First meeting with the cousin-kids

Around 3:30 in the afternoon we took our bikes downtown to visit Olle's uncle. But we were not there alone; Olle's two cousins showed up too. One of them has two little kids now, it was fun to meet them for the first time. One old tradition in some families in Sweden during Easter is to roll eggs. This game works like this: Each person gets one egg, preferably colored in a distinguishable way (painted by yourself) to differentiate them from each other. Then you roll your egg down a slanted brick (the waved one, used on roofs here in Sweden) in order to knock another persons egg. If you are knocked, then you are out of the game. Eventually there is only one person left, the winner. We played a kind kind of this game that gave everyone a price. Afterwards we had a really nice Easter dinner with all the traditional food. We have really missed that during our stay abroad.

We went home again around eight, it is convenient to live just 15 minutes bike ride from each other.

Easter weekend is here

So far we don't have any flower/green plants on the window shelves, since we thought it would be hard for the plants to survive two cold nights in the moving truck. But it will come more in the nearest future. In the meantime, why not decorate the pots?

Yesterday we tried to get a little Easter feeling by coloring some eggs, whereof we had two of them for breakfast today. Otherwise we have not celebrated the Easter Eve so much, except having herring on crisp bread for lunch (nice to have easily/non-expensive access to these traditional foodstuff).

Boxes away and curtains up

Good Friday in Sweden means holiday, so Maria was home from work and together we made a huge effort to prepare our apartment for normal living. What else to do when you wake up to snowy trees, even if most of it melted away during the day.
We spent half of the day removing all the boxes from the apartment (temporary stored in our bathroom), to our small storage in the basement. It's a puzzle to get as many small boxes as possible into the bigger ones.
After lunch we cleaned the floor and placed rugs, which really helps for comfort. We also put up curtains in the last two windows.

Microwave oven - end of life

Our microwave oven, that had been stored with all the other stuff for two years, ceased to work today. Suddenly, it started to sound very noisy, and there was a smell of smoke inside of it. We chose not to use it any more since then, and it is therefore about time to order a new one. It is actually about nine years since we bought the old one, so I guess it is written of now.

A weekend full of unpacking stuff

Saturday started with unpacking boxes/bags in the bedroom. A easy place to start, since the wardrobes have plenty of shelves. Maybe we will rearrange some time later when we've found out a better order, but at least be we have somewhere to store all our clothes/towels/fabrics etc. Another reason to start with the bedroom was to make place for the beds, so we would be able to sleep our first night in our new apartment.
Next room to get some order was the kitchen, the main question was just in which cabinet to put what.
Already after this first day we had released we now have more cabinets than we had in our earlier Swedish apartment. So now we have more shelves to use for other stuff.

The furniture/boxes arrives

Olle greeted the moving company around 2:30 in the afternoon. Most of the furniture and boxes seemed to be in good shape. I tried to have them put the right boxes in the right room, but there will be some stuff that we will have to move around later on. It was a much quicker story to unpack than to pack; they were ready around four pm.

The new "toys" at work

Yesterday Maria's new computer arrived, so now she can spend a lot of time optimizing it for herself. But most time will not be playing around, but trying to understand the menus in Office2007, there's another layout than the older versions (our home computer has Office 2003 student version). Also trying to make the labnotes in OneNote is new, so there's a whole new program to learn how to handle.
During the afternoon today Maria spent a few hours in front of the instrument she will be using a lot during the nearest months - of course a mass spectrometer. The Orbitrap was installed during March, so no one in the group is an expert on the instrument so far. A mass spectrometer measures really small weights, and the Orbitrap should be very precise. Part of her work will be to identify the compositions of the different molecules in her samples, being able to decide how many atoms the molecules include (as well as if it is carbon, hydrogen or oxygen). The project will study metabolites in poplar, correlating different concentrations to different phenotypes.

Olle leaves "the Southern"

Today it was Olle's turn to go north. He took a later train than Maria and didn't have to wait that long at the airport. It was nice to be picked up by his uncle (and Maria) at the airport in Umeå.

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.