perigraphika

Inevitably, a week at a conference, staying in a huge concrete monstrosity of a conference hotel involves quite a bit of sitting in windowless rooms and drinking bad coffee. At least, though, on this trip those coffee breaks spilled out onto a sunny terrace under blue skies & overlooking the even bluer sparkling waters of the Adriatic. The conference was taking place in Cavtat, just down the wiggly Croatian coastline from Dubrovnik, and it was a gathering of around 250 lexicographers, most of them academics attached to universities across Europe, plus me, a jobbing lexicographer on commercial dictionaries feeling distinctly the odd one out, but still joining in enthusiastically with some of the nerdiest conversations imaginable. I did manage to arrive a day early to grab a free day in Dubrovnik before the conference kicked off. I took one of the handful of small boats that ply their trade between Cavtat and Dubrovnik, chatting to an Australian woman travelling around Europe on ...