As promised, I'm writing another blog about my experiences that I had during the past week here at Uppsala. It was really a great and also somewhat of a sad week. My buddy Carl from my rowing club and a really great guy to train with left Sweden for an exchange program to New Zealand. I hope he has a good time there. So during the first part of last week we hung out and of course trained together at the rowing house here at the SLU campus. The reason why I enjoy training together with Carl is that we really push each other. His splits are close to mine and vice versa. Often we are neck to neck during a rowing piece, while some times he's better, sometimes I'm a little better.
Anyways, what did we do besides training? Carl introduced me to something that I was unfortunately pretty ignorant about. We biked from the SLU campus where I live onto Lake Mälaren, which is completely frozen over. According to some ice reports the ice sheet on Lake Mälaren is between 15 and 35 centimetres thick. That's a ridiculous amount of ice. It makes sense though because it has been below -10°C practically since the end of October or the middle of November. So it's not surprising.
We began our bike trip across the frozen lake on a relatively thin sheet of snow until we approached something that I've never seen in my life! The ice on lake Mälaren was ACTUALLY plowed!!!! Now this was something totally new to me. The ice was perfect in the plowed areas and according to Carl leads all the way down to Stockholm, which is 80 Kilometres from Uppsala (not to forget).
Below are some pictures that I took which show the plowed ice sheet. Notice how the plowed ways lead to different parts of the lake and Uppsala's surrounding areas.
Pic 1: This picture faces North towards Uppsala
Pic 2: This picture faces South Southeast from Uppsala
Pic 3: This picture faces South, so away from Uppsala
Can you notice the ice skating marks on the ice? Many people do recreational ice skating here with nordic skates. Nordic skates have longer and sharper blades than regular hockey or figure skates. This allows for more speed. Unfortunately I don't have any picture of Nordic skates, but here is a link where you can see what they look like.
http://freizeitalpin.at/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/lundhags-studio-091020-19699-ok_new.jpg
Pic 4: My rowing buddy Carl and I taking a short break from our bike rides. Notice how our faces reveal how cold it was that day? As the snow pack was hard to bike on and hence I got a little warm, I took my jacket off.
Pic 5: Me posing on the ice. Notice our bikes in the background and the sign on the ice? The sign showed the directions to places one could acces via the plowed routes. ULTRACOOL!!!! Swedes know how to make the best of a long and cold winter!
Biking on Lake Mälaren was really fun. I asked my parents to send me my ice skates from Berlin, so I can also do some ice skating on the lake. Can't wait to get them and integrate ice skating into two days of my training for rowing. Ice skating is a great cardio workout and tons of fun!
That evening Carl, a couple of his other buddies and I all got together for some dinner and a small beer cruise to the Student Nations. Overall it was a really great beginning of the week!
Of course I also worked on my Master's thesis. I had some meetings with my professors, finally have my hypotheses set and am actively conducting literature research. I've really been having lots of fun here in Uppsala during this past week. Some new experiences and slowly I'm finally really feeling like I'm integrating with some Swedish people. I really enjoy it!
In my next blog I will talk about my second part of last week. As mentioned before, last week was really packed with experiences and tons of fun!
Farewell my fellow readers and until next time! Have a great Tuesday!!
Julian
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