Scotland!!!

We headed out on Sunday morning for Edinburgh, Scotland for the International Conference on Neutron Scattering.  Before that, we had to get Charlie to the boarder.  He had a couple of firsts, a train ride and the escalator.  The escalator was very amusing.  On the down he tried to keep backing up as the stairs disappeared, and on the up, he would put his first two feet on and then get stretched out till he had to put his back legs on.

Charlie on the platform

Figuring out the escalator

The flight was short and easy.  I think it was maybe an hour and a half or so.  When we landed it was sunny and hot.  We were so excited about this weather, that as soon as we got to the hotel, we changed clothes and headed out for a patio.

It was a good time to be walking around because Murray was playing in the Wimbledon finals.  As we walked past various pubs we would hear shouts of happiness, we assumed that was a good sign for Murray.  The lady working at the hotel suggested we go to Rose St. for some food.

This is happy Chris.  He knows his food is on the way!

I had a veggie-haggis burger with goat cheese.  It was delish!  I told Chris that I could say I had eaten haggis in Scotland.  He didn't think veggie-haggis really counted.

Chris had fish and chips.

We shared a salad.

Edinburgh has mostly stone buildings, and there are a lot of hills, which allows for cute little patios and nooks and crannies.

 As we were walking, we started to see glimpses of the castle.

Further walking, and we came up on the Sir Walter Scott monument.

It was surrounded by a beautiful, multilayered park.  We could see that there were people up on the monument, and decided to go.  You could climb all the way to the very top.  Maybe you can tell these park pictures were taken from different levels.

The stairs were a tight spiral and very narrow.  It was a little bit dizzying!

It was a really beautiful piece of architecture and views were amazing.

After all the hard work walking up and back down, we treated ourselves to ice cream and kept exploring! 

We had an awesome first evening, and so far we LOVE Edinburgh! Oh yeah, and we can read menus and understand the locals (well sort of).

Midsummer Take 1

I wrote this post months ago and never got it posted. It's a two part post. Here's the first one.

Midsummer is a holiday that all Scandinavians celebrate.  Many other countries do as well, but in Scandinavia it's a bank holiday, meaning no one works!  There is a lot of history in midsummer celebrations that dates back centuries into pagan times.  Originally it was the summer solstice celebration, but like other pagan holidays, the Christians kept the date the same and called it something different.  This made the transition from widespread paganism to Christianity smoother for the public. For that reason sometimes it is referred to as St. John's Eve because the bible refers to John the Baptist as being 6 months older than Jesus.  Nonetheless, it is a really big deal in Sweden.

It is a day that comes with a lot of traditions and can be celebrated anywhere between June 21 and June 25.  In Denmark they have bonfires where they burn a witch.  It is symbolic of scaring the witches back to Bloksbjerg in the Brocken mountain in the Harz region of Germany.  In Finland they also have bonfires, but without the witch, and they put birch trees arounds their doors.  In Sweden everyone looks forward to midsummer.  It is the most anticipated day of the year, right behind Christmas.

Here midsummer is the same as the first day of summer at home, June 21.  I get amusement out of the fact that it's called "mid" as in the middle, when back home you know you are still in for at least two and half more full months of scorching heat. At work we had a celebration on the Tuesday before.  First thing's first, you need a maypole.  This maypole happens to contain trimmings from our yard!

Then you need strawberries.  In our case we had cake!  Most people would tell you they have to be Swedish strawberries.  I can't vouch for the nationality of these, but I do have to say Swedish strawberries are very good!

Next comes socializing and enjoying the fact that you are about to go on a month's vacation, well at least most of these people are.

Here's Chris and Bea.

Here I am sporting a wreath.  Wreath's are an important part of midsummer.  You may notice I'm wearing a tank top.  It's a rare occasion and I will never take it for granted again!!

Even the CEO Jim Yeck, he's American, is embracing the local culture.

After cake, it's time for dancing around the maypole.  There are some traditional songs that go along with it, of course they were sung in Swedish, so we didn't join in.

There was another interesting part to the day, meet Loretta.  She grew up in North Knoxville about a mile from where Chris and I lived on Coker!  She still has her family's house there.  She met a vacuum engineer at SNS (the man in yellow, he's British), they married, retired, and he took a job at ESS.  She and I sounded like two peas in a pod when we started talking.  She's the lady in blue.  The lady in white is from Buffalo, NY.  Her husband is in cryogenics.  The world really is small (I guess especially in such a small community as neutron scattering)!

It was an awesome afternoon that ended with going out for pizza with the American crowd!  Here's some bonus pics of true Swedes.

Neutrons and Life Sciences

Last week an instrument scientist held a small conference at a local hotel to introduce to the life sciences community how neutrons could be helpful in their research.  I attended to represent ESS' support facilities.  For the conference dinner we had reserved 60, but only 40 were going, so our team assistant Bea asked if Chris wanted to go.  We said Yes!

Dinner was at Flädie Mat & Vingård.  It was about 10 km outside of Lund.  We got there on a double decker bus.  My first one, so of course I sat up top!

The grounds were beautiful.  There was a vineyard.  It looks like the vines were just getting going.

There were a number of buildings on the grounds.  There was a gift shop, a tasting room, a restaurant, and conference room.

The conference room was very cozy and really nice.  Chris, Bea and I were lucky enough to sit at a table by ourselves.  Since Bea and Chris are both non scientists and I'm not exactly up on biology, we were happy to sit at our own table. The food was excellent.  We had three courses.  The first course was white asparagus, crispy pork, micro greens, and béarnaise sauce.  The second course was locally raised rooster, green asparagus, roasted potatoes, and demi-glace.  We don't have a picture of this one, oops.  The demi-glace was so good and it came in a separate bowl, so there was plenty of it.  The last course was a decadent chocolate cake with meringues and chocolate-chili mousse with rhubarb compote.  We enjoyed every bite of each course!

The night ended with a beautiful sunset!