Stockholm Part 1: Old Ships and Young Physicists

A full weekend in Stockholm, the self-proclaimed 'capital of Scandinavia,' for me was three things: exhausting, expensive, and totally worth it. 

I arrived late Thursday night, coming off several days in which my body attempted to adjust to frigid temperatures 6 weeks earlier than it was used to. Stockholm, a multitude of islands spattered across vast lakes, inlets, and Baltic bays, stays tepid much longer than its northern neighbors. But all I saw when I arrived was dark and empty streets; I navigated my way to the apartment of my second-ever couchsurfing (CS) host, Frida.

Except for breakfast at a nearby cafe on Saturday morning, Frida and I didn't get to chat a lot, but she seemed really personable and interesting. She's a trained engineering physicist who works for the Swedish government doing risk assessments on nuclear power plants. This topic obviously has garnered much more interest in the last few years following Fukushima, and to me it's totally fascinating. So at breakfast it was just two wild and crazy physicists talking radiation levels and statistical theory. She also is very into rock climbing (often taking long weekends to go for climbs in Turkey and Mallorca, among other places), travelling (is driving from the western to eastern end of Australia with a few friends over Christmas), painting some pretty incredible paintings (see below), and the Swedish version of American Idol (uh, yeah). Despite being completely different from my Copenhagen CS experience, it was still pleasant, a good way to meet a local, and financially efficient.

Living room: sunset painting and 'starburst' paintings on the wall are Frida originals.

But she was busy all day Friday, so I did a pretty extensive walking tour of Stockholm on my own. Friday began with a dense marine-layer type fog hanging low in the city, clearing up by mid-morning to reveal Stockholm and all its archipelagian majesty.

Well away from the city on the island of Djugårten.

Some fancy building across the water. Note:  'Murica represented far left.

All my Swedish coworkers, and my boss back in Madison, insisted if I were to go to one museum it had to be the Vasa Museum. In the early 17th century, Sweden was at war with Poland. The Swedish king wanted a flagship to take into battle, and commissioned the building of the Vasa. He was unhappy with the master shipbuilder's plans, wanting it bigger. Unfortunately the ship's hull was already completed, so the only additions could be made upward. You may be able to guess what happened next:  on the maiden voyage, only a kilometer from shore, the Vasa was hit with a slight gale, listed heavily to one side (filling the cannon ports with brackish Baltic water), and sank. Oi! After 3.5 centuries it was successfully raised and restored to remarkable condition.

No wide lens feature on my camera.

Roar.

Giant map of Scandinavia. I want.

It was a really neat and unique museum; I certainly recommend it to anyone finding themselves with time to kill in Stockholm. 

More to come in following posts.

Skål!

Advice: Don't ever lose your wallet while overseas

Don't do it. Seriously. It sucks.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to forsake your access to money? Have you ever pondered the freedom you might feel if you didn't have to worry about how much something cost, not because you are swimming in unlimited cash but because you don't have the means to buy it so you won't get it anyway? Have you ever wanted to shirk the seemingly arbitrary value assigned to pieces of paper and plastic supposedly representing numbers stored on a secure computer network? Have you ever wanted to experience economic purgatory in which there is no option to resupply diminishing food stores and you can't go out and do anything because you have no physical financial capability? If you answered yes to any of the previous questions, let me cure you of your idiocy:  not having money and not being sure when you'll have access to it again is miserable, stressful, and downright annoying.

Last week, after buying some ping pong balls at a sporting goods store, I rode my bike home. Somewhere during that 20 minute ride my wallet suicidally leapt from the side compartment of my bag which somebody had forgotten to zip up. If realizing you've lost the vessel containing your driver's license, debit and credit cards, and most importantly coffee club card isn't bad enough, scouring one side of a bike path for the next hour looking for a piece of tri-fold leather can only be described as humiliating; talk about adding insult to injury.

I cancelled both 'money' cards, and my bullheadedness decided accepting wire transferred money from pops wasn't necessary.

