84 Days Down, 6 to Go...

My last full weekend in Stockholm is over. I've visited every tourist attraction trip advisor has suggested, tried every Swedish food I could find (yes, even lutefisk), and I've even nearly finished my co-op project in spite of the fact that it was initially intended to take 6 months instead of 3. I think it's most significant that I've gotten to the point where I can spend a whole day lazing around my apartment cooking and reading, leaving only to get groceries, and not feel like I'm wasting time that should be spent exploring. It feels, well, normal.
I sort of expected this to be like an extended vacation, where I have to constantly be doing something and planning the next adventure. And I have, to some extent, done that, but I've also been content to just settle in to Stockholm life. Wake up, eat my filmjolk with muesli and lingon, bike to work, spend my day working alongside people from all over the world, break for fika, finish at a reasonable time, bike home in the dark, and then just relax or run errands or maybe go explore for a bit. It's not the same as life in Boston or Chicago, but it feels just as easy and comfortable even after barely 3 months. It's almost anticlimactic. I thought there would be homesickness and jet lag and culture shock, but it's just life as usual after no time at all.
This next week I will be systematically dismantling my life here. Sell the bike, finish my food, give back my keys, say my goodbyes, eat at my favorite bakery one last time. And this time next week, I'll be back in Chicago, jet-lagged out of my mind and binge-eating deep dish pizza. I am a weird mix of ready for everything I missed about home to be within reach again (have I mentioned that Stockholm doesn't have any good Mexican food? It's a travesty), but also dreading leaving a place in which I have so happily and comfortably settled.

Christmas cookies

Christmas season is nearly in full bloom here (lights everywhere, Christmas markets popping up around town, delicious Christmas treats appearing in bakery windows). As in the U.S., Christmas cookies are extremely popular. Here, they have pepparkakor, which are gingersnaps similar to those Anna's Swedish gingersnaps that you can find in many stores in the U.S. A chilly, rainy evening like this one is perfect for baking, so I decided to try my hand at them. You can find a version that uses American ingredients and measurements here. I also tried making risgrynsgröt, a wonderful, cinnamony rice pudding. Recipe here. I added raisins, as many do, but they are very much optional.

"There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing"

So I know my last blog post was just me moping about the weather, but I take it all back. It's been snowing since Sunday and it is glorious! It even set a new record: the most snow on any November day since the measurements started in the early 1900s.

The only drawback has been that biking is now a serious hazard to my health (not that I haven't tried...), but it's okay because the slower pace means I can better appreciate how lovely snow-covered Stockholm is.

Because my hands are usually too cold for my touch screen to recognize as human, I haven't taken so many pictures of the snow. But, I will leave you with the few that I have.

Winter

I've heard a lot about the cold, dark Stockholm winters, but I never really believed that it could be much different than Chicago and Boston. Well, it's only early November, but I'm already a little horrified by how cold and dark it is. The cold, everyone is quick to assure me, is unseasonably severe and early (not like the unusually balmy weather back in the two places I call home... insult to injury, I call it). The dark, however, is normal.
Today, the sun rose at 7:20 AM and set at 3:42 pm, just 8 hours, 45 minutes of light. By December 21st, the shortest day of the year, it will be a whopping 6 hours, 4 minutes. The damp cold, wind, rain, snow, etc. aren't so different from a normal winter in Chicago or Boston, but the darkness is something else entirely. Long before I leave work every day, I sit in the lab and watch the sun go down. By 5 o'clock, it feels like the middle of the night, like I should have been home hours ago, even though the department is still as lively and crowded as ever. And while I've spent many evenings exploring Stockholm by bike, the darkness now isn't exactly conducive to sightseeing.
The Swedes take it in stride, even embrace it as a reason to spend the evening curled up with a book and a cup of tea, surrounded by candles and house plants. I, like many non-Swedes, waver between absolute horror and dread of the looming darkness, and a curious appreciation for the increased warmth and coziness in buildings and between people.
Though not especially religious, Sweden does the Christmas season well. Cheerful lights have already been strung through the streets of Stockholm, adorable tomte have been popping up everywhere, and Christmas treats have been added to the already extensive selection of pastries in each bakery. I've made a reservation for the Michelin-starred Operakallären's julbord (a splurge I'm still questioning, but the beautiful, historical setting and reputation as being the best meal you'll ever have is rather alluring), which is certainly good motivation to make it through the next few excessively dark weeks.
So I'm a little undecided about this long, dark winter. Some days are so gray and dreary that I feel like no amount of coffee will ever wake me up. Others, I think maybe I could learn to be a bit more like the Swedes: make the most of those rare sunny days, but also the prohibitively cold and dark ones, by relying on other people or maybe just a good book - not sunshine - for warmth.

