Abroad at home

Born in the late 1970’s, I am definitely part of the "eurotrash generation", you know the kind of people you meet at parties in Warsaw, London or Salamanca? People who have studied, worked or simply lived a considerable time in another European country. In my case it has been Cambridge, U.K., and Vienna, Austria.

It is a basic psychological mechanism that, while living abroad, you tend to think with nostalgia about life back home. Often you discover that you miss the most unexpected things, like Kavli räkost (soft cheese spread with shrimp). However, having been back in Lund for half a year, there is clearly an equally strong reverse psychological mechanism: I cannot but miss the mornings at Café Sperl or lunch at the orchard in Grantchester.

So, what to do? Simulate of course! This morning, doing exactly that, I was pondering how to finish my upcoming paper for the annual meeting of the Swedish Political Science Association. The paper is an attempt to formulate the theoretical ideas behind my doctoral dissertation in just a few concise pages. Drawing on all the transnational inspiration which came from the espresso above, I think I now have a version which can be submitted. And that is good since the deadline is today.

Feel free to read:

A fair path to the future (PDF, 83 kb)