Finally, a change from grey!

I don't know about the UK, but November was exceptionally grey over here in Stockholm. We checked on Thursday and there had been a total of 28 hours of sunshine over the last four weeks; I'm sure this had been great for vitamin D sales figures! Finally, on Friday morning, the city awoke to a winter wonderland where every surface had been spray-painted white and to mark the occasion the sun even decided to show its face. It seemed that everyone's spirits had been lifted by the arrival of the first snow and the return of some light, just in time for the start of the festivities tomorrow.

The best way to avoid the November lull is to keep busy, and that we sure have done. The wining and dining of October didn’t cease and if anything was taken up a notch with 3 work dinners, a potluck evening at my supervisor’s place, numerous meals at friends’ houses and a food-filled long weekend in Krakow at the beginning of the month. In between this, I’ve been keeping up my Swedish lessons, spending two days a week in Uppsala (a small city 1 hour north of Stockholm) for a seismology course and have participated in a 3-day climate event run by the Bolin Centre at Stockholm University.

The first of the month was spent helping my British friend Felicity move to
her new place. The actual move was a fairly simple task as she had no furniture, so it was just lots of bags on the train. The tricky part, however, was the ceiling height double bed which had been left by the previous owner and needed removing before her Ikea delivery arrived that afternoon. Following much work with a small allen-key and a few terrifying experiences as the bed tumbled down over our heads, the bed was reduced to a pile of planks and a thin mattress which we were able to dispose of before our next workload arrived. Having torn some furniture down it was now time to build some back up in the form of a sofa, a bed and a fold away table. I now feel I could legitimately add ‘experienced with an allen-key’ to my CV and ended up with a blister in the middle of my hand to prove the work that had been put in to the 142 screws required to hold together a kitchen table.

The following weekend was quite a contrast. On Friday lunchtime I flew across to Krakow in Poland to meet my cousin and travelling buddy, Libby, for a couple of days exploring in the rain. One tip for a Krakow visit is to book a place for dinner, we tried many restaurants on the first night before we finally found a spot with space. This ending up being a happy mistake though as we found ourselves in a rather fancy restaurant where we decided to just order a dish of wild boar pierogi (filled pasta-like dumplings) and these came with a complimentary amuse bouche of a delectable porcini consommé with a frothy bite and fancy chocolates to end. We left with a very satisfied palate and dropped off our stuff in our hotel before finishing the night with a strong mulled wine.

Next morning was an early start ready for our visit to
Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Wieliczka Salt Mines. While this wasn’t an easy day, I feel it was an important visit to make to recognise the atrocities that took place and are now part of our history. The visit started with a harrowing tour of the Auschwitz concentration camp. It’s hard to get your head around the fact that what you’re being shown actually took place. The part which hit home the most for me was seeing the room filled with thousands of pairs of shoes, many of which just look like the sort people would slip on today, which highlighted how recent this all is. From here, we moved on to Birkenau death camp, where little remains of the thousands of wooden huts which housed the prisoners because they were destroyed to remove the evidence of the unthinkable crimes that were committed there.

While both places were busy with tourists, there was a respectful hush as people took in the worst

A well seasoned last supper

side of humanity and contemplated the enormity of the loss from the events that took place there.

The afternoon brought a change of tone as we drove over to the Wieliczka Salt Mines for a 2 hour tour in which we learnt about the history or the mines while walking through 3.5 km of tunnels, 150 m below ground: this was less than 2% of the overall system length! The mines operated from the 13^th century, producing table salt up until 1996 and have now been designed for public entrance with a route that takes you through a labyrinth of chambers with underground lakes, glimpses of how the mine was and salt sculptures in many forms, including an impressive chapel filled with salt carved ‘frescoes’.

Fancy pierogi

By the time we arrived back to the city it was already pretty late and we were ravenous so we head straight for dinner, which was a far more hearty affair than the previous evening. We had pierogi and mead, followed by potato pancakes and stew which was, of course, served with pickles alongside. Being in Poland we had to sample some of the local vodka so popped into a few bars before retiring to our hotel.

We spent Sunday exploring a very rainy Krakow. It’s a beautiful city so we wandered the streets for many hours, taking shelter in numerous cafes for mulled wine and decadent hot chocolate. Having explored the Jewish quarter, we had planned on visiting Wawel Castle but on seeing the queue winding its way around the building we returned to the centre for a trip up the clock tower instead. After a dinner of soup (mine sauerkraut and Libby’s a creamy variety served in a loaf of bread), it was time for Libby to head home, so I saw her off and then returned for a final night before my morning flight back to Stockholm.

It was all systems go in Sweden as I now have two days a week learning about reflection seismology

Uppsala

on an incredibly mathsy course over at Uppsala University and back in Stockholm I’m attempting to write up my findings on the use of geophysics in the proglacial environment. Last week I presented a poster on this at the annual Bolin Days. These are three days of climate related talks, starting with 2 lectures by a key-note speaker on the Tuesday and then sessions throughout Wednesday and Thursday, culminating in a dinner and ceilidh, all fuelled with copious amounts of free food. As a bonus I was invited to represent my research area at a dinner with the keynote speaker in the faculty club on the first evening. This year, the keynote speaker was Maureen Raymo, a prominent palaeoclimatologist who has undertaken leading work on the past temperature records to help us to understand the dramatic changes we are seeing today. She gave a scientific lecture followed by a more popular lecture for an audience including many high school students who were obviously very engaged in and concerned about what she was presenting. The Bolin Centre Days really brought to light the pressing issue of our warming climate and the need to act now both on an individual scale and through putting pressure on governments to make more radical change. The current situation was summarised well by the words of the late Bert Bolin: ‘Allvarligt, men inte hopplöst’ – Serious, but not hopeless.

Now it is time to welcome in December and all the cosy, dark nights and fun festivities it brings, starting tonight with mince pies and glögg at a friend’s place. In just 2.5 weeks I’ll be back in the UK to spend Christmas catching up with friends and family and until then I’ll be soaking up as much of the Swedish jul as possible.