Day 301: Studenten

Around the age of 18, Swedish students graduate from Gymnasium and celebrate the end of a long, tough period of exams and study. So far, nothing strange about that. Many students drink copiously and make a lot of noise, some buy air horns and some scream and sing at the tops of their voices. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. Families are very proud and many buy gifts for their children to congratulate them for their hard work. Still not saying anything odd.

What I neglected to mention is that the students are mostly pissed out of their heads while driving around on the back of a truck, they slowly trundle through regular traffic blasting their airhorns and screaming or throwing things at passers by. They decorate their trucks with the gifts their families give them, bouquets specially designed to hang off the side or little cuddly toys which I can only assume represent the end of childhood as they bash and bump the side of the truck and get slowly soaked in the alcohol of adulthood. Some trucks also have a theme, my only photographic evidence of this madness shows a Turkish truck which drove around Fridhemsplan and could be heard in a 2km radius.

Stockholm seemed extra busy, full of parents and families carrying gifts, flowers and large signs to announce their children's successes. Traditionally the signs feature a childhood picture of the student for extra embarrassment factor.

Later, families celebrate together in a money hemorrhaging exercise involving barbeque, food, cakes, booze and togetherness. The entire enterprise can cost thousands after truck hire, hats, party clothes, signs, air horns, booze, party hosting and more, at least according to the metro newspaper.

Fortunately for me I was invited to celebrate a student and I took a nice picture to embarras- to commemorate the day! Note the student hat, which all students are entitled to, the flair hanging round the neck and the big childhood photo on the sign!

My own student graduation consisted of the school hosting a club night for all the graduating students. While it was memorable seeing all the teachers drunk off their tits, the druggy crowd daringly on coke in front of the whole staff and the turkish contingent deliberately smashing all the glasses on the floor, I think the Swedes add some interesting extra touches to the affair. After all, my consecutive Uni life basically consisted of the same club nights, but I'm sure Swedish students only get one opportunity to wear the hat, carry the sign and terrorise town on a truck!

Day 298: Wrong use of biscuits

Today my Swedish boyfriend was eating this.

WHAT THE FUCK!

They're Digestive biscuits with salami and cheese.

Let's read that again.

That is a plate of fucking SALAMI and CHEESE with DIGESTIVE fucking BISCUITS.

Now, somewhere my English mother and sister are thinking "Oh well, a bit of cheese on a Digestive might be quite nice" so maybe I can forgive the cheese (these two also advocate cheese on hot cross buns for some diabolical reason) but the salami is an unforgivable crime.

As a child growing up in England we used to get a Jacobs cracker selection box at Christmas. It contained cream crackers, mini cheddars, pepper crackers, water biscuits, wholemeal crackers and a few sneaky bastard Digestives who should not have been in a cracker box.

Crackers are crispy and tasteless or crispy and salty. They are SAVOURY and can be eaten with SAVOURY foods. Biscuits are crumbly and sweet. You dunk them in tea and they are great, or you can melt chocolate and marshmallows on them for smores if your diabetes isn't progressing fast enough. As a child I was always outraged that Digestives made the cut into the cracker selection box and people thought that meant you could eat them with cheese.

Now I'm extra incensed that Swedish people (by Swedish people I am assuming that because my boyfriend does it, all swedes cop the blame) think it's okay to eat Digestives as a cracker with salami, pickles, ham, or any of the other WRONG items I have seen the bf eating.

And worst of all, he eats these Digestives without a CUPPA TEA!

I might have to move back to England!

Day 294: Rain Clouds

Taken by Andrew Matthews/PA for the guardian

In England when you see a cloud like this, you run.

A clear summer sky which is suddenly dominated by an ominous cloud means at any moment you are going to get drenched. The rain materialises in one massive downpour lasting only a few minutes and leaving you looking like a drowned rat. I've seen people try to outrun such rain, they failed. I've seen people huddle under trees to avoid such rain, they failed. I've even seen people stand in the relative cover of a building with an umbrella to get away from such rain and, you've guessed it, they failed. The best option is to make a dash for the nearest shop when you see a black cloud. This often results in you running to a sex shop you wouldn't normally go into and huddling awkwardly in the doorway like a water-averse pervert.

Today when this cloud appeared over Stockholm a mad a dash for the nearest shop, where I spent 5 minutes looking, with mild to nonexistent interest, at second hand cooking utensils.  When I dared to leave the shop I found it was indeed raining but it was a kind of rain which English people would call piddle. It was piddling down. It was the kind of shitty, noncommittal rain which drops so intermittently you can walk around it. I'd made all that effort to respect the power of the rain and avoid it, only to find out the rain here demands no respect. If the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain then the rain in Stockholm doesn't fall, mainly.  It lulls you into a false sense of insecurity and then drops a few token drops.

UPDATE: Later there was, in fact, a thunderstorm! But not a lot of rain...

Day 291: Shitty, shitty trains!

There are daily complaints about trains in England. Our railways are a joke, our trains never run on time, there are leaves on the line stopping anyone getting home and please, please, nobody mention a millimetre of snow! But...boy can we complain about it. It's in the news, its on the TV, we're mobbing the railway stations and we're vocal about how terrible things are. And even though fares still increase in price and we can't get things running on time, at least train companies know we're pissed off and give us as much information as they can in a clear way.

Not here.

No.

My mum visited and was on a train to Uppsala. It was not leaving the station because of signal failure. I took her off the train and we went to the pub instead. 3 hours later we returned to catch the train, and realised the people on it were the same ones who we'd left 3 hours ago. Those people had sat on that train, with no information given, for 3 hours. With no food, no drink and no knowledge of how long they would be there. And nobody complained!

This week has been an absolute disaster for the train companies. All over Sweden there have been strikes, broken signal systems, fires and burnt out circuits. If you don't believe how bad it's been, take a look at this article from the metro. One spokesperson has helpfully pointed out that Sweden has a "non-robust railway system" NO REALLY? But hey, whatever, stuff breaks and I can deal.

What I hate though is the piss poor information the companies give to travellers. There are 2 companies, SJ and SL. At different points in the week these companies have given different information. When they say there will be replacement busses, they don't say where from (they've started to now, but it's taken them a week.) They also do unbelievably poorly conceived quick fixes, like making a rush hour train terminate at Arlanda airport and having 300 people walk through 4 revolving door systems designed for individual people, a terminal building, a packed arrivals hall and a bus station so narrow they could never have expected such a crowd. Then, just to put the tin lid on it, they send 2 busses to carry all these people.

And that was a nice version of my commute story, I skipped the part where I waited 40 minutes for the train - a train that ran, like all the others, according to no schedule so I just had to turn up at the railway station and hope for the best.

A week on and the companies still haven't got a working replacement system. Perhaps if people were more outraged, demanded their money back, called the complaints line, got angry or did more than just bend over and take it up the arse, perhaps, PERHAPS the companies might have realised they should get their shit together.

Or maybe I'm finding the wrong scapegoat for this. Whatever it is, WOW the train companies here suck balls.