My life in Europe: SWEDEN-1

Sweden is the first European country I have been. The first time I went Sweden was winter in 1999. At that time I was a Ph.D student in Shanghai, and we had some collaborations with Umea University. Therefore I went Umea as a visiting researcher. Umea is a small, new university town, located the north part of Sweden. Since it is north part of northern Europe, you can image how cold it is. A lot of snow, the most snow I saw in my life. Actually cold is not big problem, since you are not always in the outside. The real problem is the dark. There is only around 5 hours daytime in the winter, and most time are foggy, no sunshine. You know, it is dark when you leave home, and it is also dark when you leave office. That’s quite depressed! But Swedish people are very nice, they are well-civilized and educated people. You know, they are polite and friendly.  And all Swedish people can speak English, even a cleaning lady. I guess that TV program did a big contribution for that. All TV programs are original, never translate to Swedish, and many of them are US TV serials, Hollywood movies. All the northern European countries like Denmark, Finland, Norway, have the same kind TV system (no translation for foreign material, only subtitiles). In order to get a swedish degree, I went Umea two times and spent two winters there, but I also spent half summer in the first time.

 

In the summer, it is nice and beautiful…almost no dark time. I usually got up around 6: 30 and went to bed around 11:30, and both of time, it is bright and sunshine outside. That’s also amazing experiences.

 

Of course, I tried skiing, but you know what, since then I never dare to do again. That was around April 2000. One day I borrowed a skiing board from my Swedish colleague, and tried it for one hour on the flat ground in the afternoon. I felt quite good, and I came back to the office and planed to try it again the next day. My Swedish supervisor came to my office that afternoon and saw the ski board.  He said “ you can skiing?!”, I said “yes”. “should we go together for skiing tomorrow?”  (he said). “yes, of course” I answered.  The second day, he didn’t come to me until around 6:00 pm, I thought he was just joking or not very serious about that. But you know what, he came to me around 7:00 pm and said: “let’s go skiing.” “what? Now? “ I was surprised. “ Yes, we go now, there is light in the skiing area.” I was a little afraid, but I couldn’t refuse to go. So we took the skiing board and walked to the place (there are some lights around skiing track, not very bright). We started to ski, and He said “you go first, I follow you.”  In the beginning, I was doing quite well, but certainly the flat ground goes down, it is a slope. So my speed became fast and fast, My God, this is my second time skiing, how can I know how to control my speed? I tried to use the skiing stick to slow down,  then  lost the balance, fell down and broke the stick. The stick hit my mouth when I fell down, I got a lot of breeding (fortunately not break my teeth).  So that’s my skiing experience, the total time was around 10 minutes.  Since than, I never went for skiing again. You know, 一朝被蛇咬，十年怕草绳！Ha… don’t laugh me!