Glad Påsk!

Today is Annandag Påsk, a national holiday here in oh-so-secular Sweden, and for once at least it's a holiday we're spending in exactly the way it is intended: a day to recover from the excitement of Easter.

Our local påskkäringar inspecting their haul.

Celebrations got underway the evening of Skärtorsdagen, when all the little girls in Sweden dress up as påskkäringar (witches in Sweden apparently favor aprons, head scarves, and lots of plaid) and go door-to-door handing out "Glad Påsk" cards. Just like last year, we had only one set of visitors (not the same pair, I think), and while Jennifer doled out godis to them in thanks for our card, I waited outside and talked to their father, who made sure to point out

You don't have to give them anything if you don't want to. If you don't have candy, you can give them a 5 kronor piece. Or fruit, you could give them fruit!

Despite this last, somewhat wistful addition, we had no spare fruit, so instead I'm afraid we contributed to the 17 kg of candy each of his daughters will consume this year (that's the national average, anyway). Can the candy tax be far away?

If Skärtorsdagen seems somewhat whimsical in Sweden, Långfredag has a tradition of living up to its name, as up until only a few years ago everything in the country was closed for what has been described as "the most boring day in Sweden." Things have lightened up of late, so now grocery stores and even (gasp!) movie theaters are allowed to open for the day.

Nationalist cascarones for our dinner attendees.

For us, Friday and Saturday were spent mostly prepping for Sunday, as once again we had volunteered to supply the cascarones for Easter dinner with our friends G. and D. We were a party of six all told, so we spent Friday and Saturday making 30 colorful little cascarones, enough for everyone to have a go at everyone else. We also made appetizers again; this year we did vegetable samosas, and some corned beef and cabbage spring rolls that I like to call "Blarney Rolls"—I appear to be alone in my appreciation of the name, however.

Dinner was an outstanding slow cooked lamb along with white beans and salad. Afterwards we adjourned outside, where the weather was surprisingly cooperative. We had feared that none of the snow would be clear by Easter, but a few warm sunny days had worked wonders on G. and D.'s front lawn, so we were able to dash about and get confetti everywhere just like we were supposed to.

Chocolate tarta and blueberry sauce

We followed our exercise up with a lovely chocolate tarta, and then a pleasant evening of brainstorming about the table decorations for G. and D.'s upcoming wedding. By the time we had finished a light supper it was well gone 10 o'clock, and time for a well earned rest.

Has the lovely Påsk weather lasted until Annandag Påsk? Well, at 9 this morning it started to snow again…

Half-teaching

You might remember that last year I had some students in the month of March; my project was once again volunteered for the same class year, but this year I ended up splitting the teaching duties with the Austrian postdoc E. who is in the lake project. He wanted the teaching experience, but would be out of town for the second half of the project; meanwhile, I was unemployed for the time leading up to it, but was rehired just in time to take the over for the second half. His good idea was to take the students out to nearby Lake Ekoln and get a new sample, since all our samples are from the summer and we are interested in finding out how the bacterioplankton is different in the winter. I do enjoy a bit of fieldwork— haven't done any for ages now— so I was more than happy to tag along with the group for the trip to take the sample. Back on 1 March, E. drove us and a trunk-ful of equipment down to the northern tip of Lake Mäleran, a basin called Lake Ekoln. This is the lake which runs all the way to Stockholm, and is what they skate on when they do the Uppsala to Stockholm skate race. On March 1, winter was showing no signs of giving up yet— new snow, a strong wind, thick ice. It took about half an hour for us to drill a hole all the way through the ice (here's me taking my turn). Then the two students got out the water bottles, took their samples, and we went back to the lab where the went through the rest of the procedure for filtering the bacteria out. They were very proud and possessive of their samples, as they should have been, since they suffered wet feet in a blizzard in order to obtain them; the Chinese student, who has never experienced anything like this, was quite pleased with the whole experience.

Jag jobbar jobbigt

So here's my job situation. Late last year, my boss, in collaboration with a couple other professors here, wrote a grant application to the European Research Council. One of the purposes of the grant was to continue funding for my current project; the application included funding for a couple of students and a post-doc, with the understanding that I would be the post-doc. The grant was well-reviewed by the ERC, and at the beginning of December or so I was more-or-less assured of a one-year extension. But the way these grants work is that the actual funding is left up to the research councils of member states. And when Vetenskaprådet (the Swedish equivalent of NSF) received our application, they declined to fund it. ERC proposes, VR disposes.

