A bus to Halland

This being my last official work week before the summer holidays, I spent the better part of the morning with Blackboard and helping stray students with different admin-related tasks. But since it is late June after all, I did so from the balcony while eating pancakes with blueberries.

Wanting to reclaim a bit of Halland, I then persuaded the kids to take the X3 bus down to Särö for a hike in Västerskog. The first time I discovered this windswept peninsula was during the HUB recce in 2024, and I was happy to see the impression that its natural beauty made on the kids. Looking out over the Western Sea, I suddenly felt a lot of hope that this may well be the beginning.

Though it meant that I had to work late tonight, I could not say no when William asked if I wanted to go to the gym with him. Since he started in January, he has made so much progress, and it is fascinating to see how committed he has become.

Vättlefjäll

Returning on bus X3 to the 13th-century church in Angered, it was Anna’s turn to check out the beautiful sixth stage of Bohusleden. Running on well-prepped trails through the calm summer morning, we stopped frequently to take photos and for a skinny dip in Stentjärn. After all we have been through over the last year, it feels so good that we are still friends and can do these things together.

Once in Bohus, we jumped on the train back to Gothenburg and, in no time at all, we were having lunch at Sun Sushi by the railway station, a familiar fixture ever since I moved back from Australia in 2008.

While a more sensible person would presumably have had enough physical activity for one day, William wanted to go to the gym, so I topped up with 5k of indoor rowing, some swimming in Delsjön, and then the last kilometres of running I needed to make it to 80 kilometres once more. With that in the books, I feel that I have done what I can to prepare for my 132-kilometre ultra two weeks from now, so it is finally time to taper.

Fair skies

Today, the orange weather warning has been replaced by the loveliest of summer mornings. Instead of Santa Cruz, I have my London coffee mug as I have just checked in for my Stansted flight in two weeks’ time. Otherwise, these days in June always bring back memories of the Breakthrough Dialogue: midsummers spent listening, questioning, and thinking by the Pacific.

Today, Anna is taking the train up from Halmstad for 14 kilometres along Bohusleden, stage six, which, oddly enough, she has never run before. With a bit of luck, we will get to swim in the lakes of Vättlefjäll and swing by that bakery in Kungälv before heading home to the kids.

Thunder

This morning, sitting on the balcony with my orange coffee cup from Santa Cruz, I watched the sky quickly darken as a massive thunderstorm came ashore. Seeing the intense red on the weather radar, I decided to skip my planned run and head over to the gym for some indoor rowing. Unfortunately, I was not quick enough, and the electric scooter ride soon felt like driving through a wall of water.

 

Luckily, the sky eventually cleared, so I was able to go for a run in the forest and then a harbour excursion with William to the gym in Lindholmen. All in all, close to three hours of exercise, meaning my summer training camp is well underway. However, to prevent any outsized gains, I had the most lovely Basque cheesecake at Alkemisten and later a hearty spaghetti carbonara for dinner.

Långevattnet

As planned, William joined me on his bike for a harbour run this morning. After passing a few closed cafés, we were relieved to find one of our favourite cafés in Sannegårdshamnen open, and we fully enjoyed our fika while watching the ferries pass by, filled with midsummer revellers heading out into the archipelago.

 

After lunch on the balcony, I decided to make the most of the kids’ computer time by biking up to Västra Långevattnet for a midsummer swim. Luckily, it was remote enough for a skinny dip, and the water temperature was a stunning 21 degrees.

The Alder Forest

With my apartment in Halmstad about a kilometre away from “Aleskogen”, an old alder swamp forest with abundant undergrowth, I often pass through on my coastal runs, listening to the birds singing. Yesterday, after a long day of meetings, I was a bit short on time but, even just skirting the edge of it, one can tell what a paradise it is for birds.

Now back in Gothenburg, I am alone with the kids for another week before taking the train to Stockholm. This means that midsummer tomorrow will be a rather toned-down affair, with nothing planned except reading a bit of poetry on the balcony. Before that, however, I hope to go for a long run around the harbour with William in the morning sunshine and also finish updating all Blackboard pages for the autumn courses.

The Real Flex

While my dad headed up to Norway for the launch of Snälltåget’s new daytime service between Oslo and Malmö, I took the train in the opposite direction to Halmstad to show my mother around campus as well as my apartment on Hallandsgatan 19, which I was pleased to see met with her approval.

