First Time in Uppsala (Part 2) (the much anticipated sequel)

Okay, as I said before, I'll be going over classes, winter, administration and food this time :) So first of all...

• Classes: The wonderful thing about this university and this Master's programme, is the freedom you have to choose whatever it is you want to study. You are generally required to choose a specialisation from the onset, be it Nuclear & Particle Physics (as I did), or Geophysics, Theoretical Physics or Astrophysics. And they then recommend classes within these specialisations. And you can follow it, not follow it, or mix it! Whatever makes you happy :) For your first semester, it's definitely recommended to take Group Theory and Advanced Quantum Mechanics if you haven't studied them before because they cover a lot of things you will need to understand for further courses. One thing that may be a bit of shock to some students (it was for me, anyway!), are the 08:00 lectures (which meant I had to get up at 06:00 during Sweden's famous winter... not fun...!). Also, all lectures are "2 hours" long. I put this in quotes because of the interesting "Academic Quarter" they have in Sweden. Anything academic will typically state a time on the hour, such as 11:00, or 14:00, but this actually means that the lecture will start 11:15 or 14:15. For your typical classes, this means that your "2 hour" class is in reality, 1:30 hr, and goes from 08:15 -> 09:00, fika time!, and 09:15 -> 10:00, which is a little nicer :)  
• Winter: Brace yourself!! ... Okay, maybe that's too dramatic, even from an un-acclimatised Irishman, but they can be pretty damn harsh at times. I actually do like winter quite a lot, but it's really the fact it drags on for so long that makes it so tough. Last year, snow began to fall around the 5th of December and that continued for non-stop for well over a week. The temperature dropped from a cool 8 degrees Celsius to -10 pretty quickly. If you're not familiar with cold winters, then buy a decent winter jacket (approximately 1000 sek), decent winter boots (I bought a pair of Echo winter boots for around 1200 sek but they're awesome-ly warm and comfortable and will certainly last many years), reasonably decent gloves (I bought a basic winter pair for around 200 sek and they were perfect), and a hat (a warm one... whichever makes you happy). After that, just wear layers. If it's particularly cold (one weekend it dropped to -25... I chose not to leave the house that weekend), then just wear a hoodie underneath your jacket. It's really not too bad if you have a pretty good winter jacket and boots. Those are definitely the main ones, though gloves and hat will make a pretty big difference as well. Oh, and it's dark a lot. From 16:00 to 08:00 or 09:00. So prepared to sleep a lot :) The last of the snow disappeared around the first week or two of April and it gradually got warmer and warmer :) 
• Administration: I know some people have had some issues with it but in my experience, it's been fantastic. The only frustrating thing with it is is that so many administrative offices are closed so much of the time! For example, the Migration Board (migrationverket) opens 3 days a week (Monday-Wednesday), for 3 hours a day (12:00-15:00)! But on the up-side, they're usually extremely helpful and competent. Besides the initial things you must to do when first moving here, there aren't that many other reasons to see them, which is maybe why they don't stay open as much... 
• Food: is expensive in Sweden. Probably a good deal more expensive than where you come from. It is of good quality though, though in Uppsala, I found that vegetables and fruit tend to be a little bland. The best way to save money is to avoid the large Swedish Ica stores that are within Uppsala centre (centrum). Those are much dearer than the ones a bit further from the centre (particularly avoid Ica Nära - Ica "Near"). Ica does tend to have nicer brands and their stores are laid out better. They also often have their own butcher so you can buy really good quality, though stupidly expensive, meat. Your best bet is to avoid Ica within town and go to Willys instead. Much of the sameness but much cheaper. Coop is maybe a little cheaper than Ica but usually about the same. City Gross is a huge supermarket out in Boländerna that will have pretty much everything you could want, and is also the cheapest, though the most inconvenient. And there's also Lidl, out in Gottsunda, and ÖoB in Boländerna (it's a cheap everything-store. For home products like kitchenware and body products). What's nice is that there's often a market in Vaksala Torg during the summer, with pretty cheap and tasty fruit and vegetables! Beware though: hg means hectogram, or 100 gram. I saw this and by the scrawled handwriting, figured it to be kg, not hg, leading me to buy a lot of expensive cherries (800 sek worth)... Whoops :)

Anyway, that's it for now :) I promise the next update won't be such a long gap from the previous :)

First Time in Uppsala (Part 1)

Okay, here's a list of things I wish I had known when I first came to Uppsala to make life a little easier. It's quickly becoming much longer than I thought it would be so it's going to have to be split up into several parts. Oh, I thought it might be useful to put in brackets Swedish translations of common words :)

So here it goes...

