Where do I begin?

Did I say we were spending two nights at the hostel? I'm not sure that Jennifer has quite done the place justice. Allow me to attach the directions to our room which I sent Jennifer via the e-mails:

OK, so by "a little obscure" they apparently mean "completely invisible from the road." Here's rough directions:
1. Pick up the #8 somewhere before Vaksalatorget (The last stop it shares with the #7 is Stadshuset).
2. Take that to the Kvarntorget stop.
3. Look around you. You should see a little shopping area with a blue kitchen appliances store called "Elon" or "Bo Wahlgrens" (or possibly both). Head towards that. You may also notice the oliv-o-mart flags waving in the breeze, but they are a little further than you need to go.
4. The building behind the kitchen mart has a pizza place, a hot dog stand, a massage parlour... in short, all the ear marks of civilization. At the far end of the front side is the hostel.
5. At 7 they lock the front door. You can let yourself in by typing "7613" into the keypad.
6. Go up the stairs.
7. There should now be two doors along the left hand wall. Take the 2nd, which is labeled "Hotel Rooms 200–214" or somesuch.
8. You will now feel like you have intruded on a construction zone. This is good, as it means you're probably in the right place. 9. We are (of course) the last room along this wall (#214).
10. If you haven't run into me by now, I must be in the room, so knock. I can't possibly be more than two feet away from the door.
Oh! I forgot to tell you, our personal numbers showed up in the mail as I was suiting up to leave Akademihotellet. I don't know quite what this means for our plans, but I guarantee you we will not want to spend two weeks in the hostel.
Joe

Having now spent the night in the hostel, I will add a few observations. The wing we stayed in appeared to actually be the "budget hotel," which was significantly more expensive than the hostel; however, by paying an extra 100 SEK/night we got our own WC and shower, and we brought sleeping bags (avoiding the charge for linens) so we got essentially a hotel room with no sheets for 600 SEK (now that's a bargain). Oh, the actual hotel rooms also had a luggage rack in their "closet," a space which in our room was just an empty bit of floor. On their website they note that they are a "green" hotel, which here means "miserly"—the shower only stayed on for 90 seconds, the bathroom light turned itself on and off automatically, and you had to use your room key to turn on the electricity to the room (so that you couldn't leave anything running when you left). This last turned out to be lucky, because when I said the bathroom light turned itself on and off, you shouldn't get the impression that it did so when you entered or exited the bathroom. No, it just randomly turned itself on and off, incessantly, until we pulled the key out of the light switch and cut the power.
This should have made the room pitch black, lacking as it did all external windows. It did have a large window looking out onto the lobby, which was indeed airport-esque, and seeing as we were on the second floor our window was right under the klieg lamps which shone brightly all through the night ("green hotel," my lilly-white caboose).
Oh, and the construction crew showed up at 8 a.m., to start loudly removing the plexiglass panes which lined the edge of the mezzanine we were on.
So, the question I am left with is, how much are they going to charge people to stay in the hotel once they've finished building it? If it's more than we paid, then I don't see what the "budget" part is, because it would basically cost as much as a real hotel, one with furniture and working TVs and telephones and crazy stuff like that. On the other hand, if it's not more then we paid, then why didn't we get a discount for staying in a hotel that wasn't built yet?
You may notice I am referring to the hostel in the past tense. I assume it is still there; we, fortunately, are not. There, I mean. We have moved to the Hotel Uppsala, where we will be staying for the next couple of nights before moving on to an extended stay apartment run by the same company (we had no idea this even existed, so kudos to Jennifer's department for finding it for us).
Oh, and we got our Personal Numbers. But that's another story, for another night.

Burgers and beer

Tonight we spent our designated burger money (Thanks Mom and Da!) on burgers and a beer at the restaurant attached to the youth hostel we are spending the night at. It was actually very good-- I think it was made with kebab meat-- including pickle slices, sort of tomato-y things, and fries complete with a sprinkling of seasoned salt. It was nice to eat out for a change, and after everything that happened today (too tired to write it all now, details to follow, don't worry, happy ending), a very welcome and satisfying meal.

