A kind of longer status update

I have been in Prague a couple of days (1 week), and it has been kind of hectic. So hectic that this is my first opportunity to write about it.
It was on Thursday that I flew in from Uppsala. (Yes, Uppsala has an airport it is called Arlanda.) Just after getting off the plane things began to feel strangely familiar. I was met at the airport by Ray Salman who is responsible for me spending a few more days in Prague than originally planned. It has been a few years but Ray is a good friend from the old days in Prague and he has been in Uppsala performing with some other of my Czech friends and was a huge success at the Nordic Championships in Magic. We went to a restaurant and talked magic for four or five hours, a few other things as well, but since Ray was going to translate my lecture we talked quite a bit about that. And yes that is why I am spending a few more days in Prague than originally planned. Mostly I visited old friends but this way I got to work a bit as well.
I stayed the first night with Duo Absolon at their apartment witch included me spending a long time talking about magic again with Karel Ocelík. Fortunately I also got to sleep, and I slept very well.
Friday I moved to a hotel and saw nothing of Prague, I got a ride to the hotel and sat down in my room to write. I didn't bring any lecture notes from Sweden, partly because that would have been crazy when you may as well print them in Prague, and partly because I hadn't finished them. So I wrote like crazy looking at the watch. Ray had told me about a print shop at Karlovo náměstí and I looked on my watch on the way there, because either they would close at 17 and I would be without lecture notes or they close at 18 and everything would work out. On my way there I learned two things, that it is very easy to forget subway exits. It is no problem remembering where to enter the subway but to know exactly where you will get up is not easy when you are finding your way out. But I got out where I wanted at Karlovo náměstí and was met by a few drops of rain. And I also learned that if you want to write crime novels it is a good thing to be Swedish judging from the book advertisings in the metro. Unfortunately the print shop closed at 17, fortunately I met the person closing the shop, and she told me about a different place just around the corner. The second print shop managed my somewhat complicated order without a problem as I was waiting. Understandably I felt very lucky when I went back to the hotel in Kobilisy with all my material. And I managed it all on a 90 minutes ticket. Between the metro and my hotel I learned one more new thing buying something to eat, and that was that they have cancelled the 50Kc banknote.
Back at the hotel the evening continued with preparations for the lecture, I had no time for that before since I was writing like crazy. As can be understood I only slept a couple of hours before getting up in the morning.

I came to the venue of the lecture about 45 minutes before it was going to start and I found that people were waiting. I think the seminar went quite well and I finished in time for people to go to the Illusionists. (That's a big magic show that was in Prague on that day.) For some reason I thought that there would only be a performance at 15 so when I missed that one I went to Vyšehrad for my first excursion as a tourist. But after I found out that they had also an evening show I made sure to watch that one. This included getting hold of a ticket and I first tried a ticket office that apparently closed but on the way there I passed Staromětské náměstí and there I saw that one of my magic friends were doing a street performance. It ended up with me going to the O2 arena to buy the ticket there. It was worth the money since I got an inexpensive seat. It was not bad but it lacked the continuity that you get with a more limited cast. And since there were so many performers obviously some were better than others. One thing I liked a lot was that I ran into so many old friends, some that I had seen at the lecture and others that I hadn't seen there. If it wasn't for the fact that it was a magic show I wouldn't have recognised anyone at O2 now I met at least 10 people. But basically I was still working because I made a lot of notes from the show and tried to figure out what I thought worked and what was not so good.
All day Saturday I was carrying with me my umbrella but of course it wasn't raining. Sunday morning it still wasn't raining and I moved from one hotel to another hostel (at least more of a hostel than a hotel). Since it still wasn't raining I left the umbrella at the new place when I went to meet some friends that arrived in Prague the same day. One of my friends were going to give a lecture at the institute of organic chemistry and biochemistry the following day, When I was on my way to the metro there were a few drops of rain but I thought little of it. I still didn't think much of it as I left the metro at Dejvice but it kept raining and when I met my friends and we went to the Hrad in the rain, we also went back in the rain, met with the host of my friends and when went to the Hrad again in the rain, but this time with umbrellas. Went down to Malástrana and had some dinner at a nice vegan place. After we finished the dinner it was still raining and we saw Karlův most, went back to my friends hotel by subway and when I had to get back in the rain again.
Next morning it was not raining but my shoes were still wet, fortunately my room included a hair dryer so when I left that problem was taken care of. I was going to my friends lecture at two but before that I had time to show my other friend a little bit of Prague, we started at the castle once again. We took a different way down passing by the Swedish embassy and when we found our way to Muzeum alchymistů which was quite interesting. The tower named after the famous trickster Kelly was more interesting than the exhibition on the ground floor. We continued over Karlův most and saw the multimedia clockwork at Staroměstská radnice and a few more things before having to get back to Dejvice for the lecture. It was not that obvious to find the way to the institute although I had been there before. In the time I had been gone they put up new buildings along the way. But we got to the lecture in time, and we were not the only ones although the building was technically closed due to construction works.
After the lecture we had to find the restaurant we were going to have dinner in by ourselves since our host and one more Czech scientist would come later. This time it was a vegetarian restaurant and not unlike many such places they had advertisements for things the Czech skeptics might have a few things to say about. After our dinner the host had to go but the rest of us went to Palladium and a Starbucks so that some of us could get an Internet connection and do some work while the rest of us were social.
On Tuesday I went to my old work at the Ústavu fyzikální chemie Jaroslava Heyrovského AV ČR and I got there at a very good time, exactly at the time for lunch. Much looked the same but a few things had changed as well. But the people was as friendly as ever and I spent a few hours there distracting them from their work. One of my Czech friends was performing in a play that evening and kindly booked me a ticket, fortunately the theatre was quite close to another meeting I had that evening. Since I am an honorary member of the Motorlet magic club I wanted to try to see them. On my way to Motorlet I first found theatre Gong and got my ticket. For once I had to practice my Czech quite a lot. Almost no one in Motorlet speaks English, a few speaks German and one of the professional magicians actually know how to say ”hello” and ”thank you” in Swedish. The theatre was of course in Czech as well and since it was a comedy there were a lot of things I didn't get but it was fun all the same.
For my last day in Prague I decided to do some shopping. I was meeting some old friends in the evening but before that I looked for books and DVDs in Czech, I found some short texts, with explanation of grammar, vocabulary and with the text on a CD. I also found some good movies some Czech and others with Czech dubbing. It was the first day it felt like I had some time off and could actually just go around and relax. Taking it easy before meeting my friends at a restaurant in the vicinity of Národní divadlo. It felt a bit strange walking back to my hostel in the evening knowing that I had to leave Prague the following day.
Ray picked me up close to Masarykovo nádraží and kindly drove me to the airport at 11.40 and after a delay (not usual for a SAS flight) at 14.20 I took of from Prague heading back to Uppsala.

