Winter photos in Uppsala

Last weekend we finally got some snow that didn't immediately melt. I went out and took some photos.





















I also paparazzi-d the bicycles like crazy. Those will get a dedicated post of their own.

Mom visits Sweden - Uppsala

This is how my system works. Take photos. View photos on computer, and write down which photos I like best and would like to put on my blog. Never edit or upload photos. Have tons of post-it notes lying around the house.

So I decided I wanted to start tackling this problem of mine. I went to a stack of post-its, and chose one. And guess what I found! A list of photos from when my mom and Joel visited Sweden last summer! I was surprised to find I hadn't posted these yet (or maybe I had and am just really bad at searching my own blog).



We took a ride on the old steam train, Lennakatten. That was the conductor.



Greg's beard looks so wimpy these days compared to what it once was!







The above photo of the cathedral during dusk was made possible by the fact that I had been carrying my camera everywhere while we had visitors. And on this particular day I had to go to one of my first Swedish classes, and I also had a flat bike tire, so I was on foot and able to admire everything around me. (I didn't have such a positive outlook at the time, but I'm glad I stopped to take the photo.)



At one point we were just walking along and we heard a crash, which was a potted plant being dropped from an upper floor and breaking on the sidewalk. I took a photo (above) and these guys were all shocked about what was happening and maybe asked if I knew what was going on. Sorry gentlemen, I have no clue, I just like to take pictures.





I know I have tons and tons of photos from the Linneaus gardens in Uppsala. They have such a huge variety of plants and flowers, and somehow I managed to narrow down my photo choices to just these two. I'm tempted to go back and look through all the photos again, but I do always spend a lot of time cultivating these little post-its of photo numbers, so I just have to trust my choices and give you what I've got!

Really good photos of First Night fireworks

On Flickr there is an Uppsala group, and I saw these lovely images posted of the fireworks that I could only take low-quality photos of. Enjoy!

Note that these were not taken by me (click the photo for the credits)!





Now just imagine that times twenty, spread all around the city. Fabulous!

lights in Uppsala

It isn't part of the Lights of Uppsala, but some really cool lights in Uppsala can be found in the cemetery. There are many candles burning at various graves, which makes the cemetery look really.. welcoming? .. at night. Here is a photo I took of a grave with two lanterns with candles burning.

Here is a fun fact. Greg and I had a few of our engagement photos taken in a cemetery and a few of our wedding photos too.

The Lights of Uppsala

Throughout the month of November, there is a thing called The Lights of Uppsala going on throughout town. It basically consists of brightly colored lights in different places. I guess it has been going on for a few years now. I think the idea is that November is the darkest and dreariest month, because the days are getting longer and there is no snow yet. So the lights make things nicer and keep people from getting (too) depressed.

Here are some photos I took (with my small camera (meaning I have little to no control over how they turn out)) one evening.

New Bridge!

There is a new bridge in town, which is the talk of the town! We like the bridge because it makes our trip from work to Swedish class much nicer/shorter.
 

In true Swedish fashion, it is high-tech and awesome. We first heard that the bridge had opened at the physics and astronomy pub night. A group of astronomers arrived a bit later because they had to go out of their way so they could check out the bridge and do some "experiments". The bridge has a counter, which keeps track of the number of people who cross it. They ended up spending far too much time trying to figure out how it worked, because they wanted to know how accurate the counts were. And no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't get the bridge to count them more than once.

Here is the total count for the day and the week.

And also for the year (which basically means since it opened a few weeks ago). I also might have noticed that it keeps different tallies for each direction. I am not positive, because I was on my bicycle, and I didn't stop to verify my suspicions. But I am almost nearly positive that it keeps track of the two directions separately.

The castle at sunset

The other afternoon this sight caught my eye out the living room window. The castle is located in the highest part of the city, so as the sun sets, it is the last thing left in direct sunlight. Maybe the photo doesn't do it justice, but it is certainly something to see. With everything in darkness and the castle in all its glowy pink greatness.

Photos from lately

 

1. View of the cathedral from the castle, with a hint of the beginning of fall (this photo was not actually that recent).

 

2. My dad and the cannons outside of the castle.

 

3. Cannon.

 

4. A vibrantly bright autumn tree.

 

5. Saturday morning coffee and pastries at the konditori.

 

6. A bird seen out my office window, flying high to be in the sunlight after sunset.

Bicycling in the rain

Before today I always opted to ride the bus to work on rainy days, rather than taking my bicycle. Today however, today was a day for riding a bicycle in the rain. A quick check of the weather forecast made me realize that the afternoon and evening would be clear and nice. Plus the rain wasn't coming down too hard. I've been prepared to ride in the rain. I have a rain jacket now that is actually waterproof, plus I have rain pants. Combine that with my hiking boots and I become fully waterproof, with the exception of my face and my hands.

I used the technique of putting the hood of my rain jacket under my helmet. It blocked out some of my hearing, but it also kept the visor of my hood in place, so I didn't have to look like this:

That is not me, by the way. But it is what most people look like while riding bicycles in this town. Another popular technique is to wear a poncho that covers the handlebars and anything you might be carrying on the back of your bicycle. Like this:

That is also not me. The other option, which seems the most ridiculous and ineffective is to hold an umbrella. There might be a time and a place for this, like if you are riding a tandem bicycle on Mackinac Island, but otherwise, I just wouldn't recommend it.

All in all, I didn't mind riding my bicycle in the rain. The really unfortunate part was that it was also incredibly windy, and the wind was against me. The wind never seems to be blowing in the direction I am going. Either way, I am glad to have gotten past my first bicycle ride in the rain. Now the only thing left to look forward to is riding my bicycle in the snow!

Gamla Uppsala

On Saturday we took a bike ride to Gamla Uppsala. It was a short ride from home, and the weather was beautiful. There is not much left in the old section of Uppsala. There is a museum (which we didn't go to), a church, and a cafe, but the main draw is the burial mounds. The pictures don't quite capture how impressive these are. I also had assumed that each mound had several people buried in it, but we learned that there was just one person in each burial mound.

 

 

 After walking around the burial mounds, we stopped by the cafe for a kaffe and this delicious blueberry tart with vanilla cream. Really delicious.

The church was a cool stone church. I'm not sure why so many of the windows were plastered over.

 

The only downside of the adventure were the spiders. Somehow, there were just tiny spiders everywhere. You could be walking along, or riding your bike along, and it would feel like you went through a spider web. There were just streams of spider webs and also spiders streaming through the air. It was a pretty breezy and warm day, so maybe this is an anomaly, but really. There were just spiders everywhere. In the photo below you can kind of see some of the spider webs in the tree.

And here is one of the spiders that landed on my bicycle, along with two of his bugs.