Madrid weekend

Back in Spain!!

At least for a long weekend. Nata wanted to visit some old highschool friends who lived in Madrid while I thought 'hey how nice', and 'hey I also have a good friend of me living there' a French ex-roommate from Valencia (the world is a village?). And there we went, off to Madrid. After an early flight we got picked up from the airport by car, how comfortable....The first day mainly consisted of the highschool friends getting updated, talking in rapid Chilean, with food, drinks and laughter involved :). The second day we had several missions, barber (Nata's hair got a bit out of hand ;)), pans & company (my favourite lunchplace from Valencia as I liked the food as well as the location close to university where I worked), see the KIO towers and buy xmas presents for home.


We succeeded in all missions throughout the weekend, but the barber and lunch mission already were accomplished on the second day where we also visited the Kio towers and had a pans y company lunch next to the towers, excellent!! We also found some presents in the xmas markets spread throughout the centre of Madrid, where the one at plz. Mayor was really the Major one, gigantic and superbusy!! All the xmas decoration lights in Madrid were also very nice. In the evening we had fingerfood and nice talks in which we also invited my French. It was great seeing her again having some great laughs a small break in English hehehe.





Day three was a day of going to the Rastro I believe it was called, a gigantic fleemarket somewhere in the centre of town. The market was spread over lots of nice small streets and squares, supernice, and superbusy. IFollowing that there was a Paella at the home of one friend and after returning 'home' we had one nice final walk in the neighbourhood and did some puzzling (bought at the fleemarket of a Dutch mill hehehe) before going to go to bed early and wake up at 3.40 in the morning!! in order to catch the early early early morning flight....

The End (of a nice weekend in Madrid)

See you next time in??

Jody

ESPON

© ESPON, 2006

After talking about ESPON but not really explaining what it is, it is now time to give you a better idea of what ESPON really is.

ESPON stands for European Spatial Observation Network. It was a EU programme consisting of 36 applied research projects covering a wide range of spatial issues all different in nature regarding their goals and methods employed. The projects were executed by Transnational Project Groups. The first ESPON programme ran from 2000 till 2006 while ESPON II will run from 2007 till 2013 and will have an increased budget. ESPON I had a budget of 12 million Euro while ESPON II will have an approx. 36 million Euro Budget. This is still peanuts compared to for instance INTERREG, another EU programme where they speak about billions of Euros. The network focusses on the observation and analysis of regional development trends in Europe.
© ESPON, 2006
Within ESPON they defined 5 fields of research:

• 'Thematic projects (projects under Priority 1) on the territorial effects of major spatial developments on the background of typologies of regions, and the situation of cities on the base of broad empirical data
• Policy impact projects (projects under Priority 2) on the spatial impact of Community sector policies, Member States’ spatial development policy on types of regions with a focus on the institutional inter-linkages between the governmental levels and instrumental dimension of policies on the base of broad empirical data
• Co-ordinating cross-thematic projects (projects under Priority 3) as a key component. Evaluation of the results of the other studies towards integrated results such as indicator systems and data, typologies of territories, spatial development scenarios and conclusions for the territorial development.
• Scientific briefing and networking (projects under Priority 4) in order to explore the synergies between the national and EU sources for research and research capacities.
• Studies and scientific support projects serve mainly the purpose of deepening results already achieved by current ESPON projects.
  More particularly, the ESPON Studies will further deepen and explore the results already achieved in a targeted way, in response to demands from the policy community. The ESPON Scientific Support Projects will address issues of a more technical and/or scientific nature, to be presented in a “state-of-the-art” documents. They will as well to some extent serve as a preparatory work for a possible continuation of ESPON activities after 2006'. (http://www.espon.eu, 2006)

I myself worked mainly on the 'ESPON project 2.3.2 Governance' where the relatively new terms Governance and Territorial Cohesion were better defined, related to each other and much more:

'Project 2.3.2 holds an important position in the definition and elaboration of a common ground for investigating the institutional and instrumental aspects of implementation of territorial and urban policies in Europe. The project focuses on the question how effective different systems are, e.g. considering a policy mix of spatial planning (in different forms implemented by Member States), local government powers and taxation policy in meeting common spatial development strategies and objectives such as a polycentric urban system, balancing urban-rural needs, reviving derelict urban areas, urban regeneration, sustainable management of the natural and cultural assets. In that perspective, an analysis based on a comparative review of the instruments used, and stakeholders involved in various policy areas, is being undertaken to draw some valuable conclusions of practical relevance on governance'. (http://www.espon.eu, 2006).

I also have been involved in 2.3.1 and other projects (Iberian) in which my Professor was involved, which made the diversity of the tasks at hand very wide.

So now you know what sort of vague thing I did back in Valencia.....I absolutly loved it!!


See you next time

Master J

(Please do not use any of the above texts without contacting either me or the ESPON coordination unit. All texts are subject to copyrights. All other queries on intellectual property rights, such as copyrights and sui generis rights should be addressed to info@espon.eu.)

Day 2 Helsinki

Day two in Helsinki was actuall half a day as I had to fly back home late in the afternoon. So after having had a nice breakfast, packing my back and checking out of the hostel (leaving my bags) I was ready for another looooong walk. Today I had less of a plan but wanted to see the Sibelius monument. I didn't really wanne go there because the monument was so special or anything or that I am such a huge fan of his music, but I thought the walk itself to get there would be nice. Indeed it was a very nice walk, and long as I of course took a wrong turn :D After crossing many resident areas and local shopping streets (btw who knows what those tubes from the ground are?? I see them everywhere but have no idea what purpose they have) I finally reached the coast, there I took a nice long walk along the water, a beach, park, etc before I got to the monument.


