Valborg and bike theft

So yesterday was Valborg (aka Walpurgis Eve, aka Sista April) here in Sweden. As it turns out, this is a pretty big deal here in Uppsala. So much so that people come from Stockholm to join in the celebrations! Apparently the actual holiday has to do with saying goodbye to the winter and welcoming in the spring, but realistically it's just an excuse to have a huge party all across the city.

One of the big events of the day is the river rafting. Teams of about 3-5 people make rafts out of Styrofoam and ride on them in front of as many spectators as can fit along the river. There is a big rush in the morning to get a spot near one of the little waterfalls, where many rafts capsize. All of the rafts were built outside Ångström the week before which was an event in itself: there were big party tents set up with a temporary pub and other activities surrounding the building of the rafts. For the big event there were also stalls all along the river selling food, balloons, sunglasses, and all sorts of other things.

A Game of Thrones themed raft sailing on the river

Free food + more at Ångströmlaboratoriet

Well, the sun is finally coming back to Uppsala! I couldn't believe it yesterday when it was still beautiful and sunny outside, and I checked my watch and it was 19:00! It's getting me excited for the actual summer time. Last weekend I also caught a rare glimpse of the sun in the Netherlands, where I had gone to visit for a belated Easter with my family and for my girlfriend's birthday.

This past week was another research lunch, this time hosted by the Nuclear Physics division. Research lunches are great events that the physics department puts on once per month. Each lunch is hosted by a different research division (they are all listed on the left side of the department's homepage). Basically researchers from the hosting division come and share a free lunch with bachelor and master students in physics. This is a great chance to meet potential project or thesis supervisors. Typically there is also a 5 minute introduction about what the division does, and each researcher talks for about 1 minute about their own research.

I really like the lunches because I like to hear about what all is going on at the university, and I often use them to ask about academic careers in general. There are always international people present who may have done PhDs and post-docs in various countries, so it's nice for me to get a bit of a handle on what my next steps will be. Also, it's a free meal, so everyone is always happy to go, whether they're interested in that division or not!

Easter time!

As most people probably know, there was a solar eclipse about two weeks ago visible from Northern Europe. It was quite cloudy in Uppsala, which meant anyone who had bought special viewing glasses was disappointed. However, the clouds did provide enough protection to look at the sun for a short time without hurting yourself, and I did get a few good looks at the eclipse. I was actually in class while it was happening, but the nice thing about being in physics is that your teachers are likely to also be interested in this sort of thing, so we had a break during the lecture to go check it out.

My brother Callum got this shot through the clouds in Maastricht.
This is pretty much what it looked like in Uppsala too.

In other moon-related news, it's Easter this weekend (the date of Easter is based on the lunar cycle)! Good Friday and Easter Monday are both holidays in Sweden, so that makes for a nice long weekend. A lot of students seem to also have the entire next week free, but I still have class, albeit only for four hours. I was planning on going back to Amsterdam for the break, but I waited too long and flights got super expensive, so I decided I'm going to go next weekend instead.