Tallinn, Estonia

Inari and I took a two-day trip from Helsinki to Tallinn, Estonia. Tallinn is about 3 hours away by ferry, and a crazy ferry ride it is. Estonia has become something of a weekend getaway for Finns for a variety of reasons: it’s cheaper, it’s familiar but foreign, and because you can buy duty-free alcohol on the ferries. This latter point is very important because alcohol is highly taxed in Finland.

Estonia has traditionally been something of a sister country to Finland. The languages and cultures are very similar, and there has been a lot of trading between the countries throughout the years. This was put to halt for about 60 when Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union, but has resumed in recent years. The relationship has changed though, and the wounds of the communist days have not healed completely. I think the relationship can be compared to a situation in which one sibling is locked up and abused for years, and the other is unable to help (how could Finland free Estonia from the Soviet Union?) and of course feels very bad about the situation. Estonia suffered some very difficult times that it is still unable to openly discuss, so you can imagine that there is some awkwardness between Estonia and Finland. This is not helped by the fact that many Finns traveling to Estonia assume that Estonians living in Tallinn can speak Finnish, which is often true, for they were able to watch Finnish television during the Soviet days, but is probably not the best way to rejuvenate an old relationship. At the moment, Estonians probably feel closer to Latvians and Lithuanians since they had common histories during a very difficult time period.

Tallinn is one of the oldest cities in northern Europe, first mentioned in text in the 1100’s. A wall was built around the city in the early 1300’s or so; much of the wall and old buildings are still standing. Tallinn has been conquered and re-conquered many times, but somehow survived every battle. The Soviets were content to let Tallinn fall to ruins, leaving many of the buildings in a state of disrepair. But Tallinn persevered, and is now having a re-birth that started with the end of communism. I found it to be a very interesting conglomeration of history: some very old buildings that have stood for centuries, some very modern buildings that have been built in the past 15 years, and everywhere scars of communism.

Joulu suomessa (Christmas in Finland)

I've spent the past week experiencing Christmas the Finnish way, which is to say, eating lots of food and visiting with Inari's family and friends. In that regard, Christmas here is the same as in the States. But there are many differences as well. For one, Finns seem to have many more traditional Christmas foods than Americans. Christmas tort, Christmas salad, Christmas beer, etc. My personal favorite is glögi, a spiced wine served hot with almonds and raisins (in the wine). What a nice drink for a cold, dark winter day! This year I also survived my first encounter with lipeäkala, aka lutefisk. I was a little disappointed to realize that lipeäkala is edible; that's not to say that it tastes good, but it's just not that bad, especially with an appropriate amount of white sauce.

One Finnish tradition that I really appreciate is "pikkujoulu" or literally, "little Christmas". A fuller translation would say that pikkujoulu is a small gathering (or party) held to thank friends for the good times that they've had over the past year. But it's not necessarily just one party; in one given year you might attend many different pikkujoulus and host a few yourself. During pikkujoulu, you, of course, serve traditional Christmas foods (snacks) and drinks, and maybe sing some Christmas songs.

Hyvää joulua ja onnelista uutta vuotta! (Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!)

Speaking Finnish

My Finnish is not very good - rudimentary at best. But after spending four days with Inari's grandparents, who don't know a word of English, I feel a renewed desired to learn more. I spent more than one morning in the kitchen with them (while Inari was sleeping) trying to explain very simple ideas. I think they occasionally understand me (no, I don't drink coffee; yes, I'd like some cheese), but more often than not we just looked at each other in complete confusion and threw our arms up in the air. "Oh, it's not important. It's ok."

And, though Finns generally speak English quite well, they are obviously more comfortable speaking Finnish, which means that I'm often left out of discussions. Sometimes I can pick out a few words to understand the general context, and if I'm lucky somebody will summarize the conversation in English. But most of the time I just pretend to be a stereotypical Finnish male: quiet. Not that I expect them to speak English, I'm just happy that they can speak English.

Onward to Finland

My stop in Minneapolis lasted longer than I intended; thanks to bad weather in Chicago my flights were delayed and I left a day later. The trip to Finland was miserable for various reasons, but I finally made it late Saturday night and am now suffering from jet lag, as usual.

