The Swedish Flag Should Be Green!

Hej san!

I begin this post with three apologies, because everyone knows things come better in threes. First is for, of course, the slight delay in the posting of this particular blog. Second, also somewhat expected, is that I still haven't finished writing about Russia and the return trip in Helsinki. And third, in advance, is for the somewhat short nature of this blog post. My only excuse? Summer has officially come to Sweden, and I'm having a very hard time staying inside at all! However, I am committing to finishing my "Foreign Land" series about my Baltic adventures before the next blog goes up next week, despite the incredible amounts of sunshine.

When I say incredible amounts of sunshine, I really do mean quite incredible amounts! The sun comes up just before 4am and sets around 10pm, and the twilight before and after those times are long and lingering. The sky never truly gets dark at all, just a beautiful deep blue color. It's quite an experience, although I think I'm going to start missing the stars soon. All of this sunshine means I feel like I have really incredible amounts of time, because the days just never seem to end. I'm also, for the first time in my life, in the habit of going to bed around midnight or one and getting up at eight or nine every morning. It's just hard to remember to go to sleep when the sun is still up!

And all of this sunlight has wrought an incredible change on the city I thought I knew. I can hardly see the Uppsala I arrived in four months ago; people are everywhere, shops are open long hours, and everything is green and blooming. Summer has absolutely exploded! When I arrived back from my Baltic adventures three weeks ago, the trees were just budding, and now they are gloriously leafy. I ride my bike home a different way every time I go to town, and everywhere I look there are hidden parks and open spaces full of trees and bushes. The lilacs and crab apple trees are blooming, as well as several other trees and bushes I don't recognize. My mom and I joke about being able to smell the chlorophyll during the summer, and I can tell you that Uppsala is drowning in it right now.

This is the Swedish flag; the colors come from the Swedish coat of arms, and the shape is the Scandinavian cross. (Iceland, Norway, Denmark, and Finland all have the same general shape to their flags, although Norway and Iceland have three colors instead of two.) I propose changing the blue to green, for the explosion of greenery that seems to be happening everywhere, and the yellow to white, for the long winters. I don't think anyone will ever take me up on it, and I've actually always been partial to the Swedish color scheme, but maybe a green border or something. Really, there is green everywhere!

The best part is that I am finally free to enjoy it! My stint as a student is ALMOST finished; I have one class period and the "final exam" in the form of a take-home essay for my philosophy class. I officially finished my Swedish lessons on Monday and Tuesday with the written and listening exams, respectively. The written exam was a lot easier than I expected it to be, and even the listening exam wasn't as difficult as I'd anticipated. I still don't know quite where and when I picked up my Swedish grammar skills, but they served me well through both exams. Also last Tuesday I gave my final presentation about creativity for my philosophy class. I received an email yesterday detailing how to send my transcripts home; things are really wrapping up here in Uppsala.

But rest assured my time here is not quite at an end yet. I have sixteen days until Mom arrives (Counting? Who, me?) and I plan to spend them to the absolute fullest. This weekend Henri and I are going to Öregrund, a little town somewhat north of Uppsala, for some more exploration and more importantly, a chance to jump in the Baltic Sea. Henri's been swimming in every ocean or sea bordering every country he's been to so far, and he doesn't intend to let a little thing like frigid water temps get in his way for Sweden. I, of course, being a mountain girl through and through, have no qualms about jumping in cold water, so I think it sounds like a fine adventure!

My other big project, which was the perfect distraction from studying for Swedish, was planning the time I'll share with my mom. We're spending the first week in Uppsala and the surrounding areas, so she can see where I've been living for the last five months, and then the second week we're going adventuring! My dad and brother fell in love with Oslo, the capital of Norway, when they traveled through it for Telemark World Championships, so mom and I have to go check it out as well. We're also going to fulfill one of Mom's dreams and go to Tromsø, a town that is farther north than Sweden goes! You can check out where it is here: https://maps.google.se/maps?hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&q=Troms%C3%B8,+Norge+karta+visa&fb=1&gl=se&hq=Troms%C3%B8,+Norge+karta+visa&ei=zGW_T-n1NuTN4QT2m9W5CQ&ved=0CC0QyBM You'll have to zoom out a bit to really get an idea of where it is, but the close-up is good to see all the fjords. One of Mom's college friends did ecology research in this area, and Mom's always wanted to go. It's 350km north of the Arctic Circle, so Mom and I will be able to experience the phenomenon known as the Midnight Sun; the sun quite literally will never set while we're there. It's going to be one of the strangest and coolest experiences ever, I think.

