How to travel by train in Europe

 Since climate change is real and academics are increasingly starting to think about how to reduce their carbon impact, I have started to work on taking the train more frequently for trips within Europe. It is always an adventure but certainly not always easy. In this blog, I will describe the things I learnt so far.

Booking

• The first hurdle for train travel is booking. In contrast to flights, trains are not actually working with a unified booking system, which means that often for across-border travel you need to connect with various railway companies to book. I found that for the trips I have made, usually bahn.de has very comprehensive booking options. Another solution is to book with companies such as https://www.thetrainline.com I have not tried it, but someone I know has good experience with it. If you find that a ticket is not available with one railway company, it's often worth checking out whether it is available with another company. Some particular finds I have done in this department:
• in general, when a particular train is not available, try booking alternatives to find out what is and is not available. For example, what happens if you change the dates to further away and closer in advance? What happens when you change the booking to a different train station (for example, try one halfway the journey, because it may be you need to book the remainder with a different company)? This separate booking can allow you to find tickets. The reason this works is that different tickets of different companies typically become available at different times.  For example, for a trip to Poland I was able to book the intercity portion of the trip on https://www.bahn.com/en, and then had to wait to book the local tickets on the Polish website until only a few weeks before the journey. 
• to book an overnight train, you may need to book specifically with https://www.nightjet.com/#/home. I have now taken one of these overnight trains, booking an actual sleeping compartment, and the experience was veyr good. My compartment had a little sink, and a good toilet and shower were available in the wagon. There were separate male and female compartments, and the conductor was very nice. When you book these early, it's also quite affordable. The website also had good information about what train stations are and are not available and why. For example, when I tried to book Italy this summer, it was possible to go to Bologna, but not to some other Italian train stations due to engineering works. Once I figured this out, I booked the overnight train with  https://www.nightjet.com/#/home, the train further to the Netherlands with https://www.bahn.com/en and the trains in Italy with https://www.trenitalia.com/.
• When I tried to book a ticket to Poland, I had a lot of trouble: many of the websites I tried would show a trip, but then error out right before getting the ticket. Eventually I found that https://www.intercity.pl/en  allows you to buy intercity tickets in Poland. Although the website is only in Polish, you can use it in Google Chrome to automatically translate it. This still doesn't work for local trains in Poland, which need to be booked with https://bilkom.pl/
• One other booking hack is to make sure you leave plenty of time for important connections, especially when those involve different railway companies. This ensures that when there is a delay, you have less stress because you most likely will still be able to make it. And it also makes the journey more pleasurable, because you can visit some cities along the way and roam around a little or find a nice spot to have a good meal.

Travelling by train

• For travelling by train, I found it invaluable to download the apps of the respective train companies to my phone (for Italy I used the trenit app, which is in English, and gives detailed connection information). These apps give you information about whether the train runs on time, what platform you are arriving on or departing from, and what services are available at train stations. Importantly, when there are delays, these apps can allow you to find alternative connections (the bahn.de app is one that is particularly helpful for this. I also found this really helpful when travelling by train in India. Without an app (I used railyatra), finding the track is very hard, especially at New Delhi railway station, and with it, it's easy-peasy, and you even get real-time updates on whether the train is on schedule.
• Make sure you double- and triple-check the timing of the trains before you leave. Sometimes track works or accidents cause changes in departure times of trains. Often the railway companies warn you about this, but it may get lost and better safe than sorry. 
• Make sure to leave sufficient time when you arrive in the train station to find the relevant track. Sometimes the track organization is quite confusing, e.g., in Poland, but also some other stations such as Munich and Firenze.
• When making long train trips, it's also worth paying attention to whether there is food on board or whether you need to bring some. In the Netherlands there is pretty much never catering, but in the German ICE (high speed) trains the catering is quite nice. If there is no catering, it's worth bringing some food with you or buying it at a train station. In France you need to pay particular attention, because the catering services may be on strike. A positive exception of this is the Eurostar, where you even get served a small meal and a drink (at least in Standard Premier and up).
• Particular learning moment for Eurostar (train between Europe and the UK through the channel tunnel): they have some luggage requirements and actually scan your luggage similar to airports. I sadly lost a small knife, which I use to cut up fruits and vegetables, in this process. So if you travel Eurostar, check the luggage guidelines before you go. Other than that the train is a very pleasant experience.