The "good" news is that at least we weren't alone: it sounds like every application from our quite large department was turned down. The fact that we weren't alone is also the bad news: although my boss (who recently stepped down as department chair) said she would make an appeal for emergency funds at the next faculty meeting, the new higher-ups were so mad about the fact that their projects were turned down that they were not in the mood to make exceptions, perhaps especially in her/our case.

Fortunately, as I mentioned before, my boss did have enough money to keep me employed for two additional months (although back when I wrote that, I still thought I might be back on a stipend afterwards). I had to be hired as an employee, and so there was some additional fuss to the process (all positions have to advertised in the EU, get Union approval, and so forth), made a little more difficult in my case because of course meanwhile my residency permit had expired. All that has worked out now, and so finally we will get to the funny.

Guess how much vacation time I get for a two-month contract. Go ahead, guess. At my age and job classification, I get six days off. That's right, six days. That's as much as some new hires get in a year back in the US. Other job classifications might get even more time, I'm not sure.

The other amusing thing that happened is that I started working in the first week in March, but it took a week for them to get together the paperwork, even after the job had been approved. Also, by Swedish law, I am required to have a six-week notice of job termination. Therefore, the secretary came to me with the papers to sign accepting the job on a Thursday; on the very next Wednesday, she came to me with papers announcing that my job has been terminated.

The title of the post means "I work hard."

The bright sunny Söder

When we woke up Saturday morning in Stockholm, it was sunny and clear, just right for a sit in a park, which had been one of my chief ambitions for the weekend. After a slightly less leisurely breakfast than we had had on Friday, Joe took off to run an errand, and I packed up a mid-morning snack and headed down to the nearest good-sized park, called Nytorget, only two blocks away. Outdoor seating at the cafes lining the square were at a premium, but there were plenty of spaces on the benches in the square, where I sat and ate my leftover pizza and watched the dog walkers and kids playing in the melting snow. I walked around the area a little bit, then met Joe on the bus, and we headed back into town for an afternoon of touristing.

Our first stop was to get a cheap lunch at Nystekt Strömming, whose stekt strömming plate is said by all the guidebooks to be the best in town, and it was indeed delicious. Then we went to the City Museum, whose purpose is to document the history and life of the people of Stockholm. We learned, among other things, that our the hardware on our kitchen cabinets is from the 30s, and I found Nytorget (which means "New Square") on a map of the city dating from 1670. The courtyard of the museum has a model of the planet Mercury, which is scaled as if the all-purpose arena Globen (2.9km away) were the Sun. (Here's more about the Swedish solar system.)

When the museum closed at 5pm, it was still plenty light and sunny, so we decided to take an elevator up to the pedestrian bridge at Katarinahissen—the famous elevator itself was out of service, but there is a perfectly good one (and free!) in the nearby office building. The views of the city are as good as advertised—and a great view of the Museum we were just in— and it's rather fun to watch the traffic at Slussen, which can probably be fairly said to be Sweden's major interchange.

We walked along the pedestrian bridge back to the cliffs of Södermalm, alternately envying and feeling sorry for the apartment dwellers with balconies facing the walkway—great views of the city and lake, but you would have tourists looking at you all the time! The area at the top of the bridge has a large theater that faces the lake to the north and a little square, Mosebacke Torg, to the south: we lingered in the square to watch the dressed-up people stream out from an early show. The square is probably quite charming in the summer, when the fountain has (unfrozen) water in it, and there are narrow streets running out of it, all leading downhill.

Crêperie Fyra Knop, which is one of the restaurants we had thought might be suitable for our big dinner out, is in this area, so we thought we'd just drop in and have dinner. We are, ahem, a little out of practice with this big city restaurant stuff... the hostess looked quite dubious when we said we had not booked a table, but they keep a spare table near the door, apparently in case some silly people like us wander off the street at 7pm, on a Saturday night, at one of the most popular eateries around... sheesh! (We got in just in the nick, too; lots of other people came in after us and got flatly turned down.) The place is cozy and warm, and the food was delicious (no good food pictures because it was a little dimly lit)— we each had crepes with salmon, mine with potatoes and herbs and raclette, Joe's was with garlic-sauteed spinach and roquefort.

After dinner we took a slow amble back down Svartensgatan and then Götgatan, stopping to peer in the windows of the shops and bars. We took the bus back to our home base, stopped in one of the numerous local cafes for a latte and a nibble of dessert, then back to the apartment to relax and recover from a long day of tramping around. As an extra luxury, we rented a movie, and watched it on a television.

