Julmarknad

Yesterday was the official start to the Christmas season in Uppsala, as the downtown lights coming on for the first time. The event was also marked by a profusion of street vendors throughout downtown, as well as a more official Julmarknad in St. Erik's Torg (an old square below the cathedral), and a number of sales. Eager to see Uppsala's version of Black Friday, we headed downtown in the afternoon to catch a bit of the excitement.

The streets and shops were indeed packed with people, and the lights were all on, so it was quite festive. It was around 2:30 when we got downtown, so we still had 30 minutes until sunset. We made the best of it by sampling some of the street food, stopping for a free cup of glögg offered by the Army Women's Reserve Corp, and a couple of donuts from the "American Donuts" stand (they were… closer than anything else we've had here). Then we hit a couple of shops, mostly looking to pick up a bit of seasonal decoration for the apartment—and did we ever succeed! On our way to the market, we ran into one of Jennifer's coworkers who mentioned that Uppsala's fanciest restaurant, Domtrappkällaren, was serving his favorite dish (stekt strömming med potatismos och lingonsylt) on paper plates from it's kitchen door. As it happened to be on our way, we decided we should risk it, and indeed it was really good.

The market itself was just the sort of Christmas crafty stuff you would expect, some of it nice, some of it a little cheesy, all of it out of our price range. So we watched the litte kids taking pony rides, listened to the choir singing on the church steps, ate a hot dog purchased from the Amnesty International booth, and basically soaked up the atmosphere.

Last night was also the last night of a month long art project in Uppsala, an attempt to brighten up the dismal November evenings by putting up a series of light-themed artworks around town. As it was now a couple of hours after sunset and the vendors were all packing up, we decided to walk past a few of the light displays. The highlights were the University building, dramatically lit in shifting colors; Valvgatan, an old building with a large archway over a pedestrianized street which was glowing with blacklight; and an art gallery down by the river, which was projecting artwork onto the river wall accompanied by atmospheric music.

By then it was getting on towards 6 o'clock, and in the cold and the dark things were really winding down, so we headed home. It was a lot of fun, though.

Going to Gävle

Just in case there are any early Sunday morning readers out there, here's a quick heads up. Today is the official Invigning ceremony for the Gävle Julbock, and we're heading up there in an hour or so along with our friends G. and D. There are fireworks scheduled for 4 pm local time (that's 10 am Eastern). No idea what the crowds will be like, but if possible we'll try to stand in the line of sight for webcam #1 and wave, sometime around 4:30.

I set up a script to capture the webcam images, so if it works, I'll post our photographic evidence once we get home.

Magic Songs in the Borg Cube

The Uppsala Kammarkör had another concert last Sunday, and I now know two of its tenors, my officemate S. and Swiss postdoc G. The title of the concert was "Magic Songs" after excerpts from a piece with the same name by Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, and the theme was magic-inspired music from around the world. Included in program were a tune by 16th century composer Tielman Susato rearranged by Jan Garbarek, and a short piece by Estonian Arvo Pärt. The concert opened with Raua Needmine, a challenging piece by V Tormis (challenging in this case to the singers; two of the baritones looked like they were going to pass out at one point, but we enjoyed the piece hugely). The eponymous Magic Songs were intended "to make magic work in the real world," and included chants for calling wolves, keeping bees warm, making bears dance, making stones sing (there were some lovely vocals for that one, with one note sustained while others fell in turn, making me think of meteorites), and finally, an all-purpose chant to make magic work. The concert ended with a yoik, the Lapp song that captures the essence of a human or other living being. In this case the living being was joyful, and as the choir sang they bent their bodies about, almost as if they were singing a traditional American gospel.

The concert was held in the Uppsala Konsert och Kongress, the opening of which, in September of 2007, was surrounded by controversy. The building was expensive to begin with, and then of course costs ran well over what had been projected. The style is a modern cube: some like it, some hate it, but everyone agrees it stands out architecturally (whether that's good or bad depends on you). The acoustics in our small hall were fantastic. The view of the city, from the solid bank of windows that runs around the building at about two-thirds the way up, is fabulous, and anybody can come into the building during the day just to see the view. The interior feels rather uncomfortably like an airport. There is a water feature outside so unobtrusive that pedestrians routinely fall into it, and even a taxi drove into it once.

