Will it always be like this?

Today was my first exam for the period, and while in many ways it was very different from my exam last period—I've been meaning to write a post about how different this half of the semester has been from the first half, but there simply hasn't been a spare moment; I'm hopeful for next week—in one critical way it was exactly the same: the morning of the exam was the morning when my bike broke down.

Fortunately this time I didn't discover it on my way to the exam itself. Instead, I was trying to go to the store to get exam snacks when quite abruptly my chain started jumping off the rear sprocket every 20 feet. I guess when I changed out my rear tire I didn't snug that little fella up tight enough, because with a little time the whole thing had crept forward just enough that the chain could just slip right off. No big deal, but with the mud and the standing water and the snow falling and the cold and my crappy little adjustable wrench… well, anyway, it's fixed now.

As for the exam, here's my fresh observation: the best thing about a five hour exam is that it's so much time that your jeans, which got completely soaked on the bike ride in* have time to completely dry—and then it's time to ride home. Hmm, maybe that wasn't such a great thing. The exam itself wasn't as bad as I thought at the time, as a quick perusal of my notes shows that the stuff I totally made up was pretty close to the way he did it in class, so I think it went OK.

Gotta go now: my martini won't stay cold forever. 

*Longer because I had to go downtown to buy a calculator—you know, I had my calculator-that's-smarter-than-I-am in my hand the last time we were stateside, but I figured, "Nah, I just won't need it…"

Temptation's Advent

You all may laugh at fika, and scoff at me when I say that it's difficult to have to go to a coffee break twice a day. But the social pressure to go really is rather intense: I thought I'd skip it last Monday, but V. and E. ambled by my door and asked if I was coming for coffee. I said "Sure, in just a minute," by which I meant "No." But they took it at face value, and when it became clear that they were not going to leave until I did, I gave up and headed downstairs.

Good thing I did. There was a single candle burning in a tray holding a total of four candles. I asked why only one candle was lit. The Swedes pounced on this. "It's Advent!" they cried. N. explained. "It's first Advent, the first week of the four weeks before Christmas, so of course only one candle is lit. You are supposed to light only one candle per week until the Jul, and then that week all four will be lit." I thought about this for a second, and decided to go the dumb foreigner route, because sometimes it's fun to play into expectations. "But I want to light them all now," I said. They laughed. "Typical American!" said N. "You are supposed to wait. One of the Chinese students tried to light the rest of them, but we stopped him just in time."

At fika the next day, I told the room that I thought this exercise in self-control was a fine tradition, and I would try to do it at home. "But can I just have only one candle out at first?" I asked, baiting my audience. "No, no," said N., as sternly as his cheerful nature allows. "That would be cheating. You must have all the candles out, but you can not light the second candle until the Sunday of Second Advent." (G. observed that this would be especially hard for me, given my special relationship with fire.)

At Friday morning fika, I came into the break room... to find that two candles were lit! I gasped and pointed. "Aha! What's going on here?" I cried. "What happened to delaying pleasure and all that?"

"Oh, well, you see, it's the Friday before Second Advent."

"What!!"

My outrage amused them greatly. The group agreed, after some discussion, that the unwritten rules of Advent candles at fika amounted to this: you can light the next Advent candle on the Friday before the next Advent Sunday at your first fika. You cannot, however light the next Advent candle if you work at night, and your first fika on Friday is actually your second fika of your work day. So the ambulance drivers who work from 8pm Thursday to 4am Friday can not light the candles at their second fika at 1am on Friday, but the drivers who come in at 1am to replace them, can light the candles.

It was suggested that the EU could write an 8-page document specifying how and when Advent candles can be lit; the conversation turned to how socially-enforced pressures are much harder the break than written rules. We tried to push the social situation to an extreme. "What if the King came to the fika of some small-town newspaper, and wanted to light the Second Advent candle before it was time?" "They would probably let him do it, but there would be complete and total outrage." said P. "Yes, they would frown," said S.

