Day 131: Crappy xmas presents

The city of Uppsala council has invested in these adverts suggesting you give a bus pass to your loved ones this Christmas. Aww, what a well thought out gift for everyone to enjoy!

That was good old British sarcasm, by the way.

Day 126: High shoes

Here are some shoes suspended 20ft above a busy 4 lane road outside a school.

I have absolutely no idea how these kids got the shoes up here.

Any ideas?

Day 124: If you're going to bathe in skum, make it bad skum.

Ah, things which sound terrible in other languages - ya can't beat them.

Day 123: Luciatåg

St Lucia is celebrated in Sweden on the 13th of December. Choirs form trains with Lucia at the front, visible from her crown of candles. She comes to dark places with her light and illuminates the gloom. This was greeting me on my morning commute today, the choir took the "train" part of "Lucia Train" literally.

Day 122: Swench life

I know this is a Swinglish life blog and this post is about French but...

I'm pretty sure viol is French for rape.

Packet of rape anyone?

Day 120: A veritable smörgåsbord of samey potential

Today my work provided a Julbord for all 370 of its publicly funded employees! There were some tax revenues hard at work, even if we weren't. It was alcohol-free though - the bar offered alcohol free wine to my French colleagues and, well, the word outrage doesn't quite cover what they felt (but that's a story for the Swench life blog.)

A Julbord is a Swedish Christmas table, a smörgåsbord in fact! Most people outside Sweden sort of know the word smörgåsbord or at least use it in cringeworthy phrases like "The nightclub was full of fit men, it was a veritable smörgåsbord of sexual potential!" pppf. Basically it means a buffet table. There were 5 different kinds of pickled herring (sweet tasting fish) 3 different kinds of Salmon (including gravadlax, sweet tasting fish) 10 or more kinds of meat (I don't eat meat so I lack details here. I think there was a terrine of some entrails? Maybe some ham? There was a lot of ham. I think. A ham terrine maybe?) Potatoes. Beetroot. red cabbage. Breads. Crispbreads. Cheeses. Janssons Frestelse..."Janssons Temptation" (Potatoes, cream and anchovies in a traditional Christmas baked dish)

We also had Glögg (mulled wine) which Swedish people have "improved" (snigger) by sloshing a load of almonds and raisins in the liquid and fishing them out with a spoon to eat them.

Verdict: Yes yes lovely of my company to give me a slap up meal. And great to experience a Julbord. But Swedish people eat herring, salmon, potatoes, ham, creamy baked shit and beetroots throughout the year. Where are the brussel sprouts, christmas puddings, brandy soaked consumables, turkeys too big to bake in the oven or defrost, mince pies, christmas cakes nobody ever touches, apple/cranberry/mint sauces that stay in a jar in the fridge until the next year, and numerous other things that you only see at CHRISTMAS in England, and not throughout the year???!

Come on Sweden! A bit of VARIETY!
NO MINCE PIES! HOW DO PEOPLE COPE! NO CRACKERS! WHERE ARE ALL THE BAD JOKES GOING TO COME FROM?!
The rest of this post is dedicated to absent friends.

 

Day 110: Ica rink

Never had to skate home with my shopping before. The floor was so shiny! People were sliding across the street. I tried to copy the natives but I don't think I have the hang of it yet.

Day 116: Fil me in

Another secretly taken pic, funnily enough in the same place as the last one. This was one of the most Swedish things I've seen for a while, a heavily bearded Scandi Man drinking a whole fucking carton of Fil.

What is Fil?

Well, its basically natural yoghurt but a bit different. And its sour. And, it's weird to just randomly drink a whole litre of it on the train.

Read more about it.

Day 108: Flappy Stockholmers

Sorry for the low quality pic but I was trying to take it without the woman seeing me photographing her shoes. Look at her back foot. See the boot isn't zipped closed?

There's a weird trend in Stockholm right now where people don't do up their boots. They just leave them open, flapping around. I wouldn't have noticed it, but one of my students at school had her shoes wide open and I pointed it out to her. She said "yes it's on purpose". I asked why, she said "I don't know, to express my individuality?" Unfortunately it's not so individual.

I bet this stupid trend dies a death when the snow comes.

Day 100: How you know Christmas is coming

The vending machines here are seasonal. They've started selling julmust now, a christmas special drink which is suspiciously similar to påskmust, the easter seasonal drink...

Day 95: Strange Public Art 3

Charlie Chaplin on a Windmill? Why not.

Day 92: Cynical advertising

Article: Bromma Airport closed after accident

Advert: Switch to Bromma!

Day 91: Between a rock and, er, another rock

 I don't envy Swedish builders.

