It's winter in Sverige!

It was going to happen sooner or later...winter has decided to make a long stay here in Sweden. Temperatures are well below zero and everything is covered with white fluffy snow, it really is a lovely wonderland all around! The daylight hours are quite short and if one wants to enjoy the crisp outdoors you have to venture out of the house in the first half of the day. It is dark by 3 pm now.




Today Giovanny and I worked up our courage for a hike in the Norra Lunsen woods near my house. We are quite familiar with the trails inside the woods with no snow on the ground, but many of our usual landmarks, trees, ponds, marshes, and trails, were masked with snow. We found our way much slower than we normally do but it still made for an excellent adventure!
It was a very cold day -10 C. It was a day that thermals were definitely designed for! To give you an idea of the cold factor, it took only 15 minutes for the water in my camelback hose to freeze. Needless to say, there was no water drunk on the forest walk.




This adventure made us realize the need for a second adventure; an adventure that would have the power to defrost us. So, a few hours after coming home, we booked our tickets for a Carribean getaway! Too bad for Giovanny and I that we won't defrost until the third week of January. Definitely something to look forward to!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Gårdsvägen,Sävja,Sweden

Adventures in sweden with Kate and Cap!

Kate and Cap were the first brave people to come to Uppsala for a visit.  They came for the last days of April as you can see from the time stamp on the photographs.  Both of them were very brave travelers, having just barely recovered from a sudden and exhausting stomach bug that they contracted in Paris.  You can't really tell from the picture above, but despite that big smile Cap is ready for a nap!  

We spent a day in Stockholm, walking the city and also on a boat tour.  We were fortunate to have warm and sunny weather for our exploration.  Gamla stan, (Old town), was a great place to grab lunch from an underground thai restaurant.  Gamla stan has cobble streets with very level cobbles which made walking around a mellow-non-ankle-breaking affair.  

It is very hard to see much of Stockholm by foot in a single day.  We decided to take a boat tour through the archipelago.  There are thousands of islands ranging from tiny, to very large, and many with beautiful homes where the "driveway" is a small dock for a boat.  It would be awesome to live in one of those homes!

We also spent a day walking around Uppsala, which can be seen in a single day.  One of the highlights was a stop at the Uppsala Universitet Gustavianum Museum.  The museum highlights awesome research coming from UU.  My favorite was the medical observatory where I imagined I was a cadaver  in the classroom.  Luckily, there were no students around to dissect me!

The day Kate and Cap returned to Paris, the whole town of Uppsala celebrated Valborg.  I have to admit that I don't understand the historical significance, but I celebrated with the rest of the city by drinking champagne and eating strawberries, and then partying for the rest of the day.  I think Kate and Cap's next trip will include this date in their itinerary.  

BWTCC

Question:  what is the best way to cut the cheese?  

Answer:  With lovely company at a picnic in an outdoor art museum in Copenhagen overlooking sea foam green waters.  At this picnic there is a fresh loaf of bread from a Danish bakery, juicy strawberries and a tart bleu cheese.  There was no knife at this picnic, proving that the best way to cut the cheese is with a California driver license.

Mr. Toad in the Road

Tonight on my ride home from work I almost squished this guy while he was making his journey across the road.  It was perhaps a tad cold outside, so he was moving at about the speed of molasses, which gave me ample opportunity to snap a few night photos (which didn't turn out so well, but I will post one anyway).  

My shoe has been provided for scale purposes.  Mr. Toad was larger than my fist and with stretched out legs about as long as my shoe!  Since it seemed like Mr. Toad didn't have all his wits about him I decided to move him away from the middle of the street.  And it is a good thing too, because a car came along moments after.  

Also, it was my birthday recently and I wore my "famous" birthday hat. Anna, who is featured in previous blog entries, gave me this hat about 6 years ago.  My birthday hat was well received by the Swedes in the chemistry department at work.  To celebrate my birthday some coworkers and I watched a movie and ate cake.  Jonathan made me a DELICIOUS cake with stars on the top.  Yum.

