Sweden after three months

I've been in Sweden now for more than a quarter of the year and I know I
haven't sent out nearly enough mail! So here's a little update for all of
you.

The time has flown by at an amazing pace. The last five or six weeks
really have been a blur. Classes started six weeks ago, and I've been
incredibly busy with my schoolwork. I'm taking four classes right now:
first of all, Swedish, which I've been taking since I got here in June.
Over the summer Swedish was five hours a day, four days a week. Now it's
two and a half hours of Swedish class every day, five days a week, not to
mention the homework. I'm also taking Algorithm Theory (algorithmteori),
Error Control Koding (kodningsteknik), and Functional Programming
(funktionsprogrammering). Officially, I'm taking too many classes --
twice the number of units that a Swede would take. But so far it's not so
bad, and I'm kept occupied.

Yes, my classes are in Swedish. But the textbooks this term are in
English, so that's not really as impressive as one might think. What IS
confusing, however, is kodningsteknik. Right now we're learning about
Reed-Solomon codes, which are used in just about any kind of data
transmission system, such as, for example, the encoding of music on a CD,
so that the CD can still play when it's scratched or otherwise damaged.
This is confusing because it is based on polynomials over an operator
where the coefficients are taken from a field also composed of polynomials
over a dummy variable with coefficients from {0,1} -- so called "binary
extension fields". I haven't quite figured them out yet, but that's the
first order of business once I finish this email.

I live in a "korridor" which is a hallway with a bunch of rooms with a big
collective kitchen and living space in the middle. There are something
like 25 rooms in the korridor (mine is double the normal size, consisting
of two korridors glued together in a double-sized common kitchen). I have
my own room -- no roommate -- and it's quite nice. The korridor-mates are
quite friendly. It's a diverse group, too: exchange students who came
years ago but never left, new students, students who've been here 10
years...

The summer was quite pleasant -- to begin with, the weather was absolutely
perfect. Long, warm, sunny days every day. Really, it reminded me of
being in Alaska. Lund was void of students over the summer -- everyone
takes off on vacation -- so it was just us, a small group of Americans.
Really, there weren't even any cars in the city. It was quiet indeed.
We had Swedish class for many hours, every day. Then we'd go home, cook
dinner together, and then work on Swedish homework. Then sleep for the
night, then get up and walk to Swedish class again. Every day we'd meet
at 8:20 for the 2.5km walk to class... On the weekends we went on outings
- -- to nearby Copenhagen, to Oslo, to various places in the Skåne.

At the end, I took a two week trip through the Netherlands and Germany,
visiting some friends and friends-of-friends and
friends-of-friends-of-friends. First I camped for a week in Enschede
(ensk-hede), near the German border, attending an event known as Hackers
At Large (after a day in Amsterdam and a soccer match with 10,000
screaming scots). Read about it at http://splorg.org/~tobin/hal2001/ .

I took the train West into Holland (Holland is a region within The
Netherlands) where I met my friend Grace (from Berkeley, now studying
physics at Yale, and visiting Holland for a week before attending a
scientific conference in Copenhagen). Grace and I stayed for four days in
a beautiful old house in central Delft, with Nienke, a friend of Grace's
who she'd met at Yale while she (Nienke) was studying there for three
months (she's studying [business I think] at the University in Maastricht)
and her astonishingly friendly family. The three of us took day-trips
through Delft (of course), Rotterdam, and The Hague, before Grace and I
took off on the night bus to Hamburg, Germany.

Of course we didn't get any sleep on the bus, and we arrived, after a
rather intense border-crossing experience, in Hamburg, Germany, a little
after four in the morning. We explored the city by night, got breakfast
(embarrassingly, The American Breakfast option at McDonalds -- which
consisted primarily of croissants, coffee, and jam. Where else would be
open in Hamburg's pre-dawn hours?) and then went to sleep on park benches
by a lake. I wrapped myself up in the Pink Blanket which I had inherited
from Allison, and I found this quite amusing (walking around Hamburg
carrying a bright and thoroughly pink blanket).

After a morning exploring Hamburg aimlessly -- but not unsuccessfully --
we called up a guy named Chris -- who, the story currently goes, was met
by my roommate Chris's friend Jackson on a bus home from a punk rock
concert in the middle of the night in Oakland. Or something like that.
In any case, I didn't know anything about him, so it was really a
friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend connection. We met Chris at
the train station and he was also remarkably friendly (so many friendly
people!) and took us to his apartment near the University there in
Hamburg (you can see his apartment on some of the postcards of the
city). After a nap, Chris and one of his friends took us out to see the
town -- a ride on a giant ferris wheel and the accompanying excellent view
of the city, a walk down by the harbor.

Grace stayed in Hamburg for the weekend, then took a train up to
Copenhagen. I caught a ride to Berlin.

They have a most excellent system in Germany -- the Mitfahrcentral --
which is essentially a ride sharing agency through which you can book a
ride to other cities, or arrange to have passengers if you're driving
somewhere. The rates are fixed, you even get a ticket. It's quite
professional. I was a bit worried that it wouldn't work out -- really, it
seemed to be too good to be true. Chris called them up for me -- I
expected that there *might* be a ride available -- I wanted to leave in
the next 24 hours -- but in the end there were three to choose from.

