Stockholm

I just got back from nine days in Stockholm. The first bit was World Water Week, which is the "leading annual global event for concretely addressing the planet’s water issues and related concerns of international development." This year the theme was Water and Energy and there were over two thousand participants, including folks from NGOs, various UN branches, research institutions, multinational corporations, national aid agencies, etc. The weekend was spent with friends from when I had lived there.

World Water Week is intense. Interesting sounding sessions and side events from 9 AM - 6:30 PM, with networking meetings sprinkled throughout, plus social events in the evenings. It is a big enough deal in Stockholm that one of the princesses and the king even made very short appearances (at dinners that I did not attend).  My adviser was part of a panel on business potential of resource recovery in sanitation systems and some other colleagues held a session on Fecal Sludge Management.

Our booth was pretty popular because there were games and prizes,
 including Fecal Sludge Truck card game. Fun for the whole family!

A classmate from my masters course was also there! This was taken at the
Stockholm City hall. The upstairs portion has a magnificent mosaic, which
recounts some of Sweden's history, with mostly golden tiles for quite an effect.

That is ten, count 'em 1-0, men on stage for a panel about how to create the
monitoring system for the upcoming Sustainable Development goals.

My colleagues and I rolling deep at a session with the theme "Water as a Human Right"

I didn't spend much time outside of the conference venue during the day, but I think the conference was worth it. Basically everyone in the water world is there and fairly accessible, so it is easy to get meetings, cement collaborations, and get a sense of where things are flowing. It was even easier to meet with a Swiss professor, who teaches at the same university as my adviser, in Stockholm than in Switzerland because they both travel so often.

People are starting to put a price on water, under the veil of sustainable development, in two ways: selling water futures on commodity markets and selling water benefit certificates (like carbon trading, but with water). I am not sold on either idea just yet, as they seem to be up the green, or in this case blue, -washing alley.

After I got roped into an additional, but beneficial Saturday meeting, I was able to relax sthlm style. This meant joining old friends for homemade dumplings and a rock concert at a bar where I felt old, then waking at a decent hour Sunday to hit the forest to forage for mushrooms. It took three patches of forest before we found any. I was not much help, as I could only identify two safe types (and the species we eventually found wasn't one of them). After picking our fill, we stopped for a late salmon and dill potatoes lunch before heading home to prepare the mushrooms for drying:

Counterclockwise from top right: Fika! Homemade cinnamon bun and coffee for fuel on our search; Frida in the forest; splitting the mushrooms to look for spider eggs; the haul; the dryer filled with mushrooms (didn't smell half as bad as I was promised it would)

Upon my departure Monday morning, I was given a bag of the dried mushrooms, which will make a nice Autumn meal.

On Monday I had a meeting with my thesis adviser about working together on a paper. Some of my work is still hanging around, albeit next to the trashcan...