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Hasselt and Freddy This week I was at the conference Dynamics in Perturbations held at the University of Hasselt; the conference was in honour of Freddy Dumortier at the occasion of his 60th birthday. In an earlier item I have already explained the importance of Freddy for the Dynamical Systems community in Flanders and Belgium. The conference has clearly indicated his enormous contribution and influence in the field itself. A large group of well known specialists from all over the world came to Hasselt to pay tribute to his work and heritage. I have enjoyed listening to their lectures and talking to them. Next to the scientific part of the meeting (which took place at the University of Hasselt and for the last two days at the Academy of Science in Brussels) there was also a jenever reception offered by the mayor of the city of Hasselt, an excellent birthday dinner at the "Huis de Corswarem" in Hasselt, and an evening party at Freddy's house in Diepenbeek. Some of the pictures I have taken at these occasions can be seen here. More pictures of the event are available at the website of the conference.

Trip to Salzburg From Friday March 30, 2007 till Friday April 6, 2007 we (i.e. my wife and myself) were in Germany (and Austria). We went by car, making our first stop in Heidelberg; we stayed there in a nice hotel (Holländer Hof) in the center and at the same time along the river. We had some time to walk in the town and to revive some old memories from the many months in the late 80's which I spent in Heidelberg. The next day we continued to Laufen, a small town in the Bavarian Alps, right at the border with Austria, and at about 15 km. from Salzburg. We stayed at the "Kapuzinerhof", where I attended the International Workshop on "Progress on Difference Equations". We had a few walks through the town, which is quite pictoresque. There was also a well filled social program, with a reception by the town authorities at the old city hall, a trip to the Königssee and St. Bartholomä, where we had a nice dinner party offered by the Berchtesgaden authorities, a trip to Salzburg including a "Mozart Dinner", and last but not least a night tour through Laufen. Some pictures of these events can be seen here. On our way back we had a stop in Karlsruhe; due to the heavy program of the foregoing days and the many traffic jams we were quite tired, and therefore the only items I can report from that stop are the nice weather and a very good dinner at our hotel (Ringhotel Residenz, near the Hauptbahnhof).

An old tradition in Vienna The very first conference I ever attended was the Equadiff conference held in 1973 in Brussels and Louvain-la-Neuve. Since then I have been at all the "Western" editions of this Equadiff conferences (Firenze 1978, Würzburg 1982, Xanthi 1987, Barcelona 1991, Lisbon 1995, Berlin 1999) and I was a co-organizer of the 2003 edition in Hasselt. Intertwined with these were the Czechoslovak Equadiff conferences which alternate between Prague, Brno and Bratislava; I have also attended most of these. The Equadiff 2007 conference takes place beginning of August in Vienna. I am looking forward to both the conference and the city.

Lisbon makes the Difference During the last PDE conference in Laufen (see the item "Trip to Salzburg" on this page) Henrique Oliveira and Saber Elaydi convinced me to attend the ICDEA meeting in Lisbon which takes place next week; at first I had dismissed the invitation, because there is very little time in between our trip to Canada and the Equadiff conference beginning of August. But of course, going back to Lisbon (I have been there a number of times in the past) is always appealing, and the possibility to see some old friends finally got me over the edge. Last year I was at the ICDEA 2006 meeting in Kyoto, which has been a very nice experience. I hope Lisbon will be on the same level. One particular point about this meeting is that for the first time in maybe more than fifteen years I will give again a talk about Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction, one of the favorites in the first part of my research career. I will just have to see how it goes...

Preparing for Montréal The coming week I will be preparing for a four week trip to Montréal and the province of Québec. The main reason for the trip is the 60th birthday party of Eusebius Doedel (Sebius for short). He is one of my very best friends and collaborators, working at the Concordia University in Montréal. He is from Dutch origin, and also his wife Adrienne was born and grew up in Holland. He lives since his late adolescence in the States and in Canada. He is mostly know for the fact that he created the software package AUTO which is used by many people for the numerical investigation of dynamical systems. This year Sebius celebrates his 60th birthday, and at that occasion the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques (CRM) in Montréal organizes a number of small mini-courses and workshops around the themes which are central in his work (see the special CRM webpage for more details). It will be a real pleasure for Anita and myself to be present at these celebrations. We have taken the occasion to make a longer visit to Canada, with two and a half weeks in Montréal (including the workshops), and then one more week of travelling in the province of Québec.

Perturbing symmetries in Otranto Since 1996 but at somewhat irregular intervals a series of research conference under the title Symmetry and Perturbation Theory (SPT for short) is organized in Italy. The person behind these conferences is Guiseppe Gaeta from Milan. Reflecting the personal interests of Guiseppe the conference always presents a nice mix of mathematics and physics, and is usually held at a nice touristic location. Personally I have participated in the last 3 editions (2001, 2002 and 2004) which all took place in Cala Gonone, Sardinia. This year the conference moves to southern Italy, more precisely to Otranto near Lecce. I will go there with my wife Anita; we hope to meet many of the friends from the Cala Gonone editions.

A birthday party During the week of April 23-27, 2007 there is a conference on Dynamics in Perturbations at the University of Hasselt; the conference is in honour of Freddy Dumortier at the occasion of his 60th birthday. The dynamical systems community in Flanders is quite small, and it is quite clear that Freddy is the driving force behind this community: next to his excellence in research he has also many managerial qualities (he was for many years the vice-rector of his university), and last but not least he can motivate young students to start working in his field of interest. The consequence is that his research group at the University of Hasselt is by far the best dynamical systems group in Belgium. The program of the meeting looks quite interesting, with many well known people giving a talk. I look forward to it.