Fred, The fuss is all about the fact that the trains between Hiroshima or a flight leg from Frankfurt to Prague, for example can't be compared to the train experience to/from Maastricht in terms of convenience in scheduling, ease in purchasing ticketss, quality of transport and comfort (in my experience). Information about the trains to Hiroshima was provided well ahead of time and was extremely accurate and informative (down to the detail of not changing at the central Tokyo station). The trains to Hiroshima were far superior in quality and comfort than those to Maastricht. The train I took to Maastricht was decrepit - two cars that were filthy, with the filthiest restroom I have EVER seen in my entire life and I've seen alot having traveled in a station wagon all around the US as a child. And, unfortunately, I had no choice but to use the facilities on the train since the public restroom at the lovely Liege station was closed at 10pm at nite. I barely caught the last train to Maastricht due to flight delays and I got very lucky in that there was a cab dropping someone at the train station in Maastricht when I arrived, otherwise I would have had to walk to my hotel as the train station was entirely shutdown when I arrived. So, AT MOST, I would consider Maastricht a Tertiary location as I would the venue in Dublin and as I would a conference center located 15 minutes from my house despite it being 15 minutes from the 3rd busiest international airport in the world because there are no restaurants nearby and folks that stayed at other hotels would need a car to get there. In my opinion Hiroshima was a very satisfactory venue - the trains were clean, easy to use and the meeting venue was located in a city center (near all the hotels) with plenty of nearby choices for finding food. These are all very, very basic and simple criteria to meet, unfortunately, Maastricht did not satisfy any of them. Regards. Mary. On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 2:58 AM, Fred Baker <fred@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hiroshima, Barcelona, and Maastricht are equally "secondary" to me. I take a commuter flight, I take a flight between hubs, and I do something else (flight or train, and the train's a lot more comfortable than flying), and I'm there. If I'm on three flights or two and a train, to me that's pretty normal. Leaves me wondering what the fuss is about. > > I've attached the www.hipmunk.com report on "how to get from Barcelona to Beijing". > > If you're arguing against Maastricht on the basis of it being secondary, do you really want to go there? > >> Maastricht didn't met any of both choices. >> >> I don't think the responsibility of the IAOC/secretariat finish by providing >> the venue and hotels. It must be a GOOD venue. Otherwise we may choose as >> venue ANY city lost in a far corner of any country, right ? And that should >> include the most obvious info about how to reach the venue (especially if is >> not next to an international airport). If somebody take the risk of choosing >> an alternative path, of course, that's a different history. > > I agree they need to be good venues. Was Hiroshima a good venue, by your analysis? It seemed very good to me. So did Maastricht, although we had to fix the Internet access in the conference hotel. My only complaint there, to be honest, is that I used Swisscom in the Crowne Plaza and several other hotels while in Europe, and with the exception of the NH Airport Brussels, they all had loss rates on the order of 1% or greater for the duration that I was measuring. I thought Maastricht was a great city. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Ietf mailing list > Ietf@xxxxxxxx > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf > > _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf