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Travel is a great way to make friends – especially since one experiences all sides of the person they are traveling with. One gets to know which situations a person can handle well, and which they cannot. And the most fun is when you just, impromptu, happen to meet a bunch of like-minded people. This essentially summarized my first trip abroad for work!

I was in Amsterdam from 14th to 21st of September in 2019 for presenting my work on ‘Solar wind prediction using Deep learning’ at the 1st Conference on Machine Learning in Heliophysics as a poster. The whole trip can essentially be classified into multiple parts:

• Pre-trip tension.
• On trip professional excitement.
• On trip exploration.
• Conference dinner.

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Pre-trip tension

Let’s face it, I have had much smoother trip management because I took care from start to end. Over years, for some reason, I realized I have become too prone to pre-trip tension – perennially concerned about all nitty-gritties of the trip. Some amount of tension is needed to keep things organized, but like most things, this is also a Gaussian.

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The primary issue with the trip was things were done quite late (by my standards), entirely due to some lag on my side. Also, there are new protocols to be followed here, which do not give me full control over the travel. Added to everything was the money being spent — great of my guide to fund the travel and stay. The biggest tension was – you wouldn’t believe – going to Mumbai for visa. Starting at 02:00 am, arriving at the airport at 05:00 am, and waiting for dawn there till 07:00 am without sleep was taxing. Added complication was the situation of floods in Mumbai, then. However, things went well, and I was back in Pune by 03:00 p.m. the same day. Flights were directly booked by IUCAA (which was at some 08:00 am or so) — thus, another early morning travel. Accommodation, however, was in a backpacker’s hostel, and knowing Amsterdam’s reputation, I was extremely concerned about the kind of people staying there.

The flight trip was uneventful — everything was smooth, and I landed at 08:00 p.m. in Amsterdam. There was now the tension of navigating the city without internet (and the fact that single-hour tickets were deemed not available in the city), but somehow I managed to reach the hotel. Beautiful and calm place, and one of the roommates was a nice chap from Sweden. Two others were weird guys, which sort of made me concerned — in hindsight, it would seem they were nice chaps, just kind of high the whole time.

On trip professional excitement

I was expecting to be jet-lagged the whole day, but surprisingly, the excitement of conference seemed to keep jet-lag at bay. I was early at the conference venue — the beautiful Royal Tropical Institute near the Oosterpark. Surprisingly, the first person I met there was an Indian — what are the odds? We stroke a conversation, and seemed like he had a talk that day. And then as people poured in, I spotted my friend from TIFR, and an acquaintance from the conference slack channel. I could identify a couple of people from reading their papers, but did not strike a conversation (yet).

There was such a variety of talks — using things like Dynamical systems, Bayesian inference, Self-organizing maps, etc for charachterizing, predicting and understanding things from solar flares to spicules to solar wind. I asked questions in most talks — I was surprised I could understand so many of the talks in good detail. Furthermore, one my masters’ guides also arrived in a couple of days, and kept providing me with trivia (and how to broach topics, questions, etc).

Over the week, there were many talks by many people. I too presented my poster, and especially invited people to visit my poster. People may be invited to visit your poster, but they might not find time for a visit! In such cases, I would just catch these people, and spend some time (when they are free) and attempt to explain my work.

The aims of my conference visit were two-fold: First, to understand the community’s reaction to my work, and see where they deem improvement might be needed, and second, to scout for a possible project for PhD. Both were sort of fulfilled through the interaction over the whole week. I gauged people to have generally liked my work, but they did expect improvement of ‘certain scores’ in the work. This was a legitimate criticism, but people in general thought of the work to be a good start in a very new direction.

I was able to meet a couple of people whom I had only known through Facebook/e-mail communication, and it was great to chat with them about their (and mine) work. It is quite humbling to know that the person who is so politely chatting with you is one of the stalwarts of the field you are working in!

On trip exploration

Amsterdam is a very beautiful city, especially in summer. The skies were scenic, the waters clean, and a lot of shops/gullies. Trips with explorations are generally memorable with enthu people, who do not crib about every small thing. Fortunately, most of my trips till now have been with such people (I end up as the cribber!). This trip, too, had 3 other Indian guys — two guys from CompSci doing their PhD in the US and one guy doing his PhD from Czech Republic. Funnily enough, two of us were from Tamil Nadu, one from Andhra and one from Maharashtra. The first day, after the conference, we though we would just go back, get some bread and sleep — but for one of the guys, who coaxed us into going to a Saravana Bhavan there. I was imagining eating bread, pizza and some vegan stuff for the next week, but was amazed to find an Indian shop! At first, I looked at the cost — 10 euros for a dosa+coffee, and the familiar stinginess came in me. However, I remembered my guide’s wise words then:

If you are anyway spending on a trip, better to spend a bit more, and have a happy trip, rather than a unsatisfactory trip.

My Guide.

Thus, I went ahead and did spend quite some money on the trip. Every dinner was at the Saravana bhavan (except for two days), where we had a fun time with the nice hotel staff and amongst ourselves.

The first two days, we explored the area near the Central station (also called the Centraal Station in Dutch). There were numerous shops selling cheese, cakes, books to stuff. Just roaming around on the streets, watching the setting Sun was itself fun. There was, in particular one alley which reminded us Diagon Alley (and thus it became a standard landmark for us). While exploring, we stumbled upon the backside of the station, which has a ferry to an island (or was it just a large canal?) on the other side. It was fun on the other side, which had this huuuuge building with a swing on top. Going to top itself was some 15 euros (reminded me of Eiffel tower lol), so none of us went. We just roamed around, had some ice-cream and subwich. Thus, the first two evening were spent exploring this entire area (which we though had been explored fully).

