I was thrilled to see that today's Google Doodle was "<a href="https://doodles.google/doodle/celebrating-the-flat-white/">Celebrating the Flat White</a>" – my morning coffee drink of choice.<a href="#footnotes">1</a> I've never been a fan of lattes, which have way too much milk, and don't get me started on what is typically served when you order a "macchiato" in America.<a href="#footnotes">2</a> I want to taste the espresso.
<a href="https://doodles.google/doodle/celebrating-the-flat-white/"><img src="https://www.google.com/logos/doodles/2024/celebrating-the-flat-white-6753651837110463-2xa.gif" alt="Google Doodle &#x22;Celebrating the Flat White&#x22; (March 11, 2024)"></a>
<figcaption>
Google Doodle "<a href="https://doodles.google/doodle/celebrating-the-flat-white/">Celebrating the Flat White</a>" (March 11, 2024)
</figcaption>
The flat white is the perfect blend of velvety milk and espresso. It's very similar to a cappuccino, but the milk isn't as foamy (hence, the word "flat" in the name). According to <a href="https://doodles.google/doodle/celebrating-the-flat-white/">the writeup</a> accompanying today's Doodle, "flat white" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary on this date in 2011. However, despite being around for 13 years, it can still be hard to find, especially when traveling. At home, I make it with my <a href="https://amzn.to/3OR5FaR">Nespresso machine</a><a href="#footnotes">3</a> (latte art skills sold separately – more on that another time).
If you have never had a flat white and want to try it, make sure it is either on the menu or there is zero trace of bewilderment on the barista's/waiter's face when you ask for it. Otherwise, you are much safer opting for a cappuccino. Many places have tried to convince me – despite never having heard of the drink – that they can make it or will try to. They meant well, but, unfortunately, it has never turned out well. I'm hoping today's Doodle raises awareness 😊
Have you ever tried a flat white? What is your coffee drink of choice?

<hr />
<ol>
<li>I prefer a straight shot of espresso in the afternoon. <a href="#footnote-1">↩</a></li>
<li>It's rare to find a coffee shop that serves a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caff%C3%A8_macchiato">espresso macchiato</a> by default. <a href="#footnote-2">↩</a></li>
<li>As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no cost to you. <a href="#footnote-3">↩</a></li>
</ol>

Celebrating the Flat White

Before heading to Florence for [last year's PyCon Italia](/blog/travel/2024/pycon-italia/), I had booked a train ticket to Bologna the day after the conference to spend the day exploring before flying home. On the final day of the conference, they announced it would be in a different place in 2025 (after many years in Florence): Bologna. I had no way of knowing if I would be attending that event, so it didn't make any sense to change my plans either. As it was only a day trip though, there were naturally some things I didn't get to experience, so when I arrived in Bologna this year, I headed straight to the anatomical theater, which was closed the day of the week I went last year. The other site that was closed last year was closed for repairs and still is: the Two Towers. Afterward, I had an early dinner of tagliatelle with ragù alla bolognese at the market I ate at last year and stopped by Venchi buy some chocolates and their olive oil dark chocolate hazelnut spread to bring home as I do every year. I also got a gelato because it was pretty hot outside.

![collage of photos from Bologna](/assets/blog/travel/2025/pycon-italia/bologna.jpg)

<figcaption>

Clockwise from top left: the Fountain of Neptune, entrance of the Archiginnasio Palace and Anatomical Theater, Palazzo d'Accursio in Piazza Maggiore, Basilica di San Petronio in Piazza Maggiore, the Two Towers. Source: Stefanie Molin.

</figcaption>

---

Bologna is located in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, right in the center of the country. The hyphenated name comes from these being two separate regions in the past: Emilia and Romagna. This region is known for its food, and from the cappuccino and stuffed brioche (with pistachio spread, ricotta cream, nutella, *etc.*)<a href="#footnotes">1</a> in the mornings, to the conference lunches, to the dinners with fresh, handmade pasta, it did not disappoint.