Pretending to be a Tour Guide

My mother is visiting (hi, Mom!), which means that now I get to act like I know all about Stockholm, even though I still haven't been to the Vasa Museum or seen the changing of the guard at the palace. Today we did a very uninformative walking tour of the city, led by me, full of useful facts like "this is the grocery store with the best candy bins" and "this place has the best hot chocolate and the mug is practically a bowl - but you still need a kanelbulle, obviously" and "this store has a ton of poorly-supervised samples of fancy licorice" (see a theme?). We earned our food, though. Stockholm isn't huge, but a walk from the north side of the city - where I live - to the south side of the city is a few miles in each direction.

Well, my mom just stuck her nail file into my junky-but-still-functioning little adapter in hopes that it would somehow fix it (???), but now it just sparks when I plug it into the wall. Which is to say, I need to conserve my battery until I can get a new adapter after work tomorrow. More stories and pictures soon to come, though!

Excuses from a Procrastinator

It is graduate school application season and, as a somewhat extreme procrastinator, I have managed to put off a painful amount of my upcoming fellowship application until the couple of days before it is due. This, coupled with a supposedly non-stressful presentation at work tomorrow, means that this week's blog post is mostly just an excuse for the lack of an actual blog post. Once my application is submitted, I'll return to normal human functioning.

Tourist-ing in Uppsala

I've spent a couple weekends in Uppsala, but this was the first that I did actual Tripadvisor-reccommended sightseeing. Uppsala is Sweden's fourth largest city, though it feels much more like a large town than an actual city. It does have everything you could want from a city - plenty of great food options (I recommend Churchill Arms for anyone who visits, though it's not exactly Swedish), the "standard" options for shopping (all of the popular Swedish brands are here, plus a few decent thrift stores and boutiques), interesting museums and landmarks to visit, fantastic (if a bit expensive) public transportation if you don't feel like walking, and an overall very cute setting for a weekend trip.

The Fyris River runs through Uppsala, which makes for some very charming walking paths.

The public transportation may be good, but by far the best way to get around in Uppsala (and Stockholm) is biking. Bike paths are ubiquitous and there are plenty of places to park your bike. Be warned, though: a bike that is not securely chained may be tossed into the river by unruly college students on Saturday nights.

The biggest problem with Uppsala, and Stockholm, too, is that anything even remotely touristy, from museums to the islands of the Stockholm archipelago, becomes much harder to visit in the off-season. Almost everywhere has more limited hours, and a surprising amount of attractions just close altogether once September rolls around. Still, there was plenty to do and I had a nice weekend just sightseeing at some of the more popular attractions here.

A short ride away from town is Gamla Uppsala, a mind-blowing old settlement that was once an important economic and political center and, according to some myths, the residence of Odin. Today, it is mostly just for sightseeing. The most obvious is attraction is three large burial mounds, which have generated some controversy as far as who, exactly, is buried there, though the consensus now seems to be that it's some sort of royalty.

The mounds are basically just some relatively tall hills on an otherwise flat landscape, so the main attraction here is the view.

That smidgen of blue is the first hint of non-cloud-covered sky that I've seen in more than a week. Fall in Sweden is quite gray, to say the least.

The town center can be seen in the distance, marked by the towering spires of the Uppsala Cathedral and the large, pink castle.

There is also a centuries-old church, surrounded by a mix of old and quite new gravestones. The interior is fairly plain, but certainly worth a look.

There is also a museum, a visit to which might have bolstered my ability to narrate the history in any sort of detail, but it was close to closing and rather expensive, so I cannot offer much insight into that attraction. One final note on Gamla Uppsala is that the restaurant near the museum is absolutely worth a visit for lunch. The lunch specials, which are quite good, come with as much coffee and fresh, warm bread as you want, and may actually qualify as reasonably-priced, a first for my visit to Sweden (I may be a little bitter about to exorbitant price of eating out... One of very few gripes I have about the country).

