+ I've been hearing similar characterizations of the Swedes from a number of people, Swedes and non-Swedes alike. The way Louis described it at dinner on Friday, people in Stockholm (I wonder if there's a good adjective for this, maybe something like Michigander? Stockholmian sounds awfully gothic) do not know their neighbors, will sit as far away as possible from other people on buses and trains, and if they are forced to sit next to each other or in the same row, they'll angle themselves as far away from the other person as they can. Louis was comparing this to the relative openness and friendliness of Americans, and he lived in Virginia for a few years when he was young so perhaps it's a fair assessment of a more southern sense of hospitality - but my reaction, of course, as a hostile New Yorker, was yes! It's just like New York, except not nearly as bad. In New York there are constantly compelling reasons for avoiding crazy neighbors and deranged public transportation customers, whereas in Stockholm practically everyone is completely gorgeous and you would only be so lucky to have some of their Nordic charm rub off on you. And one might think that my years in Berkeley have softened me, but no! I still walk just as fast, even when I'm not in a hurry.
The analogy Amanda gave me, which comes from a friend of hers who is married to a Swede, is that Swedish people are like those big European/Swedish apartment buildings - they have big, slightly foreboding facades, and you need codes and keys to get in the front sets of doors, but once you're in, you find things like beautiful sprawling gardens in the courtyard, things that you definitely couldn't tell were there from the outside. I thought this was funny, and it seems true. There is not a sense of immediate warmth and openness, and it can be easy to mistake this for them being cold or disdainful or hating you for some unknown reason, but once you're in (and it doesn't take much), you're in.
+ A lot of the work and reading I'm doing deals with size at birth. When adjusted for length of gestation, birth weight acts as a very useful marker of conditions in utero. One of the main connections is with nutrition, which makes sense - if you are not well-nourished when you're developing, there are all sorts of changes and adjustments that your body makes that may set you up for greater health risks later in life. Aside from literal malnutrition (e.g. siege of Leningrad), there are all sorts of things that contribute to lower birth size - smoking is an extreme and obvious example. A lot of this work, in turn, draws on the "mismatch" hypothesis (Barker), which is basically the idea that if you experience adverse conditions early on, such as in utero, then your body makes all of these physiological and metabolic adjustments to cope with the conditions that it is experiencing and that it "thinks" it will continue to experience when it's on its own. If, as is sometimes the case, the cues that are received in utero do not match the actual environment for whatever reason, or if there are changes from malnutrition in utero to adequate nutrition later on, for example, there are greater risks for all sorts of diseases. The mechanisms for this are really complicated and I'm only just starting to understand a lot of it, but the point of writing about this was that the continuum usually ranges from inadequate nutrition to adequate nutrition, and something that came up when I was talking with Ilona this morning was the question of what happens when there's overadequate nutrition. In, uh, America, for example. I know there's a lot of controversy about the research on obesity, and I don't know much about it, but it seems like a safe bet that if the one extreme of low birth weight is correlated with certain negative conditions, the extreme on the other end is going to be connected with some bad stuff too. Interesting.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Sunday, September 23, 2007
This afternoon, through another circuitous friend/family connection, I had lunch with someone named Erik who is a few years older than me and who is awesome. We ate at this restaurant looking out on the water with a huge brunch buffet where I avoided the herring but had lots of salmon, and which I have determined on the map was on an island called Hammarby Sjöstad, just south of Södermalm. Erik repeated the name for me twice but the "sjö" sound is totally bizarre. Erik had his dad's car so after lunch he drove me around Stockholm a bit. It was nice to see it from the car - I take the bus a lot but I'm still at a point where I'm constantly stressed out about figuring out where I am and not missing my stop, so it's not particularly relaxing.
It was a beautiful, sunny, perfect fall day, barely chilly at all, and the best part was driving around Djurgården, which is another island right in central Stockholm but it's mostly all a park. Apparently starting in 1580 parts of it were a royal animal preserve with reindeer and elk and such, but now it's mostly museums and lots of open park space. The leaves are starting to change colors, and driving around it felt like we were in an old movie set in autumn in Vermont, where the day's activity was to take a scenic drive in a sleek light blue Audi.