As I had explored the main parts of Bologna last year, I made it a point to see a few spots outside the city via the Italian train system. I spent a few hours in Modena (in Emilia like Bologna), where it, unfortunately, rained the entire time. I got to do a balsamic vinegar tasting (they are known for it), which to my surprise meant drinking sips of it (I definitely wish I had eaten lunch before that). I had lunch afterward at a place that suggested different balsamic vinegars depending on the dish (for example, a sweeter one to drizzle on gelato). I had lasagna with balsamic vinegar &ndash; a combination I never would have thought about trying, but I actually liked it better with the balsamic vinegar than without it.

I also went to Ravenna (in Romagna), which I liked better. In Ravenna, I did a walking tour of five of the eight UNESCO World Heritage sites<a href="#footnotes">2</a> there (the others were farther away): [Basilica of San Vitale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_San_Vitale), [Mausoleum of Galla Placidia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mausoleum_of_Galla_Placidia), [Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_Sant%27Apollinare_Nuovo), [Baptistery of Neon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptistery_of_Neon), and [Archbishop's Chapel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archbishop%27s_Chapel,_Ravenna). Each site featured absolutely stunning Byzantine mosaics made from tiny bits of glass, gold, and stone depicting early Christian imagery in which Jesus Christ is happy and healthy looking (not suffering) &ndash; it was essential to have a guide to even recognize what you were looking at because it was so different. In the Basilica of San Vitale, for instance, the emperor Justinian is depicted on one side and his wife, Theodora, who was a former prostitute, is on the other. It was shocking to learn that back then mosaics weren't regarded as art at all, but rather handiwork, and at one point they decided to cover them up and put a "more respectable" form of art (painting) when the imagery took a darker turn.

![collage of some of the mosaics from Ravenna](/assets/blog/travel/2025/pycon-italia/ravenna.jpg)

<figcaption>

Clockwise from left: the interior of the Basilica of San Vitale, young Christ depicted in the apse mosaic inside the Basilica of San Vitale, 6th-century mosaic of [Christ treading on the beasts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_treading_on_the_beasts) in the Archbishop's Chapel. Source: Stefanie Molin.

</figcaption>

When we took a shortcut through a market, the guide was quick to point out some fresh *tortelloni* and emphasized that it wasn't *tortellini*: the former is from the Emilia region and very small (like the size of your thumbnail), and the latter is from the Romagna region and much larger (some of the ones I saw were close to thumb-sized). This wasn't the only food revelation I had in Romagna: after purchasing what I would call biscotti to bring back home from a local bakery in Ravenna, I learned that *cantucci*, which I would always bring back from Florence to get my biscotti fix, is a Tuscan thing, and, in this region, it is not only called something different, *scroccadenti*, but it is longer, and, to me, airier. My favorite food from the Romagna region was the *piadina romagnola*, which is an Italian flatbread folded into a sandwich with your choice of fillings, served warm; I had one with prosciutto, arugula, and *squacquerone* (a soft, crumbly cheese), and it was honestly gone too soon 😋

---

The day the conference started my alarm didn't go off &ndash; I woke up thinking it must be time to get up and looked at my phone to see the alarm was indeed set, but the time had passed (I still have no clue what happened). This is one of the biggest fears I have with conference presentations, especially when jet lag is involved. Thankfully, I wasn't presenting this day, but it did remind me of a similar incident that happened [last year at PyCon Estonia](/blog/travel/2024/around-the-world), when I accidentally unplugged my phone in my sleep. The conference itself was quite far from the city center, so en route I watched the conference opening that I had missed and was delighted to see them show a map of the region with the *tortellini* versus *tortelloni* distinction.

