I got up at about 08:00 and headed down to breakfast, where I met a bunch of conference folks. Some of the people were leaving early, so when we were done we said our goodbyes. I then went back to my room for a few hours before heading down to the lobby for my lift back to Sofia. I got talking to Bryn about REST, JSON, ORDS and PL/SQL, which carried on during the journey to Sofia in Milena‘s car. 🙂
Rather than leave stupidly early from Pravets to get an early flight on Sunday, I decided to leave the following day, which meant staying over in Sofia for a day. Milena dropped me off at the hotel and I spent the rest of the day in my room on the computer.
The plan was I would be able to get loads of sleep and wake up at 04:00 to leave for my flight. The reality was I stayed awake until about 03:30. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t sleep. There was nothing wrong with my room, but for some reason sleep didn’t come until ist was too late. At 04:00 my alarm went off and I felt like I had been kicked in the head. It might have been better to not drift off just before my alarm.
I got cleaned up, packed the last of my stuff (including my laptop charger this time) and headed down to check out and get the shuttle to the airport.
The airport was pretty busy. I couldn’t do an online check-in as my ticket was KLM, but the first leg of the trip was Bulgarian Air, so I had to queue at the check-in and bag-drop area, at the entrance to the gates, at security and at passport control. The queues were quite big, but moved quickly, so it wasn’t a problem.
The flight from Sofia to Amsterdam took about 2.5 hours. We were a little late, but the gate for my next flight was close, so it wasn’t too much of a worry.
The flight from Amsterdam to Birmingham took about 50 minutes. I arrived in Birmingham to 12 degrees C and rain, so it felt like being home. 🙂 It was a quick ride home in the taxi, where I discovered my car had been stolen while I was away. 🙁 That gives me something to whine about for a bit, and I’m only happy when I’m moaning. I’ll put some washing on to cheer me up. 🙂
Thanks to the folks from DXC for asking me to come across and spend the day with you before the conference. Special thanks to Milena and everyone else from BGOUG for inviting me and making everything go so smoothly during my 7th visit to Bulgaria. Thanks to all the attendees for making this such a friendly event. I paid for this trip myself, but I would still like to thank the Oracle ACE Program for letting me fly the flag.
So that is my 7th BGOUG event over. I’m looking forward to number 8. See you all soon!
Cheers
Tim…
PS. Posts for this conference include the following, some of which have brief videos. 🙂
- BGOUG Spring 2017 : The Journey Begins
- BGOUG Spring 2017 : Day Off?
- BGOUG Spring 2017 : Day 1
- BGOUG Spring 2017 : Day 2
- BGOUG Spring 2017 : The Journey Home (this post)
