Beginning of Year Två

The last few weeks have been full of beautiful weather, lots of work, a few work-related short trips, and some Swedish springtime holidays (new photos added to the link on the right of the page). I really don't remember the weather last spring/summer being this nice, and I think part of the reason is that last year I didn't participate in the long, cold, dark Swedish winter. This year, it feels absolutely glorious to have sunlight and temperatures right around 20C/70F, and on several occasions in the last month or so I've had picnics/barbecues outside (which is apparently a very Swedish thing to do when the sun is shining). In terms of my work, I have been working hard to write and finalize a few conference papers (which are sending me to the US in August, South Korea in August, and hopefully the US again in November) and a couple of journal papers, as well as developing a course that I will be co-teaching in the fall. I also for the second time ran Göteborgsvarvet, the annual Gothenburg half-marathon which is apparently the largest (participation-wise, not length-wise) half-marathon in the world, which was somewhat painful, but still rewarding.

In the middle of May, I went with a bunch of people in my department to a research-related trip/meeting in Prague. While almost everyone flew there, four of us decided to rent a car and drive down to Prague, which is about 13 hours if done non-stop and closer to 18-20 if you're not in a hurry like us. We left on a Saturday evening right after I finished Göteborgsvarvet, stopped in Malmö (Sweden) for dinner at a famous falafel place, drove across the bridge to Denmark, took a ferry to Germany, and spent the night in Lübeck (Germany). We then finished the drive on Sunday, stopping for an unnecessarily-long three-hour detour in Berlin for a currywurst lunch and arriving in Prague in the evening. The road trip gave me a nice opportunity to see the European countryside and take a few stops along the way. On the way down, one of the guys in the car decided we should play a game where we go around in a circle and name famous Czech people until we can't name any more. It was then that I realized how totally unknowledgeable about the Czech Republic I was, as I couldn't think of a single person. (If any of you find yourselves in this situation in the future, Franz Kafka was Czech.) Anyway, once we got to Prague, there was a program arranged for us, and we as a group of about 60 researchers toured Skoda (a Czech car company); drank, ate, and toured a brewery; toured a sewage treatment plant; took a river-dinner cruise, and went on a walking tour of the city. We went out in the evenings to experience Czech life, which mostly involved drinking the local beer (Czechs are the highest per-capita consumers of beer in the world, by a lot). Prague is a beautiful old European city, but to me it seems a bit too touristy and lacks some of the charm of other cities I've been to. After three days in Prague, we drove all the way back to Sweden in a single day, making only a couple of stops for food in Germany and Denmark.

Yesterday was Midsummer's Eve here in Sweden, which is basically tied with Christmas for being the biggest holiday in Sweden. It always falls on a Friday, and this year it happened to be my birthday, so it was a double celebration. This typically involves eating copious amounts of food (a smörgåsbord), drinking snaps, and going to a park to dance around a big, leafy pole (for more details on the holiday, check this video out). So, yesterday that's pretty much what I did with a few friends. This day also marks the beginning of what I call "vacation season", because from now through the middle of August, pretty much everybody goes on vacation. Last year I didn't know that, and I was one of the only people in the office, but this year I will be observing it fully and taking advantage of my five-weeks' vacation (hooray working in Sweden!). So, I will have more to report on some fun travels as the summer progresses.

Ha en bra sommar!
Steven