The Swedish Life

The last few days have been mostly calm and quiet. While CJ spends her days working on her book, I read and take long walks in the town and countryside. Our apartment is nice and, after several trips to ICA, the local grocery chain, we are comfortable and well provisioned. Here are some pictures of our living situation.

Our Uppsala home (the brick building on the left)

Spring is coming! In front of our building.

Our IKEA couch from the kitchen

Our IKEA kitchen from the couch

Our table set for dinner with Ingrid

CJ's writing lair. It shouldn't be so dark but the window blind is stuck all the way down.

On Wednesday, Ingrid invited me to a movie being shown by the German Department at Uppsala University.  We all had dinner in our apartment (pasta and wine) before Ingrid and I walked the short distance to the venue in the Department of Modern Languages. The movie, "Der Vorleser," is a German-dubbed version of "The Reader" starring Kate Winslet and, somewhat redundantly one would think, also features German subtitles. The pathetic remnants of my high school German notwithstanding, I was able to follow the plot well enough to get the gist of the storyline. The nuances will have to wait for a viewing of the English version.

On Thursday, I walked into Uppsala Centrum (downtown Uppsala) to arrange our trip to Bucharest and Athens (!!) at Big Travel. At home I never feel the need to use a travel agent but, in Europe, it just seems a lot easier than finding my own flights. Mattias, one of their agents, helped us last time we were here when he planned our trip to Norway, and he came through again arranging our flights from Stockholm to Bucharest, Bucharest to Athens, and Athens to Stockholm. He also took the time to talk about the effects of our current presidential insanity on Swedes traveling to the U.S. (the effects are not good) and about his own many trips to the U.S. including to the Pacific Northwest. 

On the way back to our apartment, I got some nice pictures of the Uppsala Castle.

 Yesterday, Friday, I took a long ramble to the north. I had noticed on a map something called the Rymdgeodetiska Observatoriet which I interpret as a geodesic dome used as an observatory. After googling it and actually looking at it in person, I am still not sure exactly what it is. It was a pleasant walk though along streets, on walking paths, through parks, woods, and construction areas. The locale, Hällby, has been settled for 700 years and features allotments, small patches of ground for people in town to use for gardening. However, it is not much to look at.

In the neighborhood of Hällby

Hällby

The geodesic dome, apparently gone to seed.

Later in the day, we took a walk in the Stadsskogen (city forest).

Balloon-like water tower

Walking in the forest

The sun came out!

Friday evening I went to my first meetup of the trip where I talked to people from Poland, Sweden, Argentina, and St. Louis. A main topic of conversation was the terrorist attack in Stockholm which had happened a few hours before. Most agreed it was just a matter of time before Sweden was hit and no one seemed overly surprised. We also talked about creeping authoritarianism in Poland and its possible parallels in the United States, the rise of conservative populism in Europe and the U.S. and shared our dismay. And then things degenerated to debating of the moral issues of beastiality. Oh well.

On my way home, I noticed that the pump house was all lit up.