Laundromats Have Tourists Again!

 

Amy, Lee, Jane and John

American tourists are back in laundromats in Europe

Five years ago, I started making trips across Europe and Israel with just a backpack. Carrying just a few pieces of clothing has many advantages, but it also meant weekly trips to laundromats.  I like doing laundry, but the laundromats turned out to be much more fun than I expected. 

Other tourists from all over the world use laundromats in big cities so I met some very interesting people while resupplying myself with clean clothes.  But COVID changed laundromats just as it changed so many other things.  This current trip I am on is my fifth trip to Europe since July of last year.  

Until last week, I did not see any tourists in laundromats from France to Poland. At the beginning of this trip, I washed clothes in Rome in an empty laundromat.  But last Thursday, I went to a laundromat near the Pantheon and met three sisters traveling together in France. Actually, there are four sisters, one was off doing something else.  

Amy, Lee and Jane are currently living in Chicago, DC and Detroit.  We talked for a while about where they had already been--the Louvre, Versailles, and many other Paris destinations. The next day they were going on a tour of the Normandy coast.  They have another week in Paris then back to America.  

A few minutes before the laundry was dry, Jane's husband John joined us.  He saw my armor tattoo. He had an uncle who was a tank commander in World War II.  

Next week I am staying in a monastic guest house which has its own washer-dryer so I won't need a laundromat.  

In the same laundromat in which I met Amy, Lee and Jane, I met a couple from Australia and a bike racer from California. That was in 2017. The story is here.   

My favorite laundromat story was from 2019 in Jerusalem. That is here. 

Matthew Adamson on Academic Career Paths and the Interplay of Maps and Reality

 

At a conference on the history of science and diplomacy in Paris, Matthew Adamson talked about the history of uranium exploration and mining in the nuclear age. He had a mercator map of the world with all known uranium deposits as part his presentation.  

At a break, we had a chance to talk about the interplay between resource maps and the people who use them.  As the maps become more detailed and more reliable, they exert influence on those who use them.  When I worked for a global chemical company, the map of actual and potential raw material became a big part of business growth meetings.  Each potential source of uranium can be a source of peaceful power or weapons.  Adamson's map has business, regulatory and threat dimensions. 

At lunch we talked about he came to be Director of Academic and Student Affairs at McDaniel College's campus in Budapest, Hungary, as well as External Researcher at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Budapest advising on the history and institutional context of use of radioisotopes.

Adamson studied French and French literature at James Madison University, graduating in 1996, then began a PhD program at Indiana University in the history and philosophy of science and technology. He completed the program in 2005. But in 2001 he had moved to France as part of his doctoral studies and met his future wife, who was from Budapest.  

She got a job in Budapest in 2005. Matthew followed and found a post at an McDaniel College Budapest and has been there ever since.  

I hope to see Matthew at a future conference, or possibly if my future travels take me through Budapest. 

The conference was organized by the Science History Institute at La Maison de la Chimie.