Boston, Rain

I'm attending a summer school in Boston for this coming week, and I just arrived in Boston this evening, after a week spent visiting my family in north Alabama. The past week has been fabulous—great food, visits with family I haven't seen in years, and lots of tennis and golf (a first for me) in 95°F heat—and frankly, Boston is going to have a hard time competing.

Boston got off to a strong start, though: it was 60°F and raining, and as I stood in the airport T station trying to figure out how to buy a 7 day pass, a traveler leaving the city handed me their pass, good for two more days. After an easy train ride to my hotel, I was beginning to fear it would be difficult to maintain my anti-metropolitan prejudices. If that had been the indicator of a trend, instead of the start of a roller coaster ride, it would have been difficult indeed.

Seeing my room brought me back to reality. I had forgotten that "good quality hostel" is a category quite a bit rougher than "no-frills hotel." Don;t get me wrong, it's clean and the staff are friendly, and I don't need a TV, but I'm old enough that I want my own bathroom. Sigh. And wireless internet in the rooms is only useful if it actually works. A week of only having internet in the lobby? This was looking grim. Feeling a little down, I set off in search of dinner (and shampoo).

After a bit of wandering (through the Boston Pride festival, which was just being shut down for the evening) I managed to find not only an open pharmacy, but then the best quick hamburger place I've ever been to (sorry, Krazy Jim's). My faith in humanity restored, I went back to the hostel for a shower, an episode of Community, and then dozed off to the sound of the strengthening rain storm.

I suppose the waning of the storm made the dripping sound more distinct; in any case, something woke me up before midnight, which was thankfully before the large and growing puddle of rainwater on my floor had made it to my luggage. The culprit appeared to be a rooftop drain pipe that ran down one corner of my room. It took a good 30 minutes for the befuddled night clerk to decide he had the authority to put me in a new, crappier room ("It's a triple, so you'll have plenty of space," he assured me, despite the fact that the only difference between the single and the triple was that they had crammed two more beds into the triple). Whatever. By one I was sound asleep again, and I woke this morning to dry floors.

OK, coffee break's over. Gotta run.

April was the coolest month

Joe just informed me that, if he read the newspaper correctly, it was actually the warmest April in Uppsala in 200 years. Nevertheless, I will stand by my post title. Here is a list of the celebratory things that happened, in reverse order, so as to save the best for last.

5. Valborg. The traditional Walpurgis night here in Sweden, on which bonfires are lit to either welcome Spring or scare away the witches, depending on your view of it. We traveled out to the old Viking-era burial mounds where they have a huge fire, and fireworks, as we've done in years past. Our Swiss friends L. and J. drove, and brought a delicious hot soup with them, a traditional soup for the carnival season made mostly of flour and butter. The hot soup was very welcome, as it was nearly freezing temperatures, and therefore quite crowded around the fire. L. and J. had gone to the continent for Easter with family, so we didn't get to break cascarones over their heads as we've done in the last couple years. No worries—we got them at the fire. It's been probably more than a decade since I've surprised someone with a cascarone, and it was quite gratifying.

4. Sista April. The day of Valborg is the last day of April, which is specially celebrated in university towns in Sweden—the day when the students or anyone who has anything to do with the University goes nuts. In previous years, we've been ambitious enough to make it to the student raft race, but this year, for the first time, it was webcast by the local newspaper, so we watched it with breakfast instead, which is much more relaxed. And having a picnic is also traditional, but this year the weather wasn't so nice—see Valborg, above—so we had our picnic on the floor of our living room. In some ways, skipping Sista April makes us seem more like real townies, but on the other hand it is fun to see the craziness, so I hope next year the weather is better.

3. Easter. We missed celebrating St. Patrick's Day this last March, so we decided to both 'holidays' in one weekend and call it "St. Patrick's Resurrection Day (Observed)". Saturday night we had a Guinness, and home-corned beef (you can't get it in the store here) and cabbage and potatoes, then we had Sunday brunch in which the beef was miraculously revived as hash, and there were Easter eggs and a home-made Danish coffee cake. Since the weather was quite nice we took a stroll over one of the large grassy areas by our house to do our traditional cascarones.

2. Joe's birthday was a few days before Easter, and right in the middle of a very busy time for him, but we had fun that night anyway, with balloons in the window, and pizza and ice cream and cake (home-made pound cake as per request) for dessert. I managed to convince Joe that he really should take the second pound cake in to work, which made him very popular with everyone and especially his advisor, so I'll count that as a win.

1. And last but certainly not least... we always knew that Joe was a nerd but now we have proof. In early April Joe learned that the Swedish Artificial Intelligence Society had chosen his masters thesis as the best in Scandinavia. He has therefore been invited to present that research at their every-third-year meeting, which this year is in Trondheim, Norway the week after next. The announcement was celebrated with a bottle of champagne. Congratulations, Joe! (Please note that, although his advisor was on both the selection and evaluation committees, he won the prize before taking in the birthday cake.)