After Gamla Uppsala, we headed back to town to see the castle and the nearby botanical gardens. We didn't actually go in the castle, as it was closed, and many parts of the gardens were closed for the season or under construction, but it was quite nice to just walk around and enjoy the autumn colors - fall in Sweden may be just as good as it is in New England.

That is indeed a pink church.

The view Uppsala Cathedral from the hill on which the castle sits.

Turns out, the best views of the castle itself are from a little farther away. Still, going up close is a great way to fully appreciate the pink-ness.

Cannons pointing directly at the cathedral. A feud? Symbolism? Ill-planned decorating? Not a castle employee in sight on an off-season Sunday afternoon, so I'll have to find out another day.

The path from the castle to the botanical gardens.

A perk of sightseeing during the off-season is that there are fewer people around to scoff when the American college kids start sliding down the railings.

I'm starting to think that the warm colored buildings all over Sweden may be a way of counteracting the depressing, gray sky that sets in around late September.

Those are indeed cats on the sign. No real cats in sight, though.

A Not at All Comprehensive Photo Tour of Stockholm

As someone who hasn't biked much since elementary school, I have been happily surprised by how easy everything is when you have a bike. Stockholm isn't a huge city, necessarily, but you are pretty limited in what you can see if you want to just walk, or you have to deal with the prices for the rather expensive (but also quite good) public transportation. With a bike, everything from grocery shopping to commuting to getting to a nice nature reserve outside the city is wonderfully simple. The bike lanes here are absolutely amazing by Boston standards (though people here actually still have the gall to complain about them sometimes) and the city is also easily navigable, with a generally reliable grid system, as well as great landmarks that make it difficult to get completely lost.

All of this is to say, I have been having a fantastic time exploring Stockholm. Sometimes after work I just hop on my bike and wander around. Without fail, I stumble upon something exciting, whether it's a beautiful and historical building, an interesting store, or a massive, prairie-like park full of trails, a nice forested area, and even paddocks with horses, all right in central Stockholm. Stockholm is actually extremely good about making sure that you are never very far from nature. There are the usual parks and tree-lined streets, but also areas right in the middle of the city that feel quite wild. The island of Djurgården, in particular, is covered in forest and even has cattle and horses in some parts, in spite of also housing some of the most tourist-y sights in Stockholm. So, for anyone planning a trip to Stockholm, renting a bike is the way to do it (there are even city bikes similar to Hubway all over the city).

If you need further convincing, some of the pictures from my adventures are below.

Stockholm is quite the hub for cruise ships. You can also see bits of Gamla Stan, Östermalm, and Skeppsholmen in the background.

A deer on Djurgården, an island that also houses the Vasa Museum, ABBA The Museum, an amusement park, and a smattering of extremely wealthy people.

There are lots of swans around Djurgården in particular. 

A view of Södermalm from the bridge to Gamla Stan. A motorcycle caught fire below the church, making for some pretty cool pictures (don't worry, nobody was hurt).

The view of Gamla Stan from the bridge. 

Stockholms Stadhus

Evert Taubes Terass on Riddarholmen offers some great views.

Bikes, cobblestones, and warm-colored buildings are almost ubiquitous here (also note the "no bikes" sign directly behind the bike).

Riddarholmen in the late afternoon (also, nothing like funky lighting to hide the construction and tour bus).

One of the many narrow, cobblestoned streets on Gamla Stan. This island is one of the best preserved medieval city centers in Europe and is absolutely one of the most charming and intriguing places I've visited. Be forewarned, though: even on a dreary, off-season day like today, there are some impressively large crowds of tourists. 

The central square in Gamla Stan. Makes for some entertaining people (and dog) watching.

More of Gamla Stan's unbelievably quaint streets. People do actually live on the island and it's fairly easy to stay here through Airbnb or the like.

One more picture of Gamla Stan from that bridge. Trying to bike across near sunset is difficult because plenty of people stop to enjoy the view and it's hard to resist joining them.

Gamla Stan from a wonderful little path called Monteliusvägen on Södermalm. A strömmingsrulle, which is about the most Swedish food you'll find anywhere, from Nystekt Strömming makes for a pretty good accompaniment for watching the sunset.

Foraging

When I left Wales, I was especially sad to leave the easy access to wonderful, free blackberries. Whenever I went hiking, my pace would be significantly slower than usual because I couldn't help but stop every few feet to pick some of the blackberries that quite literally lined the path. To the locals, the berries are just commonplace and viewed almost as weeds, albeit delicious ones. Compared to buying overpriced and not especially good grocery store blackberries in Boston, simply going to the blackberry bush next to the front door and picking some for my breakfast felt quite luxurious.

