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.......