Party Like It's 1996

My 10 year high school reunion was Friday night. Since I couldn't be in NY to party with old friends this weekend, I partied with new friends in Stockholm instead.

After work on Friday, I went out with some people I met during orientation two weeks ago. We were the ones sitting in the back, quietly commenting on what we were "learning" during the entire day of orientation. We went to the student pub which was more lively than the other campus pub that we went to after orientation. They also had really cheap beers. We stayed there until it closed at 10pm and then went in search for someplace that was still serving food.

On Saturday, the other American postdoc in my lab had a Thanksgiving dinner. I was one of 4 Americans. Finland, Greece, Australia, Turkey, and France were also represented. We feasted on chicken, stuffing, mashed potatoes, Swedish meatballs, appetizers, salad, bread, cheese, pastries, and ice cream. We also sampled a lot of different drinks - hot apple cider, wine, gin and juice, glogg (Swedish, really yummy, spiced, heated wine), Bailey's ice cream drinks, and tea. We ate, drank, and talked for about 8 hours. It was a lot of fun.

Today, I was in search of a gift for under 20 krona (a bit less than $3) for our lab Christmas party. This was a tough task! Everything here is more expensive than in the US to start with and 20 krona is a really low maximum! I think I was successful, though. The picture to the side is of the main pedestrian street in downtown Stockholm. The pic below is of one of the windows in the NK department store. The do up their windows with animated displays for the holiday season. This year, the theme was Pepperkaka - which is the Swedish version of gingerbread (I think!).