The rest of the conference flew by. Thursday was particularly memorable because I went on a spontaneous pub crawl with some couch surfers and conference attendees. How it happened was that a guy named Chris who I had asked to host me couldn’t because he was hosting other people. He invited me to a meetup at a local bar called the Old Firehouse on the Thursday night. Then I proceeded to invite another CS host, Henry, who had turned me down and the guy he was hosting named Adrien from France. What was even more ironic was that Adrien had attended my panel the day before and I remembered him because he had asked a question at the end of my presentation. The following day he approached me between sessions and asked if I was the one his host had turned down! I guess it helps to have a first name with such unique spelling! Because I had met Adrien beforehand, it was easy to find him and Henry at the Old Firehouse pub that evening. I wasn’t sure if we would find Chris and his surfers because all I was going off of was a profile picture. But while I was sipping a delicious local cider (yum!) and talking to some people, I saw a guy behind them looking my way now and again. Low and behold it was Chris and the two girls he was hosting who were conference attendees from Spain. He had also invited another guy named Sanders from the Netherlands who he also had to turn down and who I had incidentally met a few days earlier at the hostel. Alice was unable to join because she is a nurse and had to work late. We were all famished and one of the girls was really feeling like curry and so we all headed off to a little Indian restaurant. It was nice because the restaurant was almost empty and so we could take a large table and sit and have all sorts of conversation. After a delicious meal we went to another pub called Duke of York because apparently there was some live music. This pub for some reason closed early and so off we went again to a pub called Sorry Head. We had a blast! I’m so glad that I couch surfed on this trip even though ironically it was the folks who turned me down that I ended up having such a good time with! I enjoyed the conference and my stay in Exeter. On Saturday morning I made the half hour walk with my big backpack to the Quay where I met Sanders for coffee and then walked around a quaint little market. Then I made the half hour walk to the train station and was off back to London, this time to play tourist for a day!
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