Stockholm: arrival (Thursday)
We landed about 15 minutes late, at 7:45 AM local time. I arrived at Arlanda airport, and found somewhat to my relief that most of the signs were in English as well as Swedish. Speaking the modern lingua franca as a first language makes life a lot easier sometimes. I found my way to customs with no problems, all set to proudly answer that I was here for “business”, rather than pleasure. Unfortunately they didn’t ask why I was here or where I was going or what I brought with me, or much of anything really. They just glanced at my passport, stamped it, and waved me through. I freshened up a tiny bit, then claimed my luggage. I found the shuttle bus to Stockholm Central without problem, and showed the driver the receipt I had printed out. I found a place for my luggage and settled down. A slightly older Swedish woman sat next to me on the bus; we didn’t speak. I spent my time looking out the window. I got an impression of tall spindly pines and auto dealers with signs in Swedish, but the bus definitely wasn’t taking a scenic route. Mostly the babble of voices around me was in Swedish, which sounded a bit like German to me.
I got a little anxious as we got into the city and started to make multiple stops that I would miss the Central Station stop, particularly because the driver made most of the announcements in Swedish, but I needn’t have worried. I got off the bus at around 9 spent a few minutes wandering around to get my bearings, and found the lockers. I asked at information where to buy bus tickets and how to get to Gamla Stan (old town). The bus tickets there are sold at Pressbyran (translates as newsshops-basically a convenience store), so I went to the one in the bus terminal and bought eight bus rides plus a couple of pastries I didn’t recognize and some mango thing to drink. I knocked down some gum with my suitcase in the process, and managed not to get too embarrassed about it. The people in the store, and in fact everyone I met, spoke very good English. I got some change for the lockers, put my suitcase and poster tube in on,e and sat down to eat the pastries which were really really good. I walked over to Riksgaten, which is a pedestrian-only road that crosses onto the island of Helgenadsholmen, and then Gamla Stan. The entire city is built on a series of islands, but it’s very easy to cross from one to the other. I took out my map to make sure I was going the right way, and a nice local man asked me where I was trying to get to, assured me I was headed in the right direction, and told me to check out the Nobel Museum and that if I went the other way on the same road I would reach more shopping that was less touristy. He was a bit scornful of the touristy nature of Gamla Stan in general, and made it pretty clear he thought I’d be missing out if I stuck around there. It was one of the few times that someone didn’t try to address me in Swedish first; a map and a camera make a great tourist badge.
I found Riksgaten and turned right to head towards Gamla Stan. My advisor had been right; there was shop after shop of postcards, magnets, and Stockholm T-shirts, as well as a sudden babble of English-speaking voices. I got a Stockholm magnet for our departmental secretary because she collects location magnets, but other than that I didn’t see much that interested me in terms of shopping. The bridge over the canal to Gamla Stan was beautiful, as was the view of the city from the water. I took some pictures, and wished
wushi were with me since I think he would have loved it. Gamla Stan is the oldest part of the city, and some of the buildings date back to the middle ages. I pulled my map and the walking tour I downloaded from the internet out, and started off to explore, grinning like an idiot. I found the royal offices but decided not to go in, and I think I saw the changing of the guard somewhat by accident. The pace of a ceremonial guard is so much sharper and louder than a soldier’s; I think it’s to compensate for the plume-covered hats. I wandered on, found the Nobel museum and the Spanish church which is one of the landmarks of the island. I began to wonder if I was starting to get jaded after the couple of trips I’ve made to Europe; one older European city begins to look very much like another. Then I spend 20 minutes looking for the Marten Trotzigs Grand, the narrowest alleyway in Stockholm, and had great fun squeezing through it. I decided I probably wasn’t becoming jaded after all.
At around 11:20 I left Gamla Stan feeling very Brave and Accomplished for finding the old town on foot rather than relying on the subway system. I returned to the terminal to get my luggage and began looking for the local bus stop to my hostel . I couldn’t find it, and decided being brave and accomplished was all very well but I was tired and slightly lost and my luggage was heavy. I hailed a cab and told him the address. I ended up paying 150 crowns (about 25-30 bucks) for what ended up being a 10 minute ride; transportation in general is ridiculously expensive here, and even a bus ticket cost the equivalent of six bucks or so. Fortunately, I’m getting reimbursed for this. I got to the hostel and found out that the conference hadn’t managed to arrange for early check-in for us (check in was from 3-6, and the conference was running that day from 2-5:30), but that they would store luggage and knew we weren’t checking in until later. I resigned myself to not being able to change until that evening, payed 20 crowns (about four bucks) to store my luggage, and pulled out my laptop to shoot a quick email to
wushi. I got directions to the bus stop that goes to the Karolinska Institut where the conference was being held, and found it without difficulty. I took my poster with me so I wouldn’t have to worry about hanging it the next day.