Erik also offered to help me move my stuff to my apartment in Kungsholmen on Friday, which is incredible because I was dreading having to do it by myself. I've now moved three separate times, soon to be five - California to hotel in Stockholm, hotel to the temporary place in Fruängen an hour away, back another hour from Fruängen to where I am now at the Wenner-Gren Center in the city, tomorrow morning moving to a different room in this building, and finally, on Friday, to Kungsholmen. I tried to be frugal with what I brought, but it is still incredible how much stuff I manage to accumulate, including a blanket and pillow and bulky things like that. Also, Erik's family has a house on an island in the archipelago (actually, based on multiple repetitions of the phrase "my family's island" and other information, I think it's their island, but I'm not one hundred percent positive) - but the point is that he said they go ice skating there in the winter and that he'd bring me sometime, so I have my first exciting Swedish winter plans. I can barely describe how grateful I am for people like this who are willing to just jump in and be kind and funny and helpful.
Also we drove past the American embassy, and it was hands down the ugliest building I've ever seen in Stockholm. It's this horrendous gray concrete bunker. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. We're having the Fulbright "orientation," aka a day of museums and receptions and things, on Friday, which culminates in a reception with someone high-ranking at the embassy, so I imagine it will be nicer on the inside...
It was a beautiful, sunny, perfect fall day, barely chilly at all, and the best part was driving around Djurgården, which is another island right in central Stockholm but it's mostly all a park. Apparently starting in 1580 parts of it were a royal animal preserve with reindeer and elk and such, but now it's mostly museums and lots of open park space. The leaves are starting to change colors, and driving around it felt like we were in an old movie set in autumn in Vermont, where the day's activity was to take a scenic drive in a sleek light blue Audi.
Erik also offered to help me move my stuff to my apartment in Kungsholmen on Friday, which is incredible because I was dreading having to do it by myself. I've now moved three separate times, soon to be five - California to hotel in Stockholm, hotel to the temporary place in Fruängen an hour away, back another hour from Fruängen to where I am now at the Wenner-Gren Center in the city, tomorrow morning moving to a different room in this building, and finally, on Friday, to Kungsholmen. I tried to be frugal with what I brought, but it is still incredible how much stuff I manage to accumulate, including a blanket and pillow and bulky things like that. Also, Erik's family has a house on an island in the archipelago (actually, based on multiple repetitions of the phrase "my family's island" and other information, I think it's their island, but I'm not one hundred percent positive) - but the point is that he said they go ice skating there in the winter and that he'd bring me sometime, so I have my first exciting Swedish winter plans. I can barely describe how grateful I am for people like this who are willing to just jump in and be kind and funny and helpful.
Also we drove past the American embassy, and it was hands down the ugliest building I've ever seen in Stockholm. It's this horrendous gray concrete bunker. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. We're having the Fulbright "orientation," aka a day of museums and receptions and things, on Friday, which culminates in a reception with someone high-ranking at the embassy, so I imagine it will be nicer on the inside...
Friday, September 21, 2007
Köpenhamn
Tonight I had rimmad lax and a big glass of the house white at Sturehof with Louis, which made me very happy. Sturehof is the perfect combination of cozy French bistro and sleek Nordic restaurant. Too bad the Euro (and Swedish kronor, by association) is at an all-time high, while the dollar has now reached the Canadian dollar for the first time in decades. In other words, restaurants are insanely expensive here. There are other cultural & economic reasons for this too, which Louis was explaining to me a bit tonight at dinner.
Today it was very mild out, but it is fall here. You can smell it in the air, and the leaves are changing colors. I'm so happy to experience an honest to god season change after two years in Berkeley. In my head the weather in Berkeley is like the reading on an EKG after someone has flatlined. I don't know much about cardiology yet but suffice it to say the yearly weather variation in Stockholm would look more like someone in severe cardiac distress.