Well, I did warn you that this post would be a touch short. The sunshine is just too irresistible! I'm off to join my corridor-mate Mia lying in the grass. She, unfortunately, is still studying, but I'll take a book and my notebook and keep her company.

Until next time,
Hej då!

Paper Chains and Daisy Chains

Hej san!

I can't believe how close I am to the end of the school year! I've received an email detailing how to get my transcripts back to CU and turned in my philosophy paper, but I'm still cramming madly for Swedish. Making things plural is still giving me fits, no matter how many times I review the rules. There are just so many exceptions. My innate sense of grammar is still there, thankfully, though I should probably expand my vocabulary a bit so have some words to put in the right order.

But school isn't the only thing I've been doing. On Thursday last week I made Mexican food for Henri. Shopping for the ingredients was a bit of a laugh; the only brand that sells "Mexican specialty items" is called TexMex, and even the extra hot salsa barely qualifies as medium at home. I went for making burritos, so I had ground beef, avocado, corn, cheese, pinto beans (no refried or black beans at the store, but I figured pinto worked) and of course the salsa. It was a resounding success, if I do say so myself. The taco seasoning I used on the ground beef tasted right, so everything had the proper flavor, even if it was a little mild. Henri thought it was awesome, though I told him he'd have to come to the US and try real Mexican food someday.

This is actually something that might happen in the near future! To finish his master's degree in material physics, Henri needs to do a second internship and he's looking into labs in Boulder, Chicago, and California. He hasn't heard anything back yet, but he's hoping to get a spot in Boulder. Now that he's making good on his promise to come to the US, he's started bugging me to fulfill my promise to come to Paris and visit him. I keep telling him there's no way he's getting out of my visit, regardless of when I start planning it!

We had one other good adventure this weekend; on Saturday we took the train to Gävle, a town about an hour and a half north of Uppsala. We'd realized we'd traveled to four other countries during our time in Sweden, but the only towns in Sweden we'd been to were Uppsala and Stockholm! Gävle is a beautiful town with about 70,000 people and a delightfully preserved old town hidden between modern streets and squares. My favorite part was the river that ran through the town. I like the river in Uppsala, but it's a flat river; you can't see the current. The river in Gävle looked so much like the Yampa river, current and all, that it almost made me a little sad. I was more happy to revel in the beauty of it, though. The city has made parks and paths for a very long way up the river; Henri and I walked for two hours from the center of town and I don't think we'd reached the end.

I loved Gävle, but at first I had a hard time explaining why to Henri. There was nothing particularly extraordinary about it in terms of history or culture. Gävle's not well-known for anything. It's a pretty town with a river and colorful Swedish-style neighborhoods and a low-key downtown. And I think that's in part why I loved it so much. The shops and restaurants on the main street were the kind of places people would actually go to buy something. They weren't trendy or fancy. The houses had toys and bikes in the front yard. It just felt like people lived there.

There is something that irks me a bit about this. I should appreciate the culture and history offered by places like Rome and St. Petersburg and even Uppsala. There are wonderful things about cities; the myriad of opportunities, the constant energy, the innovations in design and business and everything else. Things happen in cities. But I am, and I think I always will be, a small-town girl. I do believe this is very much a product of the fact that I grew up in a small town; Henri is quite sure he could never live in a place that small and boring, and he grew up forty minutes from the center of Paris. But I have never been able to stand the cookie-cutter houses of suburbia (although not all suburbs have such houses, some of them sure do!) and I feel like cities are just so...transient, I guess. Everything is always changing, and I've never been very comfortable with change. I think I prefer visiting cities, and living in a place where people put down roots.

