Alright, well my promise to keep this blog updated "as the summer progresses" was obviously a lie, since we are into full-blown autumn here, but I will try to catch you up on all that's happened. The summer travels were amazing, though by the end of it I certainly needed a vacation from all the vacationing, which came in the form of binge-working for the past two months.
I won't go into detail on each of the cities I'm about to list, so instead I'll put a one-word description of my experience or impression of each city in parentheses after its name. Some of these probably won't make sense to everyone reading, so feel free to ask if you want clarification on any of them. Anyway, right after Midsummer, my parents and sister came out to visit, and in the spirit of making the most of their Euro-trip we went on a cruise around the Baltic Sea. This was a nice way to see 8 different cities without having to change hotels every day. The weather was usually too cold and windy to be hanging out on the deck or at the pools of the floating resort, but that was okay because we were busy seeing Scandinavia all but two of the 11 days on board. The trip started and ended in Copenhagen (take-four) and along the way stopped in Oslo (rainy), Aarhus (Gammeldansk), Berlin (historical), Tallin (medieval), St. Petersburg ("democracy"), Helsinki (modern), and Stockholm (take-five). After the cruise, we took the train up to Gothenburg (sunny) and they spent a few days here before heading back. All-in-all, it was a really nice visit, and I was glad to finally be able to show my family where I've been living for the past year and a half.
A couple of days after they left, my friend Anna from Michigan came out to visit Europe for the first time. I met up with her in Rome (overrated), and then we flew to Krakow (underrated), took an overnight train to Bratislava (formerly-communist), made a day-trip to Vienna (beautiful), took a train to Prague (again), another train to Berlin (take-four), and then flew back to Gothenburg (beachy) to spend a couple of days. We then conveniently took the same flights back to Michigan as I started my summer U.S. trip, where I went to Ann Arbor (good-times), Baltimore (wedding-y), Atlanta (family-times), Portland (conference-y), and Atlanta again (reunion-y). This was an absolutely awesome trip - it was great to catch up with so many people from most of the major phases of my life, and I can't wait to see all of you (and those of you I missed) again soon.
So, I came back to Sweden, and then four days later left for another conference in Seoul (Hyundai-ful). This time, I was with 3 colleagues from here, and we spent three days before and three days after exploring the city, climbing a mountain, visiting the DMZ, and hanging out in a Buddhist temple. The day that I returned to Gothenburg another conference began, but this time it was local, and at the end of it I was finally done with my summer madness.
However, the following week classes began, and I was heavily involved in teaching and organizing a new course on design optimization. This was a really cool experience, although I underestimated how incredibly time-consuming it would be - between booking rooms, organizing the schedule and several guest speakers/lecturers, writing/planning lectures, creating assignments, designing and grading exams, and answering students' questions, I had very little time for any work outside of the course. However, I think it was a really awesome experience, and now that I've done it once it should be easier to teach the same course in future years. Now that my teaching obligations are over for the moment, I'm able to spend my time working on the research papers that I've been neglecting ever since the start of summer...
Alright, well that's enough for now. I've posted more pictures to the album to illustrate these adventures (link on the left or here), and I'd love to hear what you're all up to!
Vi hörs,
Steven
