A Rainy Afternoon with the Stasi

Joe We had a beautiful week here—clear and sunny, with highs in the mid 20s—but nothing lasts forever, and today has been gray, wet, and 19°. In response, we decided to have a movie afternoon, so in honor of our recent stay in the former East Berlin we re-watched the excellent Das Leben der Anderen. And since the weather has suddenly become autumnal, I decided to make us an extremely traditional autumn fika treat: Swedish äppelkaka. It's a very simple recipe, one that everyone in Sweden should have learned from their mormor. It's too simple, in fact, to show up in any of our cookbooks, so I was forced to googlar it. I eventually settled on a combination of two recipes, mainly a very traditional one from Dorie Greenspan. The other was a recipe that Jennifer found, which suggested sautéing the apples in butter and cinnamon beforehand. Here's what I did:

Boston, Rain

JoeI'm attending a summer school in Boston for this coming week, and I just arrived in Boston this evening, after a week spent visiting my family in north Alabama. The past week has been fabulous—great food, visits with family I haven't seen in years, and lots of tennis and golf (a first for me) in 95°F heat—and frankly, Boston is going to have a hard time competing.

April was the coolest month

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JenniferJoe just informed me that, if he read the newspaper correctly, it was actually the warmest April in Uppsala in 200 years. Nevertheless, I will stand by my post title. Here is a list of the celebratory things that happened, in reverse order, so as to save the best for last.

Works in Theory

JoeI think everyone is a little over-anxious for spring now. This morning, Jennifer opted to wear her "spring time in Sweden" shoes—a pair of black leather walking shoes, good for getting rained on, but not for walking on ice—so naturally we got three inches of fresh snow fall this afternoon.

December's Foggy Freeze

JoeI looked out the window before going to be last night, and I couldn't see the apartment building across the yard from us—an event that has not been so remarkable this November, I must say.

"Ah, snowing again," I thought, despite the fact that it clearly looked like fog, and went to bed. After all, it was -15 degrees C, it couldn't be foggy, right?

The glaciers are coming!

Joe OK, not really, but it is wicked snowy here today. Sorry for the picture being so ghetto, but I don't have a camera with me today, and I wanted to show the view from my office window before this all melts—presumably tomorrow, to make way for the sleet we have scheduled for Friday. Yippee!

In other news, I appear to have graduated on Monday. I know this because I had to fight my way through the 25 cm of melting snow this morning to pick up the 11 page certificate I get in place of a diploma from my local gas station. OK, I just reread that, and I'll clarify: I had to pick it up from the local gas station, I actually graduated from the university. Of course, Moderaterna loves the deregulation, so maybe Preem Petrochemical University isn't too far off…

City of (Occasional) Lights

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JoeThis November, in an acknowledgement that November is not a nice month to be in Uppsala, the city has decided to hold a repeat of its very successful venture two years ago, Allt Ljus på Uppsala, a sort of festival of colored lights at various places around town. (Why they decided not to do this last year, the darkest November in living memory, remains a mystery.) Forewarned that the snow was coming today, I decided to head downtown last night to check out this years entries.

Nu är det wintertid igen

JenniferLast year Sweden had the worst November in decades, as measured by having very few hours of sunlight (17 in total). Throughout the month, everyone was secretly hoping that it would snow, a lot, and soon, as the snow makes it what light there is brighter and is much better than endless grey days with a temperature hovering just above freezing.

One day toward then end of the month, the afternoon fika conversation at work turned to a prediction that there would be 25 cm of snow overnight. I frankly didn't believe it, partially because the weather forecasting is so bad here (and partly because I wanted it to be true). I expressed my disbelief by using a sarcastic, crude American expression that involves my posterior and winged simians. People laughed.

Fauxll

JoeSummer appears to have ended here. Actually, it ended on August 23, according to the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute.