It was really good to get out of town for a few days—I feel quite refreshed and ready to face the next few weeks, which will be quite frantic with work (tune in again soon for a post explaining my employment status). We have a list on our refrigerator labelled "Things we will feel stupid if we don't do" ('while in Sweden', we meant), and 'Stockholm Museums' was one of the items; although we have by no means done all the museums in Stockholm, I think we can justifiably cross that one off. (Don't think too hard about the grammatical structure of our list's title...)

A Spring View

[Editorial Note: We're temporarily skipping ahead a day for now. Jennifer's writing a post for Saturday, but she has to work some tonight, so that post won't come out until tomorrow. I wrote the following on the assumption that you'd already know about yesterday, and I think I'm just going to leave it as is.]

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Though a country be sundered, hills and rivers endure;
And spring comes green again to trees and grasses
Where petals have been shed like tears
And lonely birds have sung their grief.

-Tun Fu (ca. 750)

I suppose that yesterday's sun and warmth required redress, so as not to let the meteorological scales tip too far, too soon. Or, perhaps, nature is just fickle. Whatever the reason, this morning dawned damp and grey, and conditions have steadily deteriorated ever since.

Sofia Kyrkan

After breakfast I set out on a quick walk around the neighborhood whilst Jennifer prepared to face the day. I hadn't gone two blocks before the cold drizzle started, and by the time I made it to Vita Bergen park it had settled in to stay. The park is dominated by the early 20th century Sofia Kyrkan, the surrounds of which offer, on a clear day, impressive views to the south, including probably the best place to see Globen (the "sun" of the Swedish solar system)—today it was, alas, lost in the mists. Next to the church are a bunch of wooden shacks, formerly the poorest neighborhood in al of Söder and now, still untouched by such amenities as plumbing, no doubt used as in-town stugas by some of the more well-off who don't mind hauling water from the local well and making the freezing walk to the outhouse every day.

Too many thumbs!

As I headed north past Sofia Folkskolan, the rain began to give way to snow, and by the time I had made it Ersta Sjukhuset on the northern edge of Söder it was coming down steadily (and, given that it was 2 degrees out, somewhat wetly). Södermalm is a rocky island, and the northeast portion meets the water in a series of of sheer cliffs, making it a great spot to look out over the more northerly islands of Skeppsholmen, Gamla Stan and Norrmalm. I walked along the cliffs for a bit, until I got to the disturbing statue I mentioned on Friday. As the snow seemed to be getting heavier rather than giving up, I decided that practicality was the better part of valour, and I turned south towards home.

Söder Munkens Konditori

By the time I got there, Jennifer was ready to go out, so off we went. Had to take the movies back to the cafe we rented them from, then there was the lovely bakery just next door which could hardly be skipped. Armed with a handful of bullar, we headed back across the street to Cajsa Warg, the Zingerman's of Stockholm. Oh, to live within easy walking distance of such a place. There was so much there that I have seen nowhere else in Sweden: celery salt, whole mace, winter squash, and even genuine Italian sausage! We picked up a light lunch from the deli counter, just a couple of veggie samosas, some tandoori chicken, some rolls and some feta-basil spread. Then we went back and sat in our friend's lovely kitchen, ate our lovely food, and watched the snow come down harder and harder.

It did let off for a bit after lunch, long enough for us to have one final wandering before departure. We walked through Nytorget, lined down one side with old wooden houses, and up the other with trendy eateries. There followed a quick stop in the local branch of Stockholm Stadsmission (a charity organization which runs a number of secondhand shops throughout the city); unfortunately, it was the Skånegatan branch, which really only deals in clothes and a few accessories. Then it was time to pack up and head to the train station.

So here I sit on the train back to Uppsala, hardly able to see the trees to either side through the snowfall. It was only ten minutes late into Stockholm, we've only had to stop once to wait for the tracks to get cleared, and we're just pulling out of Knivsta this very moment, so it seems possible that we'll get into Uppsala not terribly late. That would make us some of the luckier of SJs passengers this winter—right now Jennifer's reading the handy pamphlet provided by SJ, entitled "Varför går fortfarande inte tågen som de ska?" The answer? It's the worst winter in 100 years…

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Epilogue

Uppsala was a mad house upon our arrival: near whiteout conditions, 15 cm of accumulation since morning, and 22,000 drunk bandy fans struggling to flee the city immediately following the conclusion of the national Bandyfinalen (in which Hammarby, a Stockholm team, defeated the team from Bollnäs—naturally, it was played in Uppsala). It took less time to get from Södermalm to the Uppsala train station than it took to get from there to our apartment. All's well now, with some hot chocolate and leftover pastry to restore our strength and some soup for nourishment.

