Norge

Only another 100kms (or 10 Swedish milles), over the mountains and through a tunnel lies Norgè where we arrived in Mo I Rana, a somewhat industrial town at the top of a fiord on the day they were experiencing their first winter storm. Not being ‘the season’ the information place was shut, but a friendly young lady in the bookshop helped us with an itinerary for the day. The drive in the car all along the fiord to where the ferries depart to other islands or different parts of the mainland was spectacular and afforded us a look at a small part of Norway, including their interesting letterboxes. The fiords are much more like the Marlborough Sounds than the West coast fiords, except that with the storm there were numerous waterfalls also.

Autumn or is it Winter?

Red Pig was most excited about the proposed trip by hired car north west to Hemavan, the Swedish equivalent of Queenstown, NZ. This meant the opportunity to explore the countryside, see the high mountains (around 1200m so not enormous but nice enough and still with some snow patches), and most of all, delight in the autumn colours, which are really magnificent. The landscape is beautiful; forest, farms, lakes, rivers and streams and then of course the mountains, just waiting for some intrepid hiking. Wearing our own or borrowed gear we hiked up a mountain and along the top to a place called Laisaliden and up a huge roaring river that has sculpted out holes and what were called ‘canals’ instead of ‘channels’ due to a slip in translation. Overnight it snowed

Baltic Sea

In the afternoon, G and H joined Charlotte and their Italian truffle dog (Red Pig was too nervous to accompany them) to see her family’s summer house at the beach on the Baltic sea, which incidentally is hardly salty and has no tide. It must be lovely in summer as the beach is sandy and the sea very calm-more like a lake than the sea. However, this day was very cold with a strong wind blowing, so thank goodness for the house-warmed to keep the indoor plants alive over winter!

Cycle upriver

On a 20km bike ride along the cycle path next to the wide Ume river (which has its headwaters all the way into Norway more than 500 kms away and from which the town Umeå gets its name – pronounced like oo-me-oh) on Sunday morning, we found a lovely church. Bikes and pigs were not however allowed in the picturesque cemetery!

Excercise and eating habits

Golf! Saturday saw the three of us on the golf course accompanying new friends on their usual nine holes (or 18 holes in summer, including the summer version of the 19th hole pictured here). Their day had began with a swim session – the Swedish people generally seem to be very active; no wonder they can and do eat a lot without the consequences that other western eating habits have. Mind you, we haven’t found any energy bars or muesli bars in the shops and far less a selection of chips. However, we have found whole shops devoted to lollies and the chocolate from Finland is very yummy. No-one eats on the trot, all school children receive (free) cooked lunch at school and most people eat a very healthy cooked meal at lunch time, bought from one of the many and various restaurants around the campus.

Soccer

Last night Red Pig had an outing when we were given a ‘biljtett’ (ticket) to the womens’ soccer game in town. Umea’s team has won the Swedish champs for a few years. We went out of interest to see what the crowd was like, but ended up being as excited as anyone there when the local team scored to make it 3-2 in the last two minutes of the game. Then off back home on our bicycles, through the forest tracks en route-what could be nicer?

The Dongers

We have both been lent bicycles by respective colleagues and so have a new freedom to explore more quickly. Cycling is the dominant form of transport here, supported and made safe by the network of cycle/walking tracks, and we have found it very pleasant to be out and about by bicycle. We go to work by bicycle also; it takes 15 minutes instead of the 35 minute walk. It’s easy to wear work clothes and cycle at a gentle pace, instead of the necessary lycra and speed that seems to be the norm in NZ. H's cycle is a classic-at least 40 years old, no gears, huge pedal circumference that makes pedalling (even uphill) relatively easy, although one gets to the stage where one simply cant pedal if the hill is too steep and then everyone simply walks that section. We have been finding new ways of getting to work, to the shops etc and now don’t even require a map unless we are trying to get to a specific address. Pretty good feeling. The only drawback is that it takes at least five minutes to dress up in all the required warm gear for cycling; jacket, gloves, headgear and scarf. Temperatures have certainly dropped since our arrival; it’s regularly 4 or 5 degrees in the morning en route to work and again in the evenings.

