A Night with the UOGB

Tuesday night, along with our Swiss friends D. and G., we attended what was (for us, anyway) the most eagerly anticipated Uppsala cultural event of the fall: the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, performing live at the Regina Theater.

They performed a number of their standards, like "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," and their "Life on Mars/My Way/Substitute/etc." medley. They also played a bunch of stuff we hadn't heard before, such as "Anarchy in the UK" performed in the style of a Simon and Garfunkle sing-along, "Pinball Wizard" as a sea chanty, and an old George Formby ukulele classic "Leaning on a Lamp Post" as Russian folk music (doing a pretty good balalaika impression). It was, in the words of the London Telegraph, a "plucking good time."

The concert ended around 9:30, so even after hanging around for a bit while D. bought one of the group's DVDs and got it signed, it was still early enough for us to go out for a beer. Tuesday night is pretty slow in Uppsala, and several of the bars downtown were already shut for the evening. We wound up at an Irish pub on Stora Torget called O'Connors, rumored to have the best pint of Guinness in the city. It also has live music every night, but it's big enough that we were able to score a table far enough away that we could hear each other as we rehashed the performance.

Well, that was the plan, anyway. While G. and I were ordering at the bar, one of the gentlemen at the next table struck up a conversation with D. and Jennifer. He turned out to be extremely talkative, and more than a little drunk. I never caught his name, but we did learn that he was a born-again ex-skinhead of Sami descent (and, in some ineffable way, also Jewish). He spent the next hour telling us all about his congregation back home (part of a Boulder, Colorado based Baptist splinter church), the superiority of Eastern spirituality to Western, and his Swedish folk/punk band; in fact, he spent so much time talking to us that eventually his drinking buddy, a young raggare* who never said a single word, got up and silently departed.

The Sami eventually got caught up in a confusing conversation with a waitress, in which he first needed to pay for his current beer, and then received another, larger beer he hadn't ordered and apparently didn't need to pay for; armed with his new beer and in need of a smoke, he eventually stumbled off. At that point we all decided to call it a night.

I leave you with one of my favorite UOGB numbers, unfortunately not on the playlist for us as Peter didn't come along for the Sweden tour:

*Raggare is a Swedish word describing a member of a Swedish subculture marked by pomade hair styles, Rockabilly music, cowboy boots, blue jeans, classic American cars, and a vocal pro-American stance. For more info, see the wikipedia entry.

Moose Safari

This week M., a new exchange student in Jennifer's lab, invited us to go on a moose (elk) safari, as she was taking some visiting family and had some room in her car. So, this afternoon we loaded up and ventured out into the wilds of Vansjö. We left an hour before our safari was due to start, having been told by another coworker that it only took 30 minutes to drive there.

Turns out it takes more like 45 minutes, not counting the 15 minutes you lose when you assume you've gone to far (based on the above-mentioned coworker's advice) and backtrack to find a filling station. Luckily we had a reservation, so they gave us a couple of minutes grace, but even so we were the last ones in, right behind a father with two little golden haired daughters. We were then delayed a couple of additional minutes when a series of miscommunications led the ticket taker to assume that Jennifer was the mother of said little girls, and a lot of confusion over who was paying for whom and why ensued. Once we had that straightened out, it was on to the elk (moose).

Gårdsjö Älgpark may be only the third largest moose (elk) park in Sweden, but its proprietor is quick to point out that it's the safest, thanks in no small part to it's Jurassic Park inspired system of control gates. It opened only last year, on a 16 hectare family farm to the northwest of Uppsala. At the moment it has a grand total of 6 elk (moose), but 16 hectares is enough space to properly house up to 10, so they're currently manufacturing additional elk as quickly as they can (i.e., about 2 new moose (elk) per annum).

Why all the space? Well, the thing is that elk (moose) like to eat. A lot. They don't reach their full growth until they are about 6 years old, at which point they weigh in around 600kg, but in the summers leading up to that point they can grow by as much as 2kg per day. That takes a lot of moose (elk) chow.

The "safari" consisted of two farm tractors pulling flat bed trailers, with about 50 people on board. As we pulled into the first enclosure we could see our first elk (moose), which was making a beeline for the nearest feeding trough, no doubt in response to sound of approaching tourists. When we got there he was waiting patiently for us. He was introduced to us as Gunde, a two year old male. As the proprietor of the moose (elk) park gave his spiel and took questions, Gunde single-mindedly plowed through his trough of chow, then took a few minutes to pose nobly for pictures before trotting off after his keeper into the next range.

The keeper returned followed closely by Göta, the female elk (moose) who he says tends to lurk around him protectively. She was in turn accompanied by her three month old twins, Ilsa and Ida.