Turns out, I need not have worried. Sweden has berries, too! Not blackberries, but at the moment, blueberries and lingonberries are in season, in addition to apples and mushrooms and, no doubt, other delicious things I don't know about yet. Here, there's Allemansrätten, which allows anyone to pick flowers, mushrooms, and berries on just about any land (with some caveats - which can be perused here - but not ones that are particularly limiting).

Today I got to take advantage of that, on a supposed mushroom picking outing in Uppsala. There weren't a whole lot of edible mushrooms - only two left the forest with us - but nobody particularly cared because as soon as we started walking, we realized that blueberries and lingonberries were everywhere. I spent the next few hours wandering around the forest filling the container that had been intended for mushrooms with berries.

As I write this, apple-lingon-blueberry jam is bubbling away on the stove with the berries from earlier and apples picked from a tree nearby. Is it too much to ask for this free wild berry thing to come to the U.S.?

I leave you with some pictures from today, though I didn't actually take pictures in the forest because I was too busy staring at the ground and shoveling berries into my mouth.

I have an almost identical picture from somewhere in the White Mountains. A nice reminder, since fall hikes around New England are one of the rings I miss most about the U.S.

An old mill.

I took a tree selfie. Undignified and unflattering, yet here I am posting it on the Internet.

My foraging companions (taking pictures of me as I took pictures of them).

A wonderful picnic spot at the top of a hill somewhere in Uppsala.

Sugar-Crazed in Stockholm

In the United States, everyone thinks I'm weird for enjoying licorice. Here in Sweden, however, licorice has similar status as chocolate and my moderate affinity for it has been allowed to grow into a full-blown obsession. Yesterday, I hit an all time low when I visited a shop called Lakritsroten (licorice root in Swedish), which had every form of licorice known to man: licorice powder, chocolate covered licorice, licorice honey, salt licorice, licorice caramel, and more varieties of plain licorice than I knew existed. There were also samples, which were not closely watched, and I may have grazed a little too much (but who knew mint-covered licorice balls would be so good?!). To make up for it, I spent almost $20 on a grand total of 3 things: a raspberry-filled licorice stick, a large log of licorice caramel covered in chocolate and dotted with dried raspberries, and a small jar of licorice honey. Okay, so it was an extremely frivolous purchase, but I regret nothing and will certainly be returning in the near future.
I have been quite surprised by the general dessert/sugar obsession here in Sweden. Walking down the street, you'd think everyone here must eat extremely healthy and exercise daily because most people are quite athletic looking. For the most part, that seems to be true, but at the same time, everyone seems to make an exception for dessert.
The candy and pastry selections in the grocery stores are truly impressive, and they are clearly not neglected. There are also bins of candy and snack foods (mainly assorted chocolate and licorice, but also things like wasabi nuts and violet gummies) at every grocery store, even the tiniest ones, and no matter when you go, there will always be at least one person filling up a bag. I can understand why licorice is not so popular in the U.S., but it is completely mystifying to me that these bins have not caught on like they have here in Sweden. This afternoon, after biking and exploring all day, I was feeling hangry, but also desperate for food that would not make me want to cry upon seeing the price. I went to the grocery store in hopes that inspiration would strike and indeed it did. Not only do the bins have candy, they also have assorted dried fruits, banana chips, trail mix, and fascinating things like sour cream and dill cashews. This way, I can delude myself into thinking I have a decently healthy snack when half of my bag is fruit and nuts and the other half is chocolate and licorice.
Fika is another major outlet for the dessert obsession. If you're going to have a mid-afternoon coffee break, it only seems natural that you should have a nice pastry to go along with the coffee. And the Swedish pastries are truly under-rated. Many of them feature cinnamon and cardamom, almost everything has coarse, white sugar sprinkled on top (I even saw it on a grocery store croissant), plus there is always a healthy amount of butter and oftentimes custard. There are also the extremely common and very creatively named chokladbolls (chocolate balls), which really are just coconut-covered, espresso-spiked balls of chocolate that are like a cross between a truffle and a very dense brownie. Even the gas station pastries are quite edible, so if you don't want to spend $5 on a dainty little thing from one of the many wonderful coffee shops and bakeries, there are always good options.
Believe it or not, this was actually meant to be a short post before bed. Let's just say, I am a little excited about how well Sweden caters to my dessert preferences. Also, I may or may not have eaten a freakish amount of candy today, so the sugar might be making me a bit hyper. Good thing I bike a lot?

