Places I visited

Through my work, I've been able to visit quite some places going to conferences. The following is a list of places I've seen in the last couple of years. The places I list are places where I slept for at least one night, they all have something to do with going to conferences and other academic "events." And as always, all of them had something magical, probably something strange and interesting, and learned me something about the world we're living on.

Australia

Sydney, 2003

I visited Sydney for a weekend, just before going to Canberra on a conference, in the beginning of December 2004. I spent some time visiting the touristic places in Sydney, and did wander around in the beautiful parks, reading a book in the good weather, while knowing that it was freezing back at home.

This was the first time (and probably, for a long time, the last time) that I visited Australia. It gave me a very good feeling about Australia. When you arrive in Australia, everything looks very american (from my europen point of view) except that everybody drives on the wrong side of the road. But that's not all. All ozzies are very friendly and relaxed. The best thing I remember about those guys is that they always say "no worries" when asked something or thanked for something.

Canberra, 2003

I visited Canberra in December, 2004 for the 2004 Congress on Evolutionary Computation. Canberra is a pretty strange place. Too much plastic and not creative. The capital of Australia is less than 80 years old, they want to pretend to be the actual capital of the country, and they put all kinds of strange monuments all over the place. I didn't like the artificial look of it all, the weird combinations of residential, commercial, and foremost, governmental concentrations. But there was one pro in the picture. We hired a car to drive around the bush that surrounds the capital city, and saw some kangaroos, emus and other animals living in the wild. It's not really the "outback," but it's great.

Europe

Brighton, England, 1997

I went to Brighton a long time ago for my first ever conference outside of Belgium. That was for the european conference on artificial life in July, 1997. I wasn't much of a academic back then, and I think back to my poster presentation there with horror. I met a lot of people there who I still meet at conferences. Brighton was a lot of fun, and it was a great place to visit on a low budget. My budget was so underrated however that I had to hitchhike back to Antwerp after taking the boat to cross the Channel as I had no money left at all after spending it at the conference.

Daghstuhl, Germany, 2004

You can read a log of my stay in Schloss Dagstuhl.

Lausanne, Switserland, 1999

For the european conference on artificial life in 1999, I traveled to Lausanne together with Benjamin Schrauwen, and his car. This conference was on our own budget as we didn't get paid for conferences and research back in those days. We had a great time at this conference. I'll never forget how ill Ben got from drinking a bit too much after we met some english guys with a couple of bottles. Ben missed out on the first day of the conference because of this. I can't remember much else of this conference, though. We had a couple of great parties by the lake and the such, but that's about it.

Malaga, Spain, 2002

I visited Malaga in September 2002 for the seventh Foundations of Genetic Algorithms (FOGA VII) workshop, a workshop that is not completely open to the public, you have to present a paper or get invited in order to get into the workshop. This has been my only visit to Spain up until now. The workshop was great, and I met a lot of people that work in the theory of genetic algorithms.

United States of America

Chicago, Illinois, 2003

During GECCO 2003 (Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference) I stayed in Chicago for a week. The conference and location were excellent. I had two extra days for visiting Chicago, and I spent most of my time in Chicago's museum and aquarium, which are great tourist places with good attractions.

Las Vegas, Nevada, 2001

In between my visit to San Francisco and Santa Barbara in the summer of 2001, Els and I traveled around the West coast of the USA, and one of the cities we visited was Las Vegas. Wow. That word probably just says it all. We really loved the place as it is out of this world. It's like an outdoor theme park that is completely free to visit, and it's the world's largest theme park. Staying there is cheap (if you pick your hotel right), gambling with the 5 cent machines was profitable (we won exactly 1 dollar in Las Vegas), one can smoke indoors and drink alcohol outdoors, something that is prohibited in most states. We both definitely want to visit Las Vegas again.

Los Angeles, California, 2001

Portland, Oregon, 2000

Raleigh/Durham, North-Carolina, 2003

San Francisco, California, 2001

Santa Barbara, California, 2001

Seattle, Washington, 2004