• 

  ballet class on Berlin railway station

  Sometimes you need to break up your journey for a connection by bus or metro. For example, Paris has multiple train stations, and you often need to take the metro or RER to get to another station. Leave plenty of time for that because it often involves substantial walking. Bus connections are often due to track works. In my recent trip to Italy, this was quite confusing, but by asking people, I was able to work this out without a problem. It's actually a really nice way to meet people!
• When your train gets delayed and you miss a connection, this is where things get complicated. Often it's worth asking the train conductor what to do. Sometimes your train app also gives an idea. In France, I found that I needed to go to the SNCF office at the arrival station, queue up and get a ticket for the new train. In this case it was quite helpful to already have searched a new connection on the SNCF app so this could be handled very efficiently. For Germany, you technically also need to go to the Bahn.de office to get a replacement ticket, but in my most recent trip I just boarded the alternative train and explained my situation to the conductor, who proceeded to check the situation to verify my story and let me on without a problem. 

After the trip

• If you have been delayed, many companies give you some kind of reimbursment. In some cases, e.g., the French SNCF, this information is even given when you get delayed in your actual train app with a link to the form you need to use to claim compensation. 

Despite all the challenges, I just want to emphasise that travelling by train is a great experience. You actually get to move your body during the trip, meet interesting people, and I often find the train one of the best places to work (especially when I book a first-class ticket, which especially on the German railways is quite affordable when you book early). In one of the pictures you can see me doing a small ballet class on a train station in Berlin. Moreover, it's really fun to watch the landscapes change as you proceed on your train journey!

Me in my little bed on the nightjet train

Cross-training for an adult ballet dancer, aka, how did I get such big arm muscles?

I discovered I can do ballet on
my balcony here at IIT
Roorkee in India

 Today I am writing a bit of a different blog: one in which I discuss my cross-training regime as an adult amateur ballet dancer. This blog is inspired by some funny experiences I have had. For example, last Summer, when I went to the bloodbank to donate blood, the lady behind the desk asked me whether I go to the gym a lot because I have such pronounced arm muscles. I told her that I mainly do ballet, and actually never set foot in a gym (other than to do ballet when I am travelling). She probably was not quite expecting that answer, and the next time I showed up to the blood bank she remembered that I was the ballet person. But all jokes aside, I do know I have quite pronounced arm muscles, quite unintentionally actually. How did this come about?

I think the story started many years ago when I still took class with Kip Martin in Philadelphia and I took a conditioning class for dancers. I noticed I sucked at pushups, so I figured I had to get better at those I just had to practise them. So I started to do about 18 pushups every morning (don't know where I got the number from, but somehow this is the magical number). It's great for several reasons: first of all, it's good to do something you don't really like first thing in the morning--then it can only get better from there and it trains your willpower (although the science on willpower is shaky, so I don't want to make claims that are too confident). Secondly, it's a great way to quickly warm up your body, especially on a cold day. And of course, slowly you will get better at it, and develop some muscles. It's amazing how far a little every day can go. 

In addition to this, I also work on muscle strength with a weekly ZhemFit class. ZhemFit is a type of fitness developed by Alexander Zhembrovskyy, former principal dancer with Dutch National Ballet (among others). It's a very challenging class, especially because you repeat the exercises many times. This has the advantage that you not only work the muscles, but also have the time to figure out the mechanics of movements. I found it to be very helpful to learn to better control my legs. Note that these classes are not just for dancers--in fact when I take an in-person class it consists of mostly non-dancers. But I am very happy they now have a website where you can take video classes.