What I did last summer.

Well it is this past summer, not the one before that. The summer of 2013 that I spent planning the 15th European Skeptics Congress that was held in Stockholm in August.

Now you can actually see some of the talks from the congress since it was taped. The talks are availabel online to sometime in 2014.(Talks in English the rest in Swedish.) Enjoy.

http://www.ur.se/Produkter?q=Skeptikerkongressen

A complicated issue

This will not be something light and entertaining. I will talk about an issue that has dark and terrible connotations to some and is to others almost as important as the air they breath.

In my local newspaper there is an article in the cultural section of the paper ”Kosmopoliter skriver om ursprungsfixerad värld” (Cosmopolitans write about origin fixated world). In Sweden we have a nationalistic party and they sometimes quote out of context what one leader in the green party said; that if you ride the subway in Stockholm you are Swedish. To be a member of the SS you had to prove that you were of Germanic descent from the 18th century. There are a lot of people in the US that describe themselves as Italian or Irish without having been to any of these countries or maybe even knowing the language.

Origins are a very important issue to a lot of people but it is all a matter of opinion and there is very little respect for the fact that people may have different (very different) opinions.

There are two important parts when you discuss something like origin. How deep does it have to go and what implications should it have. The two parts are very different and should be held separate. Two other concepts that are important to keep apart are nationality and citizenship. Here citizenship is far less complicated it doesn't matter where you were born or by which parents, when you are a citizen you are on equal footing with all other citizen.
The last part is not entirely true. Try to become president of the United States and people might question your origins since only someone born American can become president.

To some people belonging in a place is easy, wherever you hang your hat is your home. To these people origin is not very important, what is important is the individual. To others the feeling of belonging requires history.

I was born in Svärdsjö a small village outside of Falun in Dalecarlia a province of Sweden. I feel very much at home in Svärdsjö since I grew up there. But I am not a Svärdsjöbo (native of Svärdsjö). My parents didn't come from Svärdsjö so I don't have that connection to the place, and believe me that the people living in Svärdsjö do know things like this. But it does not matter, I am treated in the same way as everyone else in Svärdsjö and if someone told me that I am not a real Svärdsjöbo I would agree. Though I do consider myself a mas (male from Dalecarlia) because one of my parents are from Dalecarlia and I have family ties going back as far as the 16th century. My other parent is from the province of Småland but I have never lived there.
I also consider myself Swedish since this is the country I live in, was born in, and that all my known ancestors was born and lived in. Frankly I don't consider someone with both parents from outside Sweden to be Swedish and this might upset some people. I would not be terrible upset if someone considered me to be a Svärdsjöbo as I guess quite a few people might do, Svärdsjö is my home and if people ask me were I am from that is the place. But I know that I don't have deep roots in Svärdsjö.

The important part here is that I realise that all of the above are my opinions. There is nothing true or false, nothing testable. Yet this is very important on an emotional level to many people. Since we are individuals we probably have varying needs of feeling that we belong in a place and we also have varying definitions of what it means to belong in a place.
It is worrying that many people talking about this issue don't acknowledge that it is both complicated and individual. With migration we will have people growing up in places there they will not feel that they belong even if they are born there, and we will have people that feel right at home just by riding the subway. No one is more right than the other.

Are these individual differences in how we feel that we belong in a place cultural or biological? Probably a mix of both. But we should be careful not to try to force one point of view on everyone else. You can't force people to feel Swedish just by claiming that nationality and citizenship should be the same thing some people might not agree.
What you should do is to treat people as individuals with varying needs to belong and recognise that some people find this complicated and important and others don't care at all. And above all you should not categorise people as good or bad because of where you feel they should belong.