A new travel period has begun

 

The first signs of Hamburg, as seen through the window of a train going from Copenhagen. This is the train that takes me from Scandinavia to virtually all places elsewhere in Europe

 

The landscapes are flowing by outside the window, my internet connection comes and goes, and I have hours upon hours with myself in front of me, to use to my own ends with myself. Those are sure signs that tells me that I have started a new travelling period. As I explained in a few blog posts on my old blog (e.g. this and this), I am living in a carefully designed yearly pattern, that balances and optimizes many of my needs, wishes, and desires. To balance my alchemist and native american visions of digging-where-I-stand with the equally strong vision and ideal of living like a wonderering monk, I have 2-3 intensive travel and vagabonde periods each year, but stay the rest of the year in the same place as I always have lived, and see what I can do with what I am given. Likewise, I balance my desire of travelling with my desire to live in a way so that everybody can live like me, by only flying once a year - all my other travels are normally done by train. By going by train, I can also combine my desire to live in an improvised way, while still granting my other desire of visiting many places, groups, and sceneries, in a relatively short period of time (by being on a train tour, you can easily visit 10 cities in 3 weeks, and still spend sufficient quality time in all of them). And finally, I balance my desire of living in wonderful and beautiful Sweden with my desire to have long summers and short autumns, winters, and springs, by positioning one of my travel periods in mid-september to mid-october in e.g. sunny southern Europe, and another travel period in late-february throughout March period located in even sunnier South America or California. 

With this as a background, it is therefore completely expected that I right now am on a train that takes me down to the south of Europe. This night, I slept in Denmark (Nykoebing Falster), and now I am going to Brussels, and London, where I will be on a conference for a few days. After that, I go down to Barcelona for another conference, and then some 5-6 days of group visitations in France and the Netherlands before a third conference in Amsterdam. The last part of my travel period will take me down to the south of Germany and to beautiful Austria.

Some more details on the scientific part of this trip, inluding links to the conference places, and a listing of all the oral presentations that me and my group will give, is found on my scientific blog. That blog ends with an outreach to my scientific colleagues, to let me know if they want to catch me on the trip, for interesting discussions, something to eat, or some other joint activity. I therefore want to end this more personal and non-professional blog post in the same way: if you are somewhere in the regions of Europe that I will visit, and want to meet me - do let me know, and I will do my best to see if we can hook up!