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!)

A pleasant, lazy weekend

I am taking an online class this term about the life of Linnaeus. It occurred to me suddenly last week that I hadn't done any work yet, and it is already three weeks into the term, so I decided that this weekend would be devoted entirely to catching up with the reading, a good task for what I had thought would be a rainy, coolish couple of days.

Of the course the weather was gorgeous.

Well, no help for it, I still had to do the reading, so off I went on Saturday to the large lawn near our place, walking just a few steps further than I usually do, and found a nice nook in a rock that I had never noticed before, which looks as if it were made specifically for someone to sit and read in. I sat and read all afternoon in the sunshine, while people strolled around on the path behind me, walking their children or dogs or both, and a couple of young fellows fooled around with a soccer ball by the goals on the lawn. Someone went by on horseback once, and every now and then one of the sheep at the soldier's holt would bah-ah-ah, probably begging for sugary snacks from visitors. It was so very pleasant that I went back to do the same thing today. Happily the nook was unoccupied... again, the people strolled, the dogs barked, the horses whinnied, and I held still for long enough that a butterfly landed on my ankle and stayed for a time. What a very lovely situation, for reading about a botanist who believed that the best happiness is to be found outside:

Viewing nature gives a taste of the celestial bliss, a constant delight of the soul and the beginning of the complete revitalization that is the peak of human happiness.

An Afternoon at the Castle

With the sudden approach of Autumn, we've been left scrambling to manage a few last second acts of tourism. Things were looking grim after a tiny transportation snafu ended our planned trip to Finland ("What, exactly, do you mean by, 'The ship is out of service for September'?"), but then fortunately our friends G. and D. called last weekend to ask if we'd like to go to Drottningholm for a picnic.

Drottningholm is one of the several castles/palaces1 currently owned by the Swedish royal family, situated as the name implies on a medium-sized island 11 km west of central Stockholm. It used to be a country retreat, but its close proximity to Bromma Airport has assured the gradual encroachment of the city in modern times. Even so, the palace itself is set on the water in the midst of a substantial bit of parkland, so it's much more laid back than the Royal Palace in Stockholm itself; it was for precisely this reason that the King and Queen made Drottningholm their official residence in the early 80s, not wanting to raise their kids in the middle of one of the city's busiest neighborhoods. It's still the family's residence for most of the year (except in high tourist season, when they retreat to an island in the Baltic), although they obviously tend to stick to the private wing, so there's little chance of running into them when you visit.

Well, most days, anyway. By chance, we happened to go on a day when some of the Queen's relatives were having a christening in the palace chapel, with the family in attendance. The downside of this was that we couldn't tour the top floor, as they were using it for the reception; the upside was that, as we waited for the English language tour to start, Princess Madeleine and Prince Carl Philip walked right past us on their way to the chapel, followed a few minutes later by the King and the Crown Princess herself, Victoria2. No sign of the Queen (doubtless hanging with her visiting family members), but Victoria smiled at us and waved, so that was nice.

Anyway, the palace and the grounds were nice, if somewhat anti-climactic after all the royal-spotting that started the afternoon. Our tour guide, Lotta, impressed Jennifer by explaining that Marie Antoinette and that chap she was married to obviously deserved to have their heads cut off; the tour was interrupted as it approached the end of its allotted time when another functionary came in to tell Lotta that she would have to keep us busy for a while longer, as no one was allowed to leave the building for a while (apparently so that Madeleine and Carl Philip could stand around the back entrance holding candles for a bit). Other than that, the palace itself was home a fairly typical collection of baroque bric-a-brac.

More interesting was the theater, a restored 17th century opera house. It's a working theater, but the stage and interior have kept their original style and function, so they still use all of the original special effects machinery (they have had to update the lighting a bit, although they've done a good job replacing the candles with some impressive fakes). The seating hasn't changed, either, so it's remarkably uncomfortable; what's more, when the theater was built the seating capacity was limited by the size of the ladies' hoop skirts, which means that now it seats twice as many people as it was designed to do, with no concomitant increase in oxygen flow. A four hour opera watched from uncomfortable seats, with no temperature control and nothing to breathe? Where do I sign up?

1 The Swedish word is slott, which unfortunately covers a sort of broad range of concepts in English. The massive royal palace in Stockholm is Kungliga Slottet, but it can also mean 'castle.' It's also used to describe the manor houses which dot the southern Swedish countryside, some of which are large and impressive enough that they might merit being called a small palace in English; more often than not, they're what I would call 'big houses.'

2 Some time ago the law was changed in Sweden so that the royal couple's oldest child became the heir to the throne, irrespective of sex. So despite having a younger brother, Victoria is set to become Sweden's first reigning Queen since Ulrika Eleonora abdicated in 1720. Leaving Carl Philip free to spend his time driving race cars and taking pictures of flowers.

Time of the season

What with our short vacation in early August, and the visit from Joe's parents, and the hustle and bustle to start the school year this week, our posts have been a little sparse of late. Meanwhile, summer is over and autumn is here.

Last year, this change happened quite abruptly. On the last day of the break, 29 augusti, my department had fika outside and the weather was quite fine for post-doc G.'s wedding the next day. Then, on the first day of school, 2 september, the temperature dropped, the wind picked up, and no one would even consider going out for fika. That's not quite true—I did go out once that first week, and was joined by a fellow foreign post-doc, but we were alone and did not repeat the experiment.

This year, exactly the same thing happened. Last day of vacation, 28 aug, nice and warm. First day of school, 31 aug, 12C, and windy: Joe, who is now back to riding his bike to school every day, notes that last part especially. It happened as if a switch had been turned. But last year, autumn was nice and sunny, if not exactly warm, so I and everyone else at work is hoping for a good season. Happy Fall, everyone.