Holidays and Travelling

Last time I promised a post about how to apply to university in Sweden, but since the deadline for starting in September has passed and the deadline for starting next year is ages away, I thought I'd write about something more seasonal. So this post will be about holidays and travelling.

Timetabling in Uppsala university is a mysterious process which seems to follow no logical structure. Firstly, it's not the same from week to week. You might have three classes for one course one week then none at all the next week, and they can be on any day at any time. There's even a horrific possibility that classes can start at 8am, however luckily I have largely avoided this. They usually give you the timetable each half-semester at a time, a week or two before classes start, so long term planning is quite difficult.

Despite this, the number of hours of class a week is a lot less than I've had before. However, my friends doing theoretical physics courses seem to have it a lot more intense (moral of the story, astronomy and space physics is best). It also depends a lot on how many credits you're taking. You need 120 for the masters in total which works out at 15 per half-semester (usually one 10 credit and one 5 credit course), but sometimes you might have more in one period and less in another. You can take more courses than required then you can choose which ones to put on your final transcript, but obviously doing this will give you a lot less free time and a lot more stress. NOTE: If you are from outside the EU/EEA and therefore a fee-paying student you will have to pay more if you take more courses than required. More information about this is available on the university website.

A typical week of my timetable (Physics of Galaxies = 10c, AToPT = 5c)

The strange timetable means that sometimes you might find yourself without any classes for a whole week. This is, in my opinion, the perfect opportunity to go travelling, and see more of Sweden or other nearby countries. Uppsala is pretty convenient for this too.

Also, despite the university website saying there are no specific holidays for Christmas and Easter, you will get at least 2 weeks without class over Christmas and a week or two at Easter.

Trains

You can get a train from Uppsala to Stockholm in about 40 minutes, and from there you can reach anywhere in Sweden, and even take a train to Norway or Denmark too. It can be a bit pricey but if you book far enough in advance you can get a good deal. A popular trip is the 17 hour journey from Stockholm to Narvik at the very top of Norway, where you can see the Northern lights or the midnight sun in summer.

Planes

Uppsala is really close to Arlanda airport, which has flights to almost anywhere you can think of. However, the cheapest airlines use different airports instead. Västerås airport has cheap flights to London and you can get a bus there from Uppsala. Skavsta airport is south of Stockholm and a bit more difficult to get to, but you can get really cheap flights across Europe.

Istanbul is only 4 hours away from Stockholm.

Ferries

Probably the cheapest and most fun way to see other countries from Uppsala. You can take an overnight ferry from Stockholm to Tallinn (Estonia), Helsinki (Finland) or Riga (Latvia). The cheapest option is the day trip cruise where you spend the night on the boat on the way out and on the way back, and have around 8 hours or so in the city to have a look round. If you go with a group of 4 sharing a cabin you can get this return trip for less than 10 euros each, which is amazingly cheap. You can also use the opportunity to stock up on things which are expensive in Sweden (eg alcohol) but really cheap in Latvia etc. The ferry trips are something I'd recommend to anyone in Uppsala.

You can get to Tallinn for less than 10 euros return.

I would encourage anyone coming to study in Uppsala, especially those from outside Europe to take advantage of all these travel options and visit some of the Sweden's nicest places and its beautiful neighbours too. If you're from outside the EU your student visa for Sweden allows you to visit most countries in Europe (not the UK though).

Things that happen in Sweden - Part 2

At the end of May, the student nations (which I will discuss in detail in a future post) host their May Ball, the fanciest occasion of the year. This is your chance to dress up in your finest clothes and pretend to be Cinderella or Prince Charming. One unusual tradition of the May Ball is that choir groups will go round student housing areas serenading residents in the hope that somebody will agree to be their date to the ball. I experienced this at 2am one night and was very confused. I am told in future that the thing to do is bring them sandwiches and drinks and they will leave. Sometimes Sweden can be a very strange place.

Is there a satanic ritual happening outside my house? No, it's just a May ball choir.

Hello people of the internet

Hello people of the internet.

My name is Tom and I've been asked to take over this blog and tell you all about what it's like to study physics in Uppsala. I’ve been here for about 9 months now, so hopefully I have some experiences worth sharing with you, and the information they don’t tell you on the university website. This is the first time I'm writing a blog so please bear with me if I've formatted it really badly or something. Also, the previous people who wrote this blog have some really good posts too so be sure to have a loot there too.

Who are you?

