I'm staying in a lovely red building. I can see it from a long way off, so, even in my first days, there was no need to worry about not being about to navigate back to it. For the first two weeks, I stayed in a room in an AirBnB. The couple who hosted me answered all of my questions and gave lots of great suggestions of more places to check out. They also had a big map of Stockholm on the wall. I appreciated that Zara, especially, would take the to locate the places she told me about, on the paper map, so I could find them on my own.
I walk through a national forest to get to KTH's campus. Though I could just as easily walk on a paved bike/ped path, or take a bus. All of those choices are also very close by.
I have a desk in the Transport & Systems Analysis Division. It is such a joy to 1. just be in the office with other people! And 2. to hear the PhD candidates and professors talk about modeling transportation choices. You can see my professor, Dr. Fariya Sharmeen, to the right.
We have quite a few nationalities represented, with some Swedes, of course. But also folks from India, Tunisia, Italy, China, Bangladesh, Spain, Canada and Poland. I think I've mentioned here before that this department likes to take fika (coffee breaks) and lunch, together. The department was creating a new website and was trying to come up with a slogan. I liked the suggestion of "Transport modeling over fika." I think they went with something else, though.
However, since there are so many internationals, we have some pretty interesting conversations about transportation, of course. But also about what words mean in each others' languages. Do you know about False Friends? They are words that look and even sound the same in two languages, but have very different meanings.
Mine favorite in Swedish, so far, is a compound word (I guess only the second part is the False Friend): programslut. The washing machine says this to me every week.
It just means that it finished the program for washing my clothes!
Another funny one was shared with me by one of the professors with small children. She asked if I knew what "kiss" means in Swedish, which I did not. Turns out it means to pee. She pointed out that it gives a whole new meaning to the "Kiss and Ride!"
I'm really grateful for a department that is willing to laugh about these things that could be grave misunderstandings.
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