What I just forgot...

Maybe I am suffering from some kind of memory disease. Maybe I have filled my head with too much information making something go away every time I try to add new information. Or maybe I am only focusing on what I think is fun or interesting excluding the possibility to remember boring things (or less important things). I like to believe that the last statement is the most true.

I just got back from an EU conference in Nyköping about the Europe 2020 strategy. Nyköping is a beautiful town on the east side of Sweden about an hour south of Stockholm well worth a visit for any tourist interested in history and old architecture. However, the transportation possibilities between Ulricehamn and Nyköping are not great. I wanted to travel by bus or train as that would give me the possibility to work while travelling. It turned out, after extensive research, that I would be best off going there by bus and leaving it by train. Unfortuneately I was a bit distracted while ordering my bus ticket online (talking on the phone, looking at some papers and getting the ticket at the same time) so when the confirmation arrived I had bought a ticket to Linköping instead of Nyköping. If I would have paid more attention to the ticket I would have realized that Linköping is on the way to Nyköping and I could have gotten a ticket from Linköping to Nyköping. Instead I panicked, just bought a new ticket (changing it was not possible) and called the reception at the municipality to order my train ticket. They always get it right and so they did even this time.

I arrived in Nyköping with my speech, my hotel reservation, got a map to find my way around and felt fairly well organized for a while. Then, in the middle of the night I woke up. I saw a vision of my office and my white board and on that white board I saw… Yes, I saw my train ticket. I had left my train ticket hanging on the whiteboard in the office in Ulricehamn. So, I got up and tried to buy a new one on the net but as the safety system has improved I could not get a ticket. I phoned the train company and was greeted by a recorded voice informing me of their opening hours. The next morning I spent half an hour on the phone to get a new ticket (with a price increase of 100 crowns from the night before), which they could not send as an sms but that I had to pick up at the train station. So, during lunch hour I run up and down Nyköping getting my fourth ticket for this trip!

Well, was it worth it? Did the conference live up to my expectations? Luckily I like to think so even though I missed some of my colleagues at the conference. The conference aimed to look at how we implement the Europe 2020 strategy in a better way but I was one of very few people who actually work with the implementation of these strategies. But then again, looking at my past days of chaotic behaviour we should maybe let someone else do the implementation. I am thinking of taking up a carrier in ticketordering and study a bit more of Swedish geography!

Goodnight everyone!


PS: To forget is the great secret of strong creative natures; to forget is the way nature herself who knows no past and who at every hour begins the mysteries of her untiring labors afresh.
- Honore de Balzac