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.

Back to the Baltic

It's 4:45 PM, and we're sitting on the sun deck of the Viking LIne cruise ship Gabriella on a cold, dark, somewhat misty afternoon in Stockholm harbor. The last time we took this trip was a year ago July, and like bad generals throughout history, we've learned the lessons of the last war a little too well. We hustled to the gate to board as soon as possible, in order to deposit our stuff in our cabin and grab a seat on deck before the mad hordes descended—only to find that we were the only people on deck, and all the chairs have been put away for the season. Eventually we wandered down to the aft sun deck, which last time was crowded with Swedes busy taking advantage of the tax free liqour to get schnockered—today, there were just a few lonely smokers. But now we're getting underway, and a few hearty souls are starting to show up to lean over the aft rail and watch Stockholm slide into the murky distance.

There's a phenomenon at work here that we've encountered before. Swedes are proud of their life in the north, and are pretty well adjusted to it; oh, the lack of light gets them down as much as it does anybody else, but the cold and the snow don't keep them from walking in the woods or having a run or riding their bike to work, and winter sports are nearly ubiquitous. But while all of this wintery outdoorsy-ness does entail a certain heartiness, we're constantly surprised at how strictly curtailed that heartiness is. A Swede who sees no problem at all with having a January jog through the woods over a coating of ice broken only, and frequently, by huge nearly frozen puddles, will also most likely simply refuse to contemplate sitting outside for a beer on a sunny but cool evening in September. Harsh conditions are fine (with the proper gear, naturally), but a little discomfort? I think not.

And so, in the time it took me to write that, we're back to being virtually the only people on deck, despite the fact that it isn't realy all that cold, and the view is pleasant (if a little dim). Ah well, I guess we'll just have the aft deck to ourselves this trip.

6:07 PM: Having moved (indoors) to the restaurant deck, am now quite pleasantly warm again, thanks in no small part to the Irish coffee in front of me (good thing it happens to be "Irish Weeks" on the Gabriella). As a person who blindly balks at expectations, it's annoying living in a society where everyone expects me to do the reasonable thing—it forces me to be unreasonable.

Despite having joined everyone else inside, we're still having an easier go of it than in July. We got a table by a window, just next to the bar, in a corridor that on our summertime cruise we couldn't even squeeze into due to all the people crowded in to sing along with the cover band. And the duty free shop, which last year at this time looked to be in violation of its maximum occupancy, was virtually empty. Yup, there's nothing for it: it's time to go buy some chocolate.

9:00 PM: We were delayed somewhat when the smells of the tapas bar near our window table made us aware that we had seriously underestimated our hunger level for the evening. Then, fortified with some smoked salmon, potato wedges, and olives, we decided to take a quick stroll around the deck now that it's quite dark out. It had seemed like it might be clearing slightly as the sun set (at 5), but it seems to have been a passing fancy at best. We made our way up to the foredeck, which is quite untenable when the ship is at speed out in the Baltic, but since we were still in the outer reaches of the archipelago, and therefore going much more slowly, it wasn't too windy to manage. It's a misty, still night, and combined with the relative silence of being so far forward of the engines, it made for a somewhat eerie experience, with the lights of stugas situated on invisible islands glowing off to each side, and the mist glowing in the ship's lights ahead of us. Unfortunately, we weren't out there long, as after a bit a crewman came along to close the top decks up for the night. I don't think the top deck ever closed in the summer—certainly we were up there after midnight. Ah well, we'll just have to make it out a little earlier on the return.

9:20 PM: Finally made it to the duty free. While it isn't as packed as we've come to expect, we're hardly alone; there's a young woman in a Pippi Longstocking costume shopping for wine, and a group of heavily tattooed French speakers trying to figure out which is the cheapest rotgut whisky available. The duty free alcohol is an important part of the Baltic cruise, as there's a VAT of at least 25% added to all alcohol in Sweden (the exact tax varies with the strength of the liquor); we certainly intend to stock up on a few items, but mostly on the return trip. For now, we'll settle for a few snacks for the morning: small cheese sampler, a bottle of wine for Wednesday night's dinner, and some Swiss chocolate. We had our eye on a real rarity—genuine, American beef jerky!—but but we balked at the price tag (80 SEK for 100 g).

It's been a long day, so we're off to bed. Tomorrow, Helsinki!

P.S. Why no pictures? Apparently I forgot to pack a cable for the camera, so they'll just have to wait until we get home. Sorry! I'll update posts after we get back, I guess.

Not Quite Dag Hammarskjöld

The other day we went down to the main university building to hear Ban Ki-moon give a brief speech. He was, no doubt, in country on some sort of official business (probably to do with the fact that Sweden holds the presidency of the EU at the moment…), but I'm sure that no Secretary-General of the U.N. could visit Sweden without stopping to pay respects at the grave of Uppsala's most beloved son: Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary-General, who died in a plane crash in Rhodesia while trying to broker a peace treaty.

The half-hour speech itself was about what you'd expect, a call to fix the problems of the world, err, somehow. At least, the part before I dozed off at the end was pretty standard, and I assume it kept going in that vein. There was one amusing bit, though. In what must have seemed a guaranteed crowd pleaser, the Secretary-General mentioned that he liked the university motto, engraved over the entrance to the hall he was speaking in: "Tänka fritt är stort men tänka rätt är större."

Ignoring the fact that this isn't actually the school's motto ("Gratiae veritas naturae"), the truth is that most local Swedes are somewhat conflicted about this statement—hence the response Ban Ki-moon got, which I can only describe as "nervous laughter." The problem is that, while Swedes pride themselves on living in a modern and free society, the fact is that it is also a society where there is a right way to do things—and they'll never admit it, but the drive to fit in is particularly strong in Sweden.

Admission was free, but you had to get tickets in advance for security reasons, and the tickets were accounted for within a few hours of becoming available. We got there perhaps not quite as early as we should have, but before the real crush, and quite innocently managed to avoid all the security by coming in the back door (if they didn't want us to come in that way, then that nice young man shouldn't have opened the door for us, now should he?). Anyway, the upshot is that we managed to get seats up in the balcony shortly before the last minute crush of students, who mostly wound up standing in the aisles through the whole speech. How does one say "fire marshall" in Swedish?

The red badge of courage

My ex-officemate S., who is into various sorts of gaming, started a mångkamp last year for students and postdocs in our department. The idea is that every participant comes up with some sort of event for everyone to compete in, and this then gives people a chance to share their interests (and also provides an excuse for people to stick around after work and socialize). Past events have included things like ping-pong (there's a table in the basement), poker, egg-balancing, cake-baking, Guitar Hero, Pentago... you get the idea.

Occasionally the contests have been direct combat. S. himself chose stick-fighting, and today was post-doc G.'s event, fencing.

To make a short story shorter, my informal and long-ago training in the sport, courtesy of my father, did me well against people with no experience at all and I actually beat my new officemate X. I came very close to beating another student, B., who danced and swung her epee about quite wildly. Now as you see from the picture, I declined to wear a glove on my crutch-hand, so that my grip would be better. And sure enough, B. fetched me a nice swat on the hand, no more than a sting, but when I looked down when we were finished, it was bleeding. I congratulated her on drawing first blood (I think she was horrified), then accepted my consolation shot of arrack punsch, and then had to run off to do an errand in town.

It wasn't until I was on the bus that it hit me: I have been wounded—nay, I have had my blood drawn—in a sword fight at a 500-year-old European university. How cool is that?

(I am such a geek.)

(Da, I hope you are green with envy! tack för hjälpen!)