Another little tidbit:  FedEx international express shipment of a debit card from Madison to Sweden is anything but express (or cheap - cost around $80). Eight solid days after losing my wallet, I rode my bike to the local post office distribution center to pick up a 2 ounce package containing plastic with my name and some numbers on it; apparently there is no FedEx office in Umeå.

Anyway, I'm alive. And I feel better for having typed this out.

No pictures this time, sorry.

Until next time.
Skål!

A Hike

I've recently documented my involvement in couchsurfing as a way to meet new people in new cities. It turns out it's also a good way to meet some people and do things where you are currently residing. 

Last Sunday I went on a hike north of Umeå with 3 students I met on couchsurfing: Elina - a Swedish nutritionist, Nadini - a German studying German studies(?), and Emilio - an Italian lawyer. And then there's me, Eric - an American medical physicist. Real World Season 27 - Umeå

It was a warm day by the current standards of northern Sweden, and I knew we were going to be hiking all day, so I decided to wear hiking shorts. In typical American independent fashion, I was the only one.  

Anyway, the three of them are pretty fun and easy to talk to. We boarded a bus at 7 am and road it for half an hour north to the lake known as Tavelsjö (pronounced tahv-ells-shoo).

There is apparently a legend of a (very cute) version of Loch Ness-like monster living here.

The plan was to then hike all the way back to Umeå resulting in a 37 km (roughly 23 mile!) hike. The area provides some really great scenery, particularly when you climb the 300 m high mountains/hills overlooking the lakes:

Looking east at dawn. 

The lake from afar.

It was a long day, but it was certainly good to have some talkative and enthusiastic people as company. 

Enjoying a mid-morning snack with Emilio.

Chillin' with Elina. Getting late in the day and starting to regret the shorts.

Going up.

We got lost at one point, but everyone else had GPS-equipped smartphones so it wasn't that much of an issue. We didn't see much wildlife, although there were signs of elk and beavers.

Remember the show Angry Beavers? Very underrated cartoon.

I suppose I don't have too much else to say about the hike, other than it took 10 hours and it was dark by the time we got back to Umeå. 

Later in the week, the four of us watched Into the Wild, mostly because I had never seen it. "You're an American who likes hiking and you've never seen Into the Wild." I would recommend it, but only if you like sad things and Kristen Stewart's acting, which of course are mutually inclusive.  

Skål!

Bonus:  I should credit both Elina and Nadini for taking all of the pictures in this post. It was nice to have photographers with decent cameras taking decent pictures. Here are a few more:

Idyllic Swedish cottages on a remote lake. 

Going down.

Mountaintop wildflowers wildly flowering atop the mountain.

Seven hours into the hike, this view of Umeå. Still some distance to go.

Copenhagen Part III: Oh Those Crazy Danish Nights

I don't mean to overkill my experience in Denmark's capital, but it was four nights and it was pretty damn fun.

My couchsurfing host, Maja, is one of the coordinators of the Danish model UN. On Saturday night she had a dinner with several of her other fellow coordinators to do some last minute planning. I insisted on joining. It turned into some strange combination of a Mexican fiesta, wine-tasting, and ultimately, photo-shoot. And I was wildly popular with Maja's 7 female friends. Was it my pseudo-beard? Or my undeniable and inexorable charm? Or my world famous hand-made chunky guacamole? Maybe, but I'm guessing it was mostly because I'm American, and our government is not functioning. Politics...amIright?

Anyway, the night became more and more blurry, ya know, in a good way. Let's get some pictures up in here to corroborate:

Shrimp Boil represent!

Danes like to go out to clubs starting at 130 am. This means I was drinking coffee at 1, and then continuing shenanigans out on the town.

Drunk eyes alert.

Oh yeah, I should mention this is Maja. Also, drunk eyes alert.

Yeah.

Nice hat that I bought at an ACE hardware store three years ago.

Dirty bar ruined my shoes.

I was awake until 5 am, something I haven't done in years. And it hurt. A really terrible hangover is the visceral and consequential punishment necessary to remind the partying masses that they are, indeed, mortal.

