World Finals 2012 day 1 - opening ceremony

The first day was dedicated to Tech Trek (I've slept a bit more instead, which has been a mistake - apparently it was the only event happening in the historic Warsaw University building). Then teams went to the Copernicus Science Center which has lots of physics phenomena in a try-it-yourself mode:

Here are some more pictures of "normal" Warsaw on the way there:

The opening ceremony took place in the Palace of Culture and Science. I don't have any outside pictures because it was raining heavily, but the building is basically similar to the Moscow's Seven Sisters. Inside, here are a few pictures of the actual ceremony and of crazy 11-person Dixit game:

Overall, the ceremony was quite nice, but the most amazing part for me was the stark contrast with the last year's finals in Orlando. There, the finals were just another event happening in a large hotel, in parallel with several other events and one of probably thousand such events in a year. Here, the opening ceremony took place in probably the most official building of the country, with several government ministers addressing the audience. It is so much more official and grand. To be frank, I don't see much benefit for participants since it results in longer waits and longer speeches, but I guess that's good from the media perspective?..