Who are you Tom? you may ask, and indeed I may ask myself if I'm feeling philosophical. So here's a brief summary of my life. I come from the distant land of the United Kingdom. I grew up in the beautiful county of Northumberland then studied Astrophysics at University College London (which, as the name implies, is in London) before moving to Uppsala to do my masters.

A visual representation of my national identity (left).

Here in Uppsala I'm studying the physics master programme, specialising in astronomy and space physics. I've always been interested in space since I was a child and there's loads of really interesting courses here in that area. I've also taken a few courses outside this area, including ones about climate and meteorology which are really interesting too.

When I'm not studying my favourite thing to do is travelling to different cities and countries, which is something you can easily do from Uppsala. Another thing I really enjoy is getting involved in weird Swedish traditions, and sharing weird British traditions with Sweden in return.

Why are you here?

This is a question many people have asked me. Before I moved to Sweden, my family would say "why are you moving to Sweden? you've never been there, you don't speak Swedish, its too cold etc.". But, in my own mind I had good enough reasons, and here I am.
When I was studying in London, a lot of my friends went on a year abroad as part of their course. I couldn't do one on my course and I was really jealous that they all got to have loads of fun living in exotic foreign countries. This was the pull factor that made me consider doing the masters abroad. There were also significant push factors making me want to leave the UK. The conservative government had already tripled tuition fees to £9000 (over 100,000 kronor) per year and now they're taking away a lot of grants that were available to students from less well off families, meaning studying another course there would have been very expensive. Also, living costs in London are INSANELY high.
So, I decided I'd go abroad for the masters. Now, I must admit, Uppsala University was not my top choice initially. I didn't have a top choice at all, I just blindly applied to universities in any country that taught in English and had low (or better no) tuition fees. Then, when I received replies from them I did more research into each one and Uppsala really stood out as somewhere that sounded nice to study. In addition to being completely free (for EU students) and taught in English, it had courses that sounded really interesting and the student life seemed to be really unique and fun. I chose Uppsala as my first choice then all I had to do was pass my final exams in London and I had a place here.

First day in Uppsala.

So that was my reasoning of why I applied in the first place, but I still didn't really know anything about Uppsala until I arrived here. Now that I've been here a little while I know I made the right decision in coming here and I've had so much fun over the last months. Being a student is not just about academics, and I hope to share with you all the fun things you can take part in here (starting today) as well as important stuff about the course itself, so please keep reading.

Things that happen in Sweden - Part 1

As everyone in Europe will know, last weekend was the Eurovision Song Contest, this year held here in Sweden. In the UK, Eurovision is seen as a bit of a joke, where you watch people from countries you've never heard of sing awful songs then politically vote for their neighbours. In Sweden, however, its taken much more seriously. The process starts months before the contest with a televised nationwide competition to see who will represent the country. Before the contest are hours of analysis of past winners and speculation on this years winners. Then when it's time for the big event itself, its an excuse for a party. The nation gathers round their TV screens and consumes 3 times more crisps than any ordinary night (see link) and an excess of alcohol. This was definitely true at my Eurovision party.

http://www.metro.se/nyheter/sa-har-mycket-chips-smaller-vi-i-oss-under-eurovision/EVHoew!O3zTiCk3oxa6/

Eurovision party (I don't have a blue face all the time)

Unfortunately Sweden came in 5th place this year, behind winners Ukraine, so no doubt there will be a TV post-mortem to find out how Sweden can improve for next year. However, the contest will be watched with just as much enthusiasm next year, so if you're here it's definitely something to look forward to (or dread if you're one of those people who hates Eurovision).

NEXT TIME: How to apply - Tom's guide through the confusing world of University Admissions Sweden.

P.S. If anybody has any questions or things you'd like me to talk about in future posts, leave a comment and I will try and get back to you as soon as possible.

Accessing articles

So this isn't really a post, I just wanted to put this here in case anyone is ever looking to access a journal article using Uppsala University's credentials. For some reason it's hard to find information about how this works on the UU website (for me at least). Say you have an article that you've found on a journal's website, like this one:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370157315002604

You'll notice if you click this (from home, I'm not sure about from a UU connection) that you don't have access to the full article. To gain access you can use UU's proxy, by inserting ".ezproxy.its.uu.se" (without the quotes, obviously) after the .com but before the /, like so:

http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.its.uu.se/science/article/pii/S0370157315002604

Now you'll see that if you click the link it takes you to your UU login page. If you log in, it will return you to the article page, now with full access. There is a full list of databases supported by this feature on ezproxy.its.uu.se, but it's pretty long and I've not yet encountered an article that I haven't been able to access in this way. Happy reading!