At the start we had a flight from Stockholm-Arlanda airport to Borlange, which is close to Falun where we were going to meet Dr Tabar. This flight was in a propeller plane which was made many years ago by the Fokker company, a Dutch factory which had its most flourishing time during the first world war by making airplanes for the German military.
In Falun we appeared to have reservations in a quite nice hotel, it was the first time for me to be in a hotel room in which the bed did not have absolute priority in taking up space. I have had larger rooms, but then still the bed was just in the middle of the room. I found this arrangement a very good idea since I do not only sleep in a hotel room.
During saturday, sunday and monday morning we had talks with Dr Tabar. He is quite a special character by for instance being always extremely convinced of his own case. As a scientist who I usually picture as doubting his own ideas, this character of Tabar used to make me feel extra sceptical. However, now that I have seen how extremely well organized his mammography department is, I have given in all my doubts. I assume that he is just the best breast cancer screener in this world, so who am I to doubt his asking the credits for that?
Maybe his character was also added to by the cool reception of his work in Sweden. Tabar has been asked to come to Sweden to do his trial when he was still in his home country Hungary. Perhaps because of a large difference in temperament between the Hungarian and Swedish character, he has been mostly ignored during the time he was executing the trial. And when he presented the marvellous results of it, he was met with doubts without looking seriously into what he had done. He was even confronted with what can be seen as an investigative committee.
We have seriously discussed the results, intermediate outcomes, and his methods of screening. We have received data from him, which are normally not handed out that easily by other researchers. And we had a very productive talk about comparing the results of the Dutch programme on breast cancer screening with his trial.
This was somewhat in contrast with the response we got from the leader of the trial in Stockholm from whom we received a fax in which he said that he thought he had published enough and that he was not interested in meeting us.
That left us with a day off in Stockholm, which is quite a nice city also from a touristical point of view. It must be even nicer in the summer though. It was not much colder than at home (which is not nice), but also during this time of year it gets dark around three in the afternoon.
Regretfully I did not meet any of my internet friends who live in Stockholm.
Even in the big city of Stockholm, the Swedish display a marvellous kind of quietness which I really appreciate. However when visiting the bar at the gay centre, this quietness made my wonder what a Swedish disco would look like, but that was of course not open during a monday evening.