Stockholm is melting

We're in Stockholm this weekend, through the generosity of a friend who happens to be (a) in possession of an apartment in Södermalm, and (b) out of the country for a few days. So, for three days, we're trying out life in the big city. Now, admittedly, March in Stockholm is the off-season for a reason: caught between the rainy south and the snowy north, the weather in Stockholm is quixotic at the best of times, and after its snowiest winter in decades the thaw is proving a bit ugly. On the other hand, it's a lot easier to feel like a native when there aren't hordes of tourists on every street corner in Gamla Stan...

We came in on Thursday night, so that we could have an easy start on Friday. As predicted by the Norwegian weather bureau*, Friday dawned wet and dim--the perfect day for some museum hopping! We started by fortifying ourselves with some fresh-baked pastry from the Nytorgs Hembageriet, just around the corner (raspberry weinerbroed, aepple korg, and cardamom bear claw) and a cup of coffee, then we spent a little time formulating our plan of attack.

Our destination of choice today was the Museum of Medieval Stockholm. This is a relatively recent museum, first open some time in the mid-80s I believe, located underneath one of the bridges to Gamla Stan. It came about as a result of a planned underground parking structure for the Riksdag: the excavations turned up a 50m long section of the medieval city wall, along with a large cemetary. The garage was scrapped, and in its place an underground museum was built around the wall. We've wanted to go to this for years, but from before the time of our arrival it was closed for repairs (it turns out it's not so easy to build a musum underground on a small island, with a busy bridge overhead, and keep everything safe and dry at the same time); it only just reopened a couple of months ago.

The ruins are impressive, and are supplemented with some nice reconstructions of the sort of brick buildings that would have surrounded the wall in its time. There are plenty of scale models and videos to give one a sense of what Stockholm would have been like in the 13th century, and several more or less garish displays of life in those grim times--the reconstruction of "Gallows Hill" (pictured) would be the "more" part of that equation. The free English audio guide made up for the occassional lack of understandable explanatory text, even if Jennifer did, for some mysterious reason, choose not to proceed when prompted, "If you would like to learn more about life in a medieval hospital, press the button now." Most of the Swedes in the place opted for the guided tours, of which there were at least three while we were there.

By the time we had finished there, we were both tired and hungry (this turns out to be that rarest of Swedish museums: those with no fika!), so our next step was to wander over to Drottningatan, one of Stockholm's more notable streets. Alas, these days it is mostly notable for being full of sort of junky, touristy stores; nevertheless, it was a good spot to grab a hot dog from a street vendor and do a bit of people watching, and there is some decent architecture buried behind all the dross.

Restored by our respective Stekt Jättetjockar, we decided to wander back a bit towards Kungsträdsgården, so we headed up through Jakobsgata Arkaden. On the way, we passed St Jakobs Kyrka, a pleasantly gothic pile, where a free organ concert was about to start, so we stopped in and spent a pleasant hour resting and thawing in the company of Buxtehude and Bach.

By this time it was growing dim, and the light misting of the afternoon was turning into a cold, gentle rain, so we decided to get for home. I managed to sneak into Tourist Info just as they were turning off the lights and locking up, and came away with an inner city bus map for my troubles; I took my prize back to the bus stop where Jennifer was waiting, to find her staring at a much better one posted at the stop (not a usual thing in Stockholm; most of the bus stops provide at best vague information about destinations). Sigh. Anyway, we took a bus down the eastern edge of Gamla Stan into Södermalm, past the mad tangle of Slussen, and the disturbing statuary below the Södermalm cliffs, and wound up not two blocks from the apartment.

As it was nearly 7, I high-tailed it to the local Systembolaget to procure us some beer. With that safely deposited in our fridge, one more walk around the corner was all that was required to snag a couple of rental movies and an excellent pizza (pepperoni and leeks, and easily the best pizza either of us has had in Sweden).

* As mortifying as I'm sure this is to most Swedes, www.yr.no provides the most accurate weather forecasts for Sweden, much more reliable than Sweden's own SMHI. It also provides humorous, weather related "news" stories, about things like how to make the thaw come sooner by nailing butter to your wall.