The bus ride to the Karolinska Institut took about 20 minutes (sadly again through a non-scenic part of the city). The conference was being held on the other side of campus, and with twisty walkways, no signs, and a rather ambiguous map (at least if one doesn’t speak Swedish), finding it was a bit of a challenge. Fortunately I found some more conference attendants (one of them was an MD/PhD from U. Maryland several years ahead of me, and I was tired and distracted enough that I didn’t recognize him at first, but I don’t think he noticed)who also looked slightly lost, and between the four of us we eventually made it to the right building. The Karolinska Institut is responsible for giving out the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine each year, so it was somewhat awe-inspiring to be there, but the campus itself is full of dark, squat, ugly buildings. I registered around 1:30, and found out that I had been seated in “overflow” seating, which meant that I was just going to see the talks via video. I was really disappointed to find that I wasn’t going to get to see the speakers in person, some of them are huge people in my field. Feeling a little sad, I found the poster hall and hung up my weirdly sized poster (apparently 2 feet wide and six feet long is the standard for scientific posters in Sweden). I found a space in the overflow room, which contained all of eight people. One would think that they could accomadate a few more in the regular lecture hall. Regardless, Eric Kandel (a nobel prize winner and the writer of THE textbook of neuroscience) gave a really awesome talk. He talked about how in addition to being able to condition an animal to associate a specific cue like a tone with something aversive like a mild foot shock (which eventually causes the animal to fear the tone), his group has been experimenting with tones that never occur together with the foot shock, essentially turning the tone into a “safety signal”. The safety signal seems to become rewarding over time, and in experiments that model learned helplessness which is often used to model depression, playing the tone will cause the animal to reduce it’s depressive-like behaviors. There was a coffee break, and I grabbed a cheese sandwich (mm, lunch), and then went back to hear more talks on the similarity between how memory and thinkinh about hypothetical likely situations and visual attention.
I left a little early from the last one since it wasn’t scheduled to end till 5:30, the talks were already running late, the hostel was 20 minutes away, and I needed to check in and get ready for the conference reception that night. I got a little turned around but eventually found my way back to the entrance I had come in by and got the bus back to the hostel. I found out my roommate wouldn’t be arriving until the next day, so I got a private (if somewhat smelly) room for one night. I checked in and took my baggage up. I had enough time to wash up a bit and change out of my jeans and tennis shoes and into my travel dress, though there wasn’t enough time for a full shower. I grabbed my invitation to the reception at Stockholm’s town hall, ID (with room key), and camera, stuffed them in my trenchcoat, and headed downstairs. There was a group of other MD/PhD girls from Cornell waiting downstairs. I looked though the pics on my camera a bit before I worked up the courage to introduce myself. They were very nice, and I ended up hanging out with them most of the conference. One of them, J, worked in one of my mentor’s friend’s labs. We chatted a bit about travel and science and other random stuff, and waited for the shuttle the conference had arranged from the hostel to Town Hall to arrive. We got on the shuttle and got scolded for being late, which puzzled us since we had waited for the bus for 10 minutes. Apparently, they thought some of us were at one of the other hotels and had run to catch the bus here. This was puzzling since the other hotel was a 10 minute drive but about a 30 minute walk. Apparently they thought we ran really fast. In heels.