The driver was a young woman, and I was a bit surprised, as you don't
usually think of young women as taking on random passengers, but as I was
to learn, it was definitely something she could handle. First she said
she worked in a hospital, but then I learned that it was a psychiatric
ward -- she had to deal with the crazies! Later it was revealed that she
did her medical internship in Capetown -- "South Africa?" I asked. "Yup"
- -- and she added that she had excellent surgical experience -- from the
daily lineup of stab-wounds etc. And after that she went hitchhiking
around Mozambique. So I guess she could handle the Mitfahrzentral.

Crossing into what was once East Germany the road suddenly thinned and the
quality changed noticeably. Really, it was kinda like where the Ortega
Highway crosses from Orange into Riverside County. (-:

Berlin was quite interesting, but I'll write about it some other time.

My parents got me a digital camera, so I've been taking many pictures, and
they're all on the Internet for your viewing pleasure. I try to add
descriptions and captions as I have time. Unfortunately I don't have many
good pictures of "daily life" here yet -- I'm working on that. Most of
the pictures are of weekend festivities. I'm also working on a "cast of
characters" page. But for now you can cruise over to splorg.org and see
what's there. And, my summertime pictures aren't in digital form.

This weekend was pretty interesting. On Friday/Saturday I worked at
Krischansta, my Nation. The Nations are student clubs here, and everyone
must be (by law! [dating from 1670 or so]) a member of one of the thirteen
nations, which originally corresponded to one's city of origin in Sweden,
but now you can join whichever Nation you please. I joined Krischansta
nation for no particular reason, other than that they are one of the
smaller nations and are conveniently located. The nations host a
multitude of student activities, such as lunches, dinners, dances, discos,
outings, clubs, sports, etc. Every other Friday Krischansta hosts a
formal dinner (called a sittning) and followed by a dance club (a disco).
The dinner costs something like $12 to attend, and the dance club alone
$3, and they're entirely run by the students. And so, I worked at the
sittning and disco on Friday night. Work starts at about 3:00 Friday
afternoon and goes to about 6:00 Saturday morning! In the afternoon we
cooked the dinner, cleaned the Nation thoroughly. Then when the dinner
started, we served everyone (78 guests), and then some of the workers
worked in the kitchen, some (including me) as waiters. It was really
quite fun, and I got to meet many interesting people. Most I began
talking too after they inquired about my "very strange accent" -- and I
was most often identified as German. Odd. And I'm talking not only about
my accent in Swedish, but in English too. From 11pm until midnight I
worked in the kitchen, then until 1 I wandered around collecting glasses
and so forth. From 1 until 2, when the club closed, I worked coat check
- -- and consequently got to say "hej" and "hej då" to each and every guest
as they left. From 2:30 until 3:30 we cleaned the nation once more --
mopped all the floors, scrubbed the kitchen, vacuumed, etc. And finally,
it was time to "sexa," which is the after-party for the workers -- time
to sit down and enjoy some food ourselves. And then, time to go home and
sleep all Saturday morning. The obvious question of course is, why do
this? There's no monetary renumeration, and tipping is not usual custom
in Sweden beyond rounding up to the nearest 20 kronor ($2). It was fun
once but I think it's too demanding to do too often. I did get to meet
many people, and annoy them by taking their pictures:
http://splorg.org/~tobin/projects/sverige/photos/011012/dir.cgi

All of us Americans in Sweden are actively following the "situation" --
the current euphemism of choice, although "situation" is being phased out
in favor of "war." The director of our study center (the University of
California delegation to Lunds Universitet) was actually in New York City
at the time of the attacks and was stuck there for some time. In Sweden
things have for the most part returned to normal. At first there was an
outpouring of sympathy and support for the Americans here and anyone else
who might have been affected. There was some awkwardness too, as the
Swedes didn't really know how to approach the subject. After the
immediacy wore off, it became an annoying line used to start conversations
- -- "So how do you feel about the tragedy in New York?" Really, none of us
had the desire nor the energy to discuss the matter anymore, especially as
a conversation starter. But now, it's pretty much back to normal. We
watch CNN and the Swedish news on TV with some anxiety, but generally feel
safe in a neutral, non-NATO country, one where civil defense is taken very
seriously. There's a bombshelter in every building, air raid sirens are
tested weekly, and mobilisation plans are prepared and practiced. Sweden
is very accommodating towards immigrants, and consequently we have
representatives from every side of the conflict. My friend from whom I buy
lunch almost every day is looking forward to a vacation in Syria but
warned me, "You can't go there, you have an American passport." Everyone
alike feels the same sense of anxiety, I think. There's no internal
tension here regarding the matter, that I can see.

I'm very interested in what this conflict is doing to change the face of
the world scene. Apparently we count Uzbekistan as an ally now, and every
day there seems to be just a little bit more coöperation between the
ex-Soviet states and the West, the U.S. in particular. In some sense it
represents a global realignment: from the old cold war alignment to one
separating us to a greater degree from several Arab states -- eg,
Afghanistan for sure. On a more practical level the recently introduced
legislation in the United States, trading liberty for presumed security
and increasing paranoia everywhere, really worries me. It seems that in
times of crisis Congress goes into overdrive, passing laws that we'll
collectively regret later. But enough, for now, about what I think.
You'll here more of that in email #2, after all.