On one of the days, we had gone for an escape room. I had never been to this, so I went for one with some senior people in the field — imagine, the people whose papers you read, are going playing with you! That was really fun, with neat riddles and puzzles, some of which were solved by sheer brute force (we hadn’t realized the hints till the organizer told us later!). I was in for only one room, and a friend was in for the other room. Meanwhile, I went around looking for some souvenir from the city, and was generally exploring. Then, all of us went together looking for dinner, and ended up in some shady marketplace, where there was almost no food of liking available. However, it was more about the people than the food — we sat there, talking about Bollywood music, the escape room, Bohemian raphsody, possible conference souvenirs, and life experience of each person. For once, I was mostly listening, and was only seeding the topic of discussion at times. It was a fun evening, and later we broke to our respective accos.

Trams are one of the best means of transportation for any tourist. They are fast, but slow enough to provide a ride through the entire city. Of course, off-beaten paths are not covered in this, so that is one drawback. Initially, I was excited to take a tram travel across the city, but seeing we were going to only known places, I started spacing out (and the refree report nagging at the back of my head was getting amplified). At one point, we were at this floating market — which was beautiful, but most shops were similar.

As we kept roaming around, we came across some place with lots of roadside shops. To our surprise, we found our auditory receptors catching some bollywood music. Turned out, there were some Afgan shops playing them (of course, to lure Indians). We had some nice juice, bought some souvenirs, and proceeded with awe at the area, which seemed like we had entered Renganathan street in Chennai. It turned out, this was a Chinatown in Amsterdam — who would have guessed it! We went to a Buddhist temple there, which had the 1000-armed Avalokitesvara (which sort of reminded me of Shinsu-senju in Naruto), and then proceeded to an ANIME SHOP opposite to the temple! What are the odds of finding an Anime shop in Amsterdam?

The Anime shop was – for lack of adjectives – mind blowing. There were sooo many action figures, manga, tees, keychains – you name the merch. The tees were quite expensive (25ish eur) and hoodies too(35ish). Brilliant design, but quite expensive. In the end, I got a Minato figurine to join my Charmander in my office. 10 eur, but a bargain! We then found a quaint pizza shop, and had some good pizza (finally!). After a nice snack, we proceeded ‘onwards’, only to come out near a church. It was beautiful, but seemed quite modern. We proceeded, and sort of entered a very shade place — apparently, it was a red light place in the city. We hurried through (there was a sick feeling in all of us, for some reason), and came out of some gully which would have made anyone feel at Richie street in Chennai — but for the white folks and canals. There was chaos, but things seemed to proceed and not stagnate. I was getting a Rome-like feeling from this place, and we just savored the place. As the Sun started moving towards the other side, we made our way out to a final snack at the Saravana bhavan, and then proceeded back to our accos.

But hang on, I am yet to describe the conference dinner evening!

Conference dinner

The sessions ended early this day, so we left and wandered around the Oosterpark behind the conference venue. It was very maintained, and had lot of birds flying around. There were some kids running behind dogs, which was fun for us to watch!

We proceeded to assemble near the conference venue, where we had a boat trip organized for us! We were shown around the docks, and the places where the Dutch East India Company had put their loot (of course, that’s what I call it – don’t bother getting offended!). The canals were, surprisingly, very well maintained, and as we navigated through them, we could see vestiges of a military escape route. On the way, we also came through the large canal, which we had taken the ferry across — seems like our dinner was on a boat! We were quite excited, seeing the conference registration fees was put to good use!

The dinner at the boat was quite different — it was called a standing dinner, where the waiters would keep bringing stuff for us, while we stood (or sat, as with some people) and chatted. Initially, I thought of striking up convo with my masters’ guide, but he apparently had appointments with people then. So then I proceeded to make some acquaintances, and was eating cheese. While we chatted with an Indian origin guys, people from the subcontinent, and people in general, we found the only food for us was turning out to be cheese. So, at 9-ish, we took our leave, and then went over to a subway near the central station, grabbed some food, and sat down, staring at the cold, infinite-seeming waters, contemplating all the good stuff that came out of this conference.

Finally, on the day of departure, my flight was quite early – again, 10ish. On the way, I met one of the pioneers of the neural network applications waiting for the tram. I stuck a conversation with him — generally talking about things, work, asking how he would solve equations for neural nets, and how he would backprop. It was a very interesting conversation, and finally we reached the airport. At the airport, I ran into one of the Indian friends (yes, the timescale of conversion from acquaintance to friends is just a couple of days and good memories), and managed to catch another Indian friend, who was just boarding his flight. At the airport, we had a final snack of Motichoor ladoo, and we all departed for our respective places.

In hindsight, I probably learnt a lot of life lessons on this trip:

1. Plan everything in advance, and keep alternatives in case the primary way does not work.
2. Do not overthink. Resign to the fact that you might suffer. Remember, worrying makes you suffer twice!
3. Sometimes it’s okay to spend extra time (or money), and come back with some good memories, rather than having simply mediocre memories.
4. Further to (3), give up laziness and just go out. It will do wonders!
5. Accept that you might not know everything, and experts may also not know everything. But some people have a great insight, and a great way of distilling the most important stuff out of a presentation/conversation. This is a far more important skill than people emphasize!

Hope you had a nice time reading to my musings!

P.S: The cover pic is from the canal near Centraal, taken through a simple phone. You can imaging how scenic the place would be!