The Nobel Prize Banquet is held in the Stockholm town hall, so we were pretty excited to get there. We milled around the courtyard a bit as the sun set before being left in. I went to take pictures, and found that a nearly full moon was rising over the water, just beyond the steeple of the Spanish church . It was incredibally beautiful. They finally let us in, and we were welcomed by the mayor of Stockholm and invited to have wine and a very nice buffet in the main hall. We got food and chatted some more. I felt fairly pleased with myself for socializing as much as I did. I rather suspect I wouldn’t have if anyone I’d known had been there. We talked about the accomedations (some of the others were a little more horrified by the lack of private bathrooms then I was. At least the bathrooms were very clean) and the fact that they apparently put all of the MD/PhD students in the overflow seating. Since they made a big deal in the scholarship materials about providing an opportunity for future physician scientists to interact with both clinical and bais science researchers all mixed together (and since my new companions were by nature a bit more inclined to objection to the objectionable than me), we resolved to say something the next day. We got taken on a tour of the rest of the townhall, taken the same way the Nobel prize winners are led. We got to see the gold room (which is very…byzantine), the blue hall (which is in fact, red. The architect decided that the exposed brick was really pretty, but he still liked the name blue room, so it stuck), and the area where the local government meets once a month. The tour ended and we got bussed home. I was glad to be heading back, since the adrenaline was dying down and was beginning to feel a little punchy. I (finally) took a shower, emailed
wushi again, and got ready for bed. I was a little worried about not being able to sleep. I often sleep poorly before presentations, I was presenting my poster tomorrow, and I didn’t think I could do a good job on essentially two days of almost no sleep. I was out about 30 seconds after my head hit the pillow
I got a little anxious as we got into the city and started to make multiple stops that I would miss the Central Station stop, particularly because the driver made most of the announcements in Swedish, but I needn’t have worried. I got off the bus at around 9 spent a few minutes wandering around to get my bearings, and found the lockers. I asked at information where to buy bus tickets and how to get to Gamla Stan (old town). The bus tickets there are sold at Pressbyran (translates as newsshops-basically a convenience store), so I went to the one in the bus terminal and bought eight bus rides plus a couple of pastries I didn’t recognize and some mango thing to drink. I knocked down some gum with my suitcase in the process, and managed not to get too embarrassed about it. The people in the store, and in fact everyone I met, spoke very good English. I got some change for the lockers, put my suitcase and poster tube in on,e and sat down to eat the pastries which were really really good. I walked over to Riksgaten, which is a pedestrian-only road that crosses onto the island of Helgenadsholmen, and then Gamla Stan. The entire city is built on a series of islands, but it’s very easy to cross from one to the other. I took out my map to make sure I was going the right way, and a nice local man asked me where I was trying to get to, assured me I was headed in the right direction, and told me to check out the Nobel Museum and that if I went the other way on the same road I would reach more shopping that was less touristy. He was a bit scornful of the touristy nature of Gamla Stan in general, and made it pretty clear he thought I’d be missing out if I stuck around there. It was one of the few times that someone didn’t try to address me in Swedish first; a map and a camera make a great tourist badge.
I found Riksgaten and turned right to head towards Gamla Stan. My advisor had been right; there was shop after shop of postcards, magnets, and Stockholm T-shirts, as well as a sudden babble of English-speaking voices. I got a Stockholm magnet for our departmental secretary because she collects location magnets, but other than that I didn’t see much that interested me in terms of shopping. The bridge over the canal to Gamla Stan was beautiful, as was the view of the city from the water. I took some pictures, and wished
wushi were with me since I think he would have loved it. Gamla Stan is the oldest part of the city, and some of the buildings date back to the middle ages. I pulled my map and the walking tour I downloaded from the internet out, and started off to explore, grinning like an idiot. I found the royal offices but decided not to go in, and I think I saw the changing of the guard somewhat by accident. The pace of a ceremonial guard is so much sharper and louder than a soldier’s; I think it’s to compensate for the plume-covered hats. I wandered on, found the Nobel museum and the Spanish church which is one of the landmarks of the island. I began to wonder if I was starting to get jaded after the couple of trips I’ve made to Europe; one older European city begins to look very much like another. Then I spend 20 minutes looking for the Marten Trotzigs Grand, the narrowest alleyway in Stockholm, and had great fun squeezing through it. I decided I probably wasn’t becoming jaded after all.
At around 11:20 I left Gamla Stan feeling very Brave and Accomplished for finding the old town on foot rather than relying on the subway system. I returned to the terminal to get my luggage and began looking for the local bus stop to my hostel . I couldn’t find it, and decided being brave and accomplished was all very well but I was tired and slightly lost and my luggage was heavy. I hailed a cab and told him the address. I ended up paying 150 crowns (about 25-30 bucks) for what ended up being a 10 minute ride; transportation in general is ridiculously expensive here, and even a bus ticket cost the equivalent of six bucks or so. Fortunately, I’m getting reimbursed for this. I got to the hostel and found out that the conference hadn’t managed to arrange for early check-in for us (check in was from 3-6, and the conference was running that day from 2-5:30), but that they would store luggage and knew we weren’t checking in until later. I resigned myself to not being able to change until that evening, payed 20 crowns (about four bucks) to store my luggage, and pulled out my laptop to shoot a quick email to
wushi. I got directions to the bus stop that goes to the Karolinska Institut where the conference was being held, and found it without difficulty. I took my poster with me so I wouldn’t have to worry about hanging it the next day.