At the next stop we watched a demonstration of a moose (elk) being fed milk. The elk (moose) in question were a pair of one year olds named Holger and Helga, and they certainly seemed fond of their milk. As they chased the keeper with the milk bottle around the enclosure, they kept making these deep snuffing noises, which were pretty impressive. Got some lungs on 'em, moose (elk) do.

Holger was a little skittish compared to the rest, because it's heading into the autumn and mating season. This was actually the last tour of the season, although they pick up again in late October after everyone has calmed down a bit. Anyway, the season was no doubt partly responsible for the fact that the elk (moose) were all a little shy of the tourists. Jennifer's temporarily adopted daughters from earlier were visibly disappointed that they weren't going to get to cuddle with a moose (elk), so much so that eventually the proprietor relented and carried them one at a time over to the nearest elk (moose) for a quick pet.

That little family drama averted, we headed back to the cafe and gift shop, where the Swedes all tucked in to fika and everyone else stocked up on moose (elk) themed merchandise. They also have a small Santa Claus museum upstairs, but none of us felt like shilling out the extra 10 SEK. It's possible that one or two of our party may have felt themselves compelled to purchase a small cuddly moose (elk), but who can blame them? I suppose that last pretty much sums up today's lesson: elk (moose) are adorable, in a huge scary sort of way.

Note: for an explanation of the differences between elk, älg, and moose, I direct you to an earlier post, Giant Elk Alert!

Going to Class in a Classless Society

The first week of real classes is behind me now—long enough to pass on some first impressions.

The first significant change for me is probably the pace. I'm only taking three classes, but they only last for 6 weeks, so after this first week things are set to start happening pretty quickly. There isn't really enough time in the period to set a bunch of homework assignments, so instead the general model seems to be that each class sets a small handful of projects, maybe as few as two or three. The strange thing is that there isn't a single final grade issued for each class; instead you get a different grade for each component, each with a different weight. For example, in a class worth 7.5 credits, you may get 4.5 credits for passing the exam, and another 3 credits for passing the homework. To pass the class, you have to pass each element individually. Grades are issued on a scale of U, 3, 4, 5, where a U is a failing grade and the rest indicate passing (there used to be a 1 and a 2, both failing, as well as a 6 and a 7 for people who did too much).

I already mentioned the oddness of the class schedules, and after a week it seems no less odd to me. Beyond just meeting at different times each week, one of my classes is scheduled to meet in a different room pretty much every single time it meets for the whole 6 weeks. On the plus side, that one class should give me a pretty thorough overview of the Polacksbacken campus, but I don't know how I'm ever going to remember where/when I'm supposed to be.

With the exception of one class intended solely for new international students, my classes are composed of about 1/3 foreign students and 2/3 Swedish students. While a handful of the Chinese students are women, the Swedes are a unilaterally scruffy-looking bunch of men. They speak English to the professors, but Swedish to each other, and they've all obviously been taking classes together for years. As yet only one guy has shown up for class in his bright red coveralls, though. There are also a handful of undergrad exchange students in the department, but the only ones I know of in my classes are a couple of Frenchmen (don't even get me started on that).

While the buildings at Polacksbacken are mostly barracks built in the 18th century, the insides have been redone within the last decade. Actually, the old military nature of the buildings is if anything a hindrance to the IT department, as reinforced walls don't cooperate well with wireless networks. The rooms I've been in so far are mostly decent lecture halls, but nothing really fancy. The only truly odd feature is that every single classroom has a sink and a mirror in one of the front corners. A way for lecturers to literally wash their hands of their students after a class? I've no idea.

That's it for now. More weirdness as it occurs.

Some years we forget to burn the goat…

As with the start of any school year, much of my first couple of weeks have been spent dealing with administrative necessities. This being Uppsala, however, at least one of these was new to me: the need to pick a nation. We've mentioned the nations before: student organizations which correspond to various areas of Sweden. What we may not have mentioned before is the fact that membership in a nation is obligatory for students at Uppsala. In fact, when you show up to take your final exam for each class, you are required to show proof of your membership in some nation or another. So this week I had to decide what nation to join.

In the old days, students joined the nation named after the region they came from, but while some Swedish students still do that it's no longer required. Instead, people pick a nation based on some sort of shared interest. Most student groups are organized through the nations. If you want to play handball you join a nation with a handball team, if you want to sing you join a nation with a choir, and if you want to take cheap trips to Russia you join a nation that organizes cheap trips to Russia. With something of a war on right now, the only one of those things I might have wanted to do suddenly seems less appealing, so I needed some other criterion. Last week there was a sort of fair where all the nations set up booths, which I attended, and I did learn things about some of the nations there (Kalmar Nation has the biggest dance club, Värmlands Nation takes the most trips, Norrlands Nation has the most members, Stockholm Nation is the most stuck up), but nothing that really clinched it for me.

