This was my first “proper” weekend in the new place. Yesterday morning I met with a friend from my writing group at Himlen Är Blå Som En Apelsin - a really cozy cafe that is a two minute walk from my apartment.

The forest and the view

But as nice as it is to have a nice cafe two minutes away and be able to meet people or go to events at short notice, the most important part for me has been having the forest nearby. It’s not as big as the nature reserve in Täby, but it’s got what seems like many kilometers of trails… and even more kilometers if you disregard the trails :D.

I also have a really nice view outside my kitchen and bedroom-side windows: a beautiful little patch of trees right outside. Unfortunately these will likely be cut down in a couple of years, as apparently that land is university property that they will eventually build on. But I’ve got a couple of years of a really nice view until then.

Upplandsmuseet - free entry for UPP-LEV opening

I got really lucky and came across Upplandsmuseet on my walk this morning - where a free opening of a new exhibit was just taking place! And suitably, it is about the history of Uppland.

Singularity short story discussion fika

I’ve never really been into organizing people-stuff. But when living in Täby I realized nobody else was going to start the reading/writing group I wanted, so I’d just have to do it myself. And even though organizing is still not my favorite thing in the world, it was worth it! We had some meetups in a “short story fika” format - where we’d read a few short stories in advance and then discuss them over fika.

So I already knew I’d want to do something similar again. Meetup.com is not as popular here, and I guess that makes sense with the overall smaller population compared to Stockholm. But we had a really interesting and nice three-person discussion about two short stories centered around technological singularity today. The stories were:

• The Gentle Seduction by Marc Stiegler
• Answer by Fredric Brown

In a way the stories were opposites. The longer The Gentle Seduction was about the slow seduction of technological advancement that ends beautifully (at least beautifully for the main character - we did discuss the lack of insight into how the piecemeal advancements would likely have impacted other groups in the world, which weren’t mentioned). Answer was more like a one-night stand that gets you pregnant.

As always, science fiction ends up being a great way to think about our world today.

I’m going to try very hard not to make every session feature science fiction.

Conclusion

All in all - I’m still settling in (and unpacking) but have already had a great start and met interesting people. And speaking of people - everyone is so friendly in Uppsala. They are very friendly in Stockholm too, but I sense that the frequency of random approaches and people smiling at me in the street is higher here. Och jag har orkat prata så mycket svenska den här veckan! I feel like the people here might be a little closer to what I remember from Gothenburg in terms of pace and patience to stumble through my Swedish with me.