Long Burn

Spring views

On a Sunday morning in Helsinki the streets are empty. The sun shines, fighting a cold breeze. A woman sits on a wooden chair in the middle of the street playing the cello. Such wonderful music! Don't her fingers get cold?

We are doing experiments at the electron storage ring in Lund for the next two weeks. I rented a small truck to move the equipment over from Copenhagen. I'm glad I'm not a professional driver. Driving the moving van went just fine, even through holiday traffic in the center of Copenhagen. No, the problem is that I find driving either boring or stressful. It didn't help that I couldn't relate to the music on the radio. Does this mean I'm getting old? It was either monotonous angry hip hop or teen pop, the best being Kylie Minogue. In the end I listened to a service from a Danish Lutheran church.

It was a holiday in Denmark on Friday. They used to have a lot of prayer days, public holidays, dedicated to Saint this or Saint that. They decided that people needed to work more and so they gathered all the prayer days into a single day known as 'The Big Prayer Day' (Store Bededag). The Swedes don't observe the Big Prayer Day, at least not publicly. Since I was free, my wife and I drove the car to Ikea and bought part of her birthday present, some patio furniture. We had the store to ourselves since the Swedes were at work. Anders had fun looking at everything and then he fell asleep. (Today he seems to be sick, just wants to sleep...)

It is wonderful that spring is here. The cherry trees along our street are getting ready to blossom. Tulips are blossoming plus a lot of small blue flowers, all over the lawn. Daffodils too, and some bushes.

posted by Matt_J @ 9:16 AM