In the end, I decided on Gästrike–Hälsinge Nation. Here's what sold me on it:

1. It has a name that's so funny the Swedes don't even say it, instead calling it GH Nation (which, in turn, sounds really funny to an American if you say it in Swedish).
2. One of the nations two home communes, Gästrike, includes the city of Gävle, home every Christmas season to the world's largest flame retardant straw goat.
3. While most if not all of the nations have pubs, GH is widely regarded as having the best, a cozy little third floor affair with 160 kinds of beer available. In a city where a pint glass of the nearly undrinkable local brew in one of the non-student bars will set you back 60 SEK, access to a good selection of reduced price beers is no small matter.
   

So this Tuesday night I went to GH Nation's Reccemottagning to get to know my nation a little better. When I got there I was placed in a group with four Swedes, and we were sent off with maybe a dozen or so other groups to find and answer a series of questions about the nation which had been strategically scattered about the building. Along the way we were introduced to several key members of the nation, such as Thor, the first curator. After explaining that GH was the second richest of Uppsala's nations (after Smålands Nation, and only because Smålands mistakenly received a large bequest last century and then "misplaced" the paperwork) he proceeded to pick up a small, straw goat. The conversation then went a little like this:

1Q: This is a bock. There's a bock every year at Christmas, and most years it burns.

Innocent New Member: It didn't burn this year, they soaked it in flame retardant.

1Q (vehemently): These little #@*!!*@s are soaked in it too, but they still burn.

stunned silence

1Q(quite calmly): Unless we forget to burn them. We meant to burn this one last year, but some years we forget to burn the bock.

After the group activity, it was up to dinner. This was a three course affair. We started with smoked eel in a cream sauce on a slice of pumpernickel, with a glass of beer. For the main course we had scallpoed potatoes, onion sauteed in a cream sauce, pickled beets, and a hamburger (no bun, mind you, just a hamburger patty), with red wine. Then for dessert, hazelnut ice cream surrounded by meringues, topped with whipped cream and some sort of grated nut (have I mentioned before that Sweden is the birthplace of lactose tolerance?) with coffee.

Sounds pretty straightforward, but actually it took nearly three and a half hours. Why? Because to Swedes it just isn't a dinner party without lots of singing. Every few minutes we all stopped what we were doing to sing a song, chosen seemingly at random from the GH Nation songbook, a 200+ page book of songs (mostly) in Swedish, copies of which were scattered about the tables. The only one I recognized was "What do you do with a drunken sailor?", but the others had titles that seemed to translate to things like, "Fat French Girls," "There's No More Moonshine," and "Why Am I Out Of Snus?". After each song we would drink a toast, raising a glass to the person to one side, then the other side, then across the table, then taking a drink, then raising the glass again to the person across the table, and then to each side. Several of the songs also involved banging loudly on the table or standing up on your chair or linking arms and swaying back and forth in unison.

After all that, the bicycle ride home seemed much longer than usual, but it gave me plenty of opportunity to ruminate, and by the end of it I was led to one inescapable conclusion: I've joined the Drones.

A welcome, of sorts

On Friday I attended a reception for new students at Universitetshuset. It wasn't exactly intended for me—there was another reception this week for International students, conducted in English. The one I went to was almost all in Swedish, but it was also a wee bit more of a shindig.

The schedule of events included a warning to be on time, so I showed up 45 minutes early. The building was already crawling with new students. There were also a couple dozen organizations that had set up tables to hand out junk and advertise their services. I got a lanyard from the student choir*, some cool little flashing led lights from one insurance company, and an ice cream treat from another. By the time I'd finished scalding my mouth with a cup of very strong coffee, the doors to the main room were opening.

The program itself lasted about an hour. There were a number of speakers, interleaved with performances by various student musical groups. The MC was some guy who did little magic tricks and told what I assume were jokes in Swedish. The only bit I understood went something like:

So, how do you like the ceiling here? Pretty nice, huh? Yes, it reminds me of my first student apartment.

The speakers, who all wore their gold chains of office, included the University Chancellor, the Mayor of Uppsala, a guy I assume must be the equivalent of the Student Body President, and the President of the United Nations. Don't get too excited about that last one, it wasn't Dag Hammarskjold back from the dead or anything; this United Nations is the governing council of the Student Nations at Uppsala.

And that was that.

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*a small correction by Jennifer: Joe's lanyard is from the student government, not the student choir (kår, not kör!).

