Attending the 11th ESPAnet conference in Poznan, 5-7 September. This year was also characterized by many good papers and intense discussions. Olli Kangas and myself organised two sessions on “Designing comparative social policy” with eight papers and I gave a paper in another session “Towards a social investment strategy in Europe: Generational and gender perspectives”. As a surprise the organizers had arranged a musical event following the conference dinner, music played by the participants. Needless to add that talents in social science does not travel light to the performing arts.