Uppsala, musings, etc.
Hey everyone. I have now been in Sweden for a little over a month, so I thought now would be a good time to muse over various things.
Stockholm/Elsewhere:
A couple weeks ago I went with some friends to Uppsala (a Swede, a Bulgarian, and a Greek), an old university town about an hour by train north of Stockholm. My friend Karin used to go to school there, and the city was having a cultural festival, so she was guiding tours around her old dorm building, which is one of the awesomest student housing options that I've ever seen. The building itself is about 200 years old, and it was occupied by hippies in the 70s and refurbished into this really cool, rustic old place to hang out and party. The bottom floor has two giant common rooms that have bookshelves from the floor to the ceiling and giant windows. It's a great place to have a party, which apparently happens on a fairly frequent basis.
One of the living rooms.
The attic, which has a number of stolen municipal signs on the walls - apparently the aforementioned hippies had a rule that you had to steal a cool road sign in order to qualify to live in the attic.
The cultural festival itself was fun - there were bands playing in various stages in the street and vendors out hawking their wares (I bought an incredibly delicious and dense ball of nougat and chocolate that was sprinkled with chopped almonds). Uppsala actually felt a lot like Iowa City or Freiburg in a lot of ways, except, obviously, Swedish. The details of our wanderings aren't all that interesting, though we did check out a photography exhibition that was set up in an old, defunct public restroom situated under a bridge, which was pretty awesome. Good photography too, and the extremely questionable setting gave it a nice atmosphere.
A church sitting on top of part of the river running through Uppsala - apparently students have raft races down it every spring, which, given the river's shallowness and rockiness, stikes me as being kind of dangerous. But what do I know?
The Uppsala Cathedral. It is the tallest in Scandinavia, the seat of the Church of Sweden, and built on top of an old Viking holy site. People used to be sacrificed to Odin and Thor and the other Æsir here, which is fucking awesome.
Inside the cathedral.
The bier of Gustav Vasa, the first king of what can be considered modern Sweden. He's in the back of the cathedral, which I had forgotten, so when I stumbled across the tomb my thoughts were, "Hey, this is a pretty sweet tomb. I wonder whose it ... oh. I'm dumb."
The cathedral, being on a Viking holy site, is surrounded by several runestones. Karin could read them, because apparently they teach Swedish children how to read runes in grade school. I have an idiotic grin on my face here.
A sign indicating the script on the above runestone, and identifying it as being 1070 years old.
The dissection room in what used to be the Uppsala School of Medicine.
We had dinner at this incredibly delicious and surpisingly cheap (for Sweden) café that Karin knew about. The guy who owns it is eccentric as hell and really awesome. We spent about three hours just sitting in the café because after a while he decided it was too quiet, so he and a couple of friends decided to play a small concert for the customers. He does a great impression of a trumpet.
Afterwards we decided it was a good idea to head out to one of the docks on the river and drink wine. It was a good idea. The above is Karin and a bridge.
A failed attempt to take a nighttime picture of the lights by adjusting the exposure time on my camera.
In between then and now, life has been chugging along pretty smoothly. I went to a goodbye party last weekend for an acquaintance who will be moving to Washington, DC with her boyfriend to work at the NIH. It was fun enough, and I got some books out of it, since they didn't feel like taking books with them across the Pond. The party itself was "trailer trash"-themed, and the people around me, dressed in plaids and ripped jeans and wearing mullet wigs, were amused when I told them that it wasn't all that different from a lot of parties I've been to in the States. Some of them did a great job of dressing up too, because if you saw them anywhere outside of Iowa City they would be indistinguishable from the general population.
Work is still fun, and I may even be getting published already! I've been working with Karin on a project of hers for the last week or so, analyzing data, and she wants to submit it to a few journals of science. My role was a small one, but because I ran the analyses and wrote up my findings I will (hopefully) get to be listed as an author. I am, obviously, quite pleased about this, because pimping oneself through publications is an important part of medical academia.