My other adventures for the week merely confirm there is a great possibility of my growing up to be a complete home-body. I made two different types of bread this week, and a large batch of potato soup so I didn't have to bother with cooking while I was shoving extra Swedish vocabulary into my head. I'm happy to report that my honey-wheat bread turned out much better this time! I can't wait to make some for Mom and the rest of my family. I also made a loaf of squash bread, courtesy of my corridor-mate Mia's bequeath while she was cleaning out the fridge. In sort of the same way that loving Gävle irked me, the immense satisfaction I get out baking bread irks me a bit. It's a little too simple, too easy. I part of me feels like I should be doing something productive instead. Baking bread will not save the world. But it does taste way better than store-bought bread, it makes the corridor smell incredible, and it makes me happy, and that's reason enough.

The last major project of the week has been planning the time my mom will have with me in Sweden. We had a list a mile long of things we want to do and places we want to see and only two and half weeks. We've decided our big adventure will be to Norway; Oslo to see the city that my dad and brother raved about when they were at Telemark World Championships last year, and Tromsø, a little town in the very far north of Norway. It's 350km north of the Arctic Circle, and it's actually farther north than Sweden goes! Mom and I will be treated to the midnight sun (it won't ever set) while we're there, which has always been on my bucket list. I give Mom full credit for this idea; one of her friends from college did her ecology work in the fjords there, and Mom fell in love with the pictures. I can't wait to go.

We also planned our flight back to the US so we could be in Sweden for midsommar, the biggest festival of the year. Swedes raise the maypole on the first Friday evening after June 21 with song, dance, and a lot of flowers woven into wreaths and other decorations. According to legend a girl who pick seven kinds of wildflowers and sleep with them under her pillow will dream of her future husband. Mom and I will be spending midsommar on the shores of Lake Siljan, in the region of Sweden best known for it's carved red horses. I can't wait for midsommar, or to go to Tromsø and Oslo, or really, just for Mom to come. This is definitely the longest I've ever been away from my family, though Skype and email has made it a million times easier.

Planning everything has made me realize exactly how close Mom's arrival day is! Whenever my brother and I were looking forward to our Spring Break vacation, we would make a paper chain and tape it to the fridge, pulling off one link for every day. The shorter that chain got, the closer we were to our adventure. True to my tradition-loving self, I made my own paper chain all the way until Departure Day on June 26th. It's scary to look at, alternating because it's the longest paper chain I've ever made and because it's so incredibly short. It might be somewhat childish, but I love it anyway.

I'm afraid it's time for me to go back to conjugating Swedish verbs, but by next post I'll be finished with Swedish grammar exercises forever! I also promise I haven't forgotten about my St. Petersburg post, but it might continue to languish until after the exams are finished.

Until next time,
Hej då!

April Flowers Bring May Showers

Hej san!

Well, it's easy to see that I haven't yet finished my post about Russia or the trip home. They're still coming, I promise, but a large chunk of my time has been taken up by...surprise surprise...school! The beginning of the end is near for my semester in Uppsala, with final projects and studying for exams attendant. I do refuse to deviate from my weekly updates, however, so I'm taking this break to write about my past week in Uppsala.

For my philosophy class about happiness, we had our final in-class interview last week. I would have to give this one the rating of second out of the five. Martin Smedjeback is a non-violence activist who has participated in civil disobedience actions, breaking into a weapons factory in Eskilstuna and hammering on grenade launchers to protest the Swedish weapons industry. He had very strong ideas about how one should find a purpose in life and then pursue it as directly and passionately as possible. The next two classes will be student presentations of our fieldwork projects. It's this project that's been the focus of my week so far.

My project is focusing on the relationship between being happy, being satisfied and creating something original. I talked to several of my friends from this class and from home, including a musician, a photographer, a writer, and my mom, who paints, draws, and did stained glass windows. I haven't finished compiling all of their answers together, but the conversations I've been able to have were wonderful intellectual romps. My favorite observation has been that every single person, without a question specific to it, has clearly delineated between technical skill and the less quantifiable emotional skill that allows art to be moving, both of which are necessary for creating something good. Now I only hope my writing lives up to the ideas I'm trying to convey.