To build foundations they have to drill down into endless hard rock, insert TNT into the gap and then blow apart the stone.

Then, they have to clear away all the rubble and repeat over and over again until the area is clear. This seems to me a slow and meticulous process (although, ok, they get to use TNT which might alleviate the repetitiveness somewhat)

There isn't much of this going on in London, where the ground is much softer and if we used TNT it would just cause mud and clay to splat all over the place. Fun perhaps but not productive.

Day 83: Informative street signs

Okay so it's, sadly, not a real street sign. It's next to the fictitious house of the Swedish story character Pelle Svanslös.

Still cute though!

Day 81: Happy Halloween

A girl I work with drew this. Aww.

Since I work with international kids, they are quite keen on Halloween and trick or treating. Swedish children are becoming increasingly more interested in Halloween thanks to Americanisation, but mostly they are in it for the sweets and not the costumes.

I've never seen a nation so obsessed with pick N mix sweets!! A powerful bribery tool against children.

Day 77: What it means to be liberal?

In the fridge at school today. Maybe a teacher was having a rough time?

Day 74: Do you have a flag?

Today is "FN Dagen" or UN Day.

There are several days in the Swedish calendar which would pass by completely unnoticed if not for the little Swedish flags that appear on the tops of buses and on the flagpoles of the more observant members of society.

Day 71: I think they want me to buy things

I've received a lot of coupons and offers in the post for various services in my area...What could it mean?

They must know I've recently moved here because I only just got my person number, see how easy it is for them to target me as a consumer now I'm just another number on a government list...

Day 69: Fun with letters

Need I explain?
(I was looking in the dictionary as part of a Scrabble game which, considering I have only been here 2 months, was very successful!)

Day 67: Catch 22

I need a day off to take a SFI (Swedish for immigrants) test and show that I'm learning Swedish, but I need a heck of a lot of Swedish to know how to take a day off!

In England I was shielded from a lot of bureaucracy by my employer taking care of such things for me. No more such luxury here! As a colleague said to me about clearing away my tray in a cafe "It's every man for himself here, didn't you know?"

Day 65: It's like a party in my mouth and everyone's throwing up

Why?
Why combine two of the most despicably disgusting Swedish sweets into one hellish combination?
And then advertise it prolifically on my commute route?

I'm talking about bilar - a famous Swedish foam sweet with a distorted fruity flavour - and polly - chocolate covered foamy stuff with the taste of arrak. If you like the flavour rum&raisin then you'll probably like polly, but they're not for me.

If you like parties in your mouth where everyone is throwing up, then you might also like to try arraksrullar, otherwise known as dammsugare (vacuum cleaners). You may have seen these in Ikea.

Day 64: Sucks for concessions to cross the border by train...

Day 61: WTF Finland SRSLY

My blog is about things which I find unusual or noteworthy in Sweden so technically this post it an anomaly but ...

WTF Finland srsly.

This is an English textbook taken from a Finnish speaking school in Sweden. There is no way you would find these kinds of expletives in an English classroom!

Day 57: brittsommar

Ha. An Indian Summer is called a British Summer. That sums up all you need to know about how warm it actually gets here (Essentially not very).

Day 54: Cinnamon Bun Day

Getting a bake on for Kanelbullensdag (Cinnamon Bun day)

It's always clear that Swedes are fond of cinnamon buns but now they have a set day to eat buns with an excuse. It's apparently a recently made-up day established by the hembakningsrådet (home baking council). On one hand I could be fooled into thinking that baking is so important here that they've got a council for it, but on the other, more likely, hand, Swedes have a council for everything and this fact merely points to how bureaucratic the country is.

AAaaanyway, baking is fun and buns are good. As testament to how popular it is to bake breads and buns, fresh yeast is readily available in the fridges of all shops, something which is very rare in England. It is a small clay coloured cube that smells like beer and flakes apart when you break it. Here is a recipe for a cinnamon bun cake should anyone feel inspired:

Recipe for Buns

Ingredients - Buns
225ml milk warmed to body temperature
75g butter
425g plain flour
70g sugar
1tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
25g yeast (half a cube)

Ingedients - Filling
75g butter
50g sugar
2tsp cinnamon
(optional) dash of vanilla sugar

1. Add the yeast and sugar to the warm milk
2. Put this mix into the centre of all the combined dry ingredients. It should make a slightly wet dough
3. Leave this dough to rise, covered with cling film, for 30 mins
4. Combine the filling ingredients together.
5. Roll out the dough into a rectangle. Spread the filling over the rectangle (see my picture at the top for inspiration)
6. Roll up the rectangle from the long end (like a swiss roll)
7. Cut 1inch thick circles from the roll and arrange them in a 22cm cake pan with removable base
8. Leave to rise for at least 30 mins until they grow monsterous (I left mine overnight and they got huge) then bake at 200C for 20 mins

Weird Ingredients and Measurements

Fresh yeast - can be bought in 50g packets in Sweden. You can supplement dry yeast according to this really detailed site about yeast this recipe needs 20g of dry yeast.