After having seen that I was doubting to continue walking to the open air museum as it was supposed to be authentic Finnish, just a small settlement on a small island that was frozen in time....however I also wanted to do some shopping for souvenirs so I choose for the second one.
I walked back all the way along the coastline, passing a HUGE cemetery. The cemetery was on a peninsula and cosisted an orthodox, muslim, christian, war etc. cemetery. You had great views over the cold windy sea, and the city on the other side. Although it was very cold and windy it was a beautiful walk. After a short stop in the library again to get heated again and use the internet it was time for a short stop at MacDonalds as I didn't want to loose more time. I crossed the centre in all directions again and then got back to my hostel. After a short tram and busride I was back again on the airport ready to fly back home. After spending 30min at home it was time for me to head to a graduation party of my ex-roommate with a nice Finnish design present for her freshly flewn in from Helsinki :D

So that was a perfect end to a great trip to Finland. Next time I will be sure to come back in summer to see it all green and more warm, as I believe that it must look extremely nice in summer with aaaaaaaaaaalll the parks they have overthere.

Jody

First day in Helsinki

The first night in the hostel was excellent, had a good night of sleep with a busy day ahead, but a very different busy than the days before. busy with myself, siteseeing. I had a small guidebook from Holland which gave 5 interesting walking routes, and I did 3 of them on my first day....well more or less as every once in a while I got a bit lost, but I crossed Helsinki from north to south and west to east :D I have started with walking to the olympic stadium of 1952, from there on I walked passed the lake (opera, theatre, parliament, etc) to the trainstation after which I crossed the centre of town (senate square (massive Lutheran church), market square, shopping streets, etc.) to the Russian neighbourhood with the biggest orthodox church of Europe. Crossing that area, staring at the big boats, old warehouses that were transferred into nice hip conference centres etc, was very nice.



I Then had an internet break in the extremely beautiful university library also to get warm again. I bought some nice vanilla bread on the market square to also get some fuel again to get me warm inside again. Then it was time to head to the southern point of the Helsinki centre Peninsula and the Eira jugenstill neighbourhood and a beautiful park from where you had a very nice view over all the islands and the coast. Walking back through the nice Eira neighbourhood it was time to meet up with 2 Chilean friends with which I had a nice evening making a great end to a fascinating day. Damn I love traveling!!





:D

Day 2 of the conference

So what happened on day 2? On the second day I had to check out of the hotel early in the morning, as during the day I was busy with the conference. From then on I was too busy to really keep my blog going but let's continue. Well it of course started with scrambled eggs with bacon, and more ;) After that the second day of the conference was all plenary, presenting the result of the workshops that took place the day before....The representative of our sessions managed to summarize the workshop pretty well by using keywords etc. , however I heard many people complain that this summerizing and presenting of workshop results should not be done anymore in the future, as it is almost impossible.....After This session it was time to reflect on the lessons learned in ESPON I (2000-2006) and look ahead to ESPON II (2007-2013). This was a very interesting part untill the was a discussion with some high people....that were obviously not researchers but politicians and did not share our vision at all....It was all pretty frustrating, as I of course can see that there are differences between politicians and researchers, but this can be a good thing. However in this case, there was no consensus to be found.....so that was a rather frustrating end of such a nice seminar which was characterized by optimism, proud, sadness, happiness, enthousiasm and all feelings that go with the end of a very succesful programme. Later this week I will write a post on what ESPON actually is besides it being the European Spatial Observation Network.

After a not very smooth transfer from the hotel to the hostel (bus, metro, wrong tram, right tram, etc) I went to meet a group of 10 to have a final dinner together and share this 'victorious' feeling. Going out for dinner is an expensive luxury in Finland I noticed. Afterwards we also tried some disgusting Finnish liquirs (one tasted like smoke and the other one like Colgate toothpaste).....

Around 2.00 I got back to the hotel, after having had a nice conversation with a friendly girl in the tram (I asked her if I was on the correct tram this time) and after some emailing it was time to go for a nice sleep.......

Day 1 of conference

So what did today bring?? For sure meeting loads of interesting people, having great laughs, lectures, discussions, food, drinks, etc. all the things you would expect of a conference I guess, but great nonetheless. Today my professor had to give a lecture as part of a seminar of 3 presentations that were pretty closely related (I included a picture of one of the maps that I have made).

In the evening we had a tour in the bus through Espoo, but as it was already dark it was a bit weird to be shown architectural highlights that were more or less hardly visible......Anyway I could see that Finnish people are very proud of their country, everything is nice and special, they are very clear on that Santaclaus lives in Finland and nowhere else and that hej is hi, and hej hej is bye and kitos y thank you. When we arrived at our dinner place, which was in the biggest museum of modern art that was just opened (it used to be a press centre), we were warmly welcomed and then the buffet opened with live jazzmusic and excellent salmon pastrami!! the rest consisted of loads of cold dishes again, wine, and I had my first raindeer meat with a fruity sauce (there is a picture of the dinner place before we all started).

Well well that was tiring, time to go to bed and get ready for another day of conference before moving to Helsinki city centre (Espoo is really rather dead, besides an impressive amount of high tech companies and institutions there is no real nightlife or life in general to explore).

See you again next time!!
Jody