Day 11

I think my body is getting accustomed to the cold.  This state hasn't been achieved by staying indoors, obviously.  Each day I try to spend at least one hour outside walking, biking or running.  I would say that walking and biking have been the greatest percentage of my adventures, while running was only completed once, last night.  I haven't gone for a run in over a year, but I have come to realize that this is the most feasible and affordable way to exercise - most bang for the buck - until I get a paycheck.  I prepared by dressing in many layers, and that did the trick.  Even though it was 0 F outside, I managed to stay warm even to my extremities.  

Today, I went on an exploratory walk of Uppsala.  It was a lovely walk with a bone chilling breeze.  Maybe it can be seen from the picture below that there was no sun today:

The picture above shows the riverside path.  The lower elevation, flat portion of land in this photo is actually the frozen river!  At various locations on the river can be seen ice skate marks and shoe prints of people who have dared the ice.  I am curious, but not quite brave enough to cross the river.  Hypothermia does not sound like an adventure I'm ready for just yet.  

In my latest trip to the grocery store I found the "real tube food rack".  Everything was tubed meat, so my appreciation of this strange thing did not result in me buying some.  There was tubed bacon, shrimp, salami, something white, etc...  The packaging was color coordinated and very appealing to the eye.

When I find some vegetarian tube food I promise to give it a whirl.

Tomorrow I begin my second week in Sweden.  I think I will be able to start living in a somewhat normal fashion.  What I mean is that I haven't been able to open a bank account or get a cell phone plan without a "person number", which is like a social security number.  I finally have received my person number (!!!) and I expect that I will be able live like someone who lives in Sweden.  

walk in the sun!

Today is Sunday.  Retail stores, cafes and restaurants seem to generally be closed today.  The local food super-store was open today and since I needed to gather more supplies for my belly, I decided to take a brisk walk to this superstore, Willys, across town.  This store was definitely a step up from the local corner mart I had been going to, with a wider selection and better quality foods.  For instance, I could have bought a foil 1 pound brick of margarine!  Or some tubed american spread?

Willys was also more affordable which always excites me.  I filled my backpack to the brim with foodstuffs and made the trip back to the hotel.  I stopped briefly (so as to not freeze the extremities) to appreciate some of the fine scenery Uppsala had to offer on this sunny Sunday afternoon.  In the picture below is THE cathedral of Uppsala.  I'm sure it serves many purposes.  For me it is a reference point when I'm wandering about the city:  the cathedral is up on the only hill in Uppsala and you can see it from pretty much everywhere.  It also makes me think of the Two Towers, a personal favorite.

In comparing my 90 minute walk to yesterday's 90 minute bike expedition, I would have to say that the walking keeps me warmer than the biking.  The caveat is that walking must be done in a brisk fashion - no moseying.  The weather has been trending towards getting colder and I wonder if the walking to stay warmer will hold?

Running Errands

Saturday - a good day to catch up on chores and such that need doing.  In San Diego getting my to-do list finished would be routinely easy.  1) Get tupperware from Ikea to put lunch in, 2) go to the outdoor store and get a Nalgene, 3) go to the drugstore for soap and a brush (forgot to bring one of those and it has been almost 5 days since i brushed my hair).  An easy list.  Now add the complexity of navigating a new city in the snow on a bicycle where every street has a strange name, and the mundane errand transformes in to a strange adventure.  Uppsala is a small city, so getting so lost to the point of no return is almost impossible, but it is easy to take the wrong turn at a roundabout and end up very far from the intended course.  This may have happend a few times or more on my first outing and in general it was nice to explore the city with no time constraints.  I soon realized after about 45 minutes on the bike that there was most definitely a time constraint:  the amount of time it took for my fingers and toes to become completely frozen.  I surpassed that time constraint on the way to my first stop.  This is the reason there are no new pictures in this post.  I was glad to arrive at Ikea and I spent perhaps more time there than necessary.  I did leave with toasty warm phalanges so my errand there served a double purpose. 

The next stops were done with more quickness and I arrived back at my temporary home (hotel) only partially frozen.  After some lunch and a coffee I will go check out the local gym which includes a bouldering gym.  Right now the gym offers a free week of use and I see no better time to try it out!