The bus ride to the Karolinska Institut took about 20 minutes (sadly again through a non-scenic part of the city). The conference was being held on the other side of campus, and with twisty walkways, no signs, and a rather ambiguous map (at least if one doesn’t speak Swedish), finding it was a bit of a challenge. Fortunately I found some more conference attendants (one of them was an MD/PhD from U. Maryland several years ahead of me, and I was tired and distracted enough that I didn’t recognize him at first, but I don’t think he noticed)who also looked slightly lost, and between the four of us we eventually made it to the right building. The Karolinska Institut is responsible for giving out the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine each year, so it was somewhat awe-inspiring to be there, but the campus itself is full of dark, squat, ugly buildings. I registered around 1:30, and found out that I had been seated in “overflow” seating, which meant that I was just going to see the talks via video. I was really disappointed to find that I wasn’t going to get to see the speakers in person, some of them are huge people in my field. Feeling a little sad, I found the poster hall and hung up my weirdly sized poster (apparently 2 feet wide and six feet long is the standard for scientific posters in Sweden). I found a space in the overflow room, which contained all of eight people. One would think that they could accomadate a few more in the regular lecture hall. Regardless, Eric Kandel (a nobel prize winner and the writer of THE textbook of neuroscience) gave a really awesome talk. He talked about how in addition to being able to condition an animal to associate a specific cue like a tone with something aversive like a mild foot shock (which eventually causes the animal to fear the tone), his group has been experimenting with tones that never occur together with the foot shock, essentially turning the tone into a “safety signal”. The safety signal seems to become rewarding over time, and in experiments that model learned helplessness which is often used to model depression, playing the tone will cause the animal to reduce it’s depressive-like behaviors. There was a coffee break, and I grabbed a cheese sandwich (mm, lunch), and then went back to hear more talks on the similarity between how memory and thinkinh about hypothetical likely situations and visual attention.
I left a little early from the last one since it wasn’t scheduled to end till 5:30, the talks were already running late, the hostel was 20 minutes away, and I needed to check in and get ready for the conference reception that night. I got a little turned around but eventually found my way back to the entrance I had come in by and got the bus back to the hostel. I found out my roommate wouldn’t be arriving until the next day, so I got a private (if somewhat smelly) room for one night. I checked in and took my baggage up. I had enough time to wash up a bit and change out of my jeans and tennis shoes and into my travel dress, though there wasn’t enough time for a full shower. I grabbed my invitation to the reception at Stockholm’s town hall, ID (with room key), and camera, stuffed them in my trenchcoat, and headed downstairs. There was a group of other MD/PhD girls from Cornell waiting downstairs. I looked though the pics on my camera a bit before I worked up the courage to introduce myself. They were very nice, and I ended up hanging out with them most of the conference. One of them, J, worked in one of my mentor’s friend’s labs. We chatted a bit about travel and science and other random stuff, and waited for the shuttle the conference had arranged from the hostel to Town Hall to arrive. We got on the shuttle and got scolded for being late, which puzzled us since we had waited for the bus for 10 minutes. Apparently, they thought some of us were at one of the other hotels and had run to catch the bus here. This was puzzling since the other hotel was a 10 minute drive but about a 30 minute walk. Apparently they thought we ran really fast. In heels.
The Nobel Prize Banquet is held in the Stockholm town hall, so we were pretty excited to get there. We milled around the courtyard a bit as the sun set before being left in. I went to take pictures, and found that a nearly full moon was rising over the water, just beyond the steeple of the Spanish church . It was incredibally beautiful. They finally let us in, and we were welcomed by the mayor of Stockholm and invited to have wine and a very nice buffet in the main hall. We got food and chatted some more. I felt fairly pleased with myself for socializing as much as I did. I rather suspect I wouldn’t have if anyone I’d known had been there. We talked about the accomedations (some of the others were a little more horrified by the lack of private bathrooms then I was. At least the bathrooms were very clean) and the fact that they apparently put all of the MD/PhD students in the overflow seating. Since they made a big deal in the scholarship materials about providing an opportunity for future physician scientists to interact with both clinical and bais science researchers all mixed together (and since my new companions were by nature a bit more inclined to objection to the objectionable than me), we resolved to say something the next day. We got taken on a tour of the rest of the townhall, taken the same way the Nobel prize winners are led. We got to see the gold room (which is very…byzantine), the blue hall (which is in fact, red. The architect decided that the exposed brick was really pretty, but he still liked the name blue room, so it stuck), and the area where the local government meets once a month. The tour ended and we got bussed home. I was glad to be heading back, since the adrenaline was dying down and was beginning to feel a little punchy. I (finally) took a shower, emailed
wushi again, and got ready for bed. I was a little worried about not being able to sleep. I often sleep poorly before presentations, I was presenting my poster tomorrow, and I didn’t think I could do a good job on essentially two days of almost no sleep. I was out about 30 seconds after my head hit the pillow