• Mobile(Cell) Phone/Mobile Broadband: There are 4 main mobile phone networks in Sweden and all of them offer mobile broadband as well. These are: Telia, Telenor, Tele2 (which encompasses Comviq, a prepaid only network) and 3. You'll probably get a free SIM card as part of your Student Starter package so it may be easiest to stick with that for a time. But if you're the kind who wants to pick the best one for themselves, then here's a very quick summary of what I know about them. 
• Telia is the largest network and formerly had a monopoly in Sweden so you can expect the best coverage with them, though in my experience, the coverage has generally been very good with all networks in Sweden.Their  prepaid service is meant to be good but I wasn't particularly impressed with their contract (abonnemang) because it only had 3 options which were expensive and pretty limited in data, minutes and texts. So, I would say they're reliable but not very competitive. 
• Telenor have good rates, good coverage and good offers. They also own Comviq which only offers prepaid packages with lots of different offers depending how much you text or call or use data a month and how much you want to pay. For your free SIM, it'll probably be Comviq as they tend to market heavily towards the student/informal crowd.
• Tele2 I have just joined and they seem alright so far. I seem to have continuously low 4G signal but the speed (hastighet) I'm getting is pretty nice, maybe 16 Mbit :) Their site is also really easy to use if you know some Swedish but if not, they're really helpful in store. There's one in Uppsala Centralstation.
• 3 I have no knowledge or experience with but I know they're pretty new and seem a bit behind other networks in mobile coverage and offers. 
• Personnummer (Personal Identity Number): This is really important to sort out right away! You will use it for absolutely everything in Sweden. It's a 10(12) digit number consisting of your date of birth and 4 other digits unique to you. For example, if your date of birth is 17th June 1998, then your personnumer would be (19)980617-xxxx, where the x's refer to those assigned digits. You will have to go to the tax office (skatteverket) with ID and all the information you have to show you are legally allowed to live and study here in order to get one (they will give you a temporary one to begin with). Unfortunately, I can't help more with this as it depends on the country you're coming from and your purpose here (exchange student, free-mover, etc), but it's reasonably straight-forward, just time consuming (I was there 3 hours in queue... bring a book!).
• Nation/Student Union: There are 13 nations in Uppsala corresponding roughly to the different provinces/counties of Sweden. Historically they represent a time when students had far to travel from their own county or town and weren't able to return home very often. As such, they would naturally become lonely and homesick, so the nations were formed to counteract this where students from the same or similar place could eat local food, drink local beer, converse in their local dialect, and so on. Now, they're just a place to meet other students in their far cheaper pubs and clubs (a glass of 40 cl beer might be 50 or 60 SEK in a "normal" Swedish pub, but can be as low as 25 SEK in a nation). You pay a fee per semester to join one, around 250 SEK, which includes membership of the student union (studentkår). They give you your student card which you will need along with a valid ID (legitimation or leg for short) in order to enter the nations. You can go into any nation during office hours and they will sort this out for you. From a list of nations(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Uppsala_University_nations), you can then decide which one to join (they all have websites). It doesn't really matter which one you choose because you can go into any nation you want if you're part of one, though you may get discounts in some nations if you're a member of their one (for example, Stockholm nation has a club and its entry is free for their members). Oh, and if you have a friend from back home somewhere who is also a student, you can go into a nation and buy a guest pass for a week for around 100 SEK, which allows them to enter the nations with their student card, ID, and guest pass. Which is pretty cool :) 

This was a pretty information-dense post so I think I will stop here and continue in the next one, where I'll go over classes, winter, food, and administration :)

A short introduction

Hej!

My name is Rob and I have recently taken over managing this blog from Omid, whose posts I recommend reading if you haven't already :)

A little bit about myself....

I'm a second year Physics Master's student in Uppsala University with a "sort of" speciality in Nuclear & Particle Physics, though I tend to enrol in courses I find interesting for their own sake rather than any tied to a particular area of Physics. I come from Ireland, where I did a degree in Applied Maths & Physics (solve hard problems with maths) and a master's in Mathematical Modelling & Scientific Computing (solve hard problems with computers), though my mother is Swedish so I spent a lot of time here growing up and always dreamed of moving here to study.

And if Physics is your interest, then I completely recommend Uppsala. Its Physics department is fantastic and their Master's programme is unbelievably open-ended. The courses I chose for my first semester where chosen on a whim because the possibilities were so large and diverse! And you can take courses from other departments and use them as credits towards your degree if you can argue their relevancy... Amazing!

What I find really cool here is that you have a lot of free reign on what you want to study and how (i.e. you can take courses with just an exam and no coursework, only coursework, with/without seminars, labs, etc.). I personally have come to love the traditional approach of lectures and assignments, because I love spending hours trying to figure out difficult problems, which you can't really do in an exam or seminar. So I tend to avoid classes too far from this approach, unless it's worth it (though it might be the complete opposite for you!)

Oh, a quick bit about first arriving here... The Swedish administration tends not work very often (in terms of hours/day) but works well when you can catch them. Just be sure to come over early and get your personnummer (social security number) sorted immediately... And your 2 or 3 hour wait in skatteverket (tax office) to do so to look forward to :) And definitely join a nation (about 250 sek or €28 per semester)... Doesn't really matter which to begin with, but if you want substantially cheaper food and alcohol and a nice and varied settings (13 nations, with at least one pub & club per nation), it's a must have :)

Anyway, to summarise this "short" introduction: my first year was genuinely amazing. Experienced a whole different way of learning in wonderful university, had a lot of fun in the process, met an amazing girl, travelled to Tallinn, Rome and Paris (more about that later), improved my Swedish enough to feel really comfortable speaking and hearing it (and learnt not to care too much if I didn't understand everything right away), all in a new country, far from friends and family... A valuable experience everyone should go through I believe :)

Till next time :)