That morning, in a press conference that was supposed to be about the low pressure system sweeping through the south of the country and triggering gale warnings in the Skagerrak, one Linnea Rehn was asked if this was the start of Autumn. Her response, as far as I've been able to piece it together from various radio and newspaper reports, ran something along the lines of:

Alpine Adventure

JoeWell, there. The sun came out for long enough that the organizers decided lectures this afternoon were a losing battle, so they rescheduled the last one until after dinner—and given the amount of wine that gets drunk at dinner, I suspect the 8:30–9:30 lecture slot is going to be a rough one.

Springtime?

Joe I think it would be fair to describe me as a person who is, on the whole, rather fond of winter. I like wearing wool sweaters. I like cold, snowy days. I like being warm and cozy inside on dark, stormy evenings. I even like watching curling matches on the tellie.

But it's April now, and I WANT THE SUN TO COME BACK!

Glad hjärtensdag 2010

Jennifer In my list, I said that one of my goals was to write a post a day while unemployed. That went out the window on the very first day, of course, but I intend to do some catching up with short posts: more fika- and pub-småpratar, and similar little stories of odds and ends.

Samma rutin som förra året…

Same procedure as last year…

JoeToday is trettonde dag jul, and with it our second Swedish Christmas comes to a close. If last year I was struck by how very different Christmas traditions seemed in Sweden compared to the U.S., this year what seems even more striking is how very much the same it all seems as last year.

Swedes seem particularly hide-bound when it comes to the winter holiday season. As evidence, I present a tale of two television shows: Kalle Anka och kompisar, and Dinner for One. Kalle Anka, or Donald Duck as you know him, is an oddly popular comic book character in Sweden, a fact which is perhaps related to the staggering and inexplicably enduring popularity of the Kalle Anka Christmas special here. The show in question is the 1958 Walt Disney Christmas special, and it has been shown on Swedish television on Christmas Eve at 3 PM every year since 1959—exactly the same cartoons, only a couple of them Christmas related in any way (and one of those complete with the awkward racism so typical of Disney cartoons from the 30s), with a live narrator every year translating for the kiddies (the cartoons are in English, with Swedish subtitles). OK, so they show the same thing every year, what's the big deal, right? Consider this: in a bad year, Kalle Anka pulls in maybe a little over 3 million viewers in Sweden—it may not sound like much, but its one third of the population of the country, and some years its closer to half. That's right, half the population of the country watches this one show. Live, mind you, they watch it live—I've yet to meet a Swede who would contemplate taping Kalle Anka.

God jul 2009 och gott nytt år 2010

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JenniferHappy 2010, everyone! We had a busy time before the holidays, as Joe had exams and project due right up until the 23rd, and I have quite a lot to do at work just now, either in preparation for leaving my job soon (yes, it will be two years at the end of this January), or, preferably, preparing to carry on with the project for another year (fingers crossed). Joe has also had a cold for a while, and frankly we were just so exhausted by the time jul came around that we mostly sat around and complained. But a few nice things have happened, so here's a run down of the last two weeks.

Lucia Dag 2009

JenniferLast Sunday, 13 december, was St. Lucia day, which as you all remember from last year is an important holiday in this quite non-Catholic country. The day is marked with singing, and candles, and the consumption of glögg and lussekatter. School choirs earn a lot of money on this day, as they shuttle around from workplace to workplace giving carol concerts. Ours started at 09.30 on Friday the 11th, and this year I went early to ensure a good view in the high-ceilinged, echo-y central stairwell of the evolution museum. The concert was lovely, and was followed by a division-wide fika with the aforementioned glögg (yes, mulled wine at 10.00) and lussekatter (which do ameliorate the glögg somewhat).

Now that's more like it

JoeThis is a little closer to what I expected from Uppsala in winter. We had a cold snap at the end of the week (it's been below freezing for two whole days!) and we finally got a little snow to go with it. If our luck holds, we may get to keep it for the weekend. Perfect for a trip to Ikea for some meatballs, or maybe a semla-the-size-of-my-head at Café Linne. Does the snow explain the groups of men wandering the downtown area singing while carrying grocery bags full of beer cans? No, but then again, I don't really expect that anything will.