Apart from ZhemFit, I also regularly like to practice Kniaseff floorbarre. My teacher India Rose likes to say it's a bit like programming your body into the right patterns so they are there when you stand up and actually practise at the barre. Also in India's class I very much enjoy the fact that she repeats the exercises a lot so that you not only get warm, but also have the time to figure out the coordination, which she facilitates by giving lots of detailed instructions. India teaches Zoom classes, and she also has a few on-demand classes with Broche Ballet.

Finally, I like to do prepointe classes with Broche Ballet, even though I have been on pointe for many years. Prepointe teaches a lot about how to use your toes, how to strengthen your toes and ankles, and how to coordinate all of that, Sometimes I feel like it's such a long way from my brain to my toes, and it's fascinating how hard it is to figure out these coordinations. But of course, everything gets easier with practice. So there you have it: my cross-training regime!

My productivity routine

 As I always find I have too little time, I am also continually experimenting with my productivity routine. In case it is useful for others, let me share what I have currently converged on. The main trick with productivity is that you need to keep an overview of tasks on different time scales--years/months, weeks and days. For each of these time scales, I tend to use a different tool. Before diving into that, let me also mention that sometimes I cringe a bit by the term "productivity" because it has this strong capitalist focus that everything has to be completely efficient, forgetting the human dimension of things. Nevertheless, if you want to do good, productivity is important as well, because it helps you accomplish the goals you have and make the most use of your talents for the benefit of all. So productivity is also quite compatible with altruistic values.

The obligatory ballet picture ;-)

My weekly overview of tasks

Until this year, I felt quite happy with my data-to-day management, but I felt like I was losing an overview of the biggest tasks, so this is why I started creating a gantt chart (see picture) to keep track of large projects and events across the whole year. This also allows me to keep track of conference and grant deadlines. Then every week, I am using this "Eenvoudig leven agenda" (Simple Living Calendar) that I mentioned before. At the beginning of the week I check my gantt chart for the big picture tasks, and copy those in my weekly tasks section. I have subdivided those into 5 sections: organization, grants, supervision, teaching and papers, in line with the main requirements of my job. I enter tasks according to these subdivisions (see picture). For example, for organization I have every week "make planning". For teaching, it may include "prepare lecture" or "grade assignment 2". At the beginning of the week, I then try to plan those tasks in my calendar at times that I don't have other responsibilities. This allows me to have a reasonable idea of what I can accomplish. I also try to ensure that I have some "free time" every day in which email can be dealt with and unexpected tasks. One trick I really like is to reduce the volume of such unexpected tasks by asking students ahead of time when they expect to complete things, which would require my feedback. In then book slots in my calendar to give them feedback at those times. This benefits the student, because they have a more strict deadline, and it benefits me, because I won't be able to book that slot in my calendar with more meetings (and in my career stage, meetings are the things that tend to completely overcrowd my calendar--sometimes I feel like I am in a continuous fight against meetings, even though I also enjoy talking to my lovely students and colleagues. It's just that this makes it hard to get anything done). Then finally, at the beginning of every day I check what's in my calendar, what things did not get done previously, and I make a todo list for that day. The most satisfactory bit is crossing off things of my todo list!

Extract from my gantt chart, which is still work in progress. Different colors reflect different kinds of things: teaching courses, grants, PhD students. Every column in this Excel document is a week of the year. I so far have only done it for this year, but when I find some time I want to add more years so I can already write in commitments for upcoming years.

People who know me may wonder where ballet fits in all of this. So far I talked about work. This is very simple: ballet classes have been booked already in my calendar with the "repeat weekly" feature, so they are automatically scheduled as appointments with myself, which I pretty much never skip.