I'm looking forward to having some down time. Even though my time in Minneapolis was vacation, I was quite busy meeting up with people and travelling around. The nice thing about vacationing in Finland is that I feel at home, but I don't have to worry much about work or meeting up with people. Basically I just go wherever Inari goes, but only if I feel like it.

It's interesting how one's perception of a place changes with time. Each time I've come to Finland I've come with a better grasp of the Finnish language, which isn't saying much, but more importantly, I'm less ashamed of saying something stupid. Also, certain things become familiar and "normal", but that's not to say they make sense. For example, why are the light switches for the bathrooms on the outside of the rooms? Is it so that kids can turn the lights off on their siblings while they're sitting on the toilet? Why don't strangers who pass on an empty street say "hello"? And if they do, why are they considered drunk, crazy, or American? Why do Finns always wait for a walk signal when crossing an intersection, even if there aren't any cars for miles? Maybe someday I'll have the answer's to these deep questions of life.

First publication

The manuscript that I eluded to in earlier posts has finally been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Earth Surface. Since many people have asked me how the publication process works, I thought I'd try to explain it - but in a broader context (how does science "work"?).

First, you have to figure out what questions to ask about your particular field; this is fairly natural and usually stems directly from your previous work. Then you have to figure out a creative way to investigate those questions, and of course, find a funding agency willing to support your work. For glaciology, the funding sources are typically the National Science Foundation or NASA, but there are other options. You must then write a proposal (usually with other investigators) and submit it to the funding agency. The proposal goes through a review panel consisting of scientists in the same field and in related fields. They ultimately choose which projects will be funded.

If your project is funded, you usually receive two to three years of support; the amount of money you receive depends on the nature of the project. After you conduct your research, you are expected to publish it in a peer-reviewed journal. This is crucial if you hope to continue in academics, make tenure, or continue receiving funding.

The peer-review process is science's attempt at objectivity, and usually it works well. But as I have learned from my own experience and from others' stories, there is a certain amount of politics and personal agendas that are difficult to avoid. Even though we as scientists are taught to separate our opinions from our work, it is sometimes difficult to hear somebody else tell you that what you've worked on for the past 5 years is a bunch of crap. So naturally, some (but definitely not all) scientists develop egos and hold grudges.

At any rate, after conducting your research, you typically write a 12-15 page paper and submit it to an appropriate journal. A scientific editor with the journal (usually a researcher in the field) reads the paper and forwards it to two or three other people for review. The reviewers are not affiliated with the journal, and are typically faculty members or senior graduate students. They read the paper critically and raise a number of questions regarding the work. The editor then has the choice to (1) accept the paper as is, (2) accept it with minor revisions, (3) accept it with major revisions, or (4) reject it. Choice 2 usually involves minor wording changes that will be only be re-reviewed by the editor. Choice 3 may require substantial re-writing or re-analysis, and resubmittal usually results in the paper being sent back to the same reviewers. This can go through a couple of iterations until the paper is finally accepted. Rejection does not necessarily mean that the manuscript is "dead", but probably requires serious thinking about the work that you've done. If you choose to keep working on the paper, you may need to try submitting to a different journal, depending on the terms and reasons for rejection.

When your work is finally accepted for publication, you transfer copyright privileges to the journal, along with about $100 per page and up to $1000 for figures if they are in color (this money comes from grants, if there is no money the journal may waive the fee). The journal publishes the work, sends you "pre-prints" (which are essentially nice copies of your manuscript), and sells the journal to libraries and individuals. And then you wait to become famous. If you're particularly successful, you will receive phone calls from science reporters who will misinterpret your statements and write about your "results" in the newspaper. Then, of course, politicians take the newspaper articles and twist them to satisfy their own agenda, such that in the end you have little faith that the general public really understands the current state of science.

This is my third year of graduate school and I'm already jaded.

First stop: San Francisco

I survived my first trip to the American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual conference. I think survived is the correct word choice, since I felt a sense of relief when the conference ended (after enduring 5 days of poster sessions, talks, and schmoozing). Over 10,000 geophysicists attend this meeting, making it the largest geophysics meeting in the world, to the best of my knowledge. Although the goal of any scientific conference is to share ideas, this conference in particular is a great chance to meet up with old friends, and actually, I think many people attend for that reason alone. The other reason is to eat a lot of good food... Too much, perhaps.