Another chunk of my time has gone to studying Swedish. I have two exams for that class on May 21 and 22, written and listening. I'm relatively confident in my ability to grasp at least the main idea of what I'm reading, and I have somehow an innate sense of how to order phrases in Swedish grammar, but I talk and write with entirely singular nouns because making them plural is so complicated! Fortunately for the longer writing sections all we have to do is be understandable to a Swede, so hopefully when I write "Three cat jumped on the bed" they'll just laugh at me. Though I am by no means fluent, or even conversational, I know I'll miss hearing the rhythms of Swedish when I go home.

The rest of my time has been divided between two things; what I call domestic goddess tasks, and exploring the neighborhoods on the outskirts of Uppsala. Many of the early spring flowers are fading, but the trees are budding and the grass has attained summer green instead of muddy spring green. Uppsala has always been beautiful, but everyday it continues to surpass itself. I've been eagerly exploring on my bike, taking the time to ride up the river past Kantorsgatan and on the west side of the river, where I haven't spent much time. Uppsala is full of large and small parks. Just north of my apartment I found a delightful neighborhood of colorful houses, and behind it, a soccer field and a little knoll covered with patch of forest. I promptly abandoned my bike under the first tree and went exploring.

It was really very idyllic. Birds were chirping, it was late evening so the sun was coming at an angle in all its golden glory, and everything smelled like spring. The soccer fields brought back lots of memories of long summer afternoons and evenings spent at the field below the high school in Steamboat, when all of us congregated around the ball just trying to kick it instead of passing to each other. When I returned to my bike, I saw a kite string trailing up through the branches of the tree.

This harks back to a story from when my brother and I were little. Mom often had her high school students babysit us, and our favorites where two boys named Austin and Rody. One fall afternoon they were flying my brother's kite in the front yard and got it stuck in the cottonwood tree. What I remember most was how much fun they had playing with us and with our toys, even though they were so much more grown up than we were. Austin and Rody were just over-sized kids.

As I stood there considering this kite, with a different pattern stuck in a different tree, I suddenly wanted to be a child again. I kicked off my sandals, pulled off my sock, and started climbing the tree. There's an argument for me keeping my feet firmly on the ground and not risking a fall, but there's also an argument for me climbing the tree anyway. I chose to climb.

I sat in the tree for a while, watching the sun set over the forested knoll and the colorful neighborhoods. I swore to myself not to spend another day without exploring somewhere. The last two rainy days haven't deterred me in the slightest. My schoolwork is somewhat testing that resolution, but I just keep reminding myself that grades are not the only important thing.

My domestic goddess adventures have been just as rewarding. I like sewing and listening to pod casts, and my projects this week have been hemming my curtains and embroidering a new country name on my bag (I'm working on Finland at the moment.) I'm also taking advantage of cooking only for myself to practice making yeast bread. I've had one completely failure, but my loaf this week came out edible, if somewhat dense and crumbly. I want to try it again to see if I can make it better. Bread-making is an art form, and I'd really like to get good at it. I have dreams of never buying bread again, which of course will collapse as soon as I start school again in the fall. But it's a nice idea.

I am still working on my Russia post, and I'll post it as soon as it's finished. Regardless of that project, I'll be writing again next Wednesday. Tonight I'm making Mexican food for Henri, so I can't wait to tell you that story!

Until then,
Hej då!

A Foreign Land: Finland (Part 1)

Moi!

The first thing to learn in any country is how to say hello, and I've learned it in two new languages now. This is Finnish. I've safely returned from my travels in Finland and Russia, and I can tell you that it was a week I'll remember forever. Helsinki and St. Petersburg are both beautiful cities, though in many ways they are very different. I learned so much from traveling to both cities, and not only about history this time. I'll start at the beginning of the story though, and we'll get to them in due time!

