Not much happened on Day 2 of the conference. I attended some talks and in the evening they had the conference dinner. We were served arctic char on roasted parsnip, with a great butter sauce, but NO BREAD to wipe it up with!!! And then dessert was a mousse with a cloudberry almond mixture, but my mousse had only a tiny morsel, maybe a quarter, of ( Read more... )

I am in Umea, Sweden this week for the Meeting of the Catalan, Spanish, Swedish Math Societies (a weird mix, yes, I know). I arrived late Monday night and fell asleep around 10:30 because I was so tired. It was still bright out. When I woke up at 5am, it was still bright out and by the time I actually woke up at 8am, it looked as bright as it would ( Read more... )

Today Christian's conference ended, but since it was such a full schedule, no one had had a chance to sightsee the city. So a bunch of us headed to the harbor and took a boat tour. Afterwards, we wanted to walk to the Gamla Stan (the old town), but a marathon blocked our way until we found a tunnel we could pass through. We walked around the old ( Read more... )

Christian had mentioned to me the other day how he can't get over the Swedish greeting "hej". It's pronounced just like the English "hey", but doesn't have the connotations of informality and familiarity. It has all the ubiquity of "hello" and can even be said to royalty without it seeming informal. A native Swede piped in and said that young ( Read more... )

Well, the heavy metal concert ended up not being so rowdy, mainly on account of the formidable soundproofing of our hotel. It was a little surreal this morning, however, walking into the sleek, Scandinavian-design breakfast room and seeing big hair and tattered clothes standing by the buffet counter weighing which multigrain bread to eat this ( Read more... )

As of yesterday afternoon, our hotel has been taken over by at least one heavy metal band and its backup musicians, stage crew and groupies. I spent a few minutes in the lobby this afternoon as housekeeping cleaned our room, and during that half hour I saw dozens of people of both sexes with big hair, tight pants in animal patterns, chains, studded ( Read more... )

Yesterday morning after moving into our new hotel, I headed off to the university to meet with my colleague and give my talk. It went for the full hour and forty five minute block of time (with a 15 minute intermission). I almost couldn't believe I went that long, but I ended up getting a lot of questions during my exposition. My talk actually was ( Read more... )

A few months ago, I read this article in the New York Times about the rise of paternity leave in Sweden from its initiation in the 70s to its near universal adoption nowadays. It talked about the social changes it's brought about in the country. When I read that article, I thought it was a pretty neat system, but underestimated the social impact ( Read more... )

I can't tell you how much we were looking forward to our new hotel in Stockholm. The one we were in last night had really hit our limits. The bathroom was gross, with a surprise source of water that leaks out of the base of the toilet when you sit down on it, wetting your pants if they are around your ankles. This water then leaks over to where you ( Read more... )

Flight to Stockholm. We got up at 5:30 in the morning to plan a little extra time for getting to the airport. You see, today transportation strikes were planned in France and the metro and busses would not be running as frequently. Well, we got to Lyon's central train station no problem, and from there you hop on the brand new train that heads out ( Read more... )