It is once again a beautiful day in Stockholm. Fall has fallen really suddenly here, and the trees have pretty much all started turning color at once. I spent most of the afternoon taking a walk in the Djurgården part of the city, an island almost entirely covered in forest and trails, except for the western portion, which is home to a number of museums. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera, which is too bad. Hopefully the weather will be nice again so that I can get some photos, though I'm not too hopeful - this next week is supposed to get colder again, and it's supposed to be cloudy and rainy (though, to be fair, they said it was going to be cloudy today, and it has been completely clear since I woke up). One of the nice things about the warmer weather we've been having, though, is that I can take the guitar I bought on an ebay-style site and practice in the park next to my apartment. I've noticed, though, that it's already getting darker early here. It looks like 5:30 at 2:30 now, and by the time December rolls around there will only be a few hours of daylight available. Fortunately, there's lots to do in Stockholm, and I'll be heading down to Berlin with my Bulgarian friend (Valeria) at the end of October, and then Paris to visit my friend Sari in November.
Speaking of French things, I went to the Swedish Royal Opera the other night with some friends to see a production of Camille Saint-Saëns' Samson and Delilah, and, to my very great surprise, I actually enjoyed myself. Having grown up disliking opera on account of my dad's listening to it all the time, I was just going to be social, but the music was actually really good, and the female lead (who was excellent) only hit one of those piercing high notes once. I was surprised that Saint-Saëns was able to make a whole three-act opera out of the Samson story, though, because it's not a very long one. The company did an interesting take on it, though, modernizing it somewhat and turning it into a metaphor for the founding and history of modern Israel. It pretty much worked (Philistines = Palestinians/Arabs, Jews = Jews, etc.), though they didn't really explain why Samson didn't age between 1948 and 1995, but whatever. Overall, a positive experience, and I might even be convinced to go to another one.
Political thoughts/miscellani:
I'm now going to write in list form, because I don't really have any more patience for paragraph format.
- I've been following the presidential campaign as carefully as I can from this side of the Atlantic, and so far I like what I see from the Obama people. I watched the entirety of the debate, and I was glad to see that Obama held his own against the older, grouchier, and more experienced McCain. I thought that Obama did better on questions of the economy, but there is no question that McCain won when they got to foreign policy. I think McCain, who, for all his faults, is a very smart guy, won the debate overall, but I'm happy that the preliminary reaction of most Americans seems to be favoring Obama. Americans may not know how to judge a debate properly, but at least they're wrong in the right way this time. I think that Palin, whom I loathe, is being a little more of a hindrance now than a help, which is a relief because I never understood why she was even on the Republicans' list (outside of being a woman, and therefore making history in the same way as Obama is). Corey, those websites you recommended have been really useful. I find myself checking them every other day or so.
- Can anyone explain what the long-term effects of the whole banks-going-broke thing will be? On me, I mean? I can see that the whole situation reflects the overall downward trend of the US economy, but I guess I don't really understand what the implications will be on the lives of individual Americans who are not directly involved in the affairs of Wall Street. My impression is that I'm picking a bad time to go into debt via medical school, though. I also find myself torn with regards to the government's proposed bail-out plan. On the one hand, I do think that the Fed has to do something to prevent further slippage, and I love seeing the Republicans eating their own shit and having to resort to what amounts to socialist behavior to try to fix the fallout of when a free-market(ish) economy makes a mess of itself. On the other hand, I really object to being asked to bail out companies that failed as a result of their CEOs' own poor decisions. Plus, I have no idea where everyone thinks this money is going to come from, as the United States is already in massive amounts of debt and is bogged down in two wars. I just hope that Obama, should he win, will find the cash somewhere to implement these plans of change he keeps talking about. (Side Note: If Obama wins, which I really hope he does, he is going to have to deliver on his whole "change" shtick if he wants the Democrats to have any sort of political future.)
- On a lighter note, I've recently discovered this site. I recommend you guys start on the first page of the current issue, though all the back issues are great too. It's extremely funny, and has given me a new career goal.