Trip out of town.

Last weekend, we were invited on a trip by car towards the northwest along the large river called the Vindeln to a place on the river with an impressive series of rapids. We walked along the river track and into the forest, and again, couldn’t resist the mushrooms and berries that are SO prominent in the forest here. The small town had a very old church (Lutheran is the religion in Sweden) and a newer more impressive version close by. The lovely old church is apparently used mostly for weddings or funerals and was surrounded (as usual) with the cemetery, but in this case, much of it was family plots, each with a tidy hedge around it. Local farmers apparently make a bit of ‘pocket money’ tidying the cemeteries in the summer months.

Customs

People have been extremely invitative, so we have experienced a whole raft of new and exciting cultural norms in the past week or so. We spent much of an afternoon out in the forest to collect mushrooms while on a ‘team building’ exercise for staff. Actually, the truth is that each semester (six months) everyone in the university is expected to participate in some sort of outdoor activity for the day; hence the mushroom collecting expedition with two staff members. We have also been invited to two dinners with friends; one dinner was to celebrate the custom of eating of a type of freshwater crayfish at this time of the year (no matter that the crayfish now have to be imported from China seeing as they are hard to come by locally), accompanied by schnapps and Swedish drinking songs and funny bibs. Seeing the Red Pig cant sing, it was up to Guy and Hilda to do the necessary, but they failed miserably in the pronunciation of the Swedish renderings and couldn’t remember any English versions as those days are too long gone. In retrospect, we could have managed ‘you are my sunshine’ but now aren’t sure that that would be counted as a drinking song.

The other dinner was a much more sedate affair in the most beautiful apartment five floors up and overlooking the lake. Now I know what is raved about Swedish architecture and design – it’s clean simple lines, light, bright and cheery. Maybe it needs to be to fend off the darkness that is already threatening to overtake the world here.

First impressions modified

Well, we’ll have to apologise that first impressions aren’t always the most suitable; there is much nicer architecture, the bread is very yummy if you can find the right stuff, and lingon berry is not an ‘acquired’ taste, it’s actually very good. And Red Pig has learnt which mushrooms are not marked ‘deadly nightcap’. Actually, that word belongs more to the schnapps that accompanies many (or is it most) dinners out – you’ll need to ask Guy about the after effects of too much schnapps and the use of a pillow in the morning when the sun gets up.

Sunday

Sunday morning was spent walking/jogging around the local lake-a 10 km trip which H intends to be able to do without stopping or walking by the time we leave here. Then off to the shops for supplies for the week, lugged back to our upstairs apartment in the rucksack by G. Meat and chicken (krychling) is very expensive (from $20-$26 per kilogram respectively), yet other items such as dried fruit (blandfrukt) is cheap. We bought the most awful bread last shopping spree (sweet cardboard) so are being pickier from now on. There was a nice farmers’ market in a park on Saturday with lovely bread, but that market is only once a week and only till the end of September when it appears that veges will more or less come to an end with the colder weather. Oh dear…

Architecture is interesting; rather plain and a bit like what we have seen in the Czech Republic (sort of Russianly utilitarian). Even the museum (Bilt museet) looked more like a factory, although it housed a most beautiful exhibition of aerial photographs of different parts of Sweden by Lars Bygdemark-well worth finding his work if you can A and A as you will love the patterns in it.

Hunting and gathering

It’s mushroom season at present; pity Red Pig doesnt know which ones are safe to eat. However, the forest is also home to wild berries in the form of blueberries (yummy), raspberries (very yummy) and another one called a lingon berry (rather sour and apparently an ‘acquired’ taste). G and H raided the forest for berries and looked on by Red Pig proudly produced a half pot full, which when cooked with a little sugar makes for a very nice pudding (combined with plain yoghurt).

