Onkel Toms Hütte

On the U3 line in Berlin there is a stop called Uncle Tom’s Cabin. For a long time, it stirred my imagination to the point that I had actually planned an afternoon excursion out to Grunewald last Tuesday. But as always, a plan is not a plan unless it is subject to change, so instead there was an old stone house in Rheinland-Pfalz and the mesmerizing volcanic lakes of the Eifel. In other words, another roaming summer. This time, though, less drawn-out frustration and more simple trust that somehow, in the end, all will be just fine.

Academically, however, I have to report a disappointing setback: Political Studies rejected my manuscript after its second round of review. Yet if the glass is to be seen as half-full, the encouraging part is that the manuscript made it that far and should now be suitable for submission to another, if less prestigious, journal. Meanwhile, I am reading up on democratic privacy (thanks, Micke, for the head start via your most resourceful dissertation!) as I prepare my conference paper for Barcelona in August.

And then there was Denmark: Friday night on Nørrebro, a blissful bubble and, true to the stereotype of my Scandinavian neighbour, beer-soaked conversations. Yet those talks left behind a surprising condensate of the past year – others sharing their parallel experiences of everything from The New School in NYC and Nancy Fraser to life as an Istanbul newspaper correspondent. Meanwhile, in Sweden, my friend Gabriel blogs from the “Stekare mot FRA” event – well worth reading.