Beyond showcasing Halland, we have also been able to go for a morning run together, which I always find inspiring. It is one thing to run an ultra-marathon at 47, but the real flex is obviously to run up and down the hills of Skatås at 77.

The Return of the Marking Dead

Just when I thought that the semester was over and all marking had been completed, I received 54 IR exams out of the blue with a rapidly approaching deadline. Luckily, thanks to my long-established double identity as Examinator Rex Magnificus, I was able to work my way through the whole batch.

Otherwise, I woke up on the 14th floor of Jacy’s hotel in Gårda after Anna and I had spent the night there enjoying a sumptuous 11-dish dinner and spa package prior to her early morning train to Västerås. With my parents being here in Gothenburg for a few days, the sofa was not big enough for the two of us, so a staycation was really the best way to justify an extravagant dinner in the name of household logistics.

Back at Jacy's

Aerobic volume

With nineteen days remaining until my 132-kilometre ultra in the UK, I am all in on aerobic volume, trying to keep my heart rate down and get the kilometres in. Starting at half past five, I ran a half marathon while the rest of the house was still sleeping, bringing my weekly mileage above 80 kilometres for the third consecutive week.

Afterwards, I went back up to Delsjön with my parents and William for a swim. With a water temperature of 17 degrees, I could definitely tell that I was not in Campania anymore, but it was incredibly refreshing. As for Campania, I made tuna steaks for lunch with caramelized onion and my signature salad with kale and mango.

Interrailing from above

Crossing the Apennines, snow is still visible on the higher peaks. Europe truly is our playground and, just like last night, I get that feeling of open-ended adventure: that somehow the story is far from over.

Yet, finishing the last pages of David Szalay’s Flesh, I am struck by an acute sense of physical vulnerability, a reminder of how quickly things can change, like when Anna fell on that cliff back in 2023. Though his life is so different from my own, following István around Europe has meant coming back to many places that I know, and to all their contingencies and memories. As much as I keep telling myself that I have more agency in my own life, the tiny and seemingly insignificant circumstances do have a tendency to add up over time. Looking down as we enter German airspace, I can almost see the trains criss-crossing below, like an Interrail pass holder still not knowing if the night will end in Brussels, Cologne or somewhere else entirely.

Arancia rossa

Waking up to another day of Italian sunshine, a slight hangover from last night made me trade my planned morning run for an early bus ride out to the airport. After a couple of coffees and some blood orange juice in the lounge, life is slowly returning to normal, and I can finally sum up the last few days.

Contrary to my fears on the flight down, everything went well in the end, and I have made a number of new acquaintances. Inspired by the success of the workshop, we are now planning a special issue that seeks to bring perspectives based on sufficiency and abundance into productive conversation. We are also hoping to organize another workshop in Ravenna sometime next year.

Meanwhile, back in Sweden, I have been asked to plan a new course on AI and public administration, something that I suspect could be of interest to many these days. With two more weeks of work remaining before the summer, I should be able to submit the article I have been writing on the transition to higher education and make sure that all my EU lectures for the autumn are planned and ready before August rolls around.

Friareielli

To reveal my absolute ignorance, “friarielli” has been the biggest culinary discovery of this trip. While I may well have encountered rapini in China in the past, this was the first time I tried the Neapolitan classic salsiccia e friarielli. Always weak for cabbage-like greens – for which I fully blame Gabriel and his Polish cooking – I found it an absolute treat: bold, bitter, and deeply savoury.

Sharing a bottle of Campanian red wine with my newfound Serbian friend and historian Damjan, I had one of those evenings that remind me why I would never want another job, and why I still find the world endlessly fascinating.

The abstract and the concrete

One criticism of my environmental philosophy work, to which I am largely sympathetic, is that it is too much about grand theory and too little about real lived experiences.

Wrapping up our two-day workshop at the Scuola Superiore Meridionale, the contrast could not have been sharper as my talk followed directly after a German PhD student had presented her work on “Fast Techno-Fixes, Slow Repair: Reparative Abundance Beyond the Labour–Climate Divide in Sicily’s Petrochemical Corridor”. Being a site of obvious environmental trauma, Sicily's petrochemical corridor seemed a long way from my vision of a bright ecomodern future (echoing the piece I wrote on conflicting temporalities back in 2020).

While it is easy to see the value of bottom-up approaches, one still has to recognize that they are inherently conservative. Imagine someone going to 19th century Sweden studying smallhold farmers. The intuition of most present-day social scientists would have been to find ways of making poverty slightly more bearable. In reality, mass migration to the United States and large-scale urbanization followed, paving the way for the industrial society that has allowed me to start this morning with a lovely run and a swim in the Mediterranean, completely emancipated from the serf-like conditions that existed back then. 

