Facial, football, and foo-foo drinks

What do you do when you're stranded in a strange land, feeling a little blue about your immigration status and job prospects, and about to fyllar 40 år? I decided that I really wanted to do something new for this year, something different, something that I would remember always and associate with this particular birthday for all time. I bet you can guess what I decided to do... that's right, I decided to... to... do something girly.

Fortunately S., my football pal who loaned us her apartment in the spring, is also bit more of a girly-girl than I am, and knows plenty about this sort of stuff. No sooner had I suggested that we do something like this together than she had booked us an afternoon at a beauty school. The day before, I went and got a hair cut (at long last!), and then Tuesday June 2, I was off to the Big City.

The schedule: first, the facial. It took an hour and half—who knew someone could fuss with a face for so long? Pictures were (probably) not allowed of the spa area itself, but here's the end result. It was quite fun, although as it turns out I do not much fancy having my eyebrows plucked. Ouch! Second on the agenda, a nearby establishment for some liquid refreshment and a chat about the facial. For this purpose we went to Centralbadet, with its art nouveau architecture and oasis-like inner courtyard and beer garden, with the sunlight filtering through the fully-leafed trees, and lilacs bushes in full bloom. Feeling a need for some more substantial fare, we then headed toward an Irish pub that makes a darn fine basket of french fries, which we had with vinegar and salt. We then caught the underground train to take us to the soccer game, which feature the team I'm supporting this year against the team that S. supports. My team won, although I missed The Goal (a mighty nice one too, I was told later).

After the game, back to the subway and into town, and to Gondolen, a posh bar with a fabulous view of the city (webcams), to cap off the evening with a girly drink. The rhubarb is in season just now, and so we each had a rabarbersvaj, a pink and somewhat sweet and foamy confection of rhubarb, sugar, ice cream perhaps? and maybe a spot of vodka or something like that (though I swear I could not taste it at all). The evening wore on, which means that it was somewhat dim outside when we left at 1am. We took the bus, and had a bit of a welcome walk, back to her apartment, encountering various other night owls also coming out of bars late on a Tuesday. (All quite friendly, I might add: even the drunks here are generally polite.)

A super-fun day, all-in-all, despite the eyebrow plucking (did I mention that it hurts?), and I felt that my birthday had been properly celebrated. Thanks, S.! (but wait, there is more birthday celebration to come... stay tuned for the next post, which I hope to write up sometime before I turn 41...)

Linnaeus weekend, 23 maj

When last I left you, it was Saturday, 22 May: sunny (all the Swedes got sunburnt), warm (more like 25C than 20C), meadows full of wildflowers, fruit trees in full blossom... it seemed as if summer was finally in Sweden to stay. The next day, Linné's birthday, was quite a different affair...

The plan for the day was to take a hike along Herbatio Danesis, one of the trails through meadows and along a small river that mirrors one of Linné's famous teaching-excursion trails (another one, Herbatio Gottsundensis, is a forested walk that runs just past our apartment). The walk was 5km, however, so I opted to meet the group at their destination, which was Linné's other house in another suburb called Sävja. This house is preserved, but the grounds are not, at least not to the extent that Linné's Hammarby is preserved. The Sävja Linné campus has been turned instead into a combination horse riding school and art colony. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

The day was noticeably less sunny than the previous day, but it was not until I had been up for while that I noticed how much colder it was (12C). Also, there was a little bit of a drizzle—not too bad, but not great either. Well, this is Sweden after all, and there's no way that they would cancel a walk because of a little cold and rain (not that they would be happy about it, mind you...). I packed up my things and headed out to the bus stop, not putting on my raincoat because it wasn't raining at the moment... and that's when the big thunderclap came, and the heavens opened up. I got completely soaked, just getting to the bus.

