Times are Changing.

Today we switched from winter to summer time. This coincided with Carina's birthday which therefore lasted only 23 hours. We celebrated the day by going for a brunch buffet at Skarholmen restaurant with a beautiful view of lake Mälaren (for some reason brunch are severed from 12-4pm). With the increase in temperature the ice on the lake became too thin to skate on. The following pictures were taken on the deck of the restaurant showing the lake where we skated only a few weeks ago.

Finally after almost 10 months of continuous winter (starting in South Africa and now ending here) we are entering summer again.

R&C

"I want to ride my bicycle..."

Spring is coming meaning that the snow cover is slowly disappearing. Currently all the roads, including the cycle pathways, are almost completely clear from snow and ice. We therefore bought bicycles and started this week to cycle into work. I spent less than 14 minutes on the road to work (but 19 minutes going home since we live in Malma Backe, which translates to "Malma hill"). Carina have an average travel time of 20 minutes.

Here we are before our weekly trip to the stores.

However, before anyone think of us as cyclists we should highlight the differences between people using bicycles in Sweden and South African cyclists: Here anyone can travel by bicycle and not only fitness fanatics. Also the dress code for cycling is more relaxed and although helmets are encouraged no one wears spandex inspired superhero clothes when mounting a bicycle. The big difference however is that cycling is a basic transport and not a sport, therefore bicycle users gives way to other road users. Being fair, all road users are more polite here.

(Just a note on the weather: the pictures were taken in a very nice +5°C)

R&C

There and back again...

It has been one and two weeks respectively since Carina and I returned from our trip to South Africa. We left on the 19th of February from a snow covered Sweden and arrived the next day in sunny South-Africa. The change in temperature was a bit more than 30°C from a chilling -10° to a warm +23°. Thinking that the heat was going to be a shock we were prepared for it (and it was not so bad after all). We were, however, completely unprepared for the visual shock we experienced (see the following photos, no color adjustment were made).

(Friday 19/02/2010, 12:00, -10°C)

(Saturday 20/02/2010, 11:00, +23°C)

More color commonly found in South-Africa

The best part were of course the time we spent with our families.

Celebrating the arrival of the small one in green,

and trying to convert some of them to Swedes.

But we are very glad to be back and are looking forward to more real seasons with noticeable changes. Currently the temperature is +4°C and all the snow is slowly melting. This means that the landscape is still mostly white dotted with increasing patches of brown and green and puddles of slush puppy water everywhere.


R&C

Semla

We were pleasantly surprised when both Carina and I had semla buns at work to mark the start of lent. This bun is filled with cream and sweet marzipan paste and the taste is well correlated with its unhealthiness.

For more information the different buns consumed throughout the year and their cultural connection see the following article in The Local (an online Swedish newspaper in English):
http://www.thelocal.se/25018/20100216/

R&C

Visiting South Africa

Next week we are leaving for a two week visit to our home country. It is with mixed feelings that we return. We are of course very exited to see our families and this is the main reason for the visit. Although the weekly use of Skype, online newspapers and the occasional letter or parcel has helped us keep in touch with the people back home, it does not compare with a family gathering and the traditional South African braai. We also missed droe-wors en biltong, Mrs Balls' chutney, boerewors, fresh fruit, red meat, salt and vinegar chips, Spur and the occasional KFC.

On the other hand we will be slightly bleached relative to the rest of the population and are not looking forward to the current heat. This may make us miss our weekly skating trips on the lake of ice and our morning strolls to work through the lovely snow covered country side.

We will thus work hard this week to finish as much work as possible to go back to streets filled with lions, giraffes and elephants*.

R&C

*Note to the non South-African readers: You should not belief everything you read about South Africa.

No need to panic...

With only three months until our landlady returns and a serious housing shortage in Uppsala we had a bit of a panic this week. The custom here is to give notice three months in advance and we thought that now is a critical time to get one of these apartments that will open in three months. An additional worry is that all interested individuals (including us) register on a queuing list to obtain an apartment BUT the average waiting time is 7 years. The situation is however not that bad and we were able to find a new apartment, after one day's search, in Gottsunda (a suburb in Uppsala, 7km from the city center) through a private renting agency called Graflunds. We will move in the begining of May and Carina will have two kilometers more to travel to work while I still only have three. If we are approved (the renting agency need to check our credit and working status), we will have an 82 square meter, two bedroom, completely unfurnished apartment. Anyone is therefore welcome to come and visit us, just bring your own bed. Thus, we went to IKEA to look at furniture. There are many nice pieces (all requiring some assembly) that we are interested in but today we only invested in a "starter box" for the kitchen that include pots, pans and other kitchen utensils.

Allthough browsing through IKEA is a very Swedish thing to do it is completely different from another Swedish weekend activity that we grown to enjoy. Here are a few pictures of last weekends ice skating adventure were we skated 15 km.

Crossroads on the ice, with the necessary signpost.

An outing for the whole family.

Note the icepicks around Carina's neck, needed for if she falls through the ice (does the required safety equipment raise some questions about the previous picture...).

Our current focus now is on doing enough work before our trip to Africa, but more on this later.

R&C

On thin Ice?

Most of Europe was crippled by the unusual cold spell the last few weeks. However, in Uppsala life was not disrupted as people went back to work after the Christmas holiday. We experienced an all time record low (as South Africans) when the temperatures dropped to -21.8°C. We went for a walk and the photo was taken at sub -20° at 01:15 in the afternoon (the camera stopped working for a while after this picture):

One of the things that we were looking forward to were to skate on the frozen lake (spanning about 60km from Uppsala to Stockholm). As South Africans we were slightly apprehensive to test the ice ourselves but we heard that a track was scraped during this week and safe to skate on. Still worried, both about our skill level on ice skates and falling though the ice (and drowning and freezing), we went to lake Mälaren. We saw many people on the scraped track, including mothers skating while pushing their babies in prams, and we deemed it safe to go for it.

Here are a few pictures of us on the track about 2km from the shore:

Although it was a beautiful day with ample sun and a relatively warm -10°C, anything sticking out still tend to freeze:
This is something we will definitely do often.

R&C