Bowling night

Our social committee here at the Evolutionary Biology Centre decided to have bowling as the Autumn Event. For some reason, bowling has become popular in Sweden in the last few years, and Uppsala dutifully has its 9-lane bowling alley, a place called bowlaget. The bowling here is strictly for entertainment purposes—lanes are somewhat shorter than regulation, the place is black-lit with flashing lights and relentless remixed hits from the 80s, and the bar is slick and swanky and staffed by black-clad thin young men who are much cooler than you are (80SEK for a beer). It makes quite a contrast to a place like Kelley's Bowl in St. Joseph (where I worked for a few months in order to earn cash for my first trip to Europe, 'way back in 1985), with its serious people who brought their own balls, and dozens of well-lit lanes that were nevertheless totally obscured by cigarette and cigar smoke by the end of the evening.

There's also an attached restaurant, which serves a traditional three-course bowling menu. The autumn offering is wild mushroom toast, steak with celery puree, and cloudberry pannacotta for desert (395SEK, including an hour of bowling). Or you can go for the luxury meal (475SEK), which gets you brioche for an appetizer, lightly smoke venison sirloin with port wine and cranberry sauce, and chocolate fondant with berries and ice cream. These offerings are also just a wee bit different from the snack bar at Kelley's, where for I think $1, your snack bar attendant (that's me) would throw a pre-packaged sandwich into the microwave for you.

Bowling techniques ranged from a pure power (from a tall botanist, who threw the ball so hard that it didn't even hit the floor until half-way down the lane) to attempts at finesse (student E., who stood carefully at the line, but consistently hit the alley). Highest score I saw was 160, the lowest was under 20. Everyone had a good time—after all, the point of bowling, as far as I can tell, is to share a beer with friends, and a laugh about how bad you are.

(The name "bowlaget" is a sort of a pun. "Systembolaget" is the name of the state-run liquor monopoly, where one goes to buy all alcoholic beverages, and this name often gets shortened to "bolaget" which sounds a lot like "bowlaget.")

Shopping for… pumpkin?

A couple of weeks before Halloween, Jennifer's office mate tipped us off to a grocery store that was selling pumpkins. I rushed across to town, and indeed there was a small wooden crate in front of the store labelled "Pumpor." Its contents? Three pie pumpkins, about half a dozen small decorative squash, and one perfectly good looking acorn squash. As these were the first pumpkins I'd found this year, I quickly grabbed the two most likely looking, as well as the acorn squash, and headed into the store. Once I got to the counter, though, things started to go wrong. The clerk peered at my squash assortment suspiciously for a moment before going off to consult with a coworker, returning shortly with a frown on her face.

"They were right outside the door," I volunteered.

Suddenly understanding, the clerk replied, "Jaha. You must buy these next door. Here they are not recognized," gesturing illustratively at the register.

What's next door? Why, a flower shop, of course. I tell you, I have never felt so much like an immigrant as I did at that moment, having just attempted to purchase a decorative plant for my dinner. Swallowing my explanation ("But, I'm going to eat them!"), I quietly made my way to the flower shop and bought my pumpkins.

Flash forward four weeks. The carving pumpkins I did eventually manage to locate have long since been carved, displayed, cooked, and eaten (mmmm, pumpkin bread!); with the passing of the holiday, all the winter squash have vanished from the stores (even, alas, from the flower shops). This afternoon, though, I went to a large, somewhat distant grocery store, which I do not normally frequent, in search of sage leaves, and was shocked to be confronted with a sign advertising "Pumpor — 16:90/kg." And the pumpkins in question? Here are the two I purchased:

Cold fusion

This was a holiday weekend in Sweden, for this year's observance of All Saints Eve. The exact date of All Saints varies from year to year, as it is celebrated on whichever Saturday evening falls between October 31 and November 6. On this day, Swedes remember their dead, and visit graves and leave on them flowers or pine branches or other small memorials. They also leave lit candles or little firepots, and the sight is quite beautiful.

Of course, this year All Saint's coincided with Halloween, an American holiday that seems to be gaining a foothold in Sweden, even since we've been here. Compared to last year, more stores have Halloween stuff, more people seemed to be going to a Halloween party, there was more standard Halloween imagery in the media, and so forth. After all, Halloween is an excuse to dress up, go out, eat candy, and have a party at a dark time of year. What could be more Swedish?

For ourselves, we got the best of both holidays by having a jack-o-lantern carving party on Friday night, then going out on Saturday to wander through Uppsala's scenic old graveyard. I was led to wonder whether the two holidays will remain separate, or will they someday fuse? My question was rhetorical, but we found a clue to what the future might hold, as we neared the end of our chilly ramble. Take a look again at the picture of a grave at the top of the post...

Unclear on the Concept

The second class period of the semester started here yesterday. One of my stated goals for this term is to sell off the least useful of the textbooks that I bought last fall. This isn't as straightforward a proposition here as I've come to expect in the States; the University doesn't have a bookstore, and neither of the bookstores in town with textbook sections bother to cater directly to the current course schedule, instead just maintaining a general collection of texts used in classes over the years, loosely arranged by subject. And, more to the point, neither of them deals in used books. There are a handful of online textbook exchange services; all are in Swedish naturally, and none of them appear to be frequented by the computer science students, so they aren't really useful to me.