N., who you may remember had been the most outspoken defender of the purity of the Advent candles, had not been present for any of this conversation, but he now wandered in to fill up his coffee mug. Good, an ally, I thought. I waved at him triumphantly. "Look, look, they've lit the second Advent candle before the Second Advent Sunday! What do you have to say to that?" He peered at the candles.

"Oh, that's okay," he said calmly. "It's the first fika on the Friday before Second Advent."

Thanksgiving Hamkey

We had planned to have our Thanksgiving dinner sometime last weekend, but what with all the excitement of the julmarknad on Saturday, and then the trip to Gävle Sunday, we just didn't have time. So we planned to have Thanksgiving on Monday. Joe had made mashed potatoes, baked root vegetables, green bean casserole, and the turkey leg that he mentioned before. I tried to make gravy from the few pan drippings, but it was bitter and didn't work at all, which we both blamed on the fact that the veggies also dripped on the pan.

So Joe carves up the kalkonklubba and we set to. "Wow," I said a bite or two in, "This turkey is pretty good. Tastes like ham." A few moments go by. "It really tastes exactly like ham." Joe has a bite. "Yeah, it really does." A few more seconds pass. "It cuts like ham, too." A few more beats go by. "This is ham." I said. "It can't be!" said Joe defensively. "What sick jävla made turkey out of a ham?"

The packaging clearly identifies the product as kalkon, which means "turkey" på svenska. There are pictures of turkeys on the wrapping. Read more about the product itself, basturökt klubba; note that the first ingredient is kalkon. Ingelsta Kalkon AB, the company that makes the product, advertises themselves as turkey specialists. See the turkey on their logo?

Looks like ham. Tastes like ham. Feels like ham. And yet... it's turkey.

Sensory experience tells me it's ham. Authoritarian evidence tells me it's turkey. Or maybe Swedes have discovered the sorcerer's stone of the deli business: when you put a turkey in a sauna, it turns into a pig. WWLD?

Jag är en bock. Brinn mig.

Sunday was Forsta Advent, which apparently is a big holiday in Sweden, not that anyone told us that in advance. I suppose lacking Thanksgiving as an indicator that the Christmas season has begun, they are forced to rely upon the ecclesiastical calendar. In any case, we already had plans for the day: we caught a ride up to Gävle to witness the Invigning of this year's Julbock.

For those not in the know, in December 1966 someone built a big straw goat in downtown Gävle. At the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, it burst into flames. Thus was born Gästrikeland's most beloved Yule time tradition. Over the years the goats have gotten larger (topping out at just under 15 m high, before settling to a happy size of about 12 m, and 3 tons of straw), and just over 50% of the goats have burned down. For the past two years the goat has been successfully fireproofed, but the chemical caused the goat to turn a dull brown. This year the fireproofing has been discontinued, so that the goat can once again stand proud and yellow (and, no doubt, so that the goat will burn once more and get Gävle back in the news). What's more, the straw was specially donated by Gävle's local whiskey distillery, Mackmyra, so I suppose it must be extra flammable.

Not wanting to risk missing the goat, we wanted to see it on its official birthday. We got to Gävle around 3:30, amidst the steady drizzle and falling temperatures, and managed to find parking and follow the streaming crowds to the goat just in time for the opening ceremony to begin. The goat was already lit up, of course, but there was some talking, and then some music, and then some more talking, after which everyone clapped. There was quite a large crowd gathered for the whole thing. Once the talking was done, there was a very nice fireworks show in the park right across the street from the goat—I haven't been that close underneath fireworks since the Guy Fawkes Day I spent in Glasgow (with the possible exception of that one year at Baroda where we wound up parked in the front and the wind shifted…). Yeah, the Goat Council is really going all out to avoid Goat combustion.

Here's us on the webcam a few minutes after the crowd dispersed (we're the group of four front and center (from the left, Joe, G. D., and J!)):

And here's Jennifer contemplating getting deported:

There were fireworks, the goat survived, and none of us got arrested. I call that a successful trip to Gävle.

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.