In addition to checking out some talks and catching up with conference friends and some coworkers from different offices, I used the first day to get the lay of the land at the venue: scout out the room I would be presenting, figure out where espresso could be pulled fresh, *etc.* At the drinks event that evening, it felt like every time I turned around I saw someone I knew from a previous conference around the world, and, while I definitely saw food there, I wasn't able to snag any because I was chatting too much 😂, but I was able to enjoy a prosecco, and the learn the difference between Grana Padano and Parmigiano Reggiano, the former of which was the only thing I ate there (from a giant wheel of it).

Dinner was late (normal on Italian time) with a group of coworkers at a Roman restaurant that had two ladies in the front hand-making fresh pasta. An Italian coworker of mine was telling me about the name of the restaurant being a woman's name, meaning "fortunate" and that if you add an "S" in front, it becomes "unfortunate" &ndash; almost immediately after that, the waiter (who was extremely lively and entertaining) came by to tell me that they were out of what I ordered...and then we did this dance a second time, until my third choice, carbonara,<a href="#footnotes">3</a> was available. I guess the "S" in "Stefanie" made me unfortunate there.

---

My talk, "[Data Morph: A Cautionary Tale of Summary Statistics](/talks/#data-morph-a-cautionary-tale-of-summary-statistics)," was the next day right before lunch, and my alarm cooperated, so I had plenty of time. Some of the questions I got at the end were about things I was working on or had recently explored, so I got to give people a preview of that, which was nice. After lunch, I saw my favorite talk of the event: "Hello Bug, My Old Friend" by Patrick Deutschmann. In the evening, the conference had organized a walking tour of Bologna, which was enjoyable as I had mainly just wandered around with a list of sites to see last year.

A coworker and I were quite hungry before the walking tour, so we grabbed a gelato<a href="#footnotes">4</a> nearby to hold us over until dinner afterward. Once the tour concluded, we went to a nearby restaurant called, Le Moline, which I will admit I picked partially because of the name, but mainly because I wanted to try *tortellini in brodo* (in broth), which is a popular Bolognese dish. Since we were a large group, there were lots of other things to try, including *tortelloni* and several types of Italian cured meats and *tigelle* (small, thin, round bread that you can slice in half and put the meats in), which I already knew from last year that I was a fan of, especially with *mortadella*. And of course, we had some local red wine for the table, and, (not my doing) one of every dessert they had, which had become a running joke at this point.

---

By the final day of the conference, I was having trouble staying awake. All of these late nights had taken their toll, and I, like many attendees, took a beat in the lounge chairs by the pool. As I was eating lunch there, I was catching up on the talks from the morning, particularly the keynote by Nicholas Tollervey, who I only realized was there (in addition to [PyCon US](/blog/travel/2025/boston-pittsburgh) the week prior), when we bumped into each other at the walking tour. Funnily enough, about halfway through watching this, he and his wife came over to join me for lunch in the shade 😂

During the final coffee break of the event, I said my goodbyes to my conference friends and headed back to the hotel with a coworker to rest up before meeting for dinner outside in the city center. Afterward, we got some olive oil gelato at Venchi and headed to Piazza del Nettuno to admire the Fountain of Neptune<a href="#footnotes">5</a> in the moonlight &ndash; something, which I wasn't able to do last year because I needed to catch the train back to Florence. Just a few steps away in Piazza Maggiore, there was a busker who had amassed a huge crowd, so we listened for a bit, soaking up the atmosphere of the square at night, before heading back to the hotel.

The next morning, after one last cappuccino and brioche breakfast, I headed to the airport to return home. This time, I will be home for an entire month to recuperate, and update my content for the next presentations in July at SciPy.

Arrivederci Italia!


<hr />

1. Pasticceria Cuppi in Bologna was my go-to place for a typical Italian breakfast. <a href="#footnote-1">↩</a>
2. Ravenna is also where the poet Dante Alighieri spent the last few years of his life, and we saw some tributes to him including his tomb, although, it doesn't hold a candle to the mosaics. <a href="#footnote-2">↩</a>
3. I didn't really think I would like this too much because I prefer tomato-based sauces, and I was right: the pasta itself was good, but the sauce was way too salty for me. I gave half away, but I did finally get why all the plates and cups had sheep on them &ndash; many of the cheese-based sauces were using sheep milk cheeses, like pecorino. <a href="#footnote-3">↩</a>
4. This was my first time having almond gelato, and hopefully, it won't be the last (although, pistachio will always be my favorite). <a href="#footnote-4">↩</a>
5. Last year, they were also doing some restoration work on the fountain, so it was behind a fence, whereas this year it wasn't. <a href="#footnote-5">↩</a>

Highlights from presenting at this year's event in Bologna.

PyCon Italia 2025 🇮🇹

## 📍 Boston, USA 🇺🇸

A little over a week after getting back from [the Baltics](/blog/travel/2025/baltics), I was on the road again.<a href="#footnotes">1</a> My first stop was ODSC East in Boston for their tenth-anniversary event. I arrived on Sunday to a gorgeous day ☀️ and after heading to the event location to get my bearings (ODSC was in a different part of Boston this year), I savored a delicious 😋 shakshuka<a href="#footnotes">2</a> from Tatte's Bakery & Cafe and soaked up the sun along the waterfront in the Seaport area.

The following day again had impeccable weather. I went to work out of my employer's Boston office, which was within walking distance of my hotel. After lunch at Clover, I picked up a flat white to enjoy outdoors &ndash; pure bliss. In the evening, I had a "business dinner" at Row 34 for a personal project with a contact I had met at ODSC East a few years ago &ndash; hopefully, I will have more to share on this later in the year 👀

---

Tuesday was an intense day. To start off, I got back later than I had planned from the dinner, so I didn't get as much sleep as I would have liked, and I was presenting my talk "[Getting Started with Open Source Contributions](/talks/#getting-started-with-open-source-contributions)" in the morning with a short [book signing](/events/book-signings) just beforehand. Towards the end of my presentation, I could tell I was a little behind time (we started late, which didn't help), so when I reached the last few slides and saw the founder of ODSC, Sheamus McGovern, come into the room, I got a little concerned (I didn't know what was going on). He took a seat in the front row, and I continued speaking trying not to let it show that I was startled. As I reached my thank you slide and wrapped up the talk to a round of applause, Sheamus jumped up on stage and announced to everyone that, in honor of the tenth anniversary of the event, ODSC was recognizing speakers that have made an impact on the event. He then handed me the **ODSC Speaker Impact Award** with my name on it and everything ❤️

![Sheamus McGovern presenting Stefanie Molin with the ODSC Speaker Impact Award](/assets/events/conferences/odsc-speaker-impact-award.jpg)

<figcaption>

Sheamus McGovern presenting me with the ODSC Speaker Impact Award. Later, I learned that I was [one of six speakers recognized](https://opendatascience.com/celebrating-our-instructors-with-the-odsc-east-2025-speaker-impact-awards/). Source: ODSC.

</figcaption>

This had kind of rendered me speechless &ndash; I had no idea that was coming! It was a very proud moment, and the award is prominently displayed at home now 😊 However, there wasn't much time to soak it up there because I had to head to the airport to catch my flight to Pittsburgh for PyCon US, where I was also presenting. But first, I needed to pack 😬

The hotel I was staying in had apartments, which was great from the standpoint of comfort, but it was too easy to spread out, and, when the time came to pack up, it complicated things. I also needed to make sure the award would make it in one piece (it's glass).

## 📍 Pittsburgh, USA 🇺🇸

I arrived at the Pittsburgh Westin hotel in the late afternoon and bumped into some fellow PyCon presenters that I had met at various events throughout the years in the lobby. We chatted for a while before I headed to reception to check into my room. When I had originally booked the hotel, I had put the check-in date as the day after because I wasn't sure if my tutorial would be accepted, or if I would go to the tutorials (they started the day after I arrived). When I saw the schedule (and figured out the status of my proposal), I couldn't modify the booking, so I had to make an additional one for the first night. This turned out to be a good thing because for the first night, they upgraded me to a workout suite. I didn't even know this type of room existed: basically, in addition to the standard bedroom, I had an entire room at the entrance that had a giant TV, a Peloton bike, adjustable free weights, an exercise mat, a stability ball, and some TRX cables.

