Aussois: Day 2

We're on our morning coffee break now, and I've had two espressos, so I'm feeling like doing a bit of speed blogging before the next lecture. Woke up at 7 this morning to only light rain, so I decided to get in a little walk through town before breakfast. Not too busy a place at 7 on a Tuesday morning in early May, but cute. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Did find the fromagerie, and it's open on Thursday and Friday afternoon, so I'll have to try to stop by on my way out of town. Also about half a dozen creperies, but I don't know how likely I am to hit any of them this week.

No time (or bandwidth!) to link the pictures individually, so you'll have to follow the gallery link. Sorry!

Aussois: Day 1

So I'm in Aussois in the French Alps for a week, attending a class on constraint programming. It's being held at a sort of resorty place, which is run by something called the Comité d'Action et d'Entraide Sociales (the Action Comittee of Social Caring?) with vague official overtones. It's an odd sort of place, kind of a cross between a resort and the Bio Station at Pellston. It's hard to argue with the location though—and if it ever stops raining, I'll be sure to take advantage of that fact.

In the meanwhile, I'm lamenting the fact that I didn't bring any cash with me, as several things I would consider essential services appear to be not only not free, but also cash only. I'm not talking about restrooms, mind you, but honestly: you can't put in a free pool table for the academics? Sigh. At least there's internet… most of the time.

I've never been to France before, and while I knew this wouldn't exactly be a week on a traditional farm in Provence, I was hoping for some decent eats. So you can imagine my disappointment when today's lunch was simply the leftovers from last night's cold dinner, which wasn't that impressive the first time around. Knowing I needed something to tide me over until dinner, I filled up on cheese and bread, only to be asked 45 minutes later if I was ready now for the beef plate! Just finished dinner a while ago, and I'm now feeling much more confident as to the week's culinary prospects.

That's all for now. I'll be sure to update if I manage to get outside ever.

Two rainy hours in Turin

I'm in France for the week, attending a constraint programming summer school. I'll send more details later—I've been traveling since before 7 this morning, and I'm beat, and there's no internet in the room (insert indignation here), all of which means I'm about to prioritize getting a shower over writing an in-depth blog post.

The map marker is from Turin, Italy, where I spent a few hours waiting for a train in the pouring rain. Fortunately it let up in time for me to discover this wonderful gelateria just across the street from the station (on the back side, so that I nearly missed it completely). Two scoops of mascarpone gelato with coffee beans and I was not just fika'd, but feeling much more positive about Turin. If they'd only had lockers at the train station, I could have wandered and taken some pictures. Instead it will have to wait until the weekend—I'll be back there on Friday night, sleeping over until my flight on Saturday afternoon.

Tomorrow: pictures of the Alps in the fog!

Springtime?

I think it would be fair to describe me as a person who is, on the whole, rather fond of winter. I like wearing wool sweaters. I like cold, snowy days. I like being warm and cozy inside on dark, stormy evenings. I even like watching curling matches on the tellie.

But it's April now, and I WANT THE SUN TO COME BACK!

The optimist in me supposes its possible that my backyard isn't covered in snow at all, but rather in freshly fallen volcanic ash. But in my heart, I know it isn't so.

On a more positive note, here's some very Swedish nutritional advice posted outside our neighborhood grocery store today:

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.