Little Differences

Work starts at 8 and finishes at 5.

Coffee break 9:30 and 2:30

Lunch break 11:30 - 12:30 - sounds early but if you start work at 8, you need it.

Most people go out for lunch - by law restarants have to have a 'reasonably priced' lunch for workers. So for £6-8 you get salad, a hot main meal, bread and butter, a drink and as much coffee as you want. Sandwich shopws like we have in the UK don't exist. Otherwise it's down to the office 'canteen' to eat whatever you've brought in. I'm the only person eating sandwiches - everyone swedish brings in a proper meal (often leftovers from the evening before) which they heat up. (The area is much nicer than the word 'canteen' makes it sound - all very crisp swedish design).

Office is quieter; and the phone almost never rings. I think I've now had 5 phone calls in 2 months - in the UK I'd have that many by lunchtime.

Less fat people than in the UK.

Lots and lots of people running.

I think these facts might be related.

Flats - it is a european city so living in a flat is normal.

Premiership football very popular here - possibly partly because swedish league can't play in the winter due to the weather.

We have a sauna in the basement of our office which anyone can book for free.

Things are generally expensive (even allowing for the weak pound) - but it is pretty hard to buy cheap tat.

Here for your amusement is a picture of me posing at my height adjustable desk (everyone has these). I'm not sure how up far it goes - the ceiling is pretty high.

There are hares in the park across the road...

Across the road is a park. It is a big park. In the park are lots of allotments. Also in the park are lots of hares. Here is proof!

Official Definition of Spring

According to the valuable news source thelocal.se (swedish news in english), spring is officially here. This is despite the fact that it snowed (and settled) yesterday and that most rivers are still frozen. Swedish Met Office definition of spring is 7 consecutive days where the daytime temperature is above freezing! Still sounds like a lot like winter to me. There's a little snippet for you.

More Ice

 

Last weekend my sister came to visit, which was very nice.  Here is a nice picture of her not quite managing to pose correctly for the camera. On Saturday we went ice-skating on a frozen lake then walked a bit of the way home through snow-filled woods. On the way off the lake we saw loads of trees like this one. Felled by someone with a small axe or penknife? I believe not - BEAVERS! with their big sharp teeth only 25 minutes on the bus from central Stockholm.  (Note - we spent 25 minutes on the bus, not the beavers.) It's like having them on Clapham Common.

Scooter ride in the north

Nick says:-
Having finished helping clear up from the party, on Monday we were lucky enough to go on a scooter ride, including a whole lot more frozen lake action. You seem to be able to drive over any open ground you like (I guess it doesn't really do the ground any harm) and they also have a network of snow-mobile paths which lead through the trees to shops/lakes/wherever you might want to go. The scooter is just another means of transport, but it gets you places which you can't get to in your car. Goran and Lena used theirs to go to their mountain house, which they said took about 2 hours.


As you can imagine, zipping across frozen lakes on one of these is a lot of fun - obviously I didn't have the nerve or experience to really push the throttle, but 30 felt fast enough. The stylish fur hats in the photos were lent to us, as were the padded boiler suits. What you can't see is that the one I had is for someone at least 6" taller than me and also wider - I looked like a child trying on his dad's clothes.

In the distance we saw a guy who was fishing - he had a large auger for drilling in the ice and then I guess was going to sit there for a few hours trying to not get too cold. Another properly swedish thing you'd never see in the UK.

The North

This is an ice road across a frozen lake (just like in the quality TV series Ice Road Truckers). Getting driven across did feel rather weird, even thought the swedes were totally used to it and relaxed. "Do you have these sorts of road in the UK?" they asked.
They are checked by the council highways department every day and have a 3 ton weight limit, 30km/h speed limit and you are meant to be 50m from the nearest car. (So less like Ice Road Truckers then).
This might sound a bit silly, but they are really icy and slippy - I fell over shortly after this photo while I was standing still. They are somehow more slippery thas other ice we've been on.
We went over another one which was a more main road - so they had built a central reservation out of ploughed snow and had really wide lanes in either direction (so you could have dual carriageway with each lane 50m apart!)

Shock News! Sweden is VERY big

Fig.1 - Map of Sweden with our train route

The weekend we are going to a party 'up north'. The train takes nearly 6 hours from Stockholm, and still we only will be halfway up Sweden (see fig.1 to left). It is probably as far away as St Petersburg. We'll let you know about the party; apparently they've put an advert in the local paper to make sure that everyone knows the party is on.

Oh yes - photos on flickr too
www.flickr.com/charlotteandnick