Day 1218: What a load of rubbish!

An extremely popular and well shared news article that I've seen floating around is the one about Sweden importing rubbish from other countries because it is "running out" of waste. Cue massive praises to the recycling gods of the world. It's not quite all that simple, though.


In truth Sweden is not "running out" but rather seeking more fuel because it can. Unlike in Britain where most people have their own household boiler, Scandinavian houses are almost always heated via a heat network (fjärrvärme.) The remotely heated water is pumped to homes from a huge central plant, meaning that energy efficiency is higher while cost and environmental impact are considerably lower that if each house had its own heating system. Town planners can do other clever things with remotely heated water, like run it under pedestrianised areas so that snow and ice can't form on the pavement.

The number of energy plants that can turn waste into heated water for homes is ever increasing. Privately run plants receive money for using waste that is legally not allowed to go to landfill and then receive further money for selling their hot water to homes. Almost half of all waste in Sweden is sent to be burned at these energy plants. Consequently only around 1% of household waste is sent to a tip, and that's why all the junk news outlets got their knickers in a twist on slow news day.

Then the junk news outlets point out how great Sweden is at recycling. OK yes it's true, Sweden is pretty kick ass at recycling. People working together recycle a third of the stuff they throw away and the recycling culture is strong, every building has good recycling facilities and every person knows the rules. A combination of excellent public information, education and provision means that recycling is the norm, unlike in Britain where each council has its own set of rules about recycling, everyone has a different way to recycle and people are just generally confused about what they can recycle.

What happens when you say that Sweden is importing other country's waste and then point out that Sweden is very good at recycling is that people start to say "ah yes, Sweden is very environmental and is saving all these dastardly other countries from piles and piles of trash." Well, no. What Sweden is actually doing is BURNING GARBAGE and therefore dumping a load more CO2 per KwH produced into the air than it would from burning coal or gas. Paradoxically, Sweden transports household waste from Norway in trucks (that produce CO2) burn the waste in Sweden (which produces CO2) and then send the toxic ashes back to Norway (in trucks ...that produce CO2) for storage in a finitely available lime cave.

Waste burning is seen as a good long term solution to solve the problem of unsightly, toxic landfill sites but environmentalists point out that it should only be a short term solution when it comes to CO2 emissions and the release of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals from burning plastics. Some plastics which are currently not recyclable are burned, but these could be stored until a process is developed for recycling them. Furthermore there is only so much space for the ashes produced by burning the waste and, worse still, some Norwegians argue that making fuel from waste so profitable discourages proper recycling and causes Norwegian households to throw away things they would otherwise not.

There you have it then, a bit more complicated than it seemed before. On the one hand a very efficient and praiseworthy system for delivering heated water to homes and reducing landfill, and on the other a very high CO2 impact, chemical emissions  and a short-sighted solution to a delicate problem. And while I did say that recycling is so much better in Sweden than it is in Britain, it's not all doom and gloom. There is in fact one area of waste management in which Britain does better than Sweden and that's composting. One day maybe we'll all put our heads together and come up with a comprehensive waste management system that shares the universal benefits and eliminates the bad bits. We can dream, eh!

Day 1204: Rolling back

It's been over a hundred days since I last wrote a blog post. I had given it up as a lost cause, but then some strange things happened.

First, people started asking me when I was going to update my blog. And I'm not talking close friends and family who are contractually obliged to care (they don't care about the blog as it happens, so maybe they are the ones I'm contractually obliged to forgive...) I mean really random unrelated friends and collegues.

Second I signed up for the world record breaking Reddit secret Santa gift exchange between 15,000 people. It asks you to list your hobbies and give any websites about you (your reddit profile, an amazon wish list, a personal web site) to help inspire your potential Santa. I gave my blog for reference but it felt a bit pointless since it was neglected.

Third and BEST OF ALL my blog actually contributed to my EARNING MONEY! Well, mostly my old China plate (yeah I use cockney rhyming slang now) Helen Jones got me the deal since she's got some fingers in some communication pies (mmm communication pies) but the man who gave me the commission said something along the lines of "yeah I read it" when I told him I had a blog so....it's something!

I was asked to write a 15,000 word document about all aspects of life in Uppsala to help anyone moving there. Unfortunately it's not my intellectual property any more (BECAUSE I SOLD IT MOTHERFUCKERS FUCK YEAH)  so I can't give you a slice (mmm communication pies). Needless to say I managed to get the Flogsta scream nestled somewhere in there.

HUR SOM HELST (ANYWAY)

All of that was just a preamble to say I am motivated as HELL to complain at y'all about the FUCKING GODDAMN ESCALATORS IN STOCKHOLM (and to a lesser extent IN UPPSALA *SHAKES FIST*)

Yes! I'm back! I'm complaining about escalators!

I am simply in disbelief about how many escalators don't work. Here's a statistic I just totally made up on the spot: at any given time in Stockholm 1/3 of all escalators are not working. "It's totally made up" you scoff "that's a ridiculous number of escalators, if you're going to make up a figure at least make it believable!" But you're wrong! It IS BELIEVABLE and almost TRUE! I use the metro a lot. A lot. At least 4 times a day, every day. Even on weekends when I get land legs from being still too long from not being on an escalator and just go out for a few hours and ride on the escalators around town. I don't ride them around town, that's not possible although it would be awesome. Wait, no it wouldn't because they'd all BE FUCKING BROKEN.

Stupid comments aside, there are far too many escalators not escalating. Here are the top 5 reasons why they are not doing what they are supposed to be doing according to their name:

1. NO REASON
Nope, no reason. They're just not moving. There's usually a totally unhelpful orange sticker that says "REPORTED". Sometimes I wonder if someone came and repaired the escalator in the 12 hour period in which I was not using it, and then one minute before I came back again it broke again so they had to stick a new sticker. Good business for the sticker people.

2. THERE'S A GUY IN IT
A lot of escalators can't run because there are people inside them changing bits and fixing bits. But I have definitely, more than once, seen a broken escalator that had people inside it "fixing it" just a week before. Sometimes I ride on a new looking escalator and instead of thinking nothing which is normal on an escalator ride, I am instead asking myself how long it will be before this new escalator is broken. I tell myself it will not be long. And I am right, go me.

3. THERE'S A WOMAN IN IT
Because she fell in and got horrific leg injuries and then all of Stockholm had a massive health and safety orgasm and decided to do a complete audit of the escalators IN THE WHOLE OF THE CITY and completely change out 32 of them. Normally I would be happy about them "fixing" the escalators but see #2 above. Also, the fixing of the DEATH TRAP ESCALATORS is also in addition to all the other problems I am mentioning, so now my statistic is looking kinda reasonable, huