Imbarchi

With ten minutes to spare, Anna and I were able to check our bag with SAS at Malpensa Airport after spending a rather intense hour on the busy four-lane autostrade of Milan. Still, there is an obvious charm in vacation maxing and being able to enjoy a glass of white wine in the lounge prior to boarding.

Now high above the Alps aboard Thor Viking, I can look back on an incredible race experience full of Italian energy and confusion. Having registered in the “non-competitive category” to avoid having to pay for a medical certificate, I started at the back of the pack and had to spend a lot of energy during the first kilometres overtaking other runners. Still, passing the ten-kilometre mark after 45 minutes, I was roughly within the window required to beat my previous half marathon PR of 1 hour and 35 minutes. But already then I knew that, despite all the scenery and the ice-cold snow on the mountains in front of me, the searing sun was taking its toll, as was my lack of training over the last few months.

Despite pushing myself as hard as I possibly could with an average heart rate of 173 bpm, the race was gradually slipping out of my hands, and by 15k I knew for sure that a PR was not to be had. Still, I kept going, finishing in 1 hour and 43 minutes in the heart of Verbania, which turned out to be the loveliest of towns.

After downing a water bottle, a banana, and a Coke, I asked for the pre-paid transportation back to the start in Stresa where Anna was waiting in the lobby of the Regina Palace Hotel. But this being Italy, no one would point me to the chartered ferries that were running back and forth across the lake; instead, I was sent up a hill to where the buses would normally depart. Once there, there were indeed special shuttle buses, only they went to the start of the 10k race. After waiting twenty minutes in a warm bus with other confused runners, someone found a post on a Facebook page and, in no time at all, I was instead on a boat passing the Borromeo Islands. By that time, everything was forgotten and I felt only immense joy for being alive and being able to do these kinds of things.

Picking up Anna and our Alfa Romeo, I then drove into the very centre of Milan, parking in a deep underground garage (always a favourite of mine), before exploring the iconic sites on foot for a couple of hours. All in all, we drove 477 kilometres over the weekend and I would not hesitate to do it all again in a heartbeat.

The Regina Palace

While unable to claim the same Hemingway fame as the neighbouring Grand Hotel des Iles Borromées, the Regina Palace Hotel has nevertheless seen its fair share of royalty, artists and writers over the years, as well as hosting the delegates of the 1935 Stresa Front.

With the race nerves barely in check, the breakfast view overlooking Lago Maggiore was unbeatable, and after a morning walk along the waterfront, I am now ready to set off for those 21.1 kilometres over to Verbania.

Spirito di Locarno

After submitting a couple of journal reviews and uploading a study guide, our Airbus A320 “Gandalf Viking” touched down at Malpensa Airport in Lombardy. Picking up the keys to our rental car, we discovered that Avis had magically upgraded our Fiat 500 to a shiny hybrid Alfa Romeo and, after a night at a very classic Holiday Inn Express next to the airport, Anna and I hit the road.

Driving along the shores of Lago Maggiore, the morning mist began to glow, and we kept stopping for photos as we made our way towards Stresa and the Regina Palace Hotel. Once here, looking at our old-school foldable map of Italia Nord-Ovest, we realized that we could not simply stay put waiting for tomorrow’s race, but had to follow our maximalist travel ethos by driving into Switzerland, swinging by Lugano, and checking out the Edition hotel that is about to open on the shores of Lake Como.

Our first stop in Switzerland was Locarno, famous for the 1925 Locarno Treaties which promised a new era of reconciliation and stability after the First World War. In retrospect, we all know that the scourge of war would soon resurface, yet there is something deeply moving in thinking that other roads might once have been possible.

A cappuccino and an apricot croissant later, we crossed the mountain pass over to Lugano and its art museum, featuring Korean video art and a fascinating book on anti-fascist architecture. Having only been to Lugano once before with my parents, it definitely felt like a place that I would like to return to.

The same was true for the small community of Cadenabbia, which is about to see The Lake Como Edition open on its main street. Sadly, the doors were still locked when we got there, even though the hotel seemed full of last-minute activity. Not letting this discourage us, we picked up some cheese and bread from a supermarket to enjoy next to the new pool deck.

Italian Hours

Based on forty years of travelling, Italian Hours by Henry James was first published in 1909. It famously ends with the words “the luxury of loving Italy”, and it is difficult to think of another piece of travel writing more fitting to bring along to Pontus as Anna and I are about to jet off for a weekend on the shores of Lake Maggiore – while going all-in on Talamone.

Having synchronized our calendars for the coming months – which will include the supervision of dozens of theses and the grading of untold numbers of exams – a glass of that already legendary Nespolino Chardonnay from Emilia-Romagna helps round off the edges of what will be an absurdly busy spring, especially as I will be away for a week in California over Easter to attend WPSA.

At Pontus, I ordered the oven-baked salmon with dill potatoes, Sandefjord sauce, crudité salad and trout roe, while Anna went for the Vietnamese bánh mì with chicken, sriracha mayonnaise, pickled carrot, daikon radish, spring onion and crispy onion. In both cases, the chefs certainly delivered and we are soon ready to board our flight to Milan, where the Olympic fury should have passed by now. Still, Italy's complicated relationship with (over)tourism is, of course, nothing new, as James observed more than a century ago:

“Cunningly select your hour – half the enjoyment of Venice is a question of dodging – and enter at about one o’clock, when the tourists have flocked off to lunch and the echoes of the charming chambers have gone to sleep among the sunbeams”

Paperworking

Heading back up to Gothenburg, I look out over the thawing brown-green fields of Halland from the train window. Tomorrow, I will be on my way to Italy where spring will be further underway, with temperatures up to 15 degrees and sunshine expected in Piedmont.

Before leaving Halmstad, I was able to submit a 31-page application to the Swedish Ethical Review Authority for what should be a fairly straightforward research project involving a survey and some interviews. This clearly says something about the escalating bureaucratization of scientific research.

After a quick lunch on the train, I better return to my quantitative methodology exams since I still have a few dozen to mark, but I look forward to reporting on Sunday’s race.

Floodlit

From the glowing yellow lights of Tehran en route to Hong Kong, to the turquoise waters of the Persian Gulf as seen from the Royal Mirage, I have so many memories from a region now thrown into war.

Participating in yet another quality assessment meeting, it is difficult to shake Trump’s conversational word soup: “Happy World War III season to those who celebrate”. For all its life-ending consequences, it is important to recognize that Trump is, above all, an actor pretending to be president, and whatever greater logic we try to ascribe to his actions, there is something about him that has never truly left that floodlit wrestling arena.

The Wharf of Dreams

With the war raging on in Iran and Ali Khamenei confirmed dead, I woke long before dawn, ate a roll with Austrian blueberry marmalade while trying to make sense of the news, before deciding that running would be a better use of my time than doomscrolling.

Heading out for 16k across town in the mist, I followed the river upstream to the open shipyard where volunteers and private individuals work on various cultural heritage boat projects – a place informally known as “Drömmarnas kaj“.

Uplifted by Skrotnisse-energy in a world otherwise intent on destroying things, I returned home to pick up the boys and take the bus out to Åby Arenastad for 1,000 meters in the pool – all three of us. As the day wore on, the mist gave way to the first spring sunshine but, sadly, the boys were immune to all further outdoor persuasion attempts. Instead, I had to limit myself to a 5k tempo run along the bike paths of Kålltorp.

With just a week left until the Lago Maggiore half marathon, Anna has sadly been forced to withdraw due to her injury. For my part, I am still hoping to chase down my long-standing dream of finishing in under 1 hour and 35 minutes.

Västkustpassanten

As Israel and the US attack Iran, William and I take the SNU bus into the mist for another chess tournament, this time in Jörlanda. With the strikes having just begun, it is impossible to predict the outcome, but as always, my instinct is that conflict rarely makes the world better.

Over the years, I have written quite a bit about Iran here on Rawls & Me, even though I never had the chance to visit the country myself. Like most people, I was horrified by the brutality of the Iranian regime in suppressing popular dissent earlier this year. Still, there is clearly no legal basis for this attack, and it further erodes what remains of the rules-based international order.

Gym bros

Waking up to cold rain and mist, I traded the muddy coastal trail of Prins Bertil’s path for 5k on the treadmill before taking the high-speed train to Gothenburg. Once there, I had just ten minutes to spare until my Zoom lecture on crisis communication began – a margin thin enough to make every unexpected stop on the West Coast Line feel slightly existential.

But all ended well, and after working through the afternoon, William joined me for some more gym time. Though only half an hour, it is really all about consistency – the quiet accumulation of days as the months turn into years. While often attributed to Aristotle himself, the American historian Will Durant summarized the Nicomachean Ethics’ view on the matter as: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”.

Tres Patas

A month ago, Systembolaget released a limited batch of Tres Patas from the mountains south of Ávila in Castile and León, which quickly sold out after receiving glowing reviews from Swedish wine critics. I was able to secure a bottle which I, despite the hype, would only give three or four out of five – perfectly fine, but nothing extraordinary. Yet, few things beat moose meatballs with blackcurrant jelly on a wintry night in February after teaching statistics for six hours.

Today, I did six more hours of SPSS workshops before heading down to Nordic Wellness Kyrkogatan to wrap up my indoor rowing for February. With only two days left this month, I am happy to have done fifty kilometres on the rowing machine for the second consecutive month, now when my running has more or less stalled.