Wales Pictures, Finally

            I realized that I never actually posted many pictures of Wales while I was there, mainly due to the painfully slow and somewhat capricious Internet connection. The Internet is great, here, though, so I figure I'll post a few pictures I took on one of my runs.
            Full of endless green hills checkered with pastures full of grazing sheep, quaint little cottages with wild gardens, and endless rows of flourishing food crops, all outlined by dense hedges with the most beautiful blackberries I have ever seen scattered throughout, the Welsh countryside offers an unbelievable setting for running.

It does have its quirks, though: the road (which I mistook for a walking trail the first time I saw it) is just wide enough for the occasional car to pass through, though it is frequented by bikers, walkers, runners, people on horseback, tractors, milk trucks, sheep dogs, and large herds of cattle. The rain here can come without warning and leave you drenched and shivering, only for a cheerful, unapologetic sun to come out – often before it even stops raining – to dry your dripping clothes (rinse and repeat, endlessly and often). And those hills, my god. There are no words to describe the agony of plodding for a half mile up a steep hill, believing that it will level out just around the bend, only to find that it continues for another half mile.

            It finally occurred to me that I could take pictures of those spectacular views with my phone (which I have been carrying anyway, wrapped tightly in a waterproof bag, because I don’t trust myself to not get lost on these roads). So there you go, pictures of farm animals and clouds and hills.

I was surprised by how environmentally conscious the Welsh are; wind turbines are all over the place, as are solar panels.

The sheep will stare at you until you leave. It's a little unnerving.

Have I mentioned that there are a lot of sheep?

The cows will also stare - and moo loudly - at you.

I made a friend! Mostly he just wanted food, though.

These guys were in the driveway when I got back. Like I said, the sheep do like to stare...

A Very Scattered Introduction to Sweden

I spent a long time trying to come up with a cohesive topic for my first post about Sweden, but every time I start to write about one topic, I somehow take a wrong turn midway through and end up on a completely unrelated topic. In the Welsh countryside, life moves forward in a steady, comfortable rhythm, but now I’m back to the colorful blur that is city life, and everything is so new and shiny, and my thoughts are still moving in an excited whir that makes focusing on anything for too long surprisingly difficult. So this post is just going to be a bulleted list of observations and perhaps next time I’ll be settled enough to not sound like a kindergartener after consuming way too much sugar.

•         Fika is more than just a coffee break, it is an all-important, religiously followed time to sit, drink coffee, have a good conversation, and not think about work. One of my Swedish co-workers joked that he only came to work so that he could have break from fika. At any given time, you can find people sitting in the comfy chairs in the lunch room enjoying their fika. My department also has an organized fika every other week, in which one person brings food, and everybody – from the department chair to the lowly interns – sits at a long table for as long as the food and conversation last, no matter how long that may be. It’s surprisingly intimate and very inclusive – even as the brand new intern sitting at a table full of professors and PhD students, I felt completely at ease.
•         Hierarchies work differently here. They exist, certainly, and titles and responsibilities are the same, but they don’t cause quite the separation that is normal in their American counterparts. I am the only undergraduate working full-time in my department, and by far the least knowledgeable person, but nobody seems to care. At fika last week, I ended up spending an hour talking to the department chair about American politics and it didn’t feel any different than talking to an old friend about it (internally, I was still panicking and slightly fan-girling, of course, but I seemed to be the only one who thought anything of the massive difference in status).
•         In contrast to the American emphasis on individualism and things like “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” and “taking the road less travelled,” Swedes greatly value inclusion and working together for the betterment of the group. Here, everyone – rich or poor, full-blooded Swedish or newly immigrated – goes to public school together until college. Getting held back a grade does not happen; the class simply waits for everyone to catch up. On my first day of work, the professor for whom I’m working took me around the very large department and introduced me to every single person. My picture and some information about me will also be sent around so that everyone knows who I am and why I’m here. It’s not special treatment; it’s just how it works here. Everyone is included, no one is alienated, and I have to say, it is a really nice way for things to work. I’ve worked in much smaller departments for a much longer time, but one week in, I already feel more like a part of this group than I have any other.