ljplicease | When we go to the party (Reply)

(day four) I forgot to mention that before heading off to the air museum, we went to get me fitted for tails. The nice lady in the department store was super nice. She kept saying that she was going directly to the tailor to take care of the pants, and that we needed to start getting dressed at least an hour before we needed to be ready. I wore tux to my wedding so this was by far the dressiest I had ever been.

Mum and Lena at the promotion

(day seven) So the whole reason we were in Sweden and Linköping to begin with is my mum was receiving an honorary doctorate for her work with the faculty of sciences at Linköping University. The promotion ceremony was at the same location in Norrköping, and we had to be there fairly early so that mum could rehearse, so we didn't have much time to go touring, but we did peek inside the local cathedral. These are all starting to look vaguely the same to me. No brick in this one though. Then we got dressed in the hotel room. It did indeed take about an hour with all the bells and whistles. Photographs in our fancies in front of the pretty stuff, and then the bus over to Norrköping. Then more photographs in our fancies in front of the industrial stuff. The ceremony itself was a little long and mostly in Swedish, so a bit boring, but a special occasion for those involved. Mum walked across the stage to get her second doctorate^[1]. When the offered the hat, diploma and ring to each honorary doctorate (there were about seven or eight), they would speak in either Swedish or English depending on the recipient. Each faculty had colors and symbols associated with them. The head of the faculty of philosophy smartly wore a green shall that went nicely with her wreath and the faculty colors. The head of the medical faculty clearly enjoyed promoting the students and other honored in his faculty. After that we had a very nice dinner with about a million other people. I had an interesting conversation with the lady sitting next to me, who was coincidentally also named Lena. She was involved in scientific visualization. Ingrid, across from me, is from Germany. So it was very international at our table. We danced for a little bit with the band playing, but we had an early train in the morning, so we took the 11:30pm bus back to the hotel and collapsed quite convincingly into bed.

These chairs in the hotel lobby looked like they came out of Buck Rogers or the Rocketeer

Cathedral entrance in profile

stained light through the stained glass on the cathedral floor

curvy candle holder

(day eight) Today is our last day in Sweden. As I type this, we are waiting for our train to Lund. Tonight we are staying in Copenhagen in a hotel walking distance to the airport, so that we can fly back early tomorrow. Then it is back to work on Tuesday! As I sit here and contemplate our wonderful trip I can't help but wonder if we will ever be back to Sweden. It is a friendly and interesting place.

Stadsbiblioteket, the library in Lund

This handicap space was marked with cobblestones

Presumably a dance studio? When I took this photograph I thought of Alex, our dance instructor.

The yellow house in the middle reminded me of the House I sculpture in DC

Lena and mum resting in the gardens. We had packed so much into our week, that I think we were glad to have a respite on our last day.

I loved the ladybug seat on this bike so had to commit it to film.

I had joked earlier in the week, “so do we call you Doctor Doctor now, or do we just call you Doctor since we haven't been calling you by that first Doctor so far?” and mum smartly responded “Actually it's Professor Doctor Doctor...”