Instead, the foreign students run their own informal textbook exchange over a more general purpose departmental chat group, which works pretty well (and does tend to fetch the seller a slightly better price). I've managed to part with all but one of my intended sales so far (and only been reduced to haggling once), and I have a prospect for the remaining volume. There are, nonetheless, vagaries inherent in such an informal system, such as the e-mail I received this morning regarding my remaining text:

Hej Joe,

I saw your advertisement selling "Designing Interactive Systems". If you haven't sold it, would you be willing to lend it for one week for 25kr? I need to use it for around a week but won't need it after that I think. You can still sell it during the week that it's lent out of course. I'll put collateral of a library book I'd borrowed, let's say. Yes, it sounds like a little like how stock markets work! But I don't need to own the book, just to borrow it for a specific use for one week. Of course I'll treat it like a library book and shall not write
on it.

[name deleted]

I would tend to say that this sounds more like the way that stock markets fail to work, but I'm willing to set that aside for now. I'll also not bother with the absurdly low offering price of 25 SEK (my sale price is 400 SEK, on a book that was originally priced at 1050 SEK), or even the fact that promising "not to write on it" fails to inspire much confidence in the condition the book might be returned in. And I've spent enough years working in bookstores to not be surprised by the "but I just want a few pages, couldn't I just borrow it and copy them?" line of reasoning from prospective customers.

No, the part that cracks me up is offering a library book as collateral. Sure, there's a downside for [name deleted] if he destroys my book and I refuse to return his library book as a result, but where's the upside for me? I have this vision of trying to ransom this kid's library book back to the University library…

Falling back

We had to change all our clocks today, as Sweden has just gone off Summer Time, a week before the US goes off of Daylight Savings Time. This time change is the one we always used to like, because for a day, it felt like a stolen hour, like getting away with some sort of minor indulgence, with no consequences. In Michigan, Joe and I would look at each other and laugh, and say things like "Can you believe it's only noon? haha!"

This year is different. Today over lunch, we looked at each other, then outside at the grismal day, and I sighed and said "I can't believe it's only noon." Joe agreed and added that this time change is too bad, as it makes it feel like there's an extra hour in the day.

As I write this, it's about 4:40pm, and it's quite dark outside. Clearly there's only one thing to do: make chocolate chip cookies. If that doesn't cheer us up, nothing can!

Suomenlinna

Our goal today was simple: we wanted to get out to Suomenlinna, the island fortress which guards Helsinki's harbor. This is not actually a difficult thing to accomplish from Helsinki, so we opted for a slow start to the morning. Consequently, it was just gone 9 when we showed up to the hotel breakfast buffet. We've never actually had a Finnish breakfast buffet, butof course it was not too different from what we've come to expect everywhere else. There were no waffles or pancakes, which isn't so unusual but worth noting, and the only additions were some very dark flatbread, some Karelian rice pastries, and a crock pot of hot porridge. The Karelian pastry is a thin pastry shell wrapped around some cooked rice; say what you will about the Karelians, but they don't appear to be big fans of the concept of flavor.

Breakfast ended at 10, after which we mosied back up to the room and were back downstairs for checkout by 11. The depressing discovery of the morning was that sometime the yesterday I appear to have lost my gloves and my favorite hat. I had a backup hat along, so no immediate harm done, but I really liked the other one. Oh well. Having checked out, I took a minute to walk the luggage the two blocks to the ferry terminal, where in exchange for the 4 EUR I placed in the locker I got a really cool old key. The temptation to exchange another 4 EUR at the end of the day for a souvenir key was strong, let me tell you…

The terminal also has a HKL ticket machine, from which I bought us a pair of one day tourist tickets. Then we hopped a number 4 tram into town, hustled across Kauppatori (the Market Square) and managed to catch a ferry to Suomenlinna with approximately 3 seconds to spare (they run only about every 40 minutes or so).

Suomenlinna (or Sveaborg if you're a Swede (which transliterated into Finnish becomes Viapori)) is a massive fortress. Built at the command of Gustav III Vasa, it was the largest construction project Sweden had ever undertaken. It actually spans a series of five islands at the mouth of Helsinki harbor. In more than one sense, it is the reason for the existence of Helsinki. Gustav's order also created the city (as an attemp to wrest the Baltic Sea trade away from Tallin, and hence the Hanseatic League)—the fact that neither the city (originally sited too far upriver, it had to be moved forcibly within decades of its founding) nor the fortress (while it did survive the first two attempts by the Russians to take the city, this was mostly due to the fact that the invasion fleets were turned back by the pack ice) proved particularly successful was but a temporary setback. After the fortress surrendered to the Tsar Alexander in 1808, he declared Helsinki the capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland, and the 17,000 troops he stationed there immediately turned Helsinki into a massive garrison town which led to its rapid expansion and ultimate success.

The ferry docks at the most built up quarter, so for a while we followed rough cobblestone streets as the wound between the old wooden warehouses and the Orthodox church and lighthouse. Past the museum and visitor center the walled town gives way to more serious fortification; another kilometer beyond that there's nothing but stone walls and abandoned artillery staring forlornly out across the Baltic. In the summertime the islands are crawling with people, locals and tourists both, clambering over the grass covered dunes and exploring the rabbits warren of tunnels and casements beneath, interspersed with a swim off the rocks or a picnic. For my money, though, we had it better in October: the outer reaches had a sort of wind-swept allure, and the courtyards and alleyways were mostly populated by eddies of yellow oak leaves, with the occasional human visitor thrown in for good measure.

At 3:40 it was time to catch the ferry back to the mainland, and from there a tram out to Katajanokka, there to trade in our key for our luggage. As we walked down the (absurdly long) gangway to the ship, we were treated to a parting view of the city—those parts of it not lost behind the sudden downpour we had been dreading all day.

Time to get out of Helsinki.