I didn't love Copenhagen the way I love Stockholm, although it was great to hang out with A. all weekend. But the buildings are such beautiful colors, and there are so many statues and reliefs and ornaments on them. And I found a little cafe called Petit Delice on a street called Kompagnistræde that literally made the entire weekend worth it. They serve their lattes in big French cafe bowls, and I had a beautiful open-face sandwich of potatoes, chives, red onions, and enormous flower-shaped mounds of mayonnaise, on dark bread. I don't think it would be humanly possible to consume more than 30% of the mayo that was on that plate, although it wasn't the disgusting American-style mayo, it was something else entirely.
My latte in Copenhagen. And the Dave Eggers book I bought out of desperation in Lund when I finished O, Pioneers and it was pouring and I had nothing to do but read. I strongly dislike Dave Eggers and was resentful that this was my best option at the bookstore in Lund, especially after finishing Saturday and the Willa Cather one, but these stories have kept me pleasantly occupied.
.
.
.
.
My favorite building in all of Copenhagen.
Today it was very mild out, but it is fall here. You can smell it in the air, and the leaves are changing colors. I'm so happy to experience an honest to god season change after two years in Berkeley. In my head the weather in Berkeley is like the reading on an EKG after someone has flatlined. I don't know much about cardiology yet but suffice it to say the yearly weather variation in Stockholm would look more like someone in severe cardiac distress.
I didn't love Copenhagen the way I love Stockholm, although it was great to hang out with A. all weekend. But the buildings are such beautiful colors, and there are so many statues and reliefs and ornaments on them. And I found a little cafe called Petit Delice on a street called Kompagnistræde that literally made the entire weekend worth it. They serve their lattes in big French cafe bowls, and I had a beautiful open-face sandwich of potatoes, chives, red onions, and enormous flower-shaped mounds of mayonnaise, on dark bread. I don't think it would be humanly possible to consume more than 30% of the mayo that was on that plate, although it wasn't the disgusting American-style mayo, it was something else entirely.
My latte in Copenhagen. And the Dave Eggers book I bought out of desperation in Lund when I finished O, Pioneers and it was pouring and I had nothing to do but read. I strongly dislike Dave Eggers and was resentful that this was my best option at the bookstore in Lund, especially after finishing Saturday and the Willa Cather one, but these stories have kept me pleasantly occupied.
.
.
.
.
My favorite building in all of Copenhagen.
Friday, September 14, 2007
tåg (train)
I'm on the SJ X2000 train, from Stockholm to Lund, to meet A. and her family for dinner, then an hour train ride to Köpenhamn tonight. It is a four-hour train ride to Lund and I'm just settling into my big cozy window seat. I haven't been on an Amtrak train recently, but the trains here have real-time maps of your location and time to the destination which is great for my cartographic obesssion.
It took approximately two minutes after leaving Central Station for the scenery to become totally beautiful. We've passed all sorts of lakes, and maroon and yellow farmhouses with white trim, vast stark fields dotted with sheep and cows, whole forests of very tall, solemn pine trees. The amount of undeveloped land so close to major urban centers is staggering - Sweden is the fourth largest (Western) European country and has only 9 million people.
This morning I went into CHESS for a brief meeting with Ilona, the professor who I'll be working with most. She is so nice and and welcoming, and we decided on two projects that I'll assist with to start. I believe most of the data analysis for both studies is mostly complete so they're mostly in the writing stages, which I think will be nice for me since my statistical skills are not that impressive.
The general topic of the work at CHESS is the developmental origins of adult disease - i.e. how do social conditions experienced by someone in utero or in early childhood affect later risk of developing various diseases. The first paper I'll be working on looks at correlations between cortisol levels in families. Cortisol is considered a marker of stress, and using data from Uppsala, a big university town north of Stockholm, there appears to be a significant relationship between cortisol levels in parents and children. I've always had a thing for cortisol & glucocorticoids so this is very exciting.