I guess what I am trying to say is that, sometimes, it is also important to remember the bigger perspectives, and recognize that change – which is often painful in the present – may be absolutely essential in the long run.

Sprada

Lungomare

From Bali to Beirut, few things beat a morning run and having the city to yourself before everyone else wakes up. Flying along the waterfront in my Hoka Bondis that I managed to pick up from Sellpy for close to nothing, I stop for coffee and a chocolate croissant that would make any Starbucks breakfast blush.

Now back at the hotel, I look through my pictures as I down a 1.5 litre bottle of water. With the temperature expected to climb up to 30 degrees today, I am both looking forward to and not looking forward to spending the day indoors at the Scuola Superiore Meridionale.

Most authentic

Turning pages in the book by Szalay (damn, how good it is!) as our Airbus 320neo climbs out of Copenhagen, I start to get slightly nervous for the workshop that awaits me tomorrow. Though nominally about abundance versus sufficiency, it is pretty clear that I am the only one representing Team Abundance and one of the few non-Italians attending. As much as I am used to being the Star Trek mascot, all those midsummers spent at the Breakthrough Dialogue have reminded me that other roles are possible, and that I much prefer being the cautious voice rather than the techno-evangelist.

Regardless of how it goes, Italy is somehow always memorable, like that night I spent in a shared flat in Florence back in December of 2009, listening to Italians arguing for hours about whose mother cooked the best food and whose regional cuisine was the most “autentico”.

Still, approaching the Alps, I order a tapas box with that lovable koala-shiraz to calm my thoughts. Taking a picture of my food, I was reminded once again why Karen Blixen did not have Instagram: to avoid commodifying her own aesthetic and to maintain the impression that nothing was curated.

Clearly, everything does not have to be a “varudeklaration”, and like Ester Blenda Nordström, I have already done my fair share of aura farming. Being meta-conscious of it all makes me briefly question why I keep writing this blog in the first place: is it simply a testimony to a world that is being lost, both on a personal and a political level?

Asked anew about how I think we should save the world, I shrugged at the prospect of even opening up that box. But maybe some things remain true. That more equality is better than less? That what matters is not so much that Sweden cuts its emissions as that it does it in ways that can inspire others, even those who do not believe in climate change? Or that humility and pluralism are always preferable to the kind of absolutism and social purity sought by parts of the environmental movement?

Carlsberg Aviator

The calm of my astronaut-early morning run was abruptly interrupted by a wild boar crossing the trail ahead of me at full speed. Taken aback by its explosive movement, I stopped for a second and appreciated the fact that it was only one and not dozens.

A few hours later, Anna was on a train up to Gothenburg to be with the kids and I was at Landvetter, taking part in the last BioClaims meeting of the spring semester. Then, after a quick hop in the air aboard Torborg Viking, I was back at Kastrup and the Carlsberg Aviator lounge, which I last checked out on my way to Portugal in December. Six short months ago, but already sort of a lifetime, the past year has truly been one of accelerating space-time compression.

Having spent the last few days writing like there was no tomorrow, I am now reading up on the work of the other workshop participants. Landing at seven, I expect an early evening in Naples, perhaps over some pasta and a glass of Montepulciano, before exploring more of the city at dawn in my running shoes.

Volume

When I first signed up for the 132-kilometre Essex Way Ultra, I decided to keep my running volume low in order to minimize the risk of injury. Over the last few weeks, though, I have felt that my body is able to absorb higher mileage, so I have returned to what used to be my normal training schedule for many years. With 26 days remaining until the race, I am now planning to maintain 80 kilometres per week for two more weeks before I start tapering.

Of all the things I could write on my blog, running may be the least interesting. Still, it is a big part of my life and something that keeps me focused through all these big shifts. While some may think of me as impulsive or changeable, it is more that the dynamics of all this are very powerful and that it is genuinely difficult to figure out the best course of action.

In a recent interview, David Szalay – the author of Flesh, which I am now halfway through – said that “the more we know people, the harder they become to define”, and that is a very encouraging thought in this age of solitary identities. Be it Paris in the early aughts or Hong Kong a decade later, we accumulate these layers and memories that give depth to who we are, but also fragmentation, as the discontinuities keep adding up.