All right, that's about enough out of me for today. I'll probably post more thoughts soon, as things develop and occur to me.
Stockholm/Elsewhere:
A couple weeks ago I went with some friends to Uppsala (a Swede, a Bulgarian, and a Greek), an old university town about an hour by train north of Stockholm. My friend Karin used to go to school there, and the city was having a cultural festival, so she was guiding tours around her old dorm building, which is one of the awesomest student housing options that I've ever seen. The building itself is about 200 years old, and it was occupied by hippies in the 70s and refurbished into this really cool, rustic old place to hang out and party. The bottom floor has two giant common rooms that have bookshelves from the floor to the ceiling and giant windows. It's a great place to have a party, which apparently happens on a fairly frequent basis.
One of the living rooms.
The attic, which has a number of stolen municipal signs on the walls - apparently the aforementioned hippies had a rule that you had to steal a cool road sign in order to qualify to live in the attic.
The cultural festival itself was fun - there were bands playing in various stages in the street and vendors out hawking their wares (I bought an incredibly delicious and dense ball of nougat and chocolate that was sprinkled with chopped almonds). Uppsala actually felt a lot like Iowa City or Freiburg in a lot of ways, except, obviously, Swedish. The details of our wanderings aren't all that interesting, though we did check out a photography exhibition that was set up in an old, defunct public restroom situated under a bridge, which was pretty awesome. Good photography too, and the extremely questionable setting gave it a nice atmosphere.
A church sitting on top of part of the river running through Uppsala - apparently students have raft races down it every spring, which, given the river's shallowness and rockiness, stikes me as being kind of dangerous. But what do I know?
The Uppsala Cathedral. It is the tallest in Scandinavia, the seat of the Church of Sweden, and built on top of an old Viking holy site. People used to be sacrificed to Odin and Thor and the other Æsir here, which is fucking awesome.
Inside the cathedral.
The bier of Gustav Vasa, the first king of what can be considered modern Sweden. He's in the back of the cathedral, which I had forgotten, so when I stumbled across the tomb my thoughts were, "Hey, this is a pretty sweet tomb. I wonder whose it ... oh. I'm dumb."
The cathedral, being on a Viking holy site, is surrounded by several runestones. Karin could read them, because apparently they teach Swedish children how to read runes in grade school. I have an idiotic grin on my face here.
A sign indicating the script on the above runestone, and identifying it as being 1070 years old.
The dissection room in what used to be the Uppsala School of Medicine.
We had dinner at this incredibly delicious and surpisingly cheap (for Sweden) café that Karin knew about. The guy who owns it is eccentric as hell and really awesome. We spent about three hours just sitting in the café because after a while he decided it was too quiet, so he and a couple of friends decided to play a small concert for the customers. He does a great impression of a trumpet.
Afterwards we decided it was a good idea to head out to one of the docks on the river and drink wine. It was a good idea. The above is Karin and a bridge.
A failed attempt to take a nighttime picture of the lights by adjusting the exposure time on my camera.
In between then and now, life has been chugging along pretty smoothly. I went to a goodbye party last weekend for an acquaintance who will be moving to Washington, DC with her boyfriend to work at the NIH. It was fun enough, and I got some books out of it, since they didn't feel like taking books with them across the Pond. The party itself was "trailer trash"-themed, and the people around me, dressed in plaids and ripped jeans and wearing mullet wigs, were amused when I told them that it wasn't all that different from a lot of parties I've been to in the States. Some of them did a great job of dressing up too, because if you saw them anywhere outside of Iowa City they would be indistinguishable from the general population.
Work is still fun, and I may even be getting published already! I've been working with Karin on a project of hers for the last week or so, analyzing data, and she wants to submit it to a few journals of science. My role was a small one, but because I ran the analyses and wrote up my findings I will (hopefully) get to be listed as an author. I am, obviously, quite pleased about this, because pimping oneself through publications is an important part of medical academia.