Geek night at the nerd museum

The Nobel Museum in Stockholm must surely be, on normal days, one of the very most boring museums in the city. In general, I'm all for old-fashioned Museums—give me endless displays of obscure items accompanied by a page-sized placard of information, written in a far-too-small font, and I'm a happy camper. But at this museum, the relics from Nobel Prize winners are perhaps a little too obscure to be of immediate interest to all except the truly devoted. Take the display on Albert Schweitzer, for instance. It consisted of three children's books in Swedish, about Africa. The placard described Schweitzer's work briefly, mentioning that he had given several lectures in Sweden. At the very end, we learn the relevance of the books in the display case: these books were donated to the Museum by the some relatives of Schweitzer's friends in Sweden. See what I mean about tenuous connections to the artefacts?

But a couple weekends ago, it was Culture Night in Stockholm, which meant most places were free to get into, and open late, and having various activities. The Nobel Museum decided to do Space. Here's the text of their English ad:

18:00-01:00
Nobelmuseet (the Nobel Museum)
Weightless groove, live Stormtroopers
and planetary activities
Listen to weightless groove all evening at the
Nobel Museum with DJ-Chekov, mingle with
live Stormtroopers and, if you are childish, you
can take part in the planetary activities.

DJ-Chekov? Planetary activities? Live Stormtroopers?? Who could possibly resist that? (The Swedish text was even better, as it said "living Stormtroopers", and also specified that there would be 'Klingon vodka' in the cafe. They also showed a film, a 50s Swedish movie called "Space invasion in Lapland.")

But at night, with some suitably-colored lighting, and a couple walls of slowly pulsing LEDs, and a crowd of good-natured people out to have fun, and a couple of DJs playing space-themed music, the Nobel Museum can transform itself into a respectable-looking nightclub. Who knew!

We wandered around the displays — ran into the Stormtrooper — learned a little about various Nobel Prize winners — caught the tail end of the "Pictures from Space" slide show. We missed the movie, and unfortunately the 'Klingon vodka' was all gone by the time we snagged a seat in the cafe, and they had switched to 'Klingon gin', apparently in the belief that geeks will drink anything as long as its 'on theme' (yup, we had some, it was fairly nasty). But we had a lot of fun just hanging out, and making fun of the live entertainment, an American with a quite bad singing voice and what sounded like a Casio. Thankfully he finished, and the job was taken over by a couple of young guys who did a much better job of sticking to the space theme, and of playing music that at least one tableful of middle-aged women were happy to bop along to right up until the end. Hey, I closed the Nobel Museum... on purpose... and it was fun! How nerdy can you get?

På hästen

... which means, "on the horse."

While Joe's been 'enjoying' skiing (he still has visible bruises), I've doing doing a little physical therapy. As a part of that, I went out to a local(ish) riding school to try out horseback riding. I have sat up on a horse a few times before in my life — when I lived in Stevensville (9 and younger), the people behind us had a pony and a horse, and the neighbor kids and I would just hop up on one sometimes, and ride around the paddock bareback (we weren't supposed to do it, so don't tell my parents...). And I remember taking a long trail ride in Colorado once, probably also before I was 10.

The point is, I haven't been up on a horse (okay, my ride Felicia, my Irish Tinker, wasn't a horse, really, but a "D-ponny"... which seems to mean nearly horse-sized) in 30 years.

I have to say, though, for pony who claims to be Irish, she sure didn't understand much English. Sometimes I'd her to "go" and she'd say "nej"...

Works in Theory

I think everyone is a little over-anxious for spring now. This morning, Jennifer opted to wear her "spring time in Sweden" shoes—a pair of black leather walking shoes, good for getting rained on, but not for walking on ice—so naturally we got three inches of fresh snow fall this afternoon.

Lest you think unwarranted optimism is unique to us immigrant-types, I will also mention that not 15 minutes ago I heard the distant chimes of the ice cream truck passing by:

Wanna know what's funny about ice cream trucks in Sweden? (Other than the fact that every truck in the country plays exactly the same song?) They don't sell ice cream cones, or popsicles, or anything like that: the trucks sell 1 liter tubs of ice cream. You know, just in case you forgot to get a tub of ice cream when you were at the store buying 4 liters of milk on your way home from work.

Have I ever mentioned that Sweden invented lactose tolerance? That's right: all you dairy eating types are mutants descended from proto-Vikings*.

*As my proof editor also happens to be a biologist, I am obligated to correct myself: adult lactose digestion arose independently in Scandinavia and the Arabian peninsula. So either a Viking or a Bedouin, take your pick.

The Doktorand Who Tried Skiing

Every Whom
Down in Whom-Vale
Liked Skiing a lot…

But the Doktorand,
Who lived 500 km southwest of Whom-Vale,
Thought down hill was rot!

The Doktorand hated down hill! The whole downward direction!
If you want to know why, it won't take much detection:
It could be that his poles didn't function quite right,
It could be, perhaps, that he was skiing at night;
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that it always led him to fall.

But,
Whatever the reason,
His poles or his skis,
(Or the bruises that covered his hands and knees)
He sat there on Sunday Eve, hating the hills,
Gulping glasses of water with his painkiller pills.
For he knew every Whom around Whom-Vale, you see,
Was busy now, planning their Monday morn ski.

"And the bars are closed!" he snarled with a sneer.
"I've been out skiing! I want a cold beer!"
Then he growled, with his Doktorand fingers rapidly typing,
"The internet isn't even fast enough for skyping!"
But, tomorrow, he knew…

…All the IT department girls and boys
Would wake up bright and early. They'd rush for the slopes!
And then! Oh, the skiing! Oh, the skiing! Skiing! Skiing!

To be continued…