A related tip on time management is that I really like touse the toggl app. This is an app that runs on your desktop, and which you can use to track how much time you spend on tasks. This is very insightful to get an idea of how much time you spend on tasks (right now I am using it as well to see how long the blog writing takes). This allows me to improve the realism of my time estimates for tasks over time. I also use that at the beginning of every week to review the preceding week, together with the review pages of the calendar (see picture). In the review pages you write down how much you achieved your goals, what challenges you faced, and how that relates to your habitual tendencies, as well as how you feel about the preceding week. Last but not least, it reminds you every week to "take a moment to love yourself. So important!" This is especially important as it remains a continuous struggle to avoid overloading myself because I am just too interested in things, and also really enjoy being helpful. So it is important to keep a sense of humor and not give up.

The weekly review section in which you can reflect on the past week. Initially I would never do that because I felt I did not have time, but actually  it can be done in a few minutes. And taking a moment to reflect is really helpful so you can learn from your mistakes  but also appreciate what you managed to do.

Finishing the Lojong series with applause--or maybe not?

 I think we humans are hard-wired to look for other people's approval, maybe especially those of us on social media. This is where the last slogan of Lojong, number 59, is interesting: it encourages us to "do not expect applause". 

Waiting for applause at the end of this variation at
Morlaix ballet camp 
Picture by Michel Le

The reason that social media is so addictive is that by posting something we can accumulate other people's approval in the form of likes and probably dopamine in a way that is much faster and easier than other ways of accumulating people's approval that require actions in the real world. 

There is obviously nothing wrong with seeking approval--it is actually quite adaptive and when it does not work, it is associated with mental disorders such as depression (where the reward and reward learning system are blunted) and addiction (where rewards other than the drug of addiction are blunted). Yet, if we rely only on other's approval for our happiness then we are in shady territory because we cannot control it. This is why I very much appreciate the Buddhist idea of focusing more on motivation than on outcome (including the outcome of approval): you can control your motivation but the outcome is mostly outside your control.  I think that's also what slogan 59 encourages us to do.

Maybe sitting meditation itself is an example of a practice not focused on doing, waiting for rewards, but rather on being. We are encouraged to actively notice how a certain way of being makes us feel, so slowly the being rather than doing becomes more rewarding. Once you have spent more time paying attention to your own internal landscape, it therefore also becomes easier to motivate yourself based on your intention and the process itself than the outcome. Nevertheless, it does require quite a lot of self-confidence to ignore other people's applause, but if you keep practising, bit by bit, your confidence grows, together with your stable happiness that comes from inside. A beautiful place to end this series! Maybe next time you are hoping for applause, you can ask yourself: "do I really need it?"

Some tricks for managing strong emotions

 I think the next Lojong slogan, number 58, is the reason that the stereotype of a Buddhist is a very peaceful person. This slogan namely says "don't be temperamental." An important Buddhist value is being relatively equanimous, which means you don't easily get angry or display other strong emotions. Just like the previous slogan, I think it is important to avoid suppressing emotions, because in the long run, that is not going to fly. Nevertheless, it is beneficial to try to avoid getting too much caught up in the emotions.

The dancers of Morlaix Ballet Camp putting on 
a chuckle at the end of the first act of Napoli
Picture by Michel Le

In my previous blog I mentioned how Khandro Rinpoche talked about keeping it short when emotional reactions come up. For me there are two strategies I use to shorten when emotions come up. First of all, I literally dance with it, if I am in a place where that's possible. Secondly, I will use the Buddhist teachings on emptiness: examining the nature of circumstances you see how these emotions are just ever-changing manifestations in a continuous dance of things rising and ceasing. Whatever evokes the emotion is usually conveniently put in our mind as the only cause of our anger, but if you think about it, they are also at the mercy of all these circumstances, so it is actually quite unfair to point at them for being the only cause for these emotions. Probably somewhere in there we too are to blame as well. Somehow changing perspective this way really helps me create some mental space, and frequently a chuckle as well.

It is worthwhile to think about how to manage your strong emotions, because they can create a lot of trouble. For example, for me, when people get angry I get quite stressed, and cannot think so well anymore. There is interestingly also some research on this, showing for example how more angry managers in companies were associated with reduced ability to learn from failure. This is quite consistent with my experience, where an environment where a teacher explicitly says it is OK to fail helps a lot (thanks Julie Gill for mentioning it is OK, and even good to wobble and fall over in balancing class because this is how our body learns). In short, managing strong emotions takes quite some effort, but in the end it makes our life a lot easier.