The lightning had apparently taken out some electricity south of town, because some traffic lights were out, so it took a while to get down to Sävja. When we got there (classmate Stina had also skipped the walk, and joined me on the bus about halfway), we wandered around a bit in the courtyard, wondering what had happened to our comrades. Eventually our teacher John must have heard us talking, because he came out into the now-gentle rain. "We are here," he said, looking a little grumpy and pointing into the main house. It turned out they had not stopped for lunch, so they were tired, wet, cold, and hungry. But we had our little tour, and heard the story about Linné's dog Pompe for the fourth time in two days, but did also get to see a Fritillaria meleagris (the famous kungsängslilja, a species originally planted by Linné in the botanical garden in town but spread to the meadows in the south), and some nice pressed specimens.

We had a spot of luck, though—that afternoon, a couple of troubadours were going to be there singing songs from Bellman, the famous Swedish song writer, a rough contemporary of Linné. I have heard of him of course but never heard his music performed live, so I was quite eager for the tour to end to get to the music. The wet Swedes, still a little grumpy perhaps, said it was too hot inside the cafe. I went in anyway, and it was really nice. The music is quite fun—besides "real" music, he wrote what might be called popular tunes, some comical, and I partially understood one to be about some students from Stockholm and their adventures at the University of Uppsala. Many of these tunes are still well known, and so there were quite a few of sing-along moments. (The proprietor of the cafe was so moved that he treated the musicians to a beer on the house.) It didn't take long for the rest of the class to come in, and I think they enjoyed it too despite themselves. The rain poured down, the wind lashed branches across the windows, while inside we had candlelight and music and hot coffee... not perhaps what you want from May (it was down to 10C, cold enough to see your breath), but quite fun nonetheless, at least for me, still a tourist in many ways.

The concert ended—some of the students had left, and the rest went to fetch the car while the botanist and I went back to the main house's kitchen, where we spread out the plants she had collected on the walk, and gave me a lecture about them even though I had not made the trek. So there it is: I've had a genuine disciple-of-Linné experience, getting a private lecture from a botanist in Carl von Linné's own house. I think we can call that weekend a success. Now I just need to finish my essay and pass the class...

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An odd coda to the day: when we drove back into town, we took a bit of a detour and drove along the river. The botanist in the back seat suddenly exclaimed "Soldiers!" and pointed. Sure enough, stretched out over about four city blocks, probably around a hundred soldiers were sprawled out, with full face paint and even twigs in their helmets (plenty of greenery in this part of town), all with guns, some of them in teams with big machine guns, pointed at the river, some of them wiggling forward on their stomachs across the lawns or pavement. They have to practice somewhere, of course, but it was surely a strange thing to see.

Linnaeus weekend, 22 maj

I've mentioned before that I am taking a class about the life and science of the famous 17th century Swedish botanist Carl von Linné (Linnaeus). The class is web-based, so I had not met any of the other participants, but yesterday and today we as a class went on a couple field trips to various historical sites connected with Linné.

Yesterday, 22 maj, it seemed as if summer had finally come to Sweden: very few clouds, more than 20C, just lovely weather. The five of us met at EBC (my workplace) and drove south through the industrial part of the city to a region called Danmark, where Linné had his summer home Hammarby. We arrived before the place opened and so got a personal tour of the main house, which has been preserved quite well. We then took a walk through the grounds, with our guide Jesper pointing out various plants that the man may or may not have planted himself. The walk goes up a steep rocky slope up to a small building where Linné, afraid for good reason of fire, stored his collections. On the way back down, you can see a very fake-looking "runestone" that he had carved for himself. We picnicked in the cafe garden, then went to a lecture given by Åke, a rather jolly retired Uppsala professor, about Linné and his thoughts on food (in Swedish—he spoke slowly and clearly and so I understood about half of it maybe). Linné, who could not resist classifying everything, even put breads an drinks into different categories; he thought that semlor should be eaten not too much, and his view on spirits ("brännvin är förgift för dig") was shockingly primitive. He had opinions about everything, even the types of metal that various coffee-making implements should be made of (copper to boil the water, silver to serve it).

