San Fransicko

It is 7 am on the day after this monumental election and, by now, it is all but certain that Donald Trump will win the presidency for a second time. If not before, this should warrant some serious soul searching among progressives about what has gone wrong. Though some will keep insisting that it is all due to the spreading of “fake news”, Ruy Teixeira published a very insightful piece on Substack a few weeks ago entitled “The Progressive Moment is Over”. While I may not agree with everything that Teixeira writes, I share much of his analysis.

Likewise, Svenska Dagbladet has picked up Michael Shellenberger’s book San Fransicko, seeing that democratic cities have become screeching symbols of government failure and lawlessness. From my latest visit to San Francisco in 2023, I was surprised by how rapid the decline had been over just a few years.

While a Harris victory could potentially have triggered a civil war, the prospects for American democracy under Trump look bleak indeed. As in 2017, the future of the republic very much hangs in the balance, and with no John McCain or Mitt Romney in the Senate, there will be very little holding Trump back this time around.

Staropramen

In Prague, our Airbnb was located just a block from the Staropramen brewery. Going for our morning runs, it felt pretty cool to pass the street sign “Pivovarská” and the overpass above, reminding me of seemingly simpler times. Now, as I am making a French-Italian potato gratin with chicken for dinner, I am thinking that it will take a lot of comfort food just to make it through the coming week with the US presidential election on Tuesday.

Water slides

As an adult, it’s all too easy to get stuck in one’s comfort zone. Three weeks ago, our family was in Mölndal at the new Åby swimming hall, which has some pretty wild water slides. The kids, of course, challenged me to join them on a raft but I was too much of a chicken to immediately accept, even though I knew deep down that I should have. After all, sharing these kinds of moments is one of the best parts of being a parent.

Returning today, I got some mental coaching from my dear wife, and soon enough, I found myself going down those 130 meters - to the delight of Eddie and William. As is often the case, my doubts seemed pretty silly in hindsight. Still, it was a good reminder of the importance of remaining open to new challenges.

As for that, Kullamannen is happening this weekend, with several friends from Strava running. Having sold my own registration for the 100k race, I am still tempted to one day give the full 100-mile version a shot, but I will not commit to any longer races until I have finished the Bandolerita in March.

The Tiber

Google Photos just reminded me that two years ago today, I was out running along the Tiber in the afternoon sunshine. Waking up to dark stormy skies, my morning run out to the airport in Halmstad certainly had a different feel to it but that is also very much the charm of all-year running, to fully embrace the seasons and the elements.

With track work along the West Coast this week, it made little sense to head back to Gothenburg to sleep for a few hours before going back so instead I decided to book a hotel in Halmstad and wake up refreshed to a full day of seminars on the different social insurance regimes in Europe.

Sprinter

Staying in a budget hotel next to Sloterdijk station, we made full use of the excellent public transport network in the Netherlands yesterday, riding back and forth with the yellow Sprinter trains for a couple of euros each way. Once at Amsterdam Centraal, we got to see the new £65 million underwater bicycle parking garage with room for 7,000 bikes, which shows what is possible if a city dares to think beyond the automobile-centric paradigm.

With its many bike lanes and waterways, Amsterdam is one of the loveliest cities in Europe to go for a stroll, and we sure did, stopping for coffee at Lot61 which is right up there with Sydney and Malta. Repeatedly, the streets reminded me of when I ran my first road marathon here in 2018 and I could tell that Anna got inspired.

Holland Herald

Unlike at the airport in Buenos Aires with Aerolíneas Argentinas, where no one had heard of Scandinavian Airlines or that they were a new member of Skyteam, I was able to check in and receive all Skyteam Elite Plus benefits without any problems at Prague Airport this morning.

Flying across Germany in a 737-800 named “Havik”, I was reminded of what a civilized airline KLM is, not only do they serve a free snack and drinks in economy, but they are also one of the few airlines that still has a printed inflight magazine full of escapist treats like the El Fenn riad in Marrakech and raging rain in Kolkata. On approach into Schiphol runway 18C-36C “Zwanenburg”, we are now looking forward to an afternoon along the canals of Amsterdam.

Paddle boating on Vltava

Malá Strana

As a kid, I often travelled to Czechoslovakia and the rest of the world that laid behind the Iron Curtain. Then came the nineties and its long afternoons in Central Europe, the coming to age in a time that was still breathing of hope and relief as I kept returning to Prague, Vienna and Budapest.

A few short visits followed in 2007 and 2009 respectively, but then, for some reasons, I stopped going to Prague. With Gabriel living in Warsaw, and so much else to explore in Ukraine, Russia and the Middle East, rumour had it that Prague had been overrun by tourists, and with Red Hot & Blues having permanently closed, I felt little desire to return. As such, a total of 15 years had passed when I finished my last sip of Lavazza coffee, and our Boeing 737 touched down at Václav Havel Airport yesterday afternoon. Still, I was surprised how familiar everything felt, and taking the kids up to the Prague Castle, I could feel my own excitement of once again seeing the rocket-like shaped Žižkov Television Tower and, of course, the white American embassy on the hill.

Starting our second day in Prague with a river run, William impressed Anna and me by running his first 10k, which we topped up with another long city walk ending at the Museum of Communism. Though coming across as a bit one-sided, the museum was a powerful reminder of the horrors of communism, and one could only wish that the degrowth crowd would pay it a visit.

Inflection point

Setting the treadmill at 12.5 km/h, I had time to think a fair bit before I had completed those 21.1 kilometres and could take the high-speed train back to Gothenburg. Wrapping up a week in Halmstad with lots of teaching, it feels like we are at an inflection point in higher education when the student groups are becoming so heterogeneous that traditional learning activities are no longer meaningful. No matter how much I seek to simplify the content (at the expense of the more advanced students), I still find myself talking above the heads of a large number of students. As far as I can tell, we need to engage these students at a very different level (especially as the number of students with special needs has increased four times over the last twelve years) while, at the same time, provide meaningful learning opportunities for those who are far ahead, something that is simply not possible in a lecture setting.

Though I will have one class on Zoom while in Prague, I will otherwise take a few days off from work now to be with Anna and the boys as I revisit my beloved Central Europe.

Defenestration

With Michail Rogatjev joining the ranks of Russian oligarchs mysteriously falling out of windows, it feels morbidly appropriate that all of the family is off to Prague on Saturday which, after all, is sort of the historic capital of defenestrations. Staying three nights in an Airbnb next to the Vltava River, we hope to explore everything from the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art to a model railway restaurant at the Wenceslas Square before swinging by Amsterdam for two more days in the Netherlands.

Completing my 4000th Strava activity at Nordic Wellness today, I was reminded of the importance of consistency, but also how much time and effort that I have actually put into my running since I started (in earnest) back in 2017. 

Meanwhile, yesterday’s post on pronatalism keeps generating reactions which is always appreciated. As often when writing here, rather than in a research article, I have a tendency to simplify things, and I am fully aware that these are complex issues with many possible arguments and counter-arguments. As such, I should perhaps have taken more care to clarify that I do not in any way support the broader cultural goals of the pronatalist movement and that nuclear energy, as much as I happen to love it, is only one important tool of many needed to stabilize the global climate.