From the dancer's face to the sticky mind

One of the interesting terms I learnt this Fall was "dancer's face" from a video by Allie Christensen. She referred to the idea that dancers have learnt to not show on their face how difficult the dancing really is. I very much recognize that. One funny sight at the ZhemFit classes (fitness classes with a bit of a ballet background) that I like to take is that you can easily tell the ballet dancers from the non-dancers in that they do not wince, no matter how hard the exercise, unlike basically all the other participants in the class. 

A clear case of dancer's face at Morlaix Ballet Camp
Picture by Michel Le

This makes me think of Lojong slogan 57, which is "do not be reactive" or "do not be irritable" or "do not be jealous". In all its incarnations, the slogan reminds us to not react too strongly to what happens. Of course it is also important to not suppress emotions. So the amazing Buddhist teacher Khandro Rinpoche uses a phrase that I really like "keep it short." You can feel whatever you feel, but don't waste too much energy in it. Try to drop the emotion whenever you can. This is of course easier said than done. 

In my lab, we are very interested in studying this kind of mental reactivity, which I like to call "stickiness"--not letting go of thoughts of often emotional reactions. In fact, the most reliable way to induce such sticky thinking is to evoke people's hopes and fears, for example in a social stress test, which we have used here. We find that after a social stress intervention people have more trouble concentrating on a task than after a therapy intervention, and that they also tend to be more stuck thinking about the past. In another study we have been developing machine learning tools to help classify when a person is stuck in their thoughts. Interestingly, we found that on a person-level, classifying whether people are prone to this kind of sticky thinking can be done more productively on the basis of just 5 minutes of so-called resting state EEG (where people are just sitting there without a task) than on the basis of a specific task we have to measure mind-wandering. Hopefully this research will help us understand how our mind becomes reactive and sticky, so that we can find ways to reduce this tendency.

Don't forget to play!

 One of the most delightful things from my travels in the past year was hanging out in-person again with my Tibetan monk colleagues at Sera Jey monastery, and also at a Mind & Life meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The most important reason why I enjoy so much hanging out with them is that they have so much humor. In our interactions, you can see how they never take themselves too seriously, so they very quickly shift between intense concentration and laughter. We also see this when we study their monastic debate practice, where one moment you see them shouting angrily at each other, and the next moment their are joking. I think not taking yourself too seriously is a very helpful life skill, not only to make your life more pleasant, but also to allow for more mental flexibility. And this is the topic of the 56th slogan of Lojong: "Don’t take what you do too seriously."

Some playful movement at the conclusion
of the ballet Napoli at Morlaix Ballet Camp
Picture by Michel Le

In fact, I think not taking yourself too seriously is also closely related to play, and as researchers are starting to investigate play more, they are finding that play is a very efficient way to learn. For this reason, I started to follow Julie Gill's advice in the Broche ballet classroom to play whenever necessary. It is very nice that some classes in the schedule are now even dedicated to play--for example playing with balancing in the centre, where it is OK to fall, because that's how our body learns, and playing with standing on pointe in the centre, shifting weight in different ways to get more comfortable with those sensations.

Meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama

This makes me think: would there be a way I can get my students to play more in my own classes? I feel it's increasingly hard, because students feel under so much pressure that they feel little space to play. Similarly, play can also be helpful on the spiritual path. Actually some visualisation practices in the Tibetan tradition could be viewed as a kind of play (I hope I am not insulting anyone here...), where you feel what it is like to embody a particular deity to try on those mental patterns. And for me one of the most helpful meditation advices is "be like an old man watching children play". Another good reminder!

Can you turn criticism into a prompt for exploration?

