Forsränningen 2008

The weather for sista april this year was nearly ideal; warm, but not so sunny as to make it too hot. We got downtown at about 09.00, in plenty of time for the 10.00 start of Forsränningen. Plenty of time before the start, yes, but there really wasn't much time to spare. The banks of the river were already covered solidly with people, but we still managed to get a spot with a great view, in the middle of the St. Olofsgatan bridge. Around 10.00 a large rubber raft came down the river, hovered in the middle of the Fyrisån for a few minutes, then set off a large firework, and the race was on!



Well, calling this a "race" is perhaps not quite accurate. "More like a competitive parade," said Joe, and the point of it was not so much to get to the finish line in the best time, but to get to the finish line in one piece. Rafters were allowed to attack each other (and each other's rafts) with soft projectiles (water balloons and bits of baguettes were the most popular ordinance). Every raft had a theme, so they were rather more like literal floats, and several entrants had little skits prepared that they performed as they bobbed along. Furthermore, begging for food and beverages from the crowd was common, and onlookers tossed them strawberries and sandwiches and cans of beer. So progress down the river was, shall we say, somewhat leisurely. Our vantage point was only a couple hundred meters from the start line, so most rafts were still in decent shape when they got to us, although we did see a couple of them disintegrate, or flip and fling their riders into the water, which was rapidly becoming polluted with champagne corks, exploded water balloons, pieces of bread, and pieces of foam from the rafts (you can see all the stuff in the water in the photo above).

Should any particular raft survive the upstream encounters with other rafts, it then had to navigate a short falls a little further downstream (and there was yet another further on). Failure seemed to be more common than success, which kept the rescue swimmers busy with pulling people aside and out of the main current. Helmets of some kind (bike helmets and bandy helmets were common) and floatation vests were mandatory equipment, so I don't think anyone was really in much danger, but it is probably a good idea to have the rescuers on hand, especially since the mental facilities of the some rafters might have been slightly impaired.

The drinking had started well before the race, at least among the onlookers. For the most part, this just meant that people were perhaps louder in their cheering than they might otherwise have been. The only bit of "bad behavior" that either of us witnessed that morning was that one girl was spotted in the custody of the police, wobbling around as they tried to stuff her into a waiting car that then whisked her away.

Drinking alcohol was a major part of the day (heck, it was a major part of the morning!), but this part of the day was by no means dominated by young adults. Really, the whole thing was more than a little reminiscent of the Blossom Parade, with the very young and somewhat elderly all present to see the fun. And what parade is complete without vendors selling German almonds and coffee and hot dogs and mylar balloons? We had those too. Balloons were very popular—pink unicorns were popular with young and old, and even the Goth kids by the river were flying an Eeyore balloon as they drank their champagne and ate strawberries.

We took a a fair number of pictures, so if you want to see more, click on the gallery link by the title (mousing over the thumbnails gives a caption for many). Highlights include an igloo and polar bear threatened by Big Oil (seen at left), a carrot serving drinks and dinner to two asparagus stalks, Heroes attacking a hot dog, and a meat-eating cow. Oh, and we even got a picture of the drunk girl getting nobbled by the police.

Next on the day's hectic schedule—Champagnegallopp! Or, to give its more informal name, Bubbelgalopp...

Bubbelgalopp 2008

The second of the University's major public events of the day was the Bubbelgalopp. At 3 PM, all the students gather around the front entrance of the Carolina Rediviva. Then the University Rektor comes out and waves his hat at them, and they all go running down Drottninggatan waving their student caps in the air, racing back to their Nations1. All of this is witnessed by the gathered crowd of tens of thousands of people packed all around the hill leading down past the castle and into town.

This event wasn't really our highest priority for the day, but still we figured we should go and take a look, so having rested up from our morning at the raft race we hopped another bus downtown and headed towards Slottsbacken. We didn't really feel like fighting through the crowd, so we made a bee-line for the place where Drottninggatan crosses the river, figuring we'd get a view of several students hustling back to the several Nations which could be seen from there. We had a good view of the crowd stretching all the way up the hill, and at three the swing band sitting in front of Norrlands Nation suddenly struck up a tune, which seemed to bode well. Then nothing happened for about ten minutes, after which the students in their little white student caps came sort of casually strolling down the hill, along with all the people who had been watching, and everyone sort of milled about while the students headed back to their Nations to dress up for the evening's round of private parties. Anti-climax, much?

So we hoisted a toast from the flask of whisky we'd brought along, and middle-aged Swedish man in a suit good-naturedly chuckled at Jennifer as she spluttered after taking a swig (the last drops of cask strength Laphroig that we brought from the states). Then we watched the crowd for a bit before catching a bus back to Flogsta to rest up for the evening.