We then left Hammarby for town, back to Linné's University house and working botanical garden, now a Museum of course. I have been to both places several times before, but of course it is nice to get guided tours (and it's fun to compare how different tour guides tell the same stories, they're almost always a little different). Alexandra, our guide for the garden, is a relative of Anders Sparrman, one of Linné's disciples, and gave a good hour-long tour of the important plants (at least the visible ones, it's still a little early in the season here). Then we went into the house, which was nice and cool after our tramping about in the sun for so long. This tour guide, Audrey, was initially a little grumpy about having to give the tour in English, but seemed to warm to us as it went on—as a group just coming off a class, we were perhaps unusually informed (and genuinely interested).

It was fun day but quite exhausting, and that evening we went to a birthday party, as our Swiss friend G. turned 30 on May 23. That day just happens to be Linné's birthday as well—he would have been 303—and every year that we've been here, to celebrate this day, the town puts up ads and banners and flowers and generally makes a fuss. Are you aware that you share a birthday with Linné? I asked G., to tease him a little. "Yes," he said with mock seriousness, "It has been brought to my attention."

Unfortunately yesterday was the end of Swedish summer. Tune in tomorrow for a recap of what happened today...

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A few extra details that I found interesting, put here for my memory as much as anything:

I know (finally!) know what the word "Hammarby" means: it means "rocky slope" in local dialect. Which also explains the name of the football club I follow in Stockholm, Hammarby, whose football pitch is located on quite a rocky slope indeed.

Linné, initially opposed to coffee, discovered that drinking it made his migraines better, and so he became a convert. He was not generally an empirical scientist, except in this case!

I never knew before that the pond in center of the botanical garden is full of newts, but it is ("The small kind not the big kind," the guide took pains to point out)—there are only two types of salamander in Sweden, which is at the northern extreme of amphibian range—these were mindre vattensalamander, and they appeared to be engaged in breeding behavior.

As early as 1400-something, and up until 1800-something, it was illegal to have a male hop plant in Sweden; the reason the part used in brewing beer is the female flower, not the seed; if the flowers get pollinated, they become very bitter and the beer is bad. I did manage to resist the temptation to make some snarky comment that maybe they should put that law back into effect because in general Swedish beer is not so good.

Other plants we looked at included dog's mercury (the first plant in which Linné was absolutely able to demonstrate sexuality in plants), sweet cecilia (tasty but looks just like another thing that is poisonous), snake grass (the guide seemed quite interested to learn this American name, she said it fits well), and the other plant whose name I can't remember, but it's sure not bleeding heart, which is what Linné was actually after. The flower is very sweet-smelling; ants are its pollinator, and its seeds look like ants, and the oil pods that the plant rewards the ants with look remarkably like ant pupae. In Sweden, bumblebees chew through the bottom of the flower to get to the nectar.

As it turned out, our little group included one person with my birthday, and two other football enthusiasts. Per, a high school teacher, and Stina, a student at UU, both had plans to watch this evening's Champions League final. I mentioend that I had watched the women's final on Wednesday, and the two of them at least knew what I was talking about, if not who had finally won, but then the Swedish contender had crashed out in the semifinals. Per shared some amusing anecdotes about travelling to Germany in 2006 to watch the men's matches and we all had a good laugh about the general state of football in Sweden (deplorable).

What I do for my country

So I have been amusing myself these days by trying to catch up with two months worth of Swedish homework in a week. This is not a good idea, and I don't know if I will be able to do it, but I am learning a lot of Swedish. We have to take self-administered computer tests: reading, writing, speaking (we speak into the microphones and make sound files that we then attach to the test), and... listening.