Oriented!

Orientation week is over now, so I guess I must be acclimated to the new school now. I believe I left off after my first day, so here's the rest of the week in a nutshell:

Tuesday morning was devoted to a series of short presentations by a number of the professors in the department, giving overviews of the classes we would be most likely to sign up for. I have to say, I really like this approach. I don't think it changed my mind about any of the classes I wanted to take going in; however, there were a number of classes I didn't want to take, but sort of felt like I should take anyway, and after listening to the professors talk about those classes I can now confidently state that a stampeding herd of wild elk couldn't drag me into any one of them.

To actually register for classes requires meeting with an advisor, so we had the afternoon off while some of these meetings took place. Then it was back to Polacksbacken in the evening for the barbeque. The invite said there would be "food, soft drinks, salad, etc." The food in this case was sausage (mostly hotdogs) and chips, the salad was potato salad, and the soft drinks were just that (people were encouraged to bring their own beer and/or wine, but the U can't provide it). It lasted for about four hours, and it only rained consistantly (leaving us all huddling under the small tent) for the last 90 minutes of that. I did get to meet most of my fellow students, plus a couple of profs, and got a few questions answered in the process.

The incoming class consists of 36 students: one each from America, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Sweden; half a dozen from the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent; and 2 dozen from China. I should add that not only am I the only American in my cohort, I'm actually the only American the IT department has had in a Masters program (although the international Masters in Computer Science has only been running for a few years—before 2004 or so, the department only offered a 5 year undergrad/Master combination degree for Swedish students). Anyway, they most seem a chatty, agreeable lot, and while the bulk of the Chinese students tend to group together and speak Chinese, it's hard to blame them since they are after all in the majority, and there were a number of Chinese students more than willing to buck the trend. Most of the students are new to the university, but a handful spent a semester or year here as exchange students while undergrads.

The party broke up after 9, and this is when I learned something new: the city forest, through which most of my path to and from school runs, takes on quite a different character on a cold, rainy night. It was, to put it succinctly, dark. Very dark. I was glad I'd been through it more in the preceding weeks, because otherwise I'm not sure I would have made it out before midnight. As it was, I only had to backtrack three or four times, and I exited the forest almost where I intended to wind up. I guess it's time to dig put that bike light I got in July.

Hmm, that was Tuesday, but not so much in a nutshell. Maybe I'll do better with Wednesday, which was devoted to practical concerns. Several of the topics discussed would have been useful to me in February, such as the advice about opening a bank account, which amounted to: go to any bank you like, except for the bank Joe and Jennifer chose (said the presenter: "May people have quite a good experience of them... but I've never met one."). Then we got key cards, computer passwords, and library cards, and a tour of the local campus area.

Immediately after the tour I had my meeting to sign up for classes. The class schedule is a little different ere from the sort of thing I'm used to. Instead of a firm schedule, the University only sets broad guidelines for when the semester starts and stops. Within that, each department can pretty much do as it likes. The computer science department divides the semester into two study periods, each about 6 weeks long. During each study period you take two or three classes. This meeting was to decide on classes for both periods this semester. It was pretty straightforward: I said what classes I'd like to take, and the advisor signed me up for them. He didn't check to see when they met, or even how many students were already enrolled, just signed me right up. I gather that new students just get into their classes regardless of enrollment, but I think there are limits set for older students.

The schedule thing is another story, though. You (or at least, I) would think that there would be a schedule that listed this class as meeting Tuesday and Thursday at such and such a time, and that class as meeting at another time, and so forth. It turns out you (really I this time) would be wrong. At Uppsala the classes meet at different times every week, and there's no expectation that you will be able to find two classes that never meet at the same time. My schedule doesn't conflict most of the time, but at least once per week I have a couple of lectures at the same time. What do I do when that happens? Just pick one and go to it, apparently. Professors don't appear to expect really high attendance rates, anyway. The schedule for the second period isn't even published yet, so there's no way for most people to know if the classes they registered for last week will meet at different times in November (both of my second period classes are taught by the same professor, so I suspect he won't double book himself).

After all that, Thursday was relatively uneventful. There was a meeting in the afternoon for all the foreign Master students at the University, although only about 100 out of 400 attended. The presenter offered commiseration at the lack of housing, confirmation that there is nowhere affordable to park in Uppsala, a warning that November is really grim ("…but if you make it through November, you'll be fine"), and an exhortation to eat plenty of hot vegetables at the cafeteria every day for lunch ("I know I sound like your mother, but your mother is right. Listen to your mother.").

This post is really quite long enough, so I think I'll stop there and let Friday be on its own. Anyway, for Friday there are pictures…