The second project is quite different - we will be looking at cancer incidence in survivors of the siege of Leningrad during the second world war. In the 70s when people started becoming aware of factors that influence the development of circulatory diseases (e.g. cardiovascular diseases), three cohorts were started in the US, in Moscow, and in St. Petersberg, aka Leningrad. I haven't read this stuff yet but apparently the director of CHESS and Ilona and many others have produced very good work looking at circulatory disease in survivors of the starvation/famine in Leningrad during those years (and who, I believe, were either in utero or very young children). What we're going to do now is work on a paper about how cancer incidence was affected. It is similar in nature to the Dutch hunger winter work but the situation in Leningrad was much more severe and lasted much longer, and the study is now funded in Sweden.
Ilona also invited me to the European Public Health Association conference in Helsinki in October, to all sorts of meetings at CHESS and with the collaborators in Uppsala, as well as to a dissertation defense at the Karolinska Institute next week. Apparently in Sweden dissertation defenses are public spectacles, with family and friends and whoever else wants to come, so that should be fun.
It's cloudy and rainy now, and we're passing through some very ugly towns, and I didn't think to reserve a seat with a power outlet so my battery is going to run out. Pictures to come later.
It took approximately two minutes after leaving Central Station for the scenery to become totally beautiful. We've passed all sorts of lakes, and maroon and yellow farmhouses with white trim, vast stark fields dotted with sheep and cows, whole forests of very tall, solemn pine trees. The amount of undeveloped land so close to major urban centers is staggering - Sweden is the fourth largest (Western) European country and has only 9 million people.
This morning I went into CHESS for a brief meeting with Ilona, the professor who I'll be working with most. She is so nice and and welcoming, and we decided on two projects that I'll assist with to start. I believe most of the data analysis for both studies is mostly complete so they're mostly in the writing stages, which I think will be nice for me since my statistical skills are not that impressive.
The general topic of the work at CHESS is the developmental origins of adult disease - i.e. how do social conditions experienced by someone in utero or in early childhood affect later risk of developing various diseases. The first paper I'll be working on looks at correlations between cortisol levels in families. Cortisol is considered a marker of stress, and using data from Uppsala, a big university town north of Stockholm, there appears to be a significant relationship between cortisol levels in parents and children. I've always had a thing for cortisol & glucocorticoids so this is very exciting.
The second project is quite different - we will be looking at cancer incidence in survivors of the siege of Leningrad during the second world war. In the 70s when people started becoming aware of factors that influence the development of circulatory diseases (e.g. cardiovascular diseases), three cohorts were started in the US, in Moscow, and in St. Petersberg, aka Leningrad. I haven't read this stuff yet but apparently the director of CHESS and Ilona and many others have produced very good work looking at circulatory disease in survivors of the starvation/famine in Leningrad during those years (and who, I believe, were either in utero or very young children). What we're going to do now is work on a paper about how cancer incidence was affected. It is similar in nature to the Dutch hunger winter work but the situation in Leningrad was much more severe and lasted much longer, and the study is now funded in Sweden.
Ilona also invited me to the European Public Health Association conference in Helsinki in October, to all sorts of meetings at CHESS and with the collaborators in Uppsala, as well as to a dissertation defense at the Karolinska Institute next week. Apparently in Sweden dissertation defenses are public spectacles, with family and friends and whoever else wants to come, so that should be fun.
It's cloudy and rainy now, and we're passing through some very ugly towns, and I didn't think to reserve a seat with a power outlet so my battery is going to run out. Pictures to come later.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Telefoneplan
+ Many things are much, much nicer here in Sweden. The streets are cleaner, there is less crime, etc. However, it was a comfort to learn that UPS in Sweden is just as incompetent and dishonest as UPS in the US. It is so egregrious it feels like it just has to be on purpose. After two missed deliveries at my office at CHESS I scheduled a delivery for between noon and two this afternoon. At two I called and was told the driver would be notified to call me immediately. Of course he didn't call, and at three I had the same phone call except this time the woman told me that I should call immediately if I hadn't heard from the driver by 4:15 because at that point he would be in "big trouble." Ok. At four I got a call telling me that the driver had come before twelve and no one was there, but that he'd come by the end of the day. He came at five, and even though Jake already paid a large amount of money to have this bloody package shipped quickly to Sweden, I was informed that I had to pay 571 kronors, which is over eighty US dollars, as some sort of COD thing. Incredible. I know this is mild as far as delivery and package stories go, but it impressed me nonetheless. Anyway, now I have a gorgeous new BlackBerry Pearl that will make up for some of what my Swedish cell phone lacks.