Once I set my stuff down in the room and took stock of what made it a workout suite, I couldn't ignore my hunger any longer. I hadn't eaten much all day, and now, as a consequence, I was starving. I headed to the nearest location of Primanti Bros. and tried one of their humongous sandwiches, which was served on wax paper, directly on the table 😅 It featured both corned beef and pastrami, which I had never tried before, and it was delicious and satiating 😋 After eating that, I definitely needed the workout suite, so I took advantage of the equipment when I returned to the room.

The next day was the start of PyCon US, and I had signed up for one tutorial in the afternoon run by Nicholas Tollervey, a friend from multiple past Python events (I think we first met at PyCon MEA 2023 in Dubai, UAE). I had arranged for late checkout to ensure that I could just transfer from the workout suite to the new room &ndash; my plan was to prepare for my tutorial (the following afternoon) in the morning and then grab lunch and attend the tutorial, switching rooms during the 3 PM break. It ended up being an exhausting day, as you can imagine.

Since I wasn't able to finish with my preparations in the morning, I opted to have some food delivered and continued working on that in the evening. This was to ensure that I could go to bed earlier and be well-rested for presenting. At this year's PyCon US, I was presenting my "[(Pre-)Commit to Better Code](/workshops/pre-commit-workshop)" workshop, but this almost didn't happen. For the 2024 event, this proposal was waitlisted and ultimately rejected,<a href="#footnotes">3</a> so, for this year, I figured I would try again (this was the only proposal I submitted this year). When the final announcements were sent out, I received a rejection email. So how was it that I was presenting it? Well, I happened to have the proposal submission platform open in a tab on my phone, and after seeing the rejection email, I went to close out that tab. The tab reloaded as I accessed it, and in there it said that my proposal was **accepted** 😕 At this point, I was extremely confused: which one was it? It was late, so I confirmed my slot in the platform and went to bed, expecting it to be resolved the next day, only it wasn't...

Regardless of whether the proposal was actually accepted, I was going to be at PyCon US with my team, but I needed to know whether I needed to work on updating the content and incorporating the feedback from the previous run through at EuroPython 2024 that I hadn't gotten around to addressing. The time the rejection email was sent and the proposal in the platform was updated to the accepted status was identical, further muddying this mystery. It dawned on me that the organizers are probably only looking at the platform since that is where people confirm their attendance (and I imagined it was the source of truth), so I sent them an email asking them whether my proposal was actually accepted. They quickly confirmed that my proposal had indeed been accepted, but they didn't have an explanation for what happened (or whether it happened to others). I didn't press for more information either &ndash; I was just happy that it turned out to be an acceptance 😊

---

My tutorial was in the afternoon, so I used the morning to make sure everything was ready. There are a lot of demos/live coding in this workshop, and I have to run through my setup checklist to prepare my computer ahead of time (things like adjusting the settings in my code editor so that it is easy to see in the audience). When I arrived to set up in the tutorial room, I met with the session volunteer who turned out to be someone I knew from the ODSC circuit &ndash; it felt like a collision of my conference worlds.

The tutorial itself was very interactive, and I ended up staying nearly an hour afterward to help a few people get their custom hooks working. Over the next few days, I received a lot of positive feedback from the tutorial, both about my teaching ("Amazing teacher!") and the materials ("Clear informative and with step by step slides"). One attendee said, "Great explanation of pre\[-\]commit hooks and how to create your own. Really enjoyed how hands-on everything was." Another wrote, "Just wanted to say a big thank you for the workshop! It was super practical and full of helpful takeaways. I especially enjoyed learning about the different options for pre-commit with Python and how to create a customized one. I'm definitely planning to add it to my workflow!"