As a scientist, I like Lojong slogan 55 quite a bit, since it says "Gain freedom through discernment and analysis." Trying to analyze and discern is what I do on a daily basis. Having said that, of course most of my analysis is on the external level of phenomena outside myself, like a pattern of data, rather than my own thoughts and emotions, as this slogan is talking about. In a way, you could say the slogan encourages us to engage in analytical meditation. For example, rather than simply going with a feeling of stress, we can also investigate why we feel stressed, and try to look at it from many different angles and perspectives. What do we feel is making our life stressful? What would be the perspective of those people around us; our co-workers, our boss, our family and friends? Actually one of the things I often find when I switch perspectives is that the things that seem very dramatic to me are probably not even noticed by someone else, and besides, they're probably way too involved with their own drama! 

Lots of emotions in this image from Morlaix
Ballet camp by Michel Le

In general going in analysis mode is very helpful to go out of wallowing in self-pity, especially when you get negative feedback. A common occurrence for this is when, as happened to one of my PhD students today, you get reviews from a journal where you've submitted an article. Sometimes these can be quite negative and your first reaction is want to curse the reviewers and feel very sorry for yourself that they are so stupid they don't understand your brilliant work. Of course that is not going to make anything better, so another approach would be to explore whether you can see it in any other way. For the reviews that's actually quite easy because after being an academic for so many years my standard response is: congratulations, you have not been rejected, that is amazing! But for other rejections, such as grants, it can be a lot more difficult. Instead of focusing on the emotions themselves and all your justified reasons for feeling this way, you can also try to explore with curiosity what is really going on: how are you feeling? And what can you actually do about the rejection? Even if the reviewer does not understand your paper, other future readers may similarly misunderstand, so it's good to think about how to rewrite the paper to deal with that. Such an action-oriented attitude tends to feel much more powerful and is also more productive, although obviously it's important not to neglect your feelings. 

I also try to experiment with this approach in ballet class where every correction is a chance to explore how to tell my body how to get the movements right. It very much helps when my teacher Julie Gill from Broche Ballet phrases corrections in terms of questions: can you make your leg longer? Can you turn out more? In this way it does not feel like you are an impossible ballet student (it's easy to feel that way as an adult dancer with a body that is not always cooperating) but rather as a starting point for exploration and mindfulness of my body's sensations and possibilities. In short, this slogan is a great reminder to focus on learning and exploration rather than drama.

Happy new year!

 Happy new year! I hope you had a good celebration (if you celebrate) with loved ones. Now the new year has started and it's time for action. Yesterday I talked about setting intentions. Today--in my discussion of the next Lojong slogan, number 54, which says "train wholeheartedly"--we will move into action. The "Eenvoudig Leven agenda" (Simple Living calendar) that I mentioned previously starts the year with an intriguing question: what is your mission? I think it is having a clear mission that can allow you to train wholeheartedly, because you can work to ensure that what you do and how you are is consistent with your mission. 

Ladies on a mission at Morlaix Ballet Camp
Picture by Michel Le

In the last few days I spent some time thinking about it, but I found it quite hard, because somehow your mission sounds like it has to be something grand like solving world peace or world hunger, and that is not something I can commit to. Today, during my morning run, I found that a better way for me to think about this is to come up with prayers, inspired by Roshi Joan Halifax's recent Facebook posts, such as "May I be able to inspire people with my combination of dancing and science", "May I be able to help my students reach their goals", or "May I be able to find some peace in myself." For the latter one, I find it very helpful to remind myself of this recent video by Mingyur Rinpoche, in which he says that in order to be of more help for people he decides to disappear for retreat for a while. I too have to think about how sometimes taking time away can actually allow you to be there more for others--it is not necessarily selfish. Coming back to your main mission can be really helpful to zoom out and make those decisions.

Finally, I want to leave you with a thought I have been playing with in the last days. Often it is easy to keep focusing on things that have to change, but interestingly this unrest is exactly what characterizes our vicious cycle of suffering. The hopeful message of the Buddhist teachings is that we all have a buddha nature right inside us, if we can only let it manifest. So here is an encouragement to trust this buddha nature and give it the space to blossom.