May - the beautiful fresh month is here and Skåne is looking as its very best now with yellow rape fields everywhere. This year we had high summer temperature (+25 degrees) early in April, so the Japanese pink cherry trees and magnolia has had its glory and now instead all lilac bushes are in full bloom, which used to be about ready to blossom when school finishes. At least this was the case when I was a child - times and seasons are indeed changing. Global warming again?
We just have to enjoy the beauty and the flowers while it lasts, whether it is in April, May or June. Only sad thing is for all the young girls who usually pick seven different flowers to put under their sleeping pillows the night of Midsummer Eve - to dream about the boy they will marry. What is left for June 19 this year in terms of wild flowers to pick? - Well, we just have to wait and see.
The strawberries are the most important to get, the Swedish ones (not the imported ones from Spain or Holland) and of course before the berries you need the fresh potatoes, sour cream, cut spring onion, the important herring and last but not the least the little "nubbe" (Skånsk Akvavit) . That makes the long and bright Midsummer Eve and night for a Swede - just about perfect.
Neutron scattering does not only enable important research to be carried out, which helps us to understand materials and life a bit more, but also brings people to nice countries. Being part of the ESS Scandinavia team, I'm based at ILL in Grenoble, the capital of the French Alps. I'm preparing for the future, working with world-class leading scientists from all over Europe in the fields of materials science and neutron instrumentation.
Today was an "Analyzing data day" at ILL. Numbercrunching you might say. Digging too much into data made my senses continue analysing even on my way home to our place in the outskirts of Grenoble. I, as always, had first to face the stochastic motions - the origin of quasielastic scattering for a neutron freak - in French traffic. By this I mean a more or less "amorphous" behaviour in car-driving here, where red lights and parking spots appear to serve only as guides for strangers like me. However, the opposite (the ordered structure) exists as well - here in France you need to fill in loads of papers and they may even ask you about your shoe size if you, for example, are about to buy a radio. These are just some of my observations of everyday life in France - and I like to make the comparison to Sweden, where you probably can buy a castle without signing a single paper and without telling the seller who you are.
Passing by the grocery store on my way home, I purchased the essentials for this weekend's activity, walking. My skis were stolen a few weeks ago, but the scenery is nevertheless magnificent on foot! So what did I buy? - Baguettes, cheese, wine and yoghurt of course!!! I'm still amazed about the thousands of different kinds of yoghurt you find here!. But then again a foreigner in Sweden would marvel at the hundreds of different kinds of milk we seem to need to survive. Does anyone know what "långfil" is for example...