Vanilla sugar - Icing sugar/powdered sugar with ground vanilla added. It's very strong and you only need a little for a lot of vanilla flavour. Use vanilla essence or fresh vanilla if you want.

Grams - I use ounces in England and they use cups in Sweden (which I think are different to American cups). So to save any argument this recipe is in metric measurements.

Day 51: What? No drinking culture?!

"Therefore we say No! to Friday drinks after work"

Sometimes it's hard to meet people and make friends as an expat.
 Especially in a culture which loves being "mysig" (comfy), going to the gym with earphones in and staring at phone screens all day long.

Day 50: Strange public art 2

Sometimes I work in Akalla - a relatively socially deprived suburb of Stockholm. This is a mural in the underground station there, which is widely ignored by people. Today the escalators weren't working so I looked at this for longer than usual as I waited for the lift. I wondered:

1. Why the mural is so miserable! I mean, Akalla is quite a miserable place anyway, surely a bright mural would liven it up?
2. If the people in the background were wearing Hijabs and if the mural was making a statement about the fashionable westerners in the foreground against the muslims in the back (Akalla is a very muslim area)
3. Actually, they're not Muslims. It looks like a drab socialist image from a few decades ago. Are the fashionable young people in the foreground a criticism of wealth at other people's expense?
4. Is that a vagina?

I did some research and I discovered:

The mural is painted by Birgit Ståhl-Nyberg a social realist artist who often painted to criticise aspects of society. She painted in the 70's so this mural is probably making some criticism of Socialism or maybe a criticism of the breakdown of socialism? I actually can't decide...you can decide for yourself!
At any rate, I think it's still quite a relevant mural considering the state of society as it seems in Akalla, even if it is quite depressing for a Monday morning's commute.

Day 46: Mo Money Mo Problems

Here is me with my first full paycheck since coming to Sweden, and congratulatory mousserande (fizzy)

 

• Tax over here is around 30% of the paycheck (boo!)

• But that is spent quite well on public services and saves me money on, for example, commuting. (yay!)

• A fair amount of money comes out for national insurance, pension and other taxes (boo!)

• But this is paid by the employer through something called arbetsuppgift and doesn't change my actual paycheck amount! (yay!) 

 


Overall, pay is much better for the employee than in England but, I imagine, a greater hassle for the employer. When I am told a salary in England, I have to mentally deduct a good chunk which will inevitably be lost through tax, national insurance, student loan etc etc. Over here, the stated income amount is much closer to my actual income, which makes things like means testing a lot fairer in my view.

Day 44: Stolen TV

People often ask "how is Sweden?" and expect me to tell them tales of how different life is (that people are green and walk on their hands probably). In fact, most of the time things are the same (wake up at ass o'clock, commute, work, make dinner, sleep).

This is nowhere more evident than my experience today with television. "I'll watch TV" I thought "learn about Swedish culture".

Well, this was what was on TV. Two copies of English TV shows, QI and the Great British Bake Off. The only differences were that:

a) Intresse Klubben was substandard because Sweden doesn't have Stephen Fry and the letters in the logo don't match the name of the show
and
b) Hela Sverige Bakar (Sweden bakes) had a lot of blonde people making more breads than cakes, and a token Muslim woman. I quite enjoyed Hela Sverige Bakar actually. They have quite a good rip off of Mary sourface Berry.

Day 41: Daddy doesn't work here

Passive aggressive (and note: ineffectual) workplace note leaving, which is also avoiding the gender stereotype of the female washer-upper. Could there ever be a better picture for summing up Swedish society in a single image?

1. Passive aggressive - oh yes. Definitely. Nobody wants to say anything rude or direct to anyone. Unless they paid a lot of money and THEN they feel perfectly entitled to say some strong words. Once I was in a bar with someone underage. When they showed their ID it took the bar staff a good while to muster up the courage to.....politely ask us if we might maybe, possibly consider leaving in a half hour after we had finished our drinks. Maybe. Sorry.

2. Note leaving.  Well this is a classic passive-aggressive manouevre.

At work I used the wrong photocopier for a few weeks. A few weeks!  Did anyone tell me? Well, eventually they had to, after I ignored the many, many carefully placed notes they stuck all over the office.

3. Avoiding pidgeonholing genders. It´s an artform, lemme tellya. (is pidgeonholing a verb? It is now.)

Day 39: A&E yeah you know me

You can go abroad but sometimes the problems stay the same!