Worst of all, in the minds of some: it was designed by Danes.

Glad Tacksägelse

Thanksgiving is not an official holiday in Sweden, but despite this fact Swedes have a traditional Thanksgiving Day menu: split pea soup with ham, and pancakes with cream and strawberry preserves. If that doesn't sound much like a Thanksgiving Dinner, that's because it isn't really, it's just that Thanksgiving happens to fall on a Thursday, and that's what Swedish families are supposed to eat on Thursday. I don't suppose that there are too many people these days who actually cook split pea soup and pancakes every Thursday, but that doesn't stop it from being a cultural touchstone. The lunch restaurants where I go to class and where Jennifer works both put this on the menu every Thursday, and there are always plenty of takers.

Turkey, on the other hand, is a dish generally reserved for Easter in Sweden, and the rest of the year it's pretty hard to find. That being said, I did manage to find a single turkey leg, so this weekend we're roasting the sucker and serving it with mashed potatoes. For tonight, though, we're sticking with tradition: split pea soup. Oh yes, and pancakes, too.

And so it begins

Construction on the annual Julbock, the world's largest straw goat, has begun in the small city of Gävle (about 100km north of Uppsala). According to the newspaper, they Goat committee this year has opted to forego the highly successful flame-proofing used in the past two years. They say it's because the chemical caused the straw to absorb water and turn a dull brown instead of the goat's natural proud yellow coloring. I suspect it's because they secretly want the goat to burn every other year or so.

Either way, the webcam is up, as is the goat's blog (only in Swedish this year, by the look of it). You can keep an eye on the goat's progress off to the right.

I can't resist posting this charmingly unintelligible machine translation of the goat's first blog entry:

So it was finally time for a world celebrity to wake up from its summer slumber. On Friday the whole I should be place on the Palace Square in winter white Calcutta1. Follow the building via web cameras! New raiment has bock Committee cost of an old man too. Ah, the smell luscious malt indeed - straw will apparently from whiskey production in Mackmyra. And some, it is nice to regain its former glory. Unfortunately, the flame retardant (used in recent years) that I lost stinget total. Nobody likes of course, a dirt brown CHRISTMAS GOAT, which most resembles a roller cured terrier. But this year I am irresistible again with the New barley straw! Although I am not as eldsäker night, but I hope you will help me to look out for FIREBUG industries. Now is the ZOMBIES!

1 For some reason, online translators generally mistake the Swedish town of Gävle for the Indian city of Calcutta. Go figure.

Låt det snöa, låt det snöa, låt det snöa

Turns out that the snow we got on Saturday was just the start. Sunday evening saw some more, but then things really took off on Monday, and now we've got about 30 cm of the stuff. The picture above was taken Tuesday morning—I guess some people don't have their snow tires on yet. Biking to school Monday morning was dicey in parts (and I did watch a couple of people wipe out), but fortunately the majority of my route goes through the woods, so I didn't have to contend with traffic outside of a couple of blocks at each end.

Now that the snow has stopped falling for a couple of days, the maintenance crews have had a chance to catch up. Interestingly, they don't actually plow all of the snow; they pack a bunch of it down into a nice hard base that covers the sidewalks and the streets, and then they spread gravel over that. It doesn't make for a great walking surface right after they do it, but once it gets roughed up a bit it seems to be fine. There must be a tiny version of the big snow clearing equipment I've seen around town, too, because someone has gone through the forest trails and made a 45 cm wide path of packed snow down the center of each.

The forest, incidentally, is gorgeous in the snow, so much in fact that after getting home earlier than expected Tuesday I felt the need to go and walk around in the woods for a while. I didn't have too long, though: I got home at 1:45, and the sun sets now at 3.

That's all for now. Thursday we're expecting highs around 5°C, so I suppose we'll be trading in all our high albedo cover for a new round of mud; meanwhile, I intend to keep enjoying the white stuff.