For those of you who aren't as familiar with the Baltic region, this is a map of our travels. We travelled by overnight ferries, which was a fantastic adventure for me! I had to explain on more than one occasion that there simply isn't that much water in Colorado, and that getting to any significant body of water involved traveling at least two or three hours by plane. One thing that was interesting to me was the sheer number of islands between Sweden and Finland; we were never out of sight of land.

Henri and I met at noon to take the train to Stockholm. Even after taking it several times, it still hasn't gotten old yet, and Henri still teases me about it. We then walked from Central Station to the ferry terminal, stopping at our favorite cafe from our last wander in Stockholm to get some lunch. When we arrived at the Viking Line terminal, the road sign had an arrow pointing left that said "To Finland" as if there were a road to get there; really it's just the ferry. Ingång means entrance in Swedish, and Sisään the same in Finnish. Finnish is mostly unrelated to Swedish, but as Swedish is the second official language of Finland, everything was written in both languages.

After Henri and I found our cabin and dropped our backpacks, we eagerly explored the ferry. It was really more like a cruise ship! There were ten decks altogether, though two of them were car decks. The top deck was open to everything, and here we found the Finnish flag streaming in the wind. We were officially off on our adventure! For the first several hours we sailed through the web of waterways that connect Stockholm to the Baltic Sea. You can see on the map that Stockholm is actually very far inland for a port city. There were hundreds of islands; some were large and some were chunks of rock with a tree or two. Most had colorful houses and docks scattered on them. It was incredibly picturesque, and Henri and I stayed on the bow watching them go by until we couldn't feel our hands anymore.

This is what our cabin looked like. You can see the two lower bunks folded down here; there were also upper bunks that are folded up in this picture. Henri and I shared our room with a German girl named Sophie and a French girl named Caroline. Sophie, Henri and I got along famously. Caroline had a somewhat different purpose for traveling than we did; she was horrified when we went to bed at one (we were getting up at seven the next morning to disembark the ferry, mind) and she was skeptical of our ability to have any fun when we told her Henri studied physics, Sophie EU law, and me molecular biology. It takes all kinds, I guess, but my interactions with Caroline were mostly limited to checking the clock when she came back around four or five each morning.

Traveling on a ferry like this only confirmed what I already knew; I love traveling. Of course the biggest draw is seeing new places, but I like the traveling itself as well. I love being able to live out of my backpack, sleeping in bunks, and the people watching is always fantastic. Things like sharing a bathroom with three other people and carrying my stuff around don't bother me (although I did have significantly less to carry than most of the other students there). Packing light and the highly functional layout of the small cabins make me feel efficient and independent.

And then there is the goal of the traveling: seeing the new places. When we arrived in Helsinki we got on a bus to take us to the West Terminal, where a different ferry line would take us to St. Petersburg that afternoon. Along the way we also got a bit of a tour around Helsinki. This photo is just at the very beginning, looking back at our ferry. IT'S HUGE! The one behind it was a second Viking Line ferry that also went back and forth to Stockholm.

Like Stockholm, Helsinki is surrounded by a multitude of islands. This one is a classic example of what you could see every time you looked out to sea from the city.

While we were on the bus we learned a little bit more about Finland. There are only five million people in the country, and a fifth of that population lives in Helsinki. Finland was part of the Kingdom of Sweden from around 1200 until 1809, when it was ceded to Russia. Helsinki was founded by Sweden during this time in order to compete with Tallinn, the current capital of Estonia, which was at that time the major trade city on the Gulf of Finland. Finland declared independence from Russia in 1917. While they gained independence peacefully, Finland had a civil war the following year between the Red Guard and the White Guard (of similar politics to their Russian counterparts). The civil war lasted less than a year, when the White Guard won, and the country has been peaceful ever since.

This island is called Sveaborg/Viapori/Suomenlinna (the Swedish/Russian/Finnish names). It's a fortress that was built by Sweden to defend Helsinki from Russia, though the Swedes never actually finished building the fortress. It was later used by the Russians to defend against Sweden and then by Finland to defend against the Soviet Union during WWII. (The Soviets, for some reason, thought taking Finland back was a good idea while they were also fighting in a world war. Why, I'm not quite sure; you would think they already had their hands full.) In our second day in Helsinki, we visited the island fortress, so I'll save the rest of those stories for now.

