The load of furniture is going north

The guys from the moving company arrived after eight in the morning. The seemed calm and serious, I felt that our goods were in good hands. Three hours later they left the house on their long journey north. Olle spent a couple of hours outside, enjoying the nice weather.

The first day in Umeå

The rumors saying that it would still be around 1 meter of snow up here showed up not to be really true, some decimeters are more correct. The snow piles are up to 3 meters high, though. It will take a while more until the spring arrives.
This small forest is just around hundred meters away from our new home. I would guess there will be cross country ski trails there during the winter, according to the man walking to the right in next picture.



Before noon Maria took the bus to our new apartment. The three-story apartment house is built in late 60s, but the appliances in the kitchen are just a few years old, which is nice.
Our apartment is a 3-room apartment of 85 m2, suitable with a bedroom, an office (with space for a temporary bed) and a living room. The kitchen is not big, but have space for a kitchen table at least.
A prerequisite for selecting this apartment, was to have biking distance to the university. It will take next week to find out the best/nicest biking path to work for Maria.

In the afternoon Maria met her new boss TM at work. Not much of work today, only paper work and introduction to some new people (in the best case she will remember them later). She will get her own office desk, in a small room together with three other girls (two of whom are on maternity leave right now).

Maria is in Umeå

Today it was time for Maria to go to Umeå, which involved taking the passenger train from Östergötland to Arlanda (the Stockholm airport) and then an hour long flight to Umeå. During the 2½ hour long train trip (direct train, but also the slower one) Maria actually tried to come back to research mind, reading a review article about mass spectrometry instruments. After a month outside of the research world (hardly been thinking of research), you've placed a lot of your knowledge into the back of your head.

You could notice some difference in amount of snow on the ground during the flight time. There was less when departure middle Sweden, compared to when arrive in the northern parts.

Maria will stay a few nights in the house of Olle's uncle, nice to know someone in your new hometown at least.

Another week in Småland

Back to Småland for a week, we spent time with family/relatives/friends. A few hours goes fast when you start talking and even easier if you start showing some photos.
We have quite many photos from our last years, sorted but too many to show at once. One good idea would had been to sort out the really good ones to show others, but that hasn't happen.

Another family dinner occurred on Saturday, to celebrate three birthdays in March-April. Most likely, it will take a few months until we will be together again.

New cell phones - about time

Today we bought new cell phones, the ones we had before were old already some years ago. Calling them mobile are not really right, since as soon someone called you needed to connect to a charger (=batteries too old). The new phones of course included camera, mp3-player and option to use internet, you can't really get anyone without this even if you choose the simplest one. Our plan is to not get a land line, using Skype and cell phones would work just fine.
We also passed IKEA, to buy some smaller things. Surprisingly, there's no IKEA in Umeå! How can that be - a larger Swedish (university) town without one of those?

Even more boxes...

The next week we spent in northern Östergötland, where Olle's parents live. It's also here in their attic we have stored most of our belongings during our abroad-time. Both furniture and a lot of boxes, we will have no problem to fill a 2-bedroom apartment (3 rooms) of the same size as we lived in before in Sweden. To our disappointment not all the boxes was nicely packed, the last minute packing resulted in some half-full boxes as well as paper bags. We had better just do the work with getting everything into boxes, which will be nicer for the moving company (don't think they will move anything to the moving truck that is just lying around).

Maria showed up not to be resistant to the Swedish viruses, as she caught a cold and had a runny nose for several days (weeks).

During these days we transferred the hours we've filmed in the States from bands to external hard disk. Our laptop doesn't have the required connections, but now we can edit it later.

A nice reunion

The first week back in Sweden was spent in northern Småland, the area of Sweden where Maria's parents and two siblings lives.
When we stayed a few nights at Maria's sister a lot of time was focused around horses, what else can you expect when the family has five horses on their own. This included walking the youngest horses, as well as riding them (yes, Maria tried for a short while, even if her young niece was much much better).
The following days in her parent's house were when we started to collect our belongings. Most of the fabrics (towels, linen, old clothes) as well as glasses/porcelain have been stored in their house. We just had to try to find them in the wardrobes and attic.

Old traditions as sauna on Friday evenings were also brought to live again. A nice wood-burning sauna is never wrong, you feel so clean afterward.
On the Saturday all of Maria's family had a reunion, at the same time Olof's parents showed up in order to bring us and our belongings with them later in the day. A nice big family dinner and so nice to spend time with the niece and nephews that have grown so much these two years we have been away.

Leaving our life behind us

After some hectic weeks with the selling of furniture/kitchen utensils, as well as our car, it was time to end our time living in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. Sad to leave your friends behind, nice to see our relatives back in Sweden again. With us on the flight from Chicago we had our “Madison life’ packed in four heavy suitcases (just at the weight limits)

Umeå next!

Today Maria decided to accept the offer from Umeå, after discussion about the options we have (or not). It was a big decision, since we also decided upon our new hometown.
Do we want to move to Norrland?
How long travel will it be to visit our parents/siblings?
Definitively a lot to consider, but we decided to give Umeå a try. We don’t have to stay there forever if we found out Norrland is nothing for us (the position is for two years, to start with).

Maria has a job!

Maria was in contact with TM again for a second interview, using Skype (for the first time for TM). That was what she thought at least, but it showed up not to be.
She was offered the PostDoc position in Umeå!
Of course she got excited during the talk, at the same time trying not to sound like that. Strategically asking questions about how it will be to work in the lab. TM also tried to sell in Umeå as a living town, a necessity since we haven’t been living in the north of Sweden before.
There were several good applications received and some with experience in mass spectrometry too. But the main advantage for me was all the publications I've got, mainly from my graduation time (thanks to a kind boss!).

A step in the right direction

Another email from TM, who wanted to talk about the PostDoc position, which seems like another step in the right direction. We started a long weekend trip today, so Maria asked to wait a few days with the talk. The thoughts went in the direction “this probably/hopefully means I’m further to a second interview”, at the same time she tried not to be too excited.

Another interview

Today Maria had a telephone interview (~80 min) with Berlin, a really interesting position. More or less exactly what she wants to work with (study proteins with mass spectrometry), but not in Sweden though.

As a note: Maria was not offered the position, or even heard from them again (that's a little strange).

Time for interview

Maria had a long telephone interview with TM today.
With a seven hour time difference to Sweden it’s a puzzle to find times suitable for both parts. Now it was arranged so that TM called 8 am in USA (afternoon in Sweden) and to the lab phone (due to bad cell phone reception at home and also the cost of incoming calls). Most people in the lab arrived around nine, so most of the hour-long phone interview was “in private”, and if someone (at the end of the hour) heard something, they didn’t understand it. Just to admit it was a clear help that the interview was in Swedish.

Selected for interview

Quite a fast process with the application sent of to Umeå. The professor TM contacted me about an interview, which will take place in the nearest days.
It also strengthen yourself knowing that your resume is attractable (to some extent at least) and your expertise is requested.

The first step is done

The application to the position in Umeå was sent off, just in time for the deadline. This was the sixth application Maria sent off, others had been to labs in northern Europe (Copenhagen, Berlin, Berlin). So far only applications for announced positions have been sent, further on direct contact with specific labs will be done. Although the latter require more work to more or less write your own research idea (in the same field as the prospective research group). Finding the labs is the first step, but not always the easiest.