Friday 9.15 AM;
The Meeting/Plenum started at 9 sharp in a full conference room.
The FAI Gliding Commission meets once a year in plenary session to discuss and work on the development of sport gliding, rules changes and sporting events.This year meeting is for reasons not in Lausanne but in the Netherlands.
Everybody was eager to start talking and listening. A long list -of- to- do -things and a long day and,..when there is news you can find it on;
http://www.fai.org/igc-about-us/igc-meetings
My news in fact Rick’s news will be here whenever I receive it.
Off to the Kröller Müller Museum now with ladies from Lithuania, Austria, Argentina , NZ/UK and Holland. Not only Vincent van Gogh – the Dutch years, but also an Italian exhibition Arte Povera will be visited as well as the famous sculpture garden and the park where we can just take a bike to travel around through nature. The sun is not shining yet, but hopeful , at least it is promised, we will see the sun as well.
It will be a good , long day for us as well.
CU later.
The entrance of the museum.The “white” art on the ground is snow, guess left over from a snowman.
5 PM;
Lovely day at the museum and seeing van Gogh remains a HUGE pleasure even for me . The 2 Argentinian ladies went together as one of them did not speak English, so we went with Laima, who runs with Vitautas the Pocuinai airfield where in August 2011 the 16th European Championships were flown.
With “Trimmel Herman’s” wife Edeltraud, who I met in the past at Wolfgangs wedding. Herman was called so at the Wiener Neustad WGC, when he took care in a perfect way of the weather.
Also with us Marion Macintyre who lived in New Zealand and now lives in the UK close to Cambridge. Never met Marion before but Ross I know from comps and once in Italy , I took over his job as juror because he could n’t come for reasons.
Lunch at the museum with Marion, Laima,Edeltraud .
You see real Dutch pea- soupe on one site and biological bread with with French Brie and Dutch Old cheese on the other site.
So a very nice INTERNATIONAL ” Bunch” of ladies. After arriving back at the hotel, we had tea looking out over the beautiful golf area here at Papendal
At 4PM all the hardworking men came out for a little, 5 minutes coffee/tea break , after talking about flight safety and ,…..as we heard the meeting -schedule was running in time. This IGC meeting is pretty “male”, but I noticed some female delegates as well, other than Marina and Frouwke ,who are doing this already for a longer time
I am impressed they are real professionals. I heard yesterday that the TOP of the IGC, who is here already since Wednesday “have “dot the i’s and crossed the t’s. Everything has been prepared to the finesse, to make this meeting smooth, fast and to the point . Compliments!!!!!
Pure dedication to soaring, from ALL here, president, vice president and delegates,….. for ALL of us.
So off to dinner tonight. CU later,…..maybe!?
10 PM;
Lovely evening, very pleasant. The Dutch top of gliding joined in as well, had a “sip” of Japanese whisky mixed with water -50 %- as they do in Scotland , shared lot’s of great stories with Marina , Tor and Silva about Räyskälä and Rieti and enjoyed the stories from Marion and Ross Macintyre.
Very good to see young female delegates from Turkey and Russia, as well as young male delegates for example from Finland, Germany and France.
If you want to see what happened today and what’s going to happen tomorrow you can go to
http://www.fai.org/igc-about-us/igc-meetings
For example tomorrow:
—strategy and votes on bids
—past and future championships
—IGC Awards
—proposals requiring voting
Off to bed, tomorrow is another day
Cheers Ritz