IMSC 2009

Visiting the International Mass Spectrometry Conference meant long days. The first seminar started already 8 in the morning, and followed by a poster session. You needed to study the list of poster titles in advance, since it's impossible to look at all the 400 posters, which were changed to new ones in the middle of the week.
Then 10am-12pm were seminar session with five different seminars in parallel. All again make a choice which ones will be the most interesting, not too easy. People were constant on the move between the lecture halls.
During the lunch breaks Maria went for another seminar hold by some of the sponsor companies. The motivation to go there, except hearing about the newest instrument on the market, was that the listeners got a lunch bag (sandwiches, water, fruit = free lunch).
The afternoon followed with another 5-parallel-seminar session (2-4 pm) and another poster session.

Learning Organic Mass Spectrometry

During both Saturday and Sunday Maria went to a short-course to learn how to interpret mass spectrometry spectra of different organic compounds. Unfortunately, the focus of were more on the old way of fragmentation, which is not the same in newer instruments.
During the first coffee break Maria started to talk to two English students (from different labs) joining the same course. They were alone as well for the day, their bosses would arrive later. We went for lunch together, as well as dinner in the evening. We ended up meeting some other Englishmen, from coworking labs to the other students, and went to a pub together with them. Food and local beers were paid by their boss, so just to enjoy the evening, which didn't end until after midnight.

Sunday afternoon the mass spectrometry conference (the main reason of the Bremen trip) started with plenary seminars. Afterwards, there were a welcome reception with some small food and free beer/wine.

Downtown Hansestadt Bremen

The city center is focused around the Town Hall erected 600 years ago, with the facade added in the 17th century.
Today it host the Ratskeller in Bremen, with more than 600 wines - all exclusively German.







In front of the hall is the Market Square with the famous Roland statue, the city's protector, being a symbol of trading rights and fredom since 1404.









Nearby were also St. Peter's Cathedral, with some parts over 1200 years old.








The bronze statue of the famous Bremen Town musicians (from Grimm Brother's fairy tale) were smaller than Maria expected.
Deutche bank house, and some other old ones.

Böttcherstrasse was a nice pedestrian area with some nice pubs.










Another nice area is Bremen's oldest district, the Schnoor quarter, earlier fishermen's houses (from 17th and 18th centruries) but nowadays a lot of cafés and art galleries.






The photos are a combination of Maria's walks Friday and Tuesday afternoons, as well as Saturday and Sunday mornings.

A week trip to Bremen

Most of this Friday Maria spent on the way to Bremen in Germany. Sweden-Germany might not seems like a long trip, but Maria needed three different flights to go from northern Sweden to a smaller town in Germany. Today she flew via Münich, before closing in to Bremen city. Good she had a nice book to read, since she traveled a day before her colleague.
Arriving in Bremen Maria took the tram to the central station, and from there she had just a few minutes of walk.
After checking in at the hotel (a small, but clean room), she went for a walk downtown. Nice to leave the jacket behind as well as using sandals, not what you do nowadays back in Umeå.

Enjoying the craft exhibition

The craft exhibition "Självklart - 100 år med Västerbotten läns hemslöjdsförening" (Eng.: "Of course - 100 years with the home craft association of Västerbotten county") ends early September, so today we decided to visit it again. When we were here during the opening day, there were so many people all over the place, but today we were almost alone. You can't do others than envy the handy people working with natural material.

The highlight of the weekend

During the night we woke up to rain, but we didn't get any inside the tent at least. The rain itself didn't last that long, instead the birches above the tent dripped for a while. That is, the sky was quite clear in the morning.

This morning we rose just after the morning weather report and therefore we were able to start the hiking around nine (even though we took a quick dip in the water first). The small "house" is where we bathed. As can be seen in the other picture, there are hardly any traces of the tent since last night.


Tavelsjöberget mountain far away, the sign was on the other side of the road.








View over Lake Tavelsjön. This stretch of the part was sometimes like a rock field.