During our drive we also drove down some of the main avenues of Helsinki. The city is the World Design Capital of 2012, so the shops are currently outdoing themselves. Helsinki's approach to design struck me as very Scandinavian; they believe that not only is design important in the context of well-known fashion labels and expensive luxury items, but also in everyday life. The design of the trolley system and the design of a patterned rug can have the same elegance. This functional and practical mindset is characteristic of Scandinavia. The last major landmark we drove past was the Olympic Stadium of the 1952 Summer Games.

After we'd stored our luggage in the West Terminal, the bus dropped us in one of the main squares in downtown. The obvious attraction was this Lutheran cathedral, which is a main fixture in the Helsinki skyline. I don't know very much about architecture, but I do pride myself on my ability to notice details. One thing I noticed about this church was the four cupolas around the main dome. This is very different not only from the Catholic churches Henri and I saw in Rome but also from the Lutheran cathedrals in Uppsala and Stockholm. You normally see cupolas like this on Orthodox Christian churches. I don't know for sure, but I think it's possible to attribute the styling of this church to the large influence of Russia on Finland. In any case, this church was just as beautiful as the others I've seen.

This is the organ inside the cathedral. Henri and I debated for a moment if it was the biggest one we've seen, but either way it's up there. However, unlike the churches we saw in Rome, the organ was the most decorative part of the church. The rest was clean white plaster and very simple. Just as beautiful, but in an utterly different way.

This is the main Orthodox cathedral of Helsinki. You can see the multitude of little cupolas on the facade here, though they aren't arranged around the dome like the cathedrals I saw in St. Petersburg. You can tell from a glance that this cathedral is very different from the Lutheran cathedral.

The inside of the cathedral reminded me more of the Roman cathedrals in how it was decorated, though I could tell there were differences. I'm not sure exactly what they were and how to explain most of them, which I blame on my lack of background knowledge about Christianity in general and cathedrals specifically.

One difference that was very obvious was the Russian writing on the arches below the dome. As most of you probably know, Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, making it very easily recognizable. Orthodox Christianity is the main religion in Russia, so it makes sense that the Russian influence on Helsinki would include the spread of the Orthodox religion.

This is an example of what Helsinki looked like. Though Helsinki was originally built by Swedes and later rebuilt by Russia, very little remains in the architecture of either culture. The city was heavily bombed during WWII and has since been rebuilt in a classical romance style. As I mentioned before, I have no background in architecture, but I can tell you that I haven't ever seen a city quite like Helsinki. Most of the buildings look like they've been styled after fairy-tale castles, complete with turrets and stone work. Where the buildings aren't stone, they're painted pastel yellows, red-oranges, and greens in a similar style to Stockholm (and to St. Petersburg). It was incredibly beautiful, and I found myself falling more in love with the city than I thought I would. It's more modern than Stockholm (thanks to the destruction caused by the bombings during WWII) but it's beautiful all the same.

At four that afternoon we met in the West Terminal to board a second ship for our voyage to St. Petersburg. Unlike the first time, we passed through passport control here. The difference between having an EU passport and a non-EU passport was highly obvious; Henri's French passport afforded merely a glance from the official, but he took great interest in every stamp I'd acquired up to that point (I had eight!) along with my residence permit. He was very friendly though, and wished me safe travels. Henri grumbled about dumb American passports and told me sternly I was going through before him from then on, despite my pointing out that it wouldn't matter in Russia.

Once on board we again dumped our things in a small cabin and explored the ship. This picture was taken around eight thirty that evening looking south at the many islands we were again sailing past. It was a stunning journey, and we went to sleep thrilled to be arriving in St. Petersburg the next day.

In the spirit of not overloading the server with more pictures (or you with the small novels I can write about my travels), I'll end here for now, but I won't wait until next week to write about the rest of my journey. Hopefully I'll have my stories about St. Petersburg up in a day or two.

Until then, moi moi!