Attending ESSLLI 2018
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| ESSLLI 2018 Participants. Photo credit: ESSLLI 2018 Facebook group |
I've just come back from Sofia, Bulgaria for ESSLLI 2018!
ESSLLI is a prominent summer school in Europe in the field of Logic, Language, and Information. It is suitable for computational linguists. I first knew it from my friend, Iza, who attended it ESSLLI 2016 in Bolzano and she really recommended it. Some professors also mentioned it in the lecture and it is also known among LCT people (my Master program). I have also planned not to come home and to go for a summer school this summer. So why not give it a try?
This year it is held in Sofia, Bulgaria from August 6th-17th. The registration for the early bird was open until the end of May. I checked on their website somewhere in February to get to know about the registration information, fee, courses offered, etc. But I didn't read it carefully so I misunderstood the part of the application for the grant. The fee is rather expensive for me, but I never attended a summer school before. I guess it's kind of worth it.
Travel to Bulgaria
I thought Bulgaria was my first Eastern Europe country I'd visited, but apparently Turkey was (geographically). Bulgaria is a member of EU but not a part of Schengen area. However, you are permitted to visit the country with a valid Schengen visa. You might need to pass the border control in the airport, so it will take a bit of your time.
The flight from Frankfurt to Sofia took approximately 2 hours. I traveled from Saarbrücken to Frankfurt Airport for almost 3 hours. I basically spent a day just for the travel. I would like to tell more about my travel story, but I think it will make this post too long. I will write another post for that.
Anyway, I traveled with my friend from Saarland, Polina, and Antonia, another ESSLLI participant who also flew from Frankfurt and turned out to be Polina's roommate during the summer school. After our arrival in Sofia Airport, with a limited knowledge of Bulgarian language and a help of my offline city map, we 'somehow' managed to get to the city center from the isolated airport terminal. Then we split, because they stayed at the student accommodation provided by ESSLLI committee, while I stayed at a hostel near the center, 15 minutes walk from the university. I registered a bit late that the student accommodation had been fully-booked by then. But it was a thing I wouldn't regret since many people were complaining about the student accommodation (mostly due to the location).
Bulgaria is the first country I have visited that does not use Latin alphabet. They use cyrillic. I didn't know Bulgarian. I didn't know how to read cyrillic. I forgot to download Bulgarian offline dictionary on my Google Translate. But I survived staying there for 2 weeks haha
Days full of lectures
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| The first evening lecture was given by a man who has attended ESSLLI for 18 times |
While people are enjoying their summer vacation at the beach, you are attending a full-day lecture for 2 weeks. Are you insane?
The school offered different courses for week 1 and week 2. There were 4 time slots in a day, starting from 9.00 until 18.30 @ 90 minutes. I could attended whichever lecture I liked. Each lecture belongs to one of ESSLLI tracks, namely Logic and Language (LoLa), Logic and Computation (LoCo), and Language and Computation (LaCo). I mostly attended LaCo courses because I had not idea with the courses from the other tracks and more importantly I had more interest in the courses from LaCo track. Besides the normal lectures, there were also additional lecture in the evening twice a week and student session every day during the afternoon break where some selected students presented their work.
I didn't have to attend the lectures in every time slot. But I still did because I liked attending a lecture haha. I could also change the class if I found out it wasn't interesting for me. I also attended the evening lectures but I skipped the student sessions most of the time. I once attended everything in the day and still went out for dinner after that, then I couldn't move my body once I touched my bed haha. It was exhausting. You should know your limit anyway.
Socializing is 'more' important
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| Unofficial music jam session at one of the student's rented apartment. Who knows that the nerds are also good musicians :) |
Knowing that you meet a lot of people from various background and research interest, it's the perfect time to expand your network. I use word 'more' on the subtitle not to emphasize the importance of socialization, but rather to say that you don't only attend classes in a school but you also make friends.
I'm not a social person either. But I like having some conversation during coffee break or lunch. ESSLLI also organized some social events, like an opening reception, a football match, and a party. The students had also organized some evening picnic in a park next to the university.
It's impossible to know everyone in the school. But I had a great time with some groups of people I met at ESSLLI. Whether it is for a short chitchat while enjoying the coffee and snack, or for a longer conversation while trying out some restaurants in Sofia, or for a deeper talk with someone when both of us didn't follow the conversation in the group, or an awkward question-answering chat while walking to a lunch place, or for a universal language in a music jam session because we didn't talk and just enjoyed the song.
What to see when in Sofia
Sofia is not so big. You can stroll around the city in half a day. Some people really recommended joining a free walk tour in which the guide shows you around and explains the history of the city and some important monuments for around 2 hours. However, I didn't really have time for it since I spent the whole day at the university. I managed to see the city in one evening after the lecture and on the my last day. I visited the main cathedral, the historical museum, the mosque, the synagogue, the national palace of culture, and the pedestrian walk with a lot of stores and restaurants. I also visited Vitosha mountain on my last day in Sofia. I'll write more about it on my next post about traveling in Bulgaria.
ESSLLI organized 2 excursions on the weekends of the first week. At first I only registered for an excursion to Plovdiv on Saturday, because it's nice to visit not only one city in Bulgaria and I could have a day-off to take a rest after a busy week. Then I changed my mind and registered for Rila Monastery excursion on Sunday as well. I heard that's one of important landmarks in Bulgaria. I joined the excursion also because I realized that it's located on Rila mountain. I was expecting there would be a short visit on the mountain and we could do some hiking. I just love mountains.
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| Somewhere on top of Plovdiv |
It turned out that both excursions were disappointing. Both destinations are located around 2 hours from the city of Sofia. With a total of 4 hours on the road, we definitely didn't mind spending more time in the destination and came back to Sofia a bit late. In Plovdiv, we only had a short guided walk for 1.5 hours and free time for 2 hours that was only enough for lunch. I wasn't that disappointed because it was so hot that day that I don't think I was able to walk much either. But for the monastery trip, we were only given 2 hours free time to visit the site without any guide. And we still had to pay to visit the museum or whichever paid parts in the monastery area. So the EUR 35 was only for the bus ride which I think was overpriced. And no hiking or visiting other sites, just the monastery which made me feel more disappointed..
As a lesson, next time you go for this kind of excursion, make sure you know the itinerary in detail and consider if it is worth the money.
Overall impression
This is my first ESSLLI and summer school experience. I know people who have attended ESSLLI a couple of times. I think I understand why they do that. You gain a lot of knowledge in this school. It's a multidiciplinary summer school. As a computer
I've asked several people whether they're considering coming to ESSLLI again next year and most of them say yes. For me, I'm not 100% sure I am coming. But if I have an opportunity to come not only as a student but also to give a presentation on my work, it will be more exciting.
ESSLLI 2019 will be organized in Riga, Latvia. Who is excited? :)
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