Semester

The Swedish word "semester" means holiday. As an outsider it currently feels as if the Swedes are the chosen people and that rapture happened. When I cycle to work the roads are quiet and I cross the usually busy intersections without seeing a living soul. When I arrive at work I find that all the doors are locked and need to dig deep in my bag to find my unused key. All the lights are turned off and the building feels spooky. During the day two Chinese colleagues appear and later one Polish guy. At lunch the four of us discover our British colleague and we discuss the absence of all the Swedes.

Apparently holiday in Sweden is very serious. During the summer most of the cities are emptied as the populous goes to their summer retreats in the Swedish wilderness. Many have summer cottages, often in remote areas only accessible by dirt roads through heavy forest (including a few kilometres of hiking). Also popular is owning one of the millions of small islands, which are often only a few hundred meters across. Usually there is a cottage on your island but everything else, including drinking water, need to be ferried in the small boat with you, to your small kingdom. Some Swedes are also reported to travel to other European countries just for fun or to see relatives.

It is very strange to see how a whole nation disappears within a few weeks. Now we can only wait, with the other slightly frightened immigrants. We shall see if the Swedes will return or remain feral. With their return we are promised that all the shops will reopen and longer business hours for the few that haven't abandoned us, doubling the number of busses which have been reduced to meet the current demand, and even more exiting programs on TV.

But until then, we have some work to finish.

R&C

Lyon

The conference I attended in Lyon was very busy. I met a number of interesting people and we spoke mainly about work. The conference centre (Cité Internationale) is located in beautiful surroundings and is encircled by the Rhône river on the one side and a huge park (Parc de la Tête d'Or) on the other side . The city architecture is a mixture of old and modern buildings and the public transport is excellent with subway connections, electrical trolley busses and trams to everywhere you want to go. The conference package did include a 5 day transport ticket that you could use on all the public transport, which was very useful. Conference activities continued to 20hoo which left only a few hours to explore. However, since the sun set quite late this time of the year I could squeeze a few things in. The one evening we went for a glass of wine on a restaurant ship anchored in the Rhône. The Rhône river has a funny turquoise colour but looks very beautiful in the evening with the lights of the city and the bridges reflecting from it. The conference dinner was at a famous brasserie (Brasserie Georges), which was established in 1836.

Below are a few picks of the river, conference centre and the park:

Rhône River


Cité Internationale Conference centre:




Parc de la Tête d'Or:






Park with conference centre in background:



C

3 Swedish miles

We found a hiking trail called the Upplandsleden, which is 40 Swedish miles.

Last Saturday we did 3, which left us with sore muscles, blisters on our feet, aching legs and a bit of sunburn. It may be worthwhile to mention here that a Swedish mile is 10 kilometers. Our journey was from our house to Fjällnora.

Much of the trail was through forested areas. Here we stopped to reapply mosquito repellent since the Swedish mosquito's are superior in number and stinger length.

Approximately 9 km into the hike we hiked past the Lunsen cottage. This cottage was build in the 1800's but are now used mainly as an overnight resting place for hikers. Here we also had our first lunch.

There are a number of marches and bogs throughout the trail. However the trail is very well maintained and boardwalks are found across the deeper waters.

Much much later in the day we hiked through the country side where small villages are interspersed with farms.

We stopped at a rune stone to have our second lunch.

Finally we reached the lake at Fjällnora. We pitched our tent next to the lake and had a very quick dip in the cold water.

We made supper on our gas stove and went to bed.

The next morning we awoke to a beautiful sight as the sun shone on the lake.

We set our to find a bus back home but we needed to hike another 5 km alongside the lake.

Just before we reached the bus stop, Kurd (this is his name) from Kurdistan (someone who we haven't met before), gave us a lift all the way back to Uppsala.

This was the longest hike that we did in one day and although it was hard work it was a lot of fun. We are looking forward to at least one more hike during this summer but it will have to wait until Carina comes back from France (more detail will follow her return).

R&C

Midsummer Madness

We heard that Midsummer in Sweden is as big (if not bigger) an event than Christmas. Therefore we decided to partake in the festivities. The Midsummer festival is celebrated the first Friday afternoon following the solstice (see previous post). Like proper Swedes we slept late on Friday and started our 10 km cycle journey into the countryside at 10h30. Our destination... Hammarskogs Herrgård (see our previous post on how we got there on ice skates during prior trip). On arrival there were relatively few people.


However, the whole lawn in front of the mansion (herrgård) soon filled with families on picnic blankets.



At 14:00, the Maypole, a symbol of fertility, was erected. Not surprising - there is a peak in the Swedish birthrate in March.



Traditional folk dancing around the Maypole were accompanied by singing.


(Lead singer in traditional folk dress and children with flower wreaths on their heads)

After a short nap, we snacked on the last of our picnic food and started our journey homewards.

R&C

Midsommar

Today is midsummer in the northern hemisphere. For Uppsala this means that the sun will set at 10:16 tonight and rise 3:26 tomorrow. However we have not seen complete darkness for quite a while now. Even in the middle of the night the sun hovers just below the horizon and you can track the movement of the light and watch it go from where the sun set to where it rise again with no clear boundary between dusk and dawn. Below are pictures taken on our balcony of Ronnie at 21:oo roughly an hour before sunset. This weekend we will go to see the midsummer celebrations where people dance around a huge Maypole.


C&R

Kungliga Bröllop i Sverige (Royal Wedding in Sweden)

Today we sat the whole day in front of the television to watch the crown princess get married. This event has been building up steam for quite a while with media hype and all kinds of memorabelia for sale in shops. In this egalitarian country the first-born is first in line for the crown whether she is female or not. Thus even though the crown-princess Victoria has a younger brother she will inherit the crown from her father Kung Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden. We were weighing the option of going to Stockholm for the day but then decided we will see more on TV. Indeed two of the channels showed live coverage of the event the whole day long. It was really nice to see all the nobby people gathering and the wedding itself was also very nice. Victoria married her gym instructor that she met 10 years ago. Yes... maybe its a bit lame to watch a royal wedding... but we enjoyed it, and it really looked if the coupled loves each other.... very nice. Below are some pics and links to more pics and stories. Enjoy. Four hurrahs for Sweden...



Links:
Sky
Gallery
Wikipedia

C&R

Springing into summer

The last few weeks everything have grown really really fast. This has happened to such an extent that we even think plants in South Africa are lazy. The surroundings have transformed completely and are very beautiful with wonderful colours. The sun never properly sets anymore and days are almost endless. Below are a few photos of a bike trip to the lake (around 8 o’clock in the evening).



C&R