New Address

I've moved apartment. Housing is quite controlled here, and aside from owning your own home where you can pretty much do as you please, apartments are designated as 'hyresrätt' (right to hire) or 'bostadrätt' (right to live). Bostadsrätt flats are meant to be owner occupied, not rented out, so there is a limit of 1 year if you don't live there. Because the owner of my flat is not coming back to Luleå yet he was forced to sell it. He's not too unhappy though, seeing as he got more than double what he paid for it 3 years ago.

So, now I am in a flat half the size of the previous one (26 sqm), but closer to uni (3 min bike ride or 12-15 min walk).

For those possibly intending to write my new adress is:

Mark Terner
Vänortsvägen 26:71
Luleå 977-54
(you can leave off the dots!)

For local visitors I am in the 2nd circle, 4th-floor, room 1.

Good points (so far):

• Cheaper ($120 a week)
• Closer to uni
• Closer to people I know from uni
• Sunnier, better ventilation
  

Bad points (so far):

• Hot water takes forever to start (several minutes)
• Even more light leaks in now in summer than old apartment - must fix as I keep waking up at 3:30am
• Further from town
• Most people I know from uni aren't in Luleå at the moment
• Fridge door doesn't swing shut on its own. You wouldn't think it's a big deal but after years of just using a simple push to get it closed on its own you can't imagine how annoying it is to have to actually keep contact all the way to the seal. And how many times I forget.
  

After the first load of moving - a celebratory meal of watermelon and Cointreau with Marco and Katherine. And the possibility of a lot of czech beer.

Misc Pics

Just a few miscellaneous pics taken around the town lately.

Localised beaches

Svartöstaden with SSAB steelworks

Jazz in the park Wed lunchtime

Midsommar på Hägnan & BBQ hos Hasse

On the midsummer holiday we went to Hägnan, which is the open air museum section of the Old Town - Gammelstad. This is the port where Luleå was first established, with a church town built in the 15th century for people to sleep over after travelling great distances to come for a service. Due to land rising 1cm per year the shoreline started moving further and further away, so a new port and town center was established 9km away. The midsommar festival involves the decoration and erection of a maypole, around which people sing and dance. It was traditionally a fertility rite, and with the shape of the maypole could be called 'the festival of the testicles'.

Lucy improvising a Swedish folk song on a bellows organ with an ex-exhumer who only dreams about dead people, never the living (seriously)

It was very much a family day, and young people without kids were in the minority. The songs sung around the maypole also seemed to be more for kids and included songs about animals. I don't know how this helps fertility as the the couples with kids obviously don't need any more help. Shouldn't it be the spinsters, bachelors, and barren couples dancing around maypole singing suggestive tunes, like "it's getting hot out here, så take off all your tradtional folk costume"?

Decorating

The folk band with nyckelharpa 'key-harp'

Parading

Erecting

Dirty (look) Dancing

Afterwards was a display of folk dancing and folk song singing. This was a bit more 'adult', with some dances involving obvious flirting and partner swapping.

Gammelstad Church

Christina, and Sky

After being out at Hägnan we went to Hasse's for a bbq and some more Kubb.

Hasse trying again to explain the 'quantum' joke about the ICA Qvantum supermarket to a non-scientist

Hannah, Ludde, and Stefan

Storforsen

Storforsen ('the big falls') is the widest waterfall in Sweden, possibly Scandanavia, maybe even the whole of Europe. If not the world. Well, OK, that might be stretching it a bit, or perhaps my worldview is shrinking, but at any rate it is impressive. Having the lend of a car for a couple of weeks, Lucy and I were able to drive out there and check it out. Up to 870 m3/s of water can be flowing down it, and although the pictures don't capture the force or speed of the water, you can take my word that I wouldn't like to try and bodysurf down it.

Cloudy reflection

Oily cloud reflection

The great cauldron (jättegryta)
detail

Bälingeberget

With Lucy visiting from Aus, and Jon from the US, we organised to go up to Bälinge 'mountain' maybe 15km from Luleå for a bbq. It is special because the evidence of the movement of glaciers from the last ice age ~10,000 years ago can be seen on the rock formations and wear patterns.

Lucy, Ida, and Hasse - covered up to avoid the swarms of mozzies that were ambushing us on the way to the top.

Magnus (my boss), Bjorny (?) and Jon treading carefully

How does this thing work?

Classy! (At least I remembered the corkscrew! And yes, it's a bottle of Rosemount Estate)

"What did you say about salad and bbq's..."

Hasse finally got the fire going, but the swedes cheat and always squirt some special odourless kero top get the coal going.