+ When I finished my time on the elliptical the other day, the screen flashed "SLUT!" (pronounced "sloot") at me. This just means "done," or "end," but it made me laugh.
+ I ran a 5k relay race with some of my new colleagues at CHESS on Saturday. The race is called Bellman's Stafetten and it's held in a beautiful park called Norra Djurgården, but it rained the entire day. Running my 5k leg was by far less painful and exhasuting than standing around in the pouring rain for hours. I ran it in 32:55, which was less than ideal but I had to dodge huge puddles of mud and water constantly so I'd like to think that slowed me down. The sole man on our team - both teams, actually, as CHESS had two teams of five each and he ran different legs for both of them - apparently used to be on the Swedish national team and of course he could run the 5k in about twenty minutes barely breaking a sweat. There's a fairly amazing video posted of the end of his leg for my team, he's the one sort of in the middle with the black shirt with the white Nike checkmark striding in to hand the baton off to me off screen.
+ On Friday I leave this cozy little apartment where I've been staying way out past Fruängen. I'm taking the train to meet a friend that evening in Lund, Sweden, all the way on the west coast, then heading to Copenhagen, where she is actually living for the year, for the weekend. On Monday I start staying at the Wenner-Gren Center in one of the guestrooms for visiting researchers, and in the woman's confirmation emails about the room she calls me "Dr. Phoebe C.....," which is pretty funny although I don't think I should correct her because technically I think you're supposed to have some sort of doctoral degree to be eligible to stay at these apartments. Then, finally, on September 28, I move into my new one-bedroom apartment in Kungsholmen. You can see the location
here on the Swedish version of google maps. It's only until January 1 but it's like a miracle. It's a beautiful neighborhood and a beautiful little apartment and I can't wait to move in.
.
The beautiful lake a block away from where I've been staying. Sadly it hasn't been sunny since the day I took that picture.
.
This a horrendously ugly photograph but there are rabbits that hang out all the time on the lawn in front of the building where I work, next to the Wenner-Gren Center. Big, fat, sweet city bunnies.
.
And last but not least, these fabulous pictures were taken by Ben and/or Megan a few days ago of my brand new niece, Lucy. This has nothing to do with Sweden except for the fact that my heart is broken that I'm here and she's there and I haven't met her yet.
+ When I finished my time on the elliptical the other day, the screen flashed "SLUT!" (pronounced "sloot") at me. This just means "done," or "end," but it made me laugh.
+ I ran a 5k relay race with some of my new colleagues at CHESS on Saturday. The race is called Bellman's Stafetten and it's held in a beautiful park called Norra Djurgården, but it rained the entire day. Running my 5k leg was by far less painful and exhasuting than standing around in the pouring rain for hours. I ran it in 32:55, which was less than ideal but I had to dodge huge puddles of mud and water constantly so I'd like to think that slowed me down. The sole man on our team - both teams, actually, as CHESS had two teams of five each and he ran different legs for both of them - apparently used to be on the Swedish national team and of course he could run the 5k in about twenty minutes barely breaking a sweat. There's a fairly amazing video posted of the end of his leg for my team, he's the one sort of in the middle with the black shirt with the white Nike checkmark striding in to hand the baton off to me off screen.
+ On Friday I leave this cozy little apartment where I've been staying way out past Fruängen. I'm taking the train to meet a friend that evening in Lund, Sweden, all the way on the west coast, then heading to Copenhagen, where she is actually living for the year, for the weekend. On Monday I start staying at the Wenner-Gren Center in one of the guestrooms for visiting researchers, and in the woman's confirmation emails about the room she calls me "Dr. Phoebe C.....," which is pretty funny although I don't think I should correct her because technically I think you're supposed to have some sort of doctoral degree to be eligible to stay at these apartments. Then, finally, on September 28, I move into my new one-bedroom apartment in Kungsholmen. You can see the location
here on the Swedish version of google maps. It's only until January 1 but it's like a miracle. It's a beautiful neighborhood and a beautiful little apartment and I can't wait to move in.
