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!"

An Accelerated Autumn

As reports of an extended Indian Summer in the Midwest continue to reach me here in Scandinavia, I'm more and more compelled to notice the desultory transitional period from summer to winter at my doorstep. Only 10 days ago 70 and sunny was the norm. Oh how quickly things can change when you are roughly 20 latitudinal degrees north of places you have lived for the first 25 years of your life. Speaking of age and transition, I'm 26 now, meaning my early twenties are over, which probably means I should be more responsible or mature or whatever. Anyway, the point is things change, including atmospheric conditions. For instance, during a brief and terrifying period on Thursday morning, it was snowing. Yes, real, frozen, crystalline water fell on September 26th. It might have been the caffeine high I was on, the frustration I was feeling about an unsolved research problem, or a combination of the two, but I nearly lost it. There was a severe disconnect between the calendar date and what I was seeing out the window. Anyway it only lasted something like 30 minutes, but it happened and it's something I'll always remember about being in northern Sweden.

The actual day-by-day weather has been rainy and cold, kind of like late fall in Michigan/Wisconsin. The trees, once vibrantly green, have undergone stunning transformations into their traditional autumnal glories.

'Dead leaves and the dirty ground'?

Umeå is like a giant arboretum. And everyone knows arboretums are most spectacular in the fall. Here you walk down paths connecting two buildings, yet are interminably surrounded by towering birch and pine trees. The sights are great, but smells create nostalgia:  cold air freezing your nose while aromas of dry leaves and musty pine bring to mind late-night bonfires, early-morning tailgates, a sweater right out of the dryer, catching falling leaves, and cider so hot it burns your tongue because you are too impatient to let it to cool before the first sip.

All this rain here also means the low level forest growth of things I thought only existed on Nintendo gaming consoles:

Dude, do you know where that second warp whistle is?

This makes me want to do this.

I like you Autumn. Please don't end too soon.

Skål!

Actually Travelling, kinda

Six days since my last post! I hope you all have gotten your mediocre blog fix elsewhere for the last week. I figured it would be wise to avoid dousing my audience with diluted material. And really, what good is a travel blog if the blogger never travels?

This Saturday I went for a long bike ride, some 17 miles round trip, to a small town called Holmsund on the Gulf of Bothnia, which is part of the Baltic Sea. One of the northernmost cities lying on the coast of the northernmost arm of the Baltic Sea. That's how far up I am. Seventeen miles might not sound like a long bike ride to some of you, but when roads aren't clearly marked and you don't have a map, the back brakes on your bike don't work and you haven't fully inflated the tires for several weeks, it makes for an interesting ride. Luckily it was a completely rural route and probably the last nice day of the year.

Perfectly empty and perfectly straight for several miles.

I huffed and puffed to my destination. Holmsund was not very impressive, but it did have a lot of off the beaten trails leading to beautiful water/island vistas:

Ski jump, and lunch spot.

End of trail on remote island, awesome picnic spot.

View from picnic spot.

Sadly, there's no direct shoreline accessible for the Gulf of Bothnia from Holmsund, but these little inlets are probably much more scenic anyway. The ride home was calmer, probably because I knew where I was going, and sunnier, probably because I wished it so. I climbed a hill a few miles from downtown Umeå and this was the view (I like views):

City to the right, one-runway airport to the left.

I think the hill I was on was actually just a former landfill. Can landfills ever be 'former' landfills? Once a landfill, always full of garbage. This is the longest caption I've written yet.

The rest of the day was spent recovering, exploring some shops downtown, and enjoying this beer.

It's so majestic.

Yeah, it was a pretty good day.

Skål!

Bonus:  Saw this in a small movie shop. 99 kronor is about 15 USD, for the Lion King 3? Not even the original, which has to be more valuable. And when did they make a third one, or was this just a special Swedish Lion King 3? I mean of course I can find out, but making you guys read my speculation is more fun.

I bet Billy Crystal learned Swedish just for the voice-over in this release. That guy is committed to his craft. 

Umeå's Proud Sporting Tradition. No, Really.

To Americans, Swedes, sporting-wise, are best known for skiing, ice hockey, shooting while skiing (skiing while shooting?), Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and armed conflict neutrality.

In Umeå, sports and being active are an important part of the culture. The largest sports facility in all of Scandinavia, IKSU, is located in Umeå. I recently got a membership there, and it really is a ball-busting, sweat-inducing fortress. It has indoor beach volleyball, 30 different fitness classes with class-specific rooms (like a spinning auditorium), and huge gym/cardio area. It also has indoor golf for some reason:

Nothing like getting out and playing a quick indoor nine.

And even tables for arm-wrestling:

I just, I just don't get it.

There are also a few popular sports clubs with some pretty competitive teams. On Monday I went to a floorball (Innebandy) match between the city's two big teams. It drew a substantial crowd of a maybe 2000 people. Floorball has the same rules as hockey, except instead of ice and skates they have a composite court, they don't wear pads, the walls are only half a meter high, and they play with a wiffle ball. A plastic, hollow ball with holes in its surface so that it doesn't hurt when you get hit. When you see them warming up it's kind of cute really. Like a bunch of kids playing with plastic bat and wiffle ball at a family reunion.

They think they're big people!

But then they start playing, and hitting each other, and moving that wiffle ball at a hundred miles an hour. It's a frenetic atmosphere.

 You boys be careful out there.

Anyway, one of the two teams won, and some number of people there were happy about that. Afterward I went out to the T3 Exel Football Field, also part of the sports club. I had been there a few weekends earlier when the stadium was deserted and the gates were open.

Not bad seats, but I bet I could get a little closer.

Better, closer, warmer..

Ahh, field level, perfecto.

The Umeå female footballers, known as the Umeå IK, were in the middle of their match. They have a pretty impressive following as well, and have even won the Women's Champions League a few times in the past ten years. For some reason I could again walk right into the stadium. I decided to try to recreate my earlier shots because I crave temporal symmetry.

Yeah kind of, but not really.

My angles seem to be a bit off.

Nailed it!

Alright that's enough pictures and sports talk, at least for now.

Skål