San Francisco was a little overwhelming for me (especially at first), coming from Fairbanks. There are so many interesting places and people to observe, and the cultural diversity is exceptional. I was most struck by the large homeless population - it left me feeling guilty of my privileges (and as a student I'm not exactly rolling in the dough). In certain areas of town you could find homeless people on every street corner, and many of them seemed to have physical and/or mental disabilities. I feel inspired to become involved with the homeless shelter in Fairbanks - maybe by posting these words on the internet I will feel more compelled to do so.

While there, I met up with some old friends, including Jess, with whom I did a 6-week canoe in the Canadian arctic in summer 1998. He was a great host, picking me up at the airport on Sunday and taking me to the (supposedly) best breakfast in San Francisco, then on to Muir Woods, the coast, and dinner at some tasty Indian restaurant. On Saturday (our shared birthday) we went to the farmer's market, and then over to Berkeley to stroll around.


I also tried to experience a little culture (and wanted to make Inari jealous) so I went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. They had some nice exhibits, including many self-portraits of Chuck Close, some of which are usually displayed at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. The building itself was very interesting, and was part of larger art center that included a theater and other attractions.


It's difficult to express all the images and experiences from the week. It was fun, but also exhausting.

Half way around the world and back again

Sorry about the lack of updates lately - the last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic, between trying to make progress on my thesis (its essentially finished, though I won't defend until March), preparing a poster for the American Geophysical Union conference which is next week, and putting the finishing touches on the paper that is nearly accepted into the Journal of Geophysical Research. And then, of course, there is skiing, hockey, and playing hand drums and steel drums!

Over the next 7 weeks I'll be gone from Fairbanks, but I'll try to keep posting as I go, and hopefully put some more thought into the posts than I have recently (sorry). At the very least I'll put up some photos of my Fairbanks - San Francisco - Minneapolis - Helsinki - Mannheim - Helsinki - Fairbanks trip. I'm looking forward to this much needed break, though I do feel a little guilty taking such a long vacation. Once I'm back I'll start preparing for field work next summer in western Greenland!

Sleepy season

As a friend put it, "when you live in Alaska (or anywhere in the far north), you finally realize that the Earth is a round object". The extreme change in seasons is wonderful, but the change in daylight is almost painful. It's hard to sleep during summer because it's too light out, it's hard to stay awake during winter because it's too dark. As we move toward the winter solstice I find the time I arrive at work gets later and later. It's just too difficult to get up before the sun rises, which nowadays is close to 10:00 am... Luckily I won't get "fired" for showing up late, as long as the work gets done it doesn't matter when and where I work.

It seems most everybody here suffers from SAD (seasonal affective disorder) to some degree. I wasn't prepared my first year here. I didn't realize how much the light was affecting me until spring came and I felt so good! Every year since then has been a little better, but the darkness isn't necessarily something you can get used to. Some people that have lived here their whole lives have a lot of trouble dealing with the darkness. The key seems to be staying active and getting out to enjoy the precious daylight hours, no matter what the temperature. Without much snow that can be difficult; this winter has gotten off to a slow start, but we finally have enough snow for cross-country skiing. I ski to school most of the winter, which takes about 35-40 mins each way. It's a long trip, but I think I'm happier for it. Besides, where else in the world can you ski to work?

First gig

Last weekend I played in my first "gig" with the Fairbanks Steel Drum Band. I'm not sure gig is the correct term, since we played at an elementary school for their family night. But on the other hand, you can't be too picky about your gigs in Fairbanks - there just aren't many opportunities. The concert was fun; I only played two songs: "Jammin' " and "Yu safe". The rest of the time I just watched or helped with the limbo stick. Those kids are crazy about limbo! After the show I had to "fight" with two of them to get the limbo stick so we could pack up and head home.

It was a somewhat humbling experience - some of the drummers are really good, and they played much faster than I was expecting. Something to work towards, I suppose. The sound of the steel drum is a little too shrill for my liking, but its fun to play. I'll probably continue playing with the band, but maybe focus more on hand drumming.

Whale music

Winter has arrived (it was -20F at the cabin this morning), so maybe it's about time to stop thinking about summer and accept the fact that winter is here to stay. But before moving on, here's one last anectdote from summer.