I have a working theory that there are seven S's to curing a hangover (sleep, shower, shave, shit, sweat, smoke, and sip-water). For this special edition Danish hangover, I added one more:  See where three famous Danes are buried. Maybe a bit of a stretch. 

Søren Kierkegaard wrote that "subjectivity is truth." The truth is that his grave is objectively boring:

Nice flowers though.

Hans Christian Anderson gave us many beautiful fairy tales, filled with morals and wisdom. But his gravestone belies nothing of his authorial genius:

A bit of an Ugly Duckling.

Guess which profession had the most badass headstone. The following picture does not do this grave-site justice, so click here  for a better image:

So cool it made a lens flare..

Yeah. It's a physicist. My man, Niels Bohr.

The rest of my last day was spent walking around and eating a giant Chinese dinner. I also somehow managed to read all of Dan Brown's new book in 2 and a half days, so that's something.

All in all, Copenhagen was a long and amazing trip. I fully recommend trying couchsurfing. I also hope to stay in touch with Maja, who turned out to be a perfect first-timer's couchsurfing host. Back to the dreary, cold north.

Skål!

Copenhagen Part II: Alt (-ernative uses of) J

Feel free to listen to some Alt-J while you read.
Intro. 
Couchsurfing could probably be viewed as a grand social experiment investigating the link(s) between humanity, trust, extroversion, and frugality. It also has to be considered one of the riskiest things someone can do when they don't have a cell phone and they are alone. It essentially is agreeing to enter the domicile of a stranger whose personality, living condition, and temperament you have to extrapolate based on a single online profile page and the exchange of a few short messages.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night I initiated myself into couchsurfing by staying with Maja. And don't let that 'j' deceive you; it's pronounced Maia. She is a born and bred Copenhagener and a 23 year old political science student who is apparently just as trusting (read:  foolhardy) as I am. We had agreed Thursday morning to meeting at her place at around 5 pm on Friday evening. Since, again, I had no cell phone to confirm or navigate with, my uncertainty increased with every passing turn of the 35 minute walk to her apartment south from downtown Copenhagen. I arrived, with ice-breaking beer in hand, at exactly 5 to find Maja exasperated after having to wait an hour to get into her apartment which she had locked herself out of. She glossed over the details and it became prominently obvious to me that she wanted to be a perfect hostess. She showed me my sleeping arrangements:

A little more space and privacy than a 10 person shared hostel room.

After chatting over a few beers about whatever for a few hours, we went to a concert at one of Copenhagen's underground music venues, Pumpehuset. We waited outside a bit for one of Maja's friends, Kajse. Yes that's right, another misplaced 'j'. Her name is pronounced exactly like Mark Wahlberg trying to say 'Kaiser' in Fear, or really just any Bostonian saying 'Kaiser'. Anyway, she was wild, and a lot of fun, and apparently knew the drummer in the opening act. After inhaling something like 40 cigarettes worth of second-hand smoke on the smoking terrace, the band began. They were great, some kind of mixture between Black Sabbath (hard, foreboding riffs) and Nirvana (melancholy lyrics), with a still very energetic stage presence. Somehow it all worked:

Too close for a hard rock concert?

Yeah I was definitely too close. The sound on that video is brutal. The main act was a group of three 20 year old Danish girls. They were a loud and head-banging type punk with incomprehensible lyrics. But still very enjoyable.

"Something something something, anarchy!"

It was a good night, but my ears were ringing for several hours afterward.

Interlude.  The next day this exchanged happened:
Maja - So not having a cell phone or internet, do you want to use my computer?
Eric - No. I can't really think of a reason I would need to.
M - Isn't there anyone you want to let know that you haven't gotten lost or been murdered by your couchsurfing host?
E - Hmm, good point. But that is exactly what a person who is just about to murder me would want me to do...

Maja had to study for an upcoming exam the entire day, but she lent me her bike to tour the city, in style.
Things I saw:
Golden spires

This makes me think of Bugles, and now I'm hungry.

Little Mermaid statue

Her head has been sawed off 9 times, including 3 times by one man with a very weird Disney-character-statue fetish.