This paper says "Two days wait for A&E (ER)" which is remarkably similar to the kinds of headlines i´m used to seeing in England.

Of course...they´re being sensationalist while also hinting at an underlying problem, but here they simply don´t have enough people to claim their health system is as burdened as England´s!

Day 34: I make that fat bastard O'clock

Mmmm Fredagsfika

I don´t know if this is a workplace tradition or just a tradition in schools, where I work, but Friday is a special day when people are rota´ed into bringing delicious cakes or pastries for all the staff to celebrate the end of the week. I work in 3 different places as an itinerant teacher on Fridays, so 3x the cake for me...

...fat bastard yaaaay!!

Day 33: Strange public art 1

Creepy Baby anyone? They like to commission art here (aka throw money around to make stuff look good) but it doesn´t always result in high class Scandinavian design....

Dafuq is this?!

It´s in a school in Kista and the kids like to play on it. I am looking forward to seeing it when covered in snow...maybe it makes more sense then?

Day 29: There's no need for the carpenter to do that.

I took some books out of the library to help me learn some Swedish. This writer of this particular glossary has failed to realise that *** usually means swearwords are being censored. Hours of fun. "Take a photo with your ASS" or "The clerk fucks things in the store" are just two of the many possibilities!

Day 21: Messing about on the river

Sailing time in the Stockholm Archipelago
Definitely never done anything like this before.

While it is still fairly uncommon for people to own boats, it's definitely more common than in England where boat ownership as a hobby is, well....let's just say I've never met a single person with a sailboat in England.

The experience is a bit like caravanning, you have to take a load of stuff with you including a stove and food and then you have to find a good place to pitch (or moor...). It's a lot more technical and difficult though and the return journey was very treacherous as the winds picked up the next day.

If you get the opportunity to go in the archipelago, do it. It's a unique experience to travel around the little islands while at the same time being very close to Stockholm.

Day 20: Can't have too much cabbage

Pizza comes with Syrkål...pickled cabbage salad.
Definitely not something ya get in England.
Mmm

Day 18: Skogen?

 

Picking berries after work is one potential activity for the average Swede. Unlike my previous home, London, which sprawls out for miles and miles of inhabited space, in Sweden you are never too far away from a forest, even in built up cities. There is Epping Forest outside London which Londoners can make the effort to journey to, but I doubt many would do this after a long day of work.

In this picture I'm picking Lingonberries in, a common Swedish berry. I also collected a substantial pot of blueberries, which grow all over Sweden and can be found easily. The joy of foraging, picking and making your own food is enjoyed by many and I can understand why.

Day 16: Waka waka waka

This is Thorildsplan T-Bana in Stockholm, I'm very impressed with the tiling!
Who knows why? My theories are:

• Swedish people love good design wherever they go, so why not a sharp T-bana station?
• There is a much more widely accepted love of videogames, board games and other "nerdy" such things, many more people may appreciate this walkway here than they would in London
• Thorildsplan is near a lot of schools, and the Campus Konradsberg of the university of Stockholm - maybe one of these large student bodies organised the tiling...
  

Day 15: Dags att gå på återvinning

 

Swedish people queue on Sundays for a long time, hours even, at huge recycling stations. They often sit with their cars running, probably undermining all their morally commendable efforts.

Day 14: An unlikely medium

I suspect my boyfriend is using the medium of cushions to make me feel more at home...

Actually he's more than my boyfriend now, according to Swedish terms, he is my Sambo (living together partner).

In England we don't have the same cultural practice, but this country has a long history of accepting couples who live together and have steady relationships without being married.

Day 13: Arriba!

Swedish people fucking love Tacos.
When my Swedish boyfriend saw me taking this picture he explained that a lot of people have comfort foods on Fridays for "Fredagsmys" (comfy Fridays)
It also reminds me that Sweden has several things in common with America...

Day 12: I would have got away with it too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids

Today I was reading the Metro newspaper on my commute and I thought this was a very Scandinavian story. Usually the Metro paper in London has stories of gang violence, political corruption, poverty and death, but here in Sweden the front page featured a story about a beaver bringing a train to a halt. "Beaver behind the stopping of the Saltlake train. A gnawed tree trunk fell on the tracks"

Day 11: They've got my number

Sweden is a very efficient country! I had my migration registered in 3 days and now, just 10 days later, I have a person number.

I heard a lot of horror stories about how difficult it is to obtain a person number. They may well be true. However, having a job and a boss who can pester Skatteverket (tax office) will make the process much faster! So will being an EU citizen.

Now it's time for me to get out there and do some stuff for the government to monitor!