That's not to say there weren't a few things to improve upon. For one, a few attendees were using `uv` and ran into a couple of issues. Some others decided to use company laptops, which is almost always an issue to due to how locked down they are &ndash; I always recommend using a personal laptop for tutorials for that reason. I took note of these issues and will work on addressing what I can for the next run through at SciPy in Tacoma, Washington (USA) on July 8, 2025.

Afterward, I went to briefly check out the conference opening event, where I bumped into a few people I knew, but I didn't stay for long because it had gotten late (remember, I stayed nearly an hour after the scheduled end time), and I was exhausted. I dropped my stuff off in my room and met up with the team members that had arrived for dinner, where I celebrated another successful presentation 🥳

---

The next day the talks and open spaces<a href="#footnotes">4</a> started, and in the evenings (and in between talks), I started working on some book proposals. Yes, book proposals. During my tutorial, Bill Pollock, founder of No Starch Press, approached me about writing a book with them. This wasn't the first time either, and it has been something for which I've been trying to find the right subject. For the last few PyCon US events, I've ended up chatting with Bill about this (a recurring theme if you think about the dinner I had in Boston). While I have previously written about `pandas` (two editions of *[Hands-On Data Analysis with Pandas](/books/Hands-On-Data-Analysis-with-Pandas-2nd-edition/)*), there are other topics I've become interested in exploring, and this year, I had a much clearer picture of what they were. One of these topics is [something I have been working on for a while now](/blog/updates/2024/new-year-new-book), although I have been away from it for a bit, and the others were things I hadn't even tried outlining yet. I took a day to gather my initial thoughts on these ideas I had swimming around my brain and scheduled a chat with Bill onsite for the final day of talks, which gave me another day to flesh things out further (and see if there was indeed enough for a book in some cases).

When the time for the meeting came, I first pitched one of the new ideas I had come up with while at the event (the quick turnaround was reminding me of the whirlwind podcast scheduling and recording in a single day at [PyCon Lithuania last month](/blog/travel/2025/baltics)). Bill was interested, but gave me some homework to refine the proposal further to help him look into the prospects for something like that. Next, I showed him [the idea I had been working on since last year](/blog/updates/2024/new-year-new-book), which to my delightful surprise, he loved (I was fully prepared to self-publish this after shopping it around). There was still homework on this one, although less.

The plan had been to chat for thirty minutes, but we quickly reached the hour mark, and he had to head to another informal chat. We arranged to meet again later that day to discuss more details: about the homework (if I got to it), next steps, and how we could work together. I headed to lunch buzzing with excitement &ndash; my passion project had legs! Unfortunately, the loud lunch area in the sponsor hall made it hard to concentrate, and I wasn't too enticed by the food, so I opted to forgo lunch and take a beat to work on the homework in a quieter location. One of the tasks was to write up a value proposition for the new idea I had (I had this already for the older idea), and workshop some titles (this proved to be even harder). With the help of my manager to bounce ideas off of, I cobbled together the value proposition, but wasn't able to come up with a short, informative title for the next meeting with Bill.

We met up once more after the final keynote to touch base on next steps for how to continue these discussions after the conference &ndash; I still have work to do. Hopefully, this is also something I can share more about soon. After Bill left to take some of his hungry authors out to dinner, I chatted with some conference friends I have known for years now before meeting my team for dinner.

---

For the next three days, I attended the development sprints. While I ended up sitting with pyOpenSci and making a PR to fix an issue there I had noticed while trying to publish my personal project, [Data Morph](https://stefaniemolin.com/data-morph), to conda-forge a while back, I worked on my new project, [Docstringify](https://github.com/stefmolin/docstringify), which was born out of [my keynote at PyCon Lithuania last month](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBKs4rxDufs) on abstract syntax trees (ASTs), entitled "[Build Your Own (Simple) Static Code Analyzer](/talks#build-your-own-(simple)-static-code-analyzer)."

