I like travelling. Well, up to a point - at some point, it does get tedious, and then I really love to be home again.

It's made much nicer, though, by having stuff that I don't want to be without with me, and some things are by now a no-brainer to stick into the bag. My own pillow, for instance. While I used to be able to sleep on about any pillow when I was little, at some point, this changed, and I'm now much more comfortable with my own little pillow to rest my head on. So that does accompany me.

Another thing is some stuff to amuse me, which usually boils down to knitting and an ebook reader (as that is easy to transport and offers a whole library). Finally, something for the yoga habit: my day starts with a bit of yoga, and so I take either a mat or a yoga towel or yoga paws, depending on the space I have and the willingness to carry stuff.

And then there's the food and drink related things, like these:



If you have travelled with me, or seen me at a fair or other event, chances are high that this battered mug was there, too. It's a Thermos King Tumbler mug, holds close to half a litre of drink, is absolutely spillproof when closed and keeps things hot forever. In most cases, baristas will fill it directly and thus save one disposable cup at a time, which is also nice. I usually call it "the world's best thermos cup". I also usually have my own cutlery plus a bit of salt (you never know when you need salt) and, most recent add-on to the essentials, the mini-immersion heater. Add a few bags of tea, and the world's your oyster... because somehow, I really love to have a cup of tea in the evening when I'm alone in my room, getting ready for the night.

Anything you really, really need to have with you when you travel?

I've had a beyond wonderful time up in Scandinavia - but I can't tell you anything specific about the details of the project part at this time, as the team wants to have good, solid results from their tests before anything gets written about it on the internet. So for now, you're stuck with the abstract available on the CTR website... and the short video there. The team, by the way, was a group of utterly wonderful people, and it was pure pleasure to work together with them.

What I can tell you, too, is that learned a few interesting things about my spinning - for instance, that I move very little apart from what is necessary, and that I can actually spin decent yarn with a very small, very light spindle. The moment this small spindle clicked for me was a total delight, and I spent the rest of the day, and a good bit of the next one, marvelling about how workable it was. Mind you - I don't think I will become best friends with tiny spindles now, but we will be able to develop a good working relationship. Plus it made me reconsider park-and-draft as a production technique, something I had only seen as a method to use while learning and before progressing to "proper" spinning.

I've also learned that Swedish cinnamon rolls are the originals, with a different dough than the Danish ones; that the Danes are utterly incredibly good at making marshmallow puffs; that Scandinavia is so much more of paying with card and not cash than Germany; that both Copenhagen and Lund are very bicycle-friendly; that public transport there is, compared to Germany, quite affordable and very good; that there is a really nice bouldering gym in Copenhagen; and that bringing a tiny immersion heater and a few bags of tea along with my trusty thermos mug (that travels with me about anywhere) makes a huge difference to my comfort levels in the evenings, sitting on my own in a hotel room somewhere.

Now, apart from going to the conference, we had a little extra time to spend in Cardiff, and just in case you would like to hear about that as well... here you go.

First of all, Cardiff was really, really nice. They have a very good and quite affordable public transport system, with a bus going out to Cardiff Bay every few minutes and buses going everywhere about all the time. (Except to the airport on a Sunday morning!) There is lots of small and large shops and many different shopping arcades, a large covered market where you can buy food and other stuff, several parcs, the very imposing castle, lovely food for fair or very fair prices and lots of friendly people.

My only problem with the friendly people that were chatting at us randomly was that I sometimes had a lot of trouble understanding the accent. It’s a lovely accent (I am a fan of locally different forms of language anyways) and I had already heard a little bit more of it due to watching Torchwood, but sometimes… well, sometimes it could as well have been Welsh they were speaking at me.

Apart from all this, there is also lots of culture going on in Cardiff – events at museums, galleries, there’s the Millenium Centre with lots of stuff happening and so on and so on. We had not enough time to take advantage of all that, but altogether, it reminded me a tiny bit of London, only much smaller and less expensive. (And with probably more Dr Who and Torchwood.) We did manage to stroll along the Bay and visit the Dr Who experience, which was a lot of fun.

The only disappointment was public transport to the airport. It is called “Cardiff International Airport” but should probably called “Wales International Heliport”, judging from its size. It has exactly one runway and is tiny, and with only very few flights going in and out. (Nuremburg has only one runway and is sort of as tiny, but much more busy.) Now, I’m all for small airports (I find them much more charming and nice, in general, than the huge ones), but if it is not possible to get there by train or bus by 9:30 on a Sunday… well, that is kind of inconvenient. We had to take a taxi out to get there in time, not something I had planned on.
To be fair, we had to take a taxi to get out to Nuremburg airport on our way to Cardiff as well, but that was for a flight taking off at 6 in the morning, and I can understand public transport not running then! 

That minor issue aside, I totally enjoyed being in Cardiff, as well as the conference, and I could well imagine going back there some day in the future. Probably in the summer, though, not in January!