.
The beautiful lake a block away from where I've been staying. Sadly it hasn't been sunny since the day I took that picture.
.
This a horrendously ugly photograph but there are rabbits that hang out all the time on the lawn in front of the building where I work, next to the Wenner-Gren Center. Big, fat, sweet city bunnies.
.
And last but not least, these fabulous pictures were taken by Ben and/or Megan a few days ago of my brand new niece, Lucy. This has nothing to do with Sweden except for the fact that my heart is broken that I'm here and she's there and I haven't met her yet.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Swedish Hearts
Also - the name of this blog is from an exhibition about recent Swedish art at the Moderna Museet a few years ago called Swedish Hearts, which in turn comes from the "Kungssången," the "king's song," which is the Swedish royal anthem and which is apparently also known by its first line, "Ur svenska hjärtans djup en gång," or "Once from the depths of Swedish hearts." So, it's not due to my own creativity - thank you Moderna Museet and royal anthem.
ett vecka
I've been in Stockholm for exactly one week, and I've done lots of important things so far:
-I got a Swedish cell phone, although I still can't figure out how to set up my voicemail.
-I got a bank account at Handelsbanken.
-I met most of the people I'm going to be working with at the Center for Health Equity Studies, and got my key and a pretty office with a phone and a computer that says things like "logga in."
-I discovered my new favorite food (rimmad lax, which is like gravad lax but the salmon is cured without dill and with more salt, and it's served with dill cream potatoes).
-I despaired about ever finding a place to live because housing in Stockholm is unbelievably impossible and so tightly controlled it's like a joke, but by some miracle today I found a beautiful apartment in a great neighborhood called Kungsholmen which I can rent for a few months starting October 1.
-I joined a beautiful gym/pool/spa/bathhouse called Sturebadet where Greta Garbo used to go and which I am counting on to make me happy during the very dark and very cold days ahead.
-I learned how to buy alcohol (vodka and aquavit, to be specific) at a System Bolaget, the very tightly regulated government-run liquor stores.
and many more things, but now I'm so tired from trekking around all day that I think I'm going to pass out.
This is how they serve the aquavit at Sturehof.
.
Östermalmshallen, a tremendous indoor food market.
.
My mom in front of Svenskt Tenn where small pillows with Josef Frank fabric cost a hundred dollars.
.
My new Klippan wool blanket.
-I got a Swedish cell phone, although I still can't figure out how to set up my voicemail.
-I got a bank account at Handelsbanken.
-I met most of the people I'm going to be working with at the Center for Health Equity Studies, and got my key and a pretty office with a phone and a computer that says things like "logga in."
-I discovered my new favorite food (rimmad lax, which is like gravad lax but the salmon is cured without dill and with more salt, and it's served with dill cream potatoes).
-I despaired about ever finding a place to live because housing in Stockholm is unbelievably impossible and so tightly controlled it's like a joke, but by some miracle today I found a beautiful apartment in a great neighborhood called Kungsholmen which I can rent for a few months starting October 1.
-I joined a beautiful gym/pool/spa/bathhouse called Sturebadet where Greta Garbo used to go and which I am counting on to make me happy during the very dark and very cold days ahead.
-I learned how to buy alcohol (vodka and aquavit, to be specific) at a System Bolaget, the very tightly regulated government-run liquor stores.
and many more things, but now I'm so tired from trekking around all day that I think I'm going to pass out.
This is how they serve the aquavit at Sturehof.
.
Östermalmshallen, a tremendous indoor food market.
.
My mom in front of Svenskt Tenn where small pillows with Josef Frank fabric cost a hundred dollars.
.
My new Klippan wool blanket.
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