Pink Punk

While Rawls & Me has given my mother plenty of reason to worry about my alcohol consumption over the years, a fair bit of it has been props too, and being alone with the kids, so is this bottle of Serbian rosé. Seeing the label on the temporary selection shelf, it was such an irresistible throwback to the club scene of Belgrade two decades ago that I simply had to buy it.

Beyond vacuuming and throwing away things in preparation for the big move, today's great accomplishment has been taking both kids to Parkrun for the first time in a long while. Though it took some bribing in the form of Nutella waffles, both kids thanked me afterwards, and I was reminded once again how much resistance there can be to doing the things that are ultimately good for us. Without going all-out theological with Bjørn Eidsvåg's Floden, the last few weeks of procrastination have been a hard lesson, and as such, it was a relief to finally start making progress on my co-authored article about the transition to higher education.

Otherwise, my plans of going to the library with the kids fell through when I realized that today is the National Day of Sweden and that the country has been taken over by syttende-mai-wannabes. Do not get me wrong, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with being proud of Sweden, especially considering all the great things this country represents, something that becomes even clearer with a bit of distance when living abroad. Still, it felt almost like a dream when someone wrote that she “wanted her kids to be world citizens”, as if I had almost given up on the possibility that there could be other people out there still aspiring to something larger.

Hail

Falling asleep with an open window, I was woken around midnight by strong winds and fierce hail hitting the glass. Lying awake, thoughts wandering, I struggled to make sense of the year that has passed since the last graduation ceremony in June 2025: how different, yet similar, my life was back then, and how grateful I am for what I have experienced despite all the pain it has entailed.

Eventually, I fell asleep, only to be woken by my 4:45 alarm telling me that it was time to get up and catch a train to Halmstad. Reading the news, I learned that Anthropic has issued another warning to slow down AI development, which, given the immense risks of recursive AI self-improvement, is as urgent as it is unrealistic, while Zelensky is calling for a face-to-face meeting with Putin.

But, for now, the world is still there and, today, we will send off another cohort of ambitious students. Celebrating how much they have learned over these past three years – the first cohort I have followed through their entire studies at Halmstad – and hearing about their plans for the future, I cannot help but feel optimistic. The road may be anything but straight but, somehow, we will figure this out.

Daydrinking

After a recovery jog through the hills of Skatås, Anna and I took the tram into town for some errands and a lovely lunch at Fiskbar 17. With the rain pouring down outside, we shared a glass of Alsatian Riesling, which felt like true Thursday decadence.

Returning home to a new batch of exams from my quantitative methods course, the afternoon hours quickly passed in front of the computer. For dinner, I had long planned to make honey butter chili aubergines, which turned out to be just as good as I had hoped. Tomorrow, I am taking the train down to Halmstad for the annual graduation ceremony and, with a bit of luck, I will have wrapped up all teaching-related duties by the time I leave for Italy on Tuesday.

Thirty minutes

Through the divorce, going to the gym with the boys has been both a reminder of normality and a shared activity that has helped bring us closer together. Though we rarely spend more than thirty minutes there at a time, it is something I really wish I had done at their age. As a teenager, I suffered from constant headaches and back problems, partly because I grew so quickly and partly, perhaps, because I was once kicked down a flight of stairs by some not-so-friendly guys at school.

Hearing my colleagues complain about their various neck issues, the value of strength training can hardly be underestimated as an adult either. As the years add up, consistency really pays off, and by now I have doubled or tripled the weights I am able to pull on most machines at Nordic Wellness. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about my academic productivity for the moment. Quite the opposite of how I felt back in December, I find myself in a season of procrastination, a curious condition in which one postpones the very thing that would make one feel better (and instead writes blogposts).

Malmö Marathon

Drawn as ever to alliterations, Malmö Marathon on the third of October (which also happens to be Tag der Deutschen Einheit) proved to be irresistible after learning that both Gabriel and Nils were running. While I have done my fair share of Malmö runs in the past, the marathon course will take me out to Ön and Sibbarp, adding some new lines to my Strava heat map and hopefully a new PR as the course is exceptionally flat. All this assuming that I do not end up injuring myself during that 132-kilometre ultra in July.

Between marking exams and reactivating Instagram after a decade, I had some wild plans for Valhalla today. Having forgotten my running socks, however, I ended up just swimming a thousand metres and saving that 70.3 madness for another rainy day. At least I was able to top up with my usual Skatås loop before returning to Blackboard.