During a field project in August, Inari, myself, and a professor from Juneau traveled around Southeast Alaska by boat to try to quantify rates of post-glacial rebound. (Uplift rates in Glacier Bay National Park are some of the highest in the world.) One day while traveling through Frederick Sound, we came across a pod of humpback whales, who spend winters in Hawai'i and summers in Alaska. The largest populations are found in Frederick Sound.


The whales surprised us at first - we nearly hit a couple of them while going 30 mph. Once we realized how many whales were around we decided to kill the engine and enjoy the moment. We must have been surrounded by 30 whales, each surfacing and "singing". One even jumped completely out of the water. (That's a 45 ton cannonball!) We got the feeling they were enjoying the wonderful weather even more than we were. Every being was happy, except for Tracy the dog, who was perturbed by the incredibly deep vibrations produced by the whales.

God's country

Okay, so it's not usually sunny in Juneau, but you wouldn't know that from these photos and those from my last entry. In August Inari and I traveled to Juneau for vacation and field work. Southeast was hit with record rainfall the week before we arrived, but by the time we got there a heat wave was passing through. We did a great hike on a trail that literally starts in downtown Juneau and quickly climbs 3000 ft, giving us a different perspective on Juneau and the cruise ships. The hike took us a better part of one day.


On the way up you pass into alpine tundra (treeline is at only 2500' or so, compared to 10000' in Colorado) and then follow a ridge back towards the Juneau icefields.


I find it amazing that such beautiful places are largely unknown to most of the world; this place is more beautiful than some national parks in the lower 48. The trail is within the Tongass National Forest, which means its sort of protected. There are signs, though, forbidding you from contaminating the streams because the city of Juneau depends on them for fresh water.

Sunny Southeast

One thing to keep in mind about Alaska is that view of the world is a little different from here. For example, when people travel to Southeast they are not heading to Disney World. Similarly, what I used to call "out east" is now lumped into the expression "back east" since almost everybody in Alaska is from back east.

Juneau is, in many ways, the cultural center of Alaska. Some refer to it as North Seattle because it is the most politically liberal part of the state, which means its pretty moderate. There is never a shortage of things to do in Juneau; besides the obvious outdoor activities there is a great bluegrass music scene, numerous good restaurants, some cinemas that show independent films, numerous art galleries and museums, and even an opera. Numerous sculptures, totem poles, and paintings can be found in the downtown area, which is the old part of the city.




And if you still run out of things to do you can always sit and watch the turistos who swarm the city by the thousands each day during the summer. Fortunately for the locals, the tourists usually don't venture too far from the cruise ships so they're impact on the city life isn't too great. Unfortunately, the money they spend on Persian rugs and Brazilian emeralds doesn't go to the locals.

Fish "harvesting"

Life at the moment isn't super exciting; I'm working my tail off on my thesis so that I don't feel as guilty about taking so much time off over winter break. Plus, we've entered the "shoulder" season: it's much too cold for summer activities, but there isn't enough snow yet for skiing. I've decided that for the next few weeks I'll start posting some photos and stories from the summer. I'm not sure if I'll keep updating the ol' website or not. This seems much easier.

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Being an Alaskan gives you certain privileges, such as an annual dividend from the government and the ability to go "dipnetting" in the famous Copper River near Chitina (pronounced Chit-na). Dipnetting is so many things rolled into one. But at its core it's basically the "Great Alaskan Get-Together". Alaskans of all sorts drive to the tiny town of Chitina, which is a couple hours from Valdez, which means the middle of nowhere, to stick their nets in the glacially-fed Copper River. And then you wait for salmon to jump in your net.


To get from Chitina to the fishing holes, you have to drive down an extremely rough, one lane dirt road that is on the edge of a cliff. Eventually you come to a spot where the road has been "closed" due to high slope instability. Many people drive right past that spot, others use four-wheelers, or dirt bikes. We had intended to bicycle, but upon arriving at the closed road sign, we were informed that the fishing were running so hard that we wouldn't have to go to the better fishing holes down the road. So, at 12:30 am we scrambled down the steep slope (45 degrees?) to the water's edge, tied our nets to a tree so that we wouldn't have to continually fight the current, and watched the fish come. It was almost like they wanted to be eaten.