Normally I enjoy practicing listening; it is a real pleasure when I suddenly understand something that I didn't before. But the people who made up this test thought it would be good if we could understand Swedish being sung. Normally I would even agree with that. But this particular test... "Idas Sommarvisa"... and I have to listen to it over and over until I can get the words... oh god, please make it stop! Click here for a youtube video of it... the lyrics scroll along the bottom so no, I have not watched any more than it took for me to verify that yes, this is the version I am listening to about a hundred times.

Joe is sitting across from me working on his own stuff; I played a couple seconds of it. He winced. I complained. He said that it's kind of like that Dutch video they show to immigrants as a tolerance test— you know, the one showing mild drug use, homosexual couples, and topless women at the beach?— the punch-line of which is "This is the Netherlands: if you don't like it, don't come here." (Most people I know respond with "Netherlands— great! Where do I sign up?")

I am still taking the test so I don't have time to find that Dutch video for you. Instead, I suggest you försöker mina kläder and watch "Idas Sommarvisa" again instead. Joe's parallel is pretty good, so I'll stop complaining now and accept that this is just Sweden.

Still... are we sure this sort of thing is allowed by the Geneva convention?

Alpine Adventure

Well, there. The sun came out for long enough that the organizers decided lectures this afternoon were a losing battle, so they rescheduled the last one until after dinner—and given the amount of wine that gets drunk at dinner, I suspect the 8:30–9:30 lecture slot is going to be a rough one.

In the meanwhile, though, I have finally had my walk in the Alps. My roommate, D., (who is Sicilian by birth but has lived in Copenhagen for ten years) and I took advantage of the recess to walk up to the nearest mountain trail, which winds through something billed as an "Archeological park" on the basis of some pre-historic rock carvings which were discovered there in 1977, despite the fact that they all would have been in plain sight for centuries (is it wrong of me to assume that they are fakes, or have the "runestones" of Minnesota made me bitter and suspicious before my time?). Either way, we didn't see any rock carvings, but we did have a nice walk, and a bit of a cross country adventure to get back when our trail crapped out on us. One sheep farm and a number of donkeys later, we made it safely back into town, a fact which we celebrated by hitting the local fromagerie before it closed up again for the week. So I am now the proud owner of a block of Beaufort and a little bit of Tomme de Savoie, which (I think) are the two most notable local cheeses.

Incidentally: it's snowing now. The weather has been somewhat unpredictable all day—when I woke up, the sun was shining and there was not a cloud in the sky. By the time I made it to breakfast, you couldn't even see the village behind the wall of impenetrable cloud.

So tomorrow is the end of the class, and I'm scheduled to be up here from lunch until a few minutes before 4. If the weather is nice, I'll try to walk over to one of the local fortresses. If it's snowing like this, I'll probably have a nap, instead.

le Banquet

Last night was the "banquet" for this little shindig. Once again, I have no pictures, but I know some exist, so I'll try to get copies if possible. Anyway, the banquet was held in the same room as all the other meals, at the same time as every dinner every other night, and no one dressed up, so you would have been hard pressed to realize it was the special meal if you hadn't been warned going in. What set it apart was that we had to work more for our food: instead of prepared plates, each table had a plate of raw meat (chicken, pork, duck and beef) and a… well, a marble slab mounted to a gas burner. So you sautéed little strips of meat, then seasoned them with mustard or tartar sauce. Odd, but effective. Even the sole French person at our table thought it was weird and Asterix-y; then again, he was from Brittany, so he probably feels that way about most of France.

(They also replaced for the evening the pitchers of the quite respectable house red with smaller bottles of a mediocre local gamay…)

The pool table, despite costing 2 EUR per game, has been in pretty constant use every night, but after the banquet I finally managed to get on the queue, so I wound up playing eight ball for a few hours with Jean-Charles Régin (I suspect a significant proportion of the people in the world who would be impressed by that announcement are attending this conference, but I thought it was pretty cool).

It's the last afternoon now, and while I'm still hopeful that I'll get out into the mountains a bit before I depart, it isn't looking too promising. Maybe if I can get them to pack me a sack lunch tomorrow…