CanadiAnneinSweden: Arriving in Umea

After months of preparation that seemed to culminate with a bit of pandemonium in the last days leading up to my departure, it was finally time to head to Sweden. Last Monday morning I said good-bye to Molly and stuffed the last of my belongings into a suitcase. Tyler drove me to the airport and after yet more sad goodbyes it was au revoir Canada, Hej Sweden! It took four plane rides (Edmonton - Calgary - Frankfurt - Stockholm - Umea) and five security checks (grrrr!!) but I made it 22 hours after leaving Edmonton.

Leaving sunny warm Edmonton for colder parts

Strangely in Calgary I heard someone at the check-in counter calling my name - turns out one of my PhD Committee Members, Uldis, was also flying through Frankfurt on my flight- small world eh!

Uldis in the smoking jail chamber in Frankfurt

I somehow managed to fit everything I need (okay well mostly anyhow!) into one bag - my other checked back included 50 pounds of forest floor samples from Alberta (happily no problems with customs but I'm sure they aren't so used to seeing baggies full of humus!). I also had a bit of help in the what to bring department b/c my great friend from Oregon State days, Etsuko, lives in Umea with her boyfriend Petter - so she hooked me up with some of the essentials too, saving precious space and weight :)
My advisor, Michael Gundale, picked me up at the airport and after a stop at SLU (Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet - aka Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) to drop off my forest floor samples, it was a quick drive to my own apartment (no one to clean up after but me!) - which is in the student-housing neighborhood of Alidheim. I was delighted when I walked in the door and saw how spacious and cute my apartment is. It's got room for visitors - so come on up to the great white north of Sweden!

Arriving in my apt - with very little sleep!

As I settled in and looked at the clock around 6 pm I saw that it was already dark. That is going to take some getting used to! Some people might think Sweden is better to visit in the summer - but I've already done that - so living in a darker latitude will be a cool experience too (although maybe not so cool in December when 4.5 hrs of daylight is all Umea gets)!

My apt is the upper left one in this Pedagoggrand Building

Alidhem has two supermarkets that are open late (which is unusual in Sweden where they have very short shopping hours - and most stores are closed on Sunday) - and so I made my first trek out to get groceries so I could eat some supper (plane food leaves something to be desired imho). It's only a couple blocks from my apartment to get groceries, so super convenient. It was amusing to try to decipher all of the labels. Happily I didn't inadvertently buy the hamburgerkött - which is smoked horse meat - I'm on the look out to avoid that one now that Michael warned me about it! They have squeeze bottles of everything - I saw one that had a picture of bacon pieces on it but managed to resist the temptation but sounds like it might be some bacon soft cheese concoction - cheese with caviar anyone ;) Translations seem pretty literal on a lot of things so I came home with the staples and no surprises :) Most stuff you buy here (e.g., tomato sauce, milk, yogurt) is in tetra-paks rather than cans or cartons. It turns out that Sweden is the home of the tetra-pak - who knew! And while I was expecting groceries to be super expensive here, overall they seem fairly comparable to back home so that is good news for my travel budget :)

ICA - where I get my groceries

After supper it was time to crawl into bed under my beautiful Marimekko (Finnish company - I love their patterns) duvet that Etsuko gave me and finally catch up on some sleep - I'd only been up for 30+ hours - not that I was counting ;)