Forest and skifield

Red Pig felt miffed about not being included in the first day at work on Friday, so was keen to explore the surroundings over the weekend. We set out towards the city, taking one of the routes from the map and one that skirted one of the many areas of forest that are included within the town’s boundaries. Red Pig was amazed just how similar the forest areas are to those in NZ; there are small tracks lined with moss, ferns and low bushes amongst the trees. The trees are different of course, not beech or podocarp, but types of fir, oak and silver birch amongst other unidentified species. Apparently the tracks become cross-country ski tracks when the snows arrive (anytime from mid-October onwards). A detour took us up the highest ‘hill’ in Umea to see the flat countryside and the infrastructure for the ski lift, used in winter for those who wish to ski really close to home (or perhaps on the way home from work or school) or for those who cannot travel to the ‘real’ ski fields further to the northwest. Red Pig took in the scenery from vantage point on the skifield sign for those of you with a sharp eye or magnifying glass!

Stockholm and Umea arrival.

The hotel in Stockholm, a most beautiful but very expensive city, cost us over $300 and was very basic-in fact two single beds (where was the pig to sleep?) and a chair. Mind you, the included breakfast was something to write home about if you get used to the idea of cold meat, cheese, tomato, pepper and cucumber salad and yummy biscuits and tarts for breakfast. We had a morning to explore (again the old city for its history and architecture).

Then in some trepidation seeing that this was the beginning of the real business end of this experience, on to Umea, where we were met at the airport by Charlotte and Gunnevi, who I have to say, have made us feel most welcome and at home. We spent yesterday getting to grips with different culture and customs and can now proudly say that we know where to buy alcohol (at the System Bolaget-the governmental retail outlet for anything more than 2.5% alcohol), shop for muesli, bread, veges and absolutely anything else you can think of as long as you can guess from the label what is in the package! We have also mastered the washing machine (guess what centrifugering means) and know where to sort the household rubbish (Kerry you would be proud of the recycling that goes on here), use the bus, join the library and walk on the correct side of the footpath. To get to the university takes about 35 mins walk, so we (H and myself, G being already fit) should get fit if we do that twice a day.

Not quite sure why we packed summer clothes as we had to dress up yesterday in polar fleece and rain jacket; although we are now sitting inside in shorts and t-shirt, but that’s more on account of most other clothes being washed than a reflection on the temperature. It’s raining again outside.

Both G and H have made contact and spent today at ‘work’ although not much ‘work’ was achieved, it being the first day and mostly spent meeting and greeting around the respective depts. H has a room-mate called Jonas who teaches physiology-may some of that rub off in the right direction.

Please keep in touch with us through email or any other preferred means, just so’s we don’t completely forget how to converse in English while over here.

London and confusion over names.

Then on to London and a day with H’s school friend Peter and his family and a day with the A team’s parents/future p-in-law, with whom we celebrated suitably before and over dinner with champagne and then Aussie red wine. The name Guy became rather confusing, so A now has a father called GJ, a future pa in law called GP and a future brother-in-law called GC (seeing as his sister Lisa was also there with her GC). Some readers will know what I mean and many thanks for the hospitality.

Quebec City

We (that is Hilda and Guy and myself) travelled via a rather circuitous route that took us through Sydney, Vancouver and Montreal (our luggage got lost en route and arrived later) to H’s conference in Quebec City. We lodged in a delightful B-n-B near the conf centre and during the week we were there, managed to explore some of the old walled city of Quebec including part of the 400 years celebratory events, intent on taking photographs of architecture (the good, the bad and the indifferently juxtaposed) for Kerry to use in her teaching. Mona (G’s relative) and Nancy, who had come up to Quebec from Kingston to see us, treated us to cocktails in THE hotel, Chateau Fontenac, for G’s b’day – H had the ‘ladies favourite’ called ‘Million dollar legs’ and G had a ‘Manhatten’.

Start here. Travels of the RP.

Travels according to the Red Pig.
September 5th

To explain: When first embarking on this PhD, sister Lorna presented Hilda with a small red pig made out of wire and beads. Although this pig has wings, it cannot yet fly. It came with the intent that completion of the PhD will allow ‘pigs to fly’. Hence, red pig has been brought on this experience to ‘learn to fly’; but because one cannot embark on exciting ventures without ‘paying’ for them, this pig has been awarded the task of keeping the diary. Red Pig will appear in some of our photographs. Look carefully.