A place to buy weed on the street

Dude, Bugles sound so good right now 

And your classic Copenhagen canal shot

There was a 5 meter tall bridge directly behind me, so obviously these sailboats are just for show.

All in all, it was Something Good.

Skål!

Copenhagen Part I

Copenhagen, Denmark. A four day excursion, sans cell phone or internet access. I carried with me two printed maps:  airport to hostel (arriving around midnight Thursday), and downtown to a stranger's apartment. More on the latter in a subsequent post. The most technologically advanced object I carried with me was an athletic watch. It does have Indiglo...

Navigating to a small hostel in the winding streets and alleys of downtown Copenhagen with a confusing paper Google map is difficult. By the way, what is the deal with European streets? Cobblestones are quaint and interesting and a reminder of a city's budding origins, but they are also treacherous at night for a person with recurring ankle problems. And how hard is it to have one street keep the same name for more than a km? There are no discernible changes in the direction of the street, much less some kind of intersection or bifurcation. And why do the names have to be hidden on the sides of buildings like it's a secretive enlightenment only the truly worthy can attain, "Peace lies within, and ohbytheway, this is Nørre Farimagsgade." 

Anyway I eventually found the hostel around 1 am. I grabbed a few beers and admired the diversity you can only see in a hostel. Friday I awoke with that fervent feeling of excitement and novelty that I always get in a new city with lots of time to explore. I began walking in random directions, steered by whatever was drawing my interest. I saw the free national museum,

Things to stab and cut with.

the back and front of the Danish Parliament,

Architecture is easier to understand than art.

I bet there are a lot of important people debating what to do with Greenland in there.

some horses, both real and in statue form,

"Oat bag, I get my oat bag now..."

Neigh

and the most shocking, one Natalie Portman swimming with 3 Mila Kunises.

Or is it Kunisses? Kuni? Kunea? 

I even took my first selfie since the day of my arrival in Sweden.

Look how smug I can be.

Eventually I decided to spend money on something, this stereotypical gem:

Danishes are confusingly called 'Vienna bread' in Scandinavia.

It was delicious, but my coffee was too hot. As I waited for it to cool, I gazed out on Europe's largest pedestrian avenue, at it's busiest hour, and thought...

Editor's note:  if you wish to hear the author's angsty musings, please continue reading at your own peril.

People are irrepressibly interesting. Somehow there are over 7 billion of us on this tiny planet, and even though we are all different, we also have much in common. For instance, movement. Behind the window of this cafe, without street sounds and context, everyone is the same. All rushing:  to the next tourist spot, to make their reservation on time, to check out some new shoes, to buy a last minute gift, or maybe just to sit and have a coffee. Some move with purpose, most just to not stay still.  Do we fear stillness, and the real thoughts we might have when out bodies are idling? Of course I'm not the first person to contemplate such a singular human existence. As a researcher, I often worry that none of my ideas are ever original. Some ideas I'm sure would work, but of course a literature search quickly shows that the idea has been demonstrated and published, dissuading any further action on my part. If this happens enough times, when a lightbulb idea strikes and is not in literature, I'm crippled by the notion that others have already tried it and it failed. Then no action is taken. This is the problem, in my opinion, with the culture of positive results oriented research and publication. 

Anyway, I digress. Even if I never have an original idea, I should be comforted knowing that every action I perform is unique to that space and time. For instance, no other person in this cafe is taking notes with a pen and paper, something of an outlier in 2013. No other American has ever performed MR research in Umeå. These are small things, but they are mine and mine alone, and that is comforting. 

Maybe that's why we keep moving, why we're driven to always be heading somewhere:  we desperately want to achieve something, a thought or action, that is unique. The final irony is that behind a glass wall, we all look the same amid a bustling crowd.

...Dammit this coffee is still boiling hot. 

Skål!

Bonus:  To those of you who made it this far, I promise I won't do that again for awhile. Here is your reward, an insect (who won't be doing anything unique anymore) eternally frozen, compliments of the Amber Shop in Copenhagen:

"...bingo, Dino DNA!"