[Docstringify](https://github.com/stefmolin/docstringify) is a tool for detecting missing docstrings and injecting templates into the code based on the code itself, following the docstring format of your choice. I was very productive and came up with an algorithm to make it possible to overwrite the original file with the docstring additions, without losing any existing formatting or comments. It took two days to go from the problem to the initial algorithm to implementing it to refining the implementation, but with that in place, I was able to publish a new version to [PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/docstringify/).

While all this was happening, I was introduced to Carol Willing, a CPython core developer, and prominent Pythonista. We chatted for a very long time, and I showed her several of the personal projects I have been tinkering with in my spare time, including [Docstringify](https://github.com/stefmolin/docstringify), [Data Morph](https://stefaniemolin.com/data-morph), the slide generation library I have been building for myself (not public yet, but I did use it to generate my slides for [my keynote at PyCon Lithuania](/talks#build-your-own-(simple)-static-code-analyzer)), and this website. She ended up testing out [Docstringify](https://github.com/stefmolin/docstringify) that night (without the overwriting logic I was working on), and she shared with me the next day that she would like to be able to inject stubs instead of full docstring templates, so I made a new option for that &ndash; despite not thinking about it originally, it has already come in handy for me 😊

---

The third day of the sprints was noticeably quieter, as many people had left. I decided to work on [Data Morph](https://stefaniemolin.com/data-morph), partly because I was going to be presenting it at PyCon Italia in a week (yes, *another* short turnaround), but mainly because I didn't feel like writing tests, which was next on my list for [Docstringify](https://github.com/stefmolin/docstringify) 😬 In the afternoon, a conference friend, Mike Müller, who I met while doing a walking tour of Basel, Switzerland at EuroSciPy 2023 (he founded the conference), came over to catch up; I made sure to tell him that I'm helping review proposals for this year's event 😊

After three days of intense coding and nearly two weeks on the road with less than ideal sleep quantities, I was at the point where no amount of caffeine could keep me awake, so I went back to my hotel and ordered room service for an early dinner. My flight home the next morning had been moved up, so I needed to leave the hotel at 6 AM (have I mentioned I'm not a morning person?). On the way to the gate, I grabbed a hot coffee and an açai bowl &ndash; they balanced each other out and regulated my temperature. Once there, I spotted a fellow conference speaker from Australia, so I said hello, but told him I would sit elsewhere, so he could rest for his long trip back (I also needed the rest, but my journey home would be *much* shorter than his). As luck would have it, my seat on the plane was right behind him.

Once I got home, I excitedly took out the ODSC Speaker Impact Award to marvel at it and my accomplishments once more &ndash; going from being terrified of public speaking to being presented with this award fills me with extreme joy 😁 I cleared a spot for the award on my bookshelf and added my latest [conference speaker](/events/conferences) badges to the box I have all of them in (it's nearly time to get a bigger one). Then, I unpacked my suitcase to start on the laundry because in just three days 😅 I would be heading to [Bologna, Italy for another PyCon](/blog/travel/2025/pycon-italia/) 🛫


<hr />

1. Readers of my past [travel blog](/blog/travel) posts may remember that I mentioned during [my Asia trip in 2024](/blog/travel/2024/asia-tour) that I was hoping to have more time between trips... It's not as easy as it sounds. <a href="#footnote-1">↩</a>
2. I'm very partial to my shakshuka recipe, and thankfully, this, although different, was a great one. <a href="#footnote-2">↩</a>
3. It was accepted later that year at EuroPython, where I debuted it. <a href="#footnote-3">↩</a>
4. I went to one where we watched some of Eurovision huddled around an iPad 😂 <a href="#footnote-4">↩</a>
5. The title of this post is a nod to episode titles on the show *Friends*, which if you haven't seen, you must. Last year, during [ODSC East 2024](/blog/travel/2024/odsc-east) I visited a modern-day version of the Central Perk coffee shop from *Friends*. <a href="#">↩</a>

Stefanie Molin

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