School, the Turkish way

ITAP, Turunç

I am in Turunç, Turkey this week, attending a constraint programming summer school. I've never been to Turkey before, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. Of course, I still haven't been to most of Turkey, but I can say that the Mediterranean coast is really nice. Turunç is tiny (pop. 2400), and I'm actually not in the village so much as above it—the school is at ITAP, a sort of retreat for Turkish physicists, where they can stare at the sea and think deep thoughts at the state's expense. How did a bunch of constraint programmers wind up here for the week? Couldn't tell you, but I'm not complaining.

The wifi only works from the terazzo, so really I have no choice but to hang out there all day…

The weather's been nearly perfect, so we've had our breakfast (olives, feta, and sour yogurt), lunch (some combination of eggplant and beef) and dinner (soup, salad and chicken, with a cake soaked in syrup for desert) on the terazzo every day. There's a nice ling break in the afternoons, to either hike down the mountain to town—the return trip is draining, err, I mean invigorating—or take a dip in the pool. The national beer (Efes Pilsner) is enough better than Swedish beer to make long evening discussions entertaining. In short, it's been pretty much the perfect conference so far. (Oh, yes, the presentations have been top notch, too.)

Constraint programmers in the sun.

Today we took the afternoon off for a "blue water" cruise. We piled onto a wooden boat and puttered out to a series of lovely little coves, stopping for an extremely salty swim in each, then had a grilled dinner and drinks before heading back to port. The young turks (metaphorically, if you get my drift) stayed in the village to find a bar, while the more reasonable of us have taken the minibus ride back up the mountain to relax by the pool, discussing the network simplex algorithm to the tune of a little Vivaldi.

"Would you care for a turkish coffee?" "Oh, thank you very much!"

Oy, I'm tired. Off to bed for me.

Beer and brats and Brits

Back in spring of 2008, a fika conversation at work had turned to Sweden's princess Viktoria and her betrothal to a fellow named Daniel Westling, who had been her personal trainer at the gym. The Swedes didn't seem to like him too much, and I remembered that they said he "looks like a brat" (brat, with a short 'a', as in spoiled child, not brat with a longer 'a' as in bratwurst). "What's a 'brat', and how can you tell"? I asked, which led to a long discussion of it.

Here's a pretty good description (in English) of what a Stockholm brat is. The short version is that a brat is a sub-class of the young and rich and idle, and even though that article is four years old now, the 'look' of a brat is still valid. But of course I wanted to see them for myself. "Well, they hang out in Stureplan, and I often saw them walking past an English-style pub there that I liked to go to sometimes," said fellow post-doc K., who is partial to things British after spending some time at Oxford. So a plan was hatched, to go and sit ourselves comfortably with a beer (which real brats wouldn't touch, as being too prole), and observe these creatures in their native habitat.

An odd thing that happened on the way in was that, somewhere between Märsta and Stockholm, our train was delayed because, as the announcer said, "there is an un-sober person on the tracks ahead of us." But we were routed around the person, and managed to get to her pub, The Bull and Bear, just after it opened. We therefore got great seats outside, facing the street, and commenced people watching. But it was a little too exposed, perhaps; as K. said, "It's hard to just look at people when they can look back." (Yes, I thought, that's a basic problem in behavioral research, for both the observer and the observed...) We were treated to a Thai parade, and a few brats (see picture above), but there were more tourists than brats. "Perhaps many of them have already gone away to their summer homes," said K.

We discussed the rich, and their odd ways, and I learned some important words pertaining to brats and their specific look, such as "kotlettfrilla." We had lunch and then left this pub to see more of the square, and window-browse at a bookshop, and to see more rich pretty people sitting outside at a restaurant for rich pretty people, and to check out Sturegallerian, a fancy-schmancy mall. If you click on that Sturegallerian link before June 23, you will get a Flash-heavy preview of its current exhibit, "Going Dandy," which is completely appropriate for the desired cliental. (It's hard to tell, sometimes, how much Swedes understand irony.)

We then took a bus to an even more British pub that K. likes, The Tudor Arms, which is small and cramped and cozy, has sports going on several TVs, and is more of a neighborhood hangout than a place to people-watch. And here, also, there were more people speaking English than Swedish. But eventually we'd had enough of beer and brats and Brits, and we made our way in the beautiful summer evening weather to Östermalmstorg, less fancy than Stureplan but still well within the borders of the well-to-do part of town. We took a rather frightening elevator down to the subway (it was shaking a lot) in order to get on the subway back to central station, and then a train home. And on the way back, our train was stopped again because of a person on the tracks, although this time, the conductor apparently didn't feel like giving us an assessment of their sobriety. "This is very weird," said K., "I commuted between Stockholm and Uppsala every day for a long time, and I never had a train delayed because of people on the tracks, and now we have had two in one day."

Boston, Rain

I'm attending a summer school in Boston for this coming week, and I just arrived in Boston this evening, after a week spent visiting my family in north Alabama. The past week has been fabulous—great food, visits with family I haven't seen in years, and lots of tennis and golf (a first for me) in 95°F heat—and frankly, Boston is going to have a hard time competing.

Boston got off to a strong start, though: it was 60°F and raining, and as I stood in the airport T station trying to figure out how to buy a 7 day pass, a traveler leaving the city handed me their pass, good for two more days. After an easy train ride to my hotel, I was beginning to fear it would be difficult to maintain my anti-metropolitan prejudices. If that had been the indicator of a trend, instead of the start of a roller coaster ride, it would have been difficult indeed.

Seeing my room brought me back to reality. I had forgotten that "good quality hostel" is a category quite a bit rougher than "no-frills hotel." Don;t get me wrong, it's clean and the staff are friendly, and I don't need a TV, but I'm old enough that I want my own bathroom. Sigh. And wireless internet in the rooms is only useful if it actually works. A week of only having internet in the lobby? This was looking grim. Feeling a little down, I set off in search of dinner (and shampoo).

After a bit of wandering (through the Boston Pride festival, which was just being shut down for the evening) I managed to find not only an open pharmacy, but then the best quick hamburger place I've ever been to (sorry, Krazy Jim's). My faith in humanity restored, I went back to the hostel for a shower, an episode of Community, and then dozed off to the sound of the strengthening rain storm.

I suppose the waning of the storm made the dripping sound more distinct; in any case, something woke me up before midnight, which was thankfully before the large and growing puddle of rainwater on my floor had made it to my luggage. The culprit appeared to be a rooftop drain pipe that ran down one corner of my room. It took a good 30 minutes for the befuddled night clerk to decide he had the authority to put me in a new, crappier room ("It's a triple, so you'll have plenty of space," he assured me, despite the fact that the only difference between the single and the triple was that they had crammed two more beds into the triple). Whatever. By one I was sound asleep again, and I woke this morning to dry floors.

OK, coffee break's over. Gotta run.