It is once again a beautiful day in Stockholm. Fall has fallen really suddenly here, and the trees have pretty much all started turning color at once. I spent most of the afternoon taking a walk in the Djurgården part of the city, an island almost entirely covered in forest and trails, except for the western portion, which is home to a number of museums. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera, which is too bad. Hopefully the weather will be nice again so that I can get some photos, though I'm not too hopeful - this next week is supposed to get colder again, and it's supposed to be cloudy and rainy (though, to be fair, they said it was going to be cloudy today, and it has been completely clear since I woke up). One of the nice things about the warmer weather we've been having, though, is that I can take the guitar I bought on an ebay-style site and practice in the park next to my apartment. I've noticed, though, that it's already getting darker early here. It looks like 5:30 at 2:30 now, and by the time December rolls around there will only be a few hours of daylight available. Fortunately, there's lots to do in Stockholm, and I'll be heading down to Berlin with my Bulgarian friend (Valeria) at the end of October, and then Paris to visit my friend Sari in November.
Speaking of French things, I went to the Swedish Royal Opera the other night with some friends to see a production of Camille Saint-Saëns' Samson and Delilah, and, to my very great surprise, I actually enjoyed myself. Having grown up disliking opera on account of my dad's listening to it all the time, I was just going to be social, but the music was actually really good, and the female lead (who was excellent) only hit one of those piercing high notes once. I was surprised that Saint-Saëns was able to make a whole three-act opera out of the Samson story, though, because it's not a very long one. The company did an interesting take on it, though, modernizing it somewhat and turning it into a metaphor for the founding and history of modern Israel. It pretty much worked (Philistines = Palestinians/Arabs, Jews = Jews, etc.), though they didn't really explain why Samson didn't age between 1948 and 1995, but whatever. Overall, a positive experience, and I might even be convinced to go to another one.
Political thoughts/miscellani:
I'm now going to write in list form, because I don't really have any more patience for paragraph format.
- I've been following the presidential campaign as carefully as I can from this side of the Atlantic, and so far I like what I see from the Obama people. I watched the entirety of the debate, and I was glad to see that Obama held his own against the older, grouchier, and more experienced McCain. I thought that Obama did better on questions of the economy, but there is no question that McCain won when they got to foreign policy. I think McCain, who, for all his faults, is a very smart guy, won the debate overall, but I'm happy that the preliminary reaction of most Americans seems to be favoring Obama. Americans may not know how to judge a debate properly, but at least they're wrong in the right way this time. I think that Palin, whom I loathe, is being a little more of a hindrance now than a help, which is a relief because I never understood why she was even on the Republicans' list (outside of being a woman, and therefore making history in the same way as Obama is). Corey, those websites you recommended have been really useful. I find myself checking them every other day or so.
- Can anyone explain what the long-term effects of the whole banks-going-broke thing will be? On me, I mean? I can see that the whole situation reflects the overall downward trend of the US economy, but I guess I don't really understand what the implications will be on the lives of individual Americans who are not directly involved in the affairs of Wall Street. My impression is that I'm picking a bad time to go into debt via medical school, though. I also find myself torn with regards to the government's proposed bail-out plan. On the one hand, I do think that the Fed has to do something to prevent further slippage, and I love seeing the Republicans eating their own shit and having to resort to what amounts to socialist behavior to try to fix the fallout of when a free-market(ish) economy makes a mess of itself. On the other hand, I really object to being asked to bail out companies that failed as a result of their CEOs' own poor decisions. Plus, I have no idea where everyone thinks this money is going to come from, as the United States is already in massive amounts of debt and is bogged down in two wars. I just hope that Obama, should he win, will find the cash somewhere to implement these plans of change he keeps talking about. (Side Note: If Obama wins, which I really hope he does, he is going to have to deliver on his whole "change" shtick if he wants the Democrats to have any sort of political future.)
- On a lighter note, I've recently discovered this site. I recommend you guys start on the first page of the current issue, though all the back issues are great too. It's extremely funny, and has given me a new career goal.
All right, that's about enough out of me for today. I'll probably post more thoughts soon, as things develop and occur to me.