I wrote bits of posts during the travel, but never uploaded anything because a detailed description of my 15 hour journey to France, which should have taken less than 9, didn't seem too read-worthy in the end. I also spent some time working on a series of post about croissants, which I have shelved due to a change in my commuting route, but it will probably surface again at some point.
This massive post will catch you up to July 4th weekend with just the highlights from each stop! Google tells me the whole ordeal was about 10,000 kilometers!
France
Transport drama will always be associated with France for me. The above delay was due to in part to it being a holiday weekend, typical French train/rail problems, and other conference goers unknowingly swiping my reserved taxi. I eventually gave up on trying to find the taxi and found a bus, which took me to my first academic conference.
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| The door kept opening and closing while the bus was moving for the whole hour-long ride |
Köln, Germany
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| This veggie loaf was actually disgusitng, but the first course of cherries was delicious |
In between all the work conferences I've been going to, I've managed to fit in a little bit of ultimate as well. Aside from the twice weekly trainings, agility and strengthening workouts and extra throwing, my team has gone to (and performed quite well at) three tournaments, Disc Days Cologne,Windmill Windup in Amsterdam, and Skyline Cup in Amsterdam.
We won DDC, or at least the women's ultimate portion of it- the tournament also had Double Diisc Court and GUTS competitions as well as a frisbee dog showcase during halftime of the open final (so much for getting away from being "that sport with the dogs"). This was our first tournament with the out of town players, so we were able to work out some kinks and get in some good team bonding, we all have plaid warm-up shirts now, embroidered with a lime green "Z" for Zürich! If you want to read the German Frisbee Association's account of the weekend, it can be found here (in German).
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| So much style! |
This conference was on the Baltic Sea and was also about Service Thinking. There were some useful sessions on paper writing and publishing. My presentation was the very last one of the conference and I think it went okay, or at least people told me they liked it; however, sanitation and water issues are not what these people are about, they were more into transportation, tourism or technology. The gala diner was at an old time farm and consisted of hearty food and homemade beer followed by traditional dancing, which the attendees had to participate in - this is consistent with one of the main tenets of Service Management: Co-creating value with the customer.
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| One of my advisers dancing! |
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| Awesome doors aren't just a Tallinn thing! |
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| Rice, cheese, chicken and pineapple. The salad and fruit on the side were excellent! |
I took a bus to Riga, then a flight to
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
for a short stop at Windmill Windup, a massive tournament that I have been to three times before. Windmill was my first encounter with European Ultimate and it has been cool to see it evolve.
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| Good ol' Windmill! |
I also ate some stroopwafels!
The tournament organized an online contest to see who could most accurately predict the final rankings of all the divisions before the tournament started. My march madness brackets have been slipping, since I can no longer follow college basketball as easily as I could from the US, so I saw this as a chance at redemption. I got the second best score out of over two hundred entries! This is largely due to my team being seeded considerably lower than where I thought we would finish, which was second! I was frantically checking my phone for live tweets of the final during a session at the next conference that I went to in
Thessaloniki, Greece
I was sort of conferenced-out by the time I got to Greece. I could start to tell in Amsterdam that I needed to not be around masses of strangers for awhile, but I still enjoyed the food and the presentations. There was a special session on Base of the Pyramid research, where I presented my master thesis work and got to see what other service researchers are up to in this area.
Plus! All the signs are in Greek. I didn't know that things (other than formulas) were still commonly written in the Greek alphabet.
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| I don't know what this is, but it seems old and important. |
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| Public viewing for the Greece-Columbia match. The local beer could not Fix the team's performance. |
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| A store that only sells Feta (and Feta accoutrements, I assume) |
I traveled to and from Greece on Air Serbia, since they had the latest connection leaving Amsterdam that would get to the conference on time. And by that I mean it was scheduled to land at 2:35 AM and I needed to be at a session at 10. Of course the flight left Belgrade 90 minutes late, so I got to my hotel at about 4:30 and skipped the first session, which was fine. Air Serbia is in the midst of re-banding. Instead of just going down the isle asking, "Beef or Chicken?" there were menus distributed, which informed me what my choices were. I had found a menu from a previous flight in the seat pocket and both of the entrees were beef-chicken combos, so I was a little disappointed to have to choose between "air dried beef" and chicken.
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| Clockwise from bottom: My air-dried beef (cheese was a little tasteless), great ice cream from the Belgrade Airport, the menu from the previous flight (Maybe the plane was so late because they were making such complicated platings). |
The final round of the Swiss National Championships was in Luzern. We had to beat the other team from Zürich in order to make it to the finals, but that didn't happen (we let ourselves get down something like 6-11, tied it at 12s, and lost on universe), so we ended up getting third place. It was gross and rainy and a little disappointing.
Between the two days of play, we stayed at a teammate's house with a nice cherry tree and an awesome view of Mt. Pilatus, which I visited with my mom a few years ago (also visible from the fields).
The last of the preparation tournaments was the Skyline Cup. This tournament had big ambitions, but it was its first year and scheduled at the same time as a big mixed tournament in Dublin and the some German national tournament, so the level and number of teams was not what anyone was really hoping for, at least in the women's division. The games were good for practicing staying onside during the pull, and refining a few plays and defenses, but we were never really tested.
After the tournament, I stayed in Frankfurt an extra day to meet with some German players in the sanitation game. I will hopefully be able to track some of their projects for case studies, as well as working together on some publications and putting together panels. It was really interesting to see how their offices work, since I could conceivably want to work for one of the organizations someday.
So, that is all for June and the first bit of July. I will probably have something up soon about what I do when I am not on the road, my recent trip to Germany to watch the World Cup Final, and my upcoming work trip to Kenya. Bis Bald!
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