MIP Meeting (4) Announcement and information
Plenary and technical Network Meeting - 3

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Date of the meeting: July 8 - 11, 2004
Meeting Location: La Rochelle, France.
July 8: Comfort Hotel St Nicolas - meeting room
July 9-10: University of La Rochelle, and Atelier Quillet (Ile de Ré)

Aim of this meeting:
Five general items will pass this meeting:
1 Management items, as annual reports, links with others etc.
2 MIP continuation, i.e. TG 3 and TG 4 have now to tell what they will undertake, while TG 1 and 2 will evaluate briefly their findings
3 MIP new topic, "education"
4 MIP in September (TG 4 activity, selecting speakers and MIP meeting)
5 MIP in November (international event, and who will and can be put on the list of speakers)

One special item is on our menu:
Exchange knowledge with the Iron Gall Ink Corrosion Group in France (IGIG-France). They want to know what we are doing and we want to know what they are doing.
Besides we have still to deal with the item on analytical methods.

Hotel Accommodation and info:
There is a simple, but good accommodation available in the town, at a walking distance from the train station. This hotel has also a meeting room for max. 25 persons.

Comfort Hotel St Nicolas, 13 rue Sardinerie, 17 000 La Rochelle
http://www.comfortstnicolas.com/

The access to the Hotel from the train station is available on the page: http://www.comfortstnicolas.com/en/acces.htm

Thanks to an agreement between the University and this hotel, you can benefit a reduced price of about 40 euro/night. An option has already been taken on your room from the 7th to the 10th of July. If you want to stay more, please mention it, because they will probably not have many rooms available on Sunday-night.

Please send as soon as possible your registration form back to John Havermans! He will collect all needs and communicate these with Veronique directly.

Travel information:
La Rochelle can be reached easily by boat. In case you decide to travel by other means, you have the choice of:

Train: Paris to La Rochelle is about 3 hours by train (TGV). But you must have to book your ticket in advance (reservation is required).

Be careful, because they are many train stations in Paris. The right one is "GARE MONTPARNASSE". (Trains coming from "gare d'Austerlitz" take 5hours!) You can order your train ticket with your credit card on the following Internet site:
http://www.sncf.com/indexe.htm

If you prefer to call directly for ordering, you can use the following number:
(33) 8 92 35 35 35 (there is a vocal system that gives you a menu in French, let it speak a little and choose the number 9, then, you should get a sales person).
If you order your train ticket enough in advance, they can send it to your home.

If you're arriving by plane to Paris, you have to schedule 2 hours between your landing and your train departure (at least). Connections are the following:

Roissy Charles de Gaulle Airport to Gare Montaparnasse
Air France Bus
(Tel. 01 41 56 89 00 for recorded message in French and English)
Leaves every 15-20 minutes during the hours of 5h40 - 23h and deposits passengers at Gare Montparnasse. Travel time of about 1 hour if traffic is clear; or more during rush hours.
RER and Metro (the quickest way)
An RER/TGV station now serves the airport directly. Trains leave every 15 minutes during the hours of 5h30 - 23h30 to downtown. Travel time is approx 45 minutes to Denfert Rochereau. Then go out and take the connection to the metro (ligne 6: direction Charles de Gaulle Etoile). Gare Montaparnasse is 3 stations later.

Note that there are some trains going directly from the airport Roissy Charles de Gaulles to Poitiers (and you can have some connection then to La Rochelle)

Orly Airport to Gare Montparnasse :
Air France Bus
(Tel. 01 41 56 89 00 for recorded message in French and English) Leaves every 15-20 minutes from during the hours of 5h40 - 23h and deposit passengers at Gare d'Austerlitz, Gare Montparnasse, Travel times of about 45 minutes if traffic is clear; or more during rush hours

Orlybus
Service to and from Denfert-Rochereau stop (bus is next to the RER stop). Departs every 15 minutes. Travel times of about 45 minutes if traffic is clear; or more during rush hours

Plane: La Rochelle has an airport. Air France, Air Jet, Flybe and Ryanair do fly to this airport. Taxi is easy to go down town. It takes about 5-10 minutes.

Car: Very simple to reach, coming from the North, take from Paris the A10 and after Portiers the N11 direction La Rochelle. Please note that the distance between Paris and La Rochelle is about 470 km!

Weather information
In July it should be summer time. According to the statistics the average temperature will be about 20 °C, but the highest temperature recorded in July was 37 °C. Do not forget some warm clothes, because it can be very warm, or rather cold and rainy as well.

Tentative Meeting Structure

Wednesday, July 7th. 2004
Arrival in La Rochelle
Informal dinner

Thursday, July 8th. 2004
Morning session
Management items
Expanding MIP
Organisation Meeting Slovenia (November), The Netherlands (September)
Conclusions, review activities TG-1 & 2
Early afternoon session
Activities TG-3 - presentation of a survey
Information on current activities by members
Cross-linked theme - education
Late afternoon session
Activities TG-4 & discussion on papers for TG-4 September meeting

Friday, July 9th. 2004
MIP meets IGIG-France
Aim to exchange knowledge, to inform about each other's activities and to establish future co-operation on bilateral level or EU-level.

Morning session
In discussion
Early afternoon session
In discussion
Late afternoon session
Round table discussions

Saturday, July 10th. 2004
Morning session
Continuation on discussions for the coming events and on items we could not finish on time
Afternoon session
Excursion on the Ré Island and visit of the workshop Quillet.