Before lunch the hike was going both up- and downhill, past some smaller lakes with traces of beaver activity. The last stretch was mostly uphill to the goal of the weekend - the Tavelsjöberget mountain. Our legs were quite tired at this point.


An enjoyable stop was made at Vallberget mountain, where we climbed up the watchtower to get a nice view over the surrounding landscape.






We then walked on to the resting area at Tavelsjöberget for a sought after lunch break. Nice to remove the sweaty shirts and get the feet some air. We had lunch and relaxed for a while, well needed, but the break passed oh so fast. We chose path number two downhill the mountain, number one was too steep for heavy backpacks.









The road down the mountain took some time too. We took a (cold) bath in Lake Tavelsjön at Sand. The sign depicts the Lake Tavelsjö creature, that has been told to be seen in the lake.
While we were waiting for the buss that should bring us back to Umeå, we just relaxed after the weekends hardship in the evening sun. You can really feel that the autumn is coming, when the sun hid behind the clouds it got cold.
Back in the apartment we had to hang up the tent for drying, as well as airing the other equipment that had been packed during the raw air in the morning.

Continuing north

We woke up to the morning weather report on the radio at 7, but stayed in the sleeping bags for another while. We slept quite good, it is always different to sleep in a sleeping bag than in a bed. It was warm enough that we didn't freeze. Breakfast, then repacking of the tent and the other stuff that we brought. Around 10 we started today's hike.

During three hours we walked along, with a couple of shorter breaks. Partly brushy, sometimes the trail was just a small path, other times an old gravel road. The surrounding nature was varied; sometimes young forest with less sight. We met three happy girls who were also hiking, but they were the only hikers beside us that we saw during the entire weekend.
After hiking on a sandy ridge for a while, we arrived at Lake Hissjön where we enjoyed our basic lunch. We took our time for one hour rest, even if we weren't drawn to the water for a swim, since the sun hid behind the clouds.

The afternoon hiking stretch was shorter, but took a while since it was going through pebble stone fields now and then. We had to take breaks more often since our legs started to get tired, and besides that, who can not stop when you pass a large field of ripe blueberries?

Part of the trail was quite swampy. Interesting rock formations at Offerstensberget (Sacrifice Mountain).









Finally we arrived at an isthmus by Lake Tavelsjön where we camped for the night. When the tent was up, we had a well tasting dinner (we were quite hungry at this point). After that we relaxed about one hour while we had our Saturday candy - fresh blueberries. Mosquitoes and gnats joined us. Supper before we crawled into the sleeping bags, even earlier than yesterday.

Hiking the Tavelsjö path

Maria came home from work earlier than usual, which made it possible for us to leave the apartment before 4 pm. Since pavement is not so fun to walk on, we took the bus the 4 km stretch downtown. From there we walked to the starting point for the Tavelsjö path, which we had decided to walk during this weekend.





The path meandered through the forest, lingonberry and blueberry lined the path most of the time.






Our first stop, about 5 km later, was Hamptjärnsstugan, from which you had a nice view over Umeå. Right now the cabin wasn't open, but the place was prepared also for winter activities. On the bare rock there were some rest cabins spread out. Since the water access didn't exist, the south east wind was whining and the cliffs were quite hard to put a tent on, we continued.
Next to Hamptjärnen on another path, we decided to camp for the night. We could hear that we still were quite close to civilization; propeller-driven aircraft and the ice cream truck was not far away.
We unfolded our newly purchased tent, at the same time finding out how to do it the right way since it was the first time.It was perhaps not the best of camp grounds; a couple of evening strollers passed by quite close. The three person tent was roomy for two persons, we put our backpacks in the apse.
After that, it was time to try cooking on the also new kitchen. Quite spartan, but okay. Dish-washing followed and then dessert, consisting of forest raspberries. When dusk closed in and the mosquitoes were to pushy we crawled into our sleeping bags around nine pm.