So again the internet has been down and as it is the summer vacation time things are taking time to get fixed… The weather here has been rather ordinary, cold, windy and wet. It is quite funny as the rest of Sweden, particularly down in the South are having a record summer with some nice high temperatures and sunshine. Abisko is said to be a sun spot and has very low precipitation but so far I have seen no indications of this. Since I arrived here I have read 4 books, as I have got no tv I read a lot. Running out of books though so if any of you have any recommendations of good books you like please let me know. On Saturday we had a little get together on the research station in the evening and a few people presented their research here in Abisko (me included). It was interesting to see what the other people are doing; there was a lot on terrestrial ecology and very little on aquatic ecology.

On my bike to work today I was getting cold hands so nearly time to bring out the gloves!!!

At work I have tested out the tangential flow filtration system they got here, will use it to concentrate viruses from the lakes, so running some small tests at the mo. I am also counting viruses from the lakes that have been sampled in Västerbotten and also some of the lakes from up here, so there are a few things to do at work. The crew that I was sampling with in Västerbotten are back here in Abisko to sample some high alpine lakes however they got back this afternoon from an unsuccessful sampling trip as it was too windy for them to get out on the lake and they said they had very little sleep in their tent as it was making lots of noise during the night due to the wind. Reminds me of the time in the tent on Hop Island in the Antarctic we had some incredible wind there. Anyhow, they did not bring back any samples which means I got nothing to do in the lab.

I had some good news from Mr Winkle (a guy that was down in the Antarctic when I was there), he is getting married in March and I got an invite to the wedding so I am considering heading South to be there for his big day.

All the best to you,

Christin