Onkel Toms Hütte

On the U3 line in Berlin there is a stop called Uncle Tom’s Cabin. For a long time, it has stirred my imagination up to the point that I actually had planned an afternoon excursion out there to Grunewald last Tuesday. But as always, a plan is not a plan if it is not subject to change, so instead there was an old stone house in Rheinland-Pfalz and mesmerizing volcano lakes up in Eifel. In other words, another roaming summer. But this time around less drawn-out frustration and more simple trust that somehow all will eventually be just fine. Academically, however, I have to report a disappointing set-back as Political studies rejected my manuscript after its second round of review. Yet, if the glass is to be seen as half-full, the good thing is of course that the manuscript made it that far and thus should be suitable for submission to another and less prestigious journal. Meanwhile, I am reading up on democratic privacy (thanks Micke for giving me a head-start with 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, as the stereotype of my Scandinavian neighbour country goes, beer-drenched talks, talks which none the less left me with a surprising condensate of the last year; others sharing their parallel experiences of everything from The New School in NYC and Nancy Fraser to the life of an Istanbul newspaper correspondent. (meanwhile, in Sweden, my friend Gabriel blogs from the event “Stekare mot FRA”, well worth reading!)