It took me a full month before I got around to writing this first diary entry of my visit to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but I’ll compensate by making it excessively long…

Caldwell Hall -- the Philosophy Department

I’ve covered the background of my visit in an earlier post, but perhaps a brief recap is in order. I’m here in Chapel Hill for the whole spring semester as a Visiting Scholar, in the remit of my postdoc project back in Helsinki. The departmental sponsor of my visit is L. A. Paul, but I do also hope to take advantage of Thomas Hofweber‘s and Marc Lange‘s presence in particular, in addition to the rest of the excellent faculty and what seems like a good bunch of grad students as well. In fact, Thomas and myself have already been involved in a joint project of sorts, more about that in due course.

The campus is quite nice, and dominates Chapel Hill. The philosophy department is located in Caldwell Hall, which is a pretty building. After some curious issues with missing and broken keys, I’ve finally also gained access to my office. It’s tiny, noisy, extremely hot, inconveniently located, and I share it with two other people (one of them is never there though), but it’s more than NYU provided for me during my visit there, so I’ll take it. In fact, the departmental library is a much nicer space, so I may end up working there at times. In general I’m quite happy working at home, but I guess the idea of visiting another department makes more sense if you actually pop in every once in a while! Besides, the internet at our house is awful.

Open Eye Cafe

Chapel Hill is rather tiny, but because the University is big, there are some decent services available. I may do a more detailed post about the restaurants, cafes etc. in the area later on, but I’ve already found a favourite coffee shop, The Open Eye Cafe in Carrboro, and eaten at the two veggie restaurants in the area, Butternut Squash and Sage. There are also a couple of breweries in the area, so eventually you can expect to see reviews of some local brews on the blog. Anyway, the student crowd guarantees at least a minimal selection of alternative services, and in general it’s not a problem to find good produce and vegan groceries; one of the best places, albeit very expensive, is the local Co-Op, Weaver Street Market, also in Carrboro.

The student population also means that there are some cultural events of interest in the area. So far we’ve seen a puppet show about burning prisons by the local anarchist cell (yes, really) at a curious book shop called Internationalist Books, and a student production of ‘A Diary of Somebody’, based on the life of Joe Orton (it wasn’t bad). By the way, just opposite Internationalist Books, on the other side of the street, there is a fancy private club called The Crunkleton, which we joined the other day. It probably stands for everything that the anarchists oppose, but it may be the only place in Chapel Hill to get decent booze — their whisky selection at least is commendable. I had an interesting brew there, the Barrel Aged Charkoota Rye, a smoked Dobblebock by New Holland Brewing Co. Anyway, I like to think that I’m in the middle of the road…

This is where we live..

I haven’t had the opportunity to explore the nearby cities yet, but Durham at least is so close by that I should do so soon. However, even though there is one aspect of the public transportation here that is absolutely great — namely it being completely free of charge — the hours of operation are certainly less than ideal. It’s virtually impossible to go out to Durham on a weekend night without a car, for instance. So, I can’t say much about North Carolina in general, but I can tell you that I like the climate: most days the temperature gets above 10 degrees Celsius, and it has already gotten up to about 21 degrees on a few days. This means that I can run in shorts in the middle of winter! The nights can be cold though, we do get freezing temperatures as well. Still, it looks extremely unlikely that I would see any snow this winter. It’s also sunny most of the time; I think it has rained maybe on four or five of the 30 days I’ve spent here.

..and here are some of my favourite things about it: Elizabeth, the library, and the fireplace.

I was fortunate enough to secure myself and Elizabeth — who is with me here in Chapel Hill for the duration of my visit — a lovely house until mid-April. It’s located a few miles north of the town, so we have to commute to town by bike, but the luxury of living in a massive 3000 square feet (or 278 square metre) detached house with two fire places, a library, and a workout room with a treadmill in the middle of some nice woods more than makes up for it. As you can see, I’ve attached a couple of photos of the house and its surroundings to this post. The only downside besides the slow internet is that it’s not cheap to heat the house up, which is why we keep it rather (=too) cool. This probably becomes a positive thing once the nights get warmer, but at the moment it’s not ideal. Incidentally, I also look forward to taking advantage of the numerous terraces that we have once it gets warmer. In the meanwhile, the fireplace in the library will probably see frequent use.

Our backyard on one of the very few grey days.

One last thing to mention about the surroundings are the Carolina North Forest and Duke Forest, which are both accessible from our house, although the latter is a bit far to get to without a bike. We do most of our running in the Carolina North Forest, which has a nice selection of trails, some are almost cross-country, but some are easy enough. I’ve got a regular 17km route that I tend to do. At the moment the woods are quite bare, but I expect that things will bloom early on here, so the woods should get nice and green soon enough. I hope to post some photos from the trails once I get around with my camera. In terms of wildlife, we get LOTS of squirrels (we virtually live with them), but also a lot of deer, who seem to be stupidly brave (and get hit by cars frequently, it seems). I haven’t captured any of them with my camera yet, but will post evidence as soon as I do.

Well, that about sums it up in terms of my living situation here. I do hope to post the next instalment somewhat sooner, hopefully with some more philosophical material as well. I am actually getting some work done too, and there is a metaphysics reading group going on. In two weeks’ time I’ll give a talk at the department, and I plan to post something here after that at latest!