1The Nations, in case we haven't explained before, are these sort of mandatory student social clubs at Uppsala University. They're named after regions in Sweden, and traditionally students belonged to the nation named after their homeland (like Norrland or Uppland).

Can't Get Enough Of Your Fika

As Joe mentions, Valentine's Day isn't pushed here as much as it is in the States, but nevertheless, it provided an excuse for another excessive fika, which was held in the Floor 1/2 break room, and spilled out into the hallway, where extra tables were set up with plates of yummy custard-filled tarts and gummy raspberry-flavored candy hearts. Even better, the social committee (the good souls in charge of this sort of thing) had put out vacuum pump carafes of good coffee (that is, brewed coffee, not the stuff from the big black machine). Red paper tablecloths covered the tables, each of which had three or four tealights burning in the ubiquitous glass holders. The lights were turned down low, and a boom box in the hallway blared Barry White and Frank Sinatra love tunes. Posters in the hallway encouraged us to "Take the opportunity to talk to someone new!" (Which I did.) Oo la la!

Really? All this, at 9:30am? Maybe it's just me, but I'm not at my most romantic at 9:30am. It was fun, if a little surreal. Especially when the talk turned to crayfish, and the horrible things that can happen to you if they are not properly purged before you eat them.

Working Conditions Part I

In some ways, the working conditions here are a little different than I'm used to. In Part I of this discussion, I'll cover Creature Comforts.

First, the the coffee break, or fika. Every day, at roughly 10am and roughly 3pm, is fika. Fika may or may not involve snacks. The time of starting and ending is not exact; by some mysterious process, people suddenly emerge from their offices all at once and converge on a common room. This is a time for socializing, and although I have overheard some work-related topics discussed, most talk (at least in my presence) has so far involved odd Swedish customs and foods, the execrable accent of Danes, and the curiosities and absurdities of the US primary elections. By a process probably analogous to the start of fika, there comes a moment roughly half an hour later when everyone suddenly stands up and goes back to work. 

There are of course exceptions. Two weeks ago, when F. defended his thesis, he started at 10am (so no morning fika), and there was not so much an afternoon fika as a small post-defense party with champagne and chips. The Monday after that, a student celebrated the end of his master's degree by providing for a lavish fika for our sub-department with several cakes and sweet yeast breads. The day after that was Fat Tuesday, so we had a rather formal afternoon fika involving the whole department and semla. On such occasions, fikorna (I think that's the proper definite plural) tend to last more like an hour. Occasionally there will be a seminar or discussion group meeting at 3pm, in which case people bring their afternoon refreshments with them to the seminar room. 

Where do these fika take place? In my building are two common rooms, so let's tackle the large room on floor 1/2 used by the whole department first (yes, floor 1/2—more on floor numbering and department and sub-department structure later, it's a whole thing). Morning fika tends to be in the 1/2 floor room, which has a large coffee machine, a couple of smaller, drip coffee machines, a electric kettle, an assortment of teas, the condiments you would expect, two refrigerators, two microwaves, two electric burners, two sinks, and a dishwasher, all provided for the use and comfort of students and employees, and all free of charge. There are candles on the tables, which are usually lit for morning fika, and orchids on the window sills. Everyone complains about the quality of the coffee, and yet, oddly, the coffee machine is rarely left alone for long. Floor 1/2 was the site of the department-wide Fat Tuesday celebration.

The other common area is on floor 1, where my sub-department is headquartered. People in my sub-department tend to eat lunch there, and it is also used for sub-department "official" occasions (such as F. and the master's students' afternoon parties). Here we manage to get by with merely a single refrigerator/freezer, a coffee maker, a microwave (made by Whirlpool!*), an electric water heater, and a sink for doing dishes. Candles are present but rarely lit in the afternoon. Being on floor 1 (that's the second floor to Americans), this room affords a great view of the fancy nearby houses, and lovely and soothing natural light, quite welcome after hours of staring at a computer screen. 

Rumor has it that there are recreation facilities in the basement, like a ping-pong table and a sauna ("But only the systematic botanists ever use the sauna," I was told). I have yet to see these things, but when I do, you'll hear about it. 

*An additional note for southwest Michigan denizens: Besides the Whirlpool microwaves, I have also run into some pressure gauges, the faces of which read "Gast: Benton Harbor, Mich." Small world!