Each household is allowed to catch 30 fish per year - if the salmon are running hard you can get your limit in a few hours. By 5:00 am we had caught 64 salmon (for three of us), all of them about the size as those in the picture above. Anybody that's done any fishing knows the work has just begun. We then hauled the fish up the steep slope, drove a short ways to a clear stream and cleaned the fish. After putting them on ice, we started heading home. We rolled into Fairbanks sometime in the early evening, and crashed.


The next two days were spent filleting the fish, and then freezing or smoking them. We figured that we had spent something like $0.60 per pound of salmon. At a store, that same salmon would cost closer to $10.00 per pound. It was a lot of work, but well worth the effort.

Travel woes

The big downside to living in Fairbanks is that its so far from everywhere - except wilderness. Its really an isolated community. Anchorage is 6-7 hours away by car, and there is basically nothing in between. Just getting to the state capital (Juneau) is quite an adventure. If you want to get there you have two options: taking a 2+ hour flight (if you're lucky you can get a direct flight) or driving through Canada and catching the ferry from Haines. That takes about 15 hours, about the same as driving from Minneapolis to western Montana. And if you want to visit the U.S....

Of course, the airlines aren't exactly trying to make travelling any more enjoyable. I don't have a lot of sympathy for the airline companies' current plight. About a month ago I purchased tickets to fly from Fairbanks to Minneapolis to Helsinki to Fairbanks over winter break. I recently decided to attend a geophysics conference in San Francisco that ends the day before I was scheduled to leave Fairbanks. Changing the ticket sounded like a hassle, so I asked if I could just cancel one leg of the ticket (2 months in advance). Turns out you can't do that without canceling the entire ticket and losing all that money. Somehow that doesn't make sense: I told them that I would just forfeit my seat, and that they could give it to somebody else (and charge them for it), but the airline wouldn't do it. My only option was to change the ticket - at first "they" tried to charge me $800 to do that, since the cost of the flight went up. The same flights, one month later, cost $800 more. Can you imagine if buses operated like that? Anyway, enough ranting. We got it squared away (minus lunch money for a couple months).

I'll be in Minnesota December 11-15 (arriving early on the 11th, leaving midday on the 15th). Leave your calendars open, it's gonna be wild.

Rainy days

I've been told that a geek would have realized his computer wasn't connecting to the internet because his ethernet cable was plugged into the wrong port. But I'm trying!

This has been the dreariest autumn since I've been in Fairbanks. It's rained almost every day, and today the rain is slowly turning into big, fat snowflakes. I hope it sticks! It must be time to wax the skis and make sure they're ready to go once winter hits.

On Monday good friends and colleagues of mine moved back to Switzerland. They've known they were leaving for about a year, but its amazing how fast that time passed. Probably the best part of being in the academic world is that you get to meet a lot of great people from around the world. The worst part being that they all leave at some point.

In other news, a paper I submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research - Earth Surfaces has been conditionally accepted. This means I need to make some major revisions to the paper within the next month, and if the revisions please the scientific editor (the person who ultimately decides whether or not to publish a paper), then we should be seeing my first manuscript in print sometime next year.

Let's party - American style

I've been convinced by two fellow geeks and travelers extraordinaire that I should join the blogging community. Alaska is still a blast and often an adventure, but many days my life consists of cursing at my computer and talking about geeky things that nobody else really cares about. So, for now I'll just post once a week unless something else comes up that inspires me to blab, rant, or show off some photos.

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A busy weekend. Saturday was the Equinox Marathon and Relay, supposedly the second most difficult marathon in the U.S. It's often considered a graduation requirement for graduate students in the geophysics department. Each year I tell myself that I'm going to run it and then chicken out. This year I ran the 3-person relay, along with Inari and my friend Anthony. We finished at 4:09, good enough for 16th out of 62 relay teams and 4th out of 22 mixed teams. Full results, if you're interested, are at http://www.equinoxmarathon.org.

On Sunday we celebrated Inari gaining resident status by hosting an American party. This required dressing as an American and bringing American food, which of course, was open to interpretation. We had a redneck, a hippie, a jock, a cowboy, an American tourist, and everything from ding-dongs to chili. It was a real hoedown.














As a resident Inari is now able to remain in the U.S. indefinitely, which means no more stress and no more unnecessary bureaucracy. For now. She'll have the option of becoming a dual-citizen in five years.