The hostel is... well... what can you say? Small. Weird. Still under construction, judging by the smears of grout on the bathroom floor and the exposed electrical wiring here and there (see the photos of the bizarre, empty, airport-reminiscent "lobby" that they are very proud of). Cheap, though, and quite clean. And far far away from anywhere we've stayed yet. Tomorrow we move again, to a hotel more in the downtown area.

Snowy Morning

Well, today we have to change hotels, so of course it's snowing again. It's been in the forties and drizzling off and on ever since the blizzard we had for our arrival, but naturally today it would snow. Moving out of our current hotel has taken all morning, and isn't quite finished yet. We actually started last night, grabbing some spare luggage and taking the bus over to Jennifer's office, where we'll stash it for the next few days. This morning I took a couple more pieces over, which actually made for a relatively pleasant walk (it wasn't the heaviest of our luggage) though the sloppy snow. Jennifer caught up later after trying to deal with checking out from the hotel (a complicated story which appears to be largely resolved now, but the details of which I am, alas, not privy to). Anyway, I'm back there now after marching all over downtown, having a brief sit down before gathering the rest of the luggage and making my way to our new digs.
Incidentally, the plan is to stay at the hostel for 2 nights, and then we have a tiny apartment reserved for the month of February. It won't be much, but it has a kitchenette, so we can go back to cooking a little, which will be good.

We've arrived!

Well, we made it. Our flight turned out to be only mildly annoying (who would be insane enough to take a trans-Atlantic flight with four children under 10?), and we landed in Sweden at 7:14 CET, about 10 minutes ahead of schedule. Unfortunately we couldn't get to our gate because of the snow! Eventually they got us a couple of buses and a staircase, and we deplaned onto the tarmac in the middle of a small blizzard. This would have gone pretty smoothly if the driver of the second bus had not decided that he had to force as many people as he could onto the first bus by keeping his doors firmly shut not only in our faces, but also in the (somewhat desperate by now, I like to think) faces of the aforementioned family of many small children.

Everything else went smoothly, though. We made it through passport control, got all our luggage(!), and by 9:30 we were on a train to Uppsala, barreling through the Swedish countryside as the snow relented and the sun came out. By 10 we were at the train station, and it had turned into a bright, clear day. It took a lot of running back and forth to deal with our somewhat unruly mound of luggage, but we managed to hail a cab and get ourselves to the Akademihotellet by 10:30.
Of course, check in is supposed to be at 1, so our room wasn't ready, but after seeing the mountain of luggage (Did I mention the luggage already? I think it might become a bit of a recurring theme over the next couple of weeks...) they quickly arranged a room, and let us hang out in the rec room in the basement until it was ready. I was just trying to figure out whether the easiest way to make use of the sauna shower next door was to go find a towel somewhere or just dry off with paper towels, when the lady from the front desk came down to tell us our room was ready in record time.

The room is every bit as adorable as you would expect of a Scandinavian hotel, compact without being crowded. The wainscoting makes it feel traditional, and the natural wood and brushed steel fixtures bring it up to date. The hotel itself is remarkably well located, just a block from the University Library, and an easy walk to the Cathedral in one direction and Jennifer's new lab in the other (well, a little less easy a walk, that last one, but not too bad). Jennifer's still fighting off her cold, so she went straight to bed, while I took advantage of the shower to rejoin the ranks of humanity, and then nipped out for a walk and some groceries. 100 SEK got us lunch, and probably tonight's dinner, if the little blue box I purchased is actually instant chicken soup mix as I suspect it to be, and I can find the camping pan we packed somewhere. 

So, now it's 3 PM, and the light is beginning to fade a bit. Still, it's a lot more sunlight than we feared, so I think it will be just fine (I'm sure that will come back to haunt me by the middle of next winter). Obviously the wireless internet works, so we should be in touch for the next few days at least. Tomorrow we'll have to contact the local authorities and become registered aliens, and Jennifer will meet with her new boss. OK, I'm going to go and try not to fall asleep now.