I survive a Disputationsfest

The older universities in Sweden have some interesting centuries-old customs; one of them peculiar to Uppsala, the firing of the cannons at commencement, I have already covered. Another is that the defense of a doctoral dissertation (or disputation), if it is successful, is celebrated with a Disputationsfest.

Yesterday, one of the students (let's call him F.) in my department successfully defended his dissertation. The defense itself lasted from 10am to about 1:30pm. Immediately after F.'s success was announced, everyone in the department dived into the sweet champagne and bowls of cheezy-poofs that had been set out in the common area earlier. This was not the Disputationsfest itself, of course; that was later in the evening. I had not been formally invited to the Disputationsfest, because RSVPs were required before I even got here, but everyone said I should come anyway, and not to worry, because F. was a generally informal guy, so surely his party would be informal too. I did some work in the afternoon, but everyone except another postdoc (E.) left early to go home and change clothes. I had come to work looking decent from the waist up, and was assured by E. that jeans would be okay (he was wearing them too) as, again, F. was an informal guy. "I brought a coat, but probably won't put it on," he assured me.

Sometime later, E. and I headed to the hall reserved for the party (accidently about a half-hour early, as it turned out, and him in his coat after all, the fink). As people started drifting in, it became apparent that this was in fact a very formal event. Men in suits (some three piece), women in fancy dresses. F. was very popular and had many friends and family attending, and out came the assigned seating chart. Fortunately there had been some last-minute cancellations, and my name had been pencilled in over someone else's. 

At each place was a bottled beer and beer-glass, a wineglass, a small shot glass for aquavit, and a double-sided page of text. The napkins were cloth, and there were tea-lights on the table at every other place or so. The beer was apparently there to hold us over until the wine could be passed around, and then gentlemen bearing aquavit came by to fill the shot glasses. Dinner turned out to be buffet-style—T., the very nice airline pilot I was seated next to (whose girlfriend's place I was sitting in) offered to carry for me, which was appreciated. Not too unusual buffet fare—ham slices, beef slices, salmon, rolls, cheese and fruit skewers, puff pastries, potatoes au gratin, all of high quality and quite delicious. 

We were given about 15 minutes to eat, and then the party started.

About every ten minutes thereafter, someone stood up to say something in praise of or tease about F., some in English, most in Swedish. At other random times, a guy stood up and held up the paper, which turned out to be song lyrics, and we all sang one of the dozen or so traditional Swedish drinking songs whose lyrics were on the paper. Twice, two small groups stood up to sing a song directly to F.; a video had been produced by the department artist featuring interviews with other students, lightly roasting F.; at one point, two other students made F. attempt to explain some aspect of his dissertation in charades; F. was presented gifts of varying usefulness or silliness. I lost track of the interruptions after about the first eight or so; I think there were at least twenty before I left. 

Each interruption, be it speech, song, or story, was followed with either a toast with wine or a skål with aquavit, mostly the latter. Aquavit glasses, once emptied, were immediately refilled.

Long story short, a Disputationsfest is lots of fun but can be a one-way ticket to extreme drunkenness if one is not wary. 

I was as wary as I could be while still being polite, as it had been a long day and I had to catch a bus home. Since I had been assured that F.'s Disputationsfest would be "informal," I had emailed Joe that I would probably be back to the hotel around 7pm. I actually got home slightly after midnight. When I left, the party was still going full swing, if not actually ramping up.

The only negative thing I can say about a Disputationsfest is hardly a complaint, but just an observation that all the interruptions make it difficult to keep up a sustained conversation with one's neighbors. I never did get to hear the end of T.'s story of landing at a small airport up north earlier in the day, made in a blizzard with severe crosswinds, nor did I get to hear as much as I would have liked of K.'s (the graduate student seated opposite me) stories about the tribulations of gathering flatworms in Russia.

(An aside—the good news is that taking a bus downtown and walking through the streets of Uppsala at midnight on a Friday feels perfectly safe.)

Yes, cannons!

The morning firing of the cannons turned out to be small potatoes compared to the afternoon firing of the cannons (two Krupp models 90 03/33, to be precise, wielded by a volunteer regiment representing the Östersund 9th). This tradition has been carried out for the last 408 years. 87 shots were fired in total, one shot for each graduate, and for those returning to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their doctoral degree, a double-shot. Each celebrant was then entitled to keep the brass shell fired in their honor. 

For my doctorate, I was handed a blank piece of paper in a cardboard tube. 

I am jealous.

Cannons?!

They take commencement seriously here. And yes, there was indeed cannon fire at 7am. I lost count of how many shots, but more than a dozen. The cannon (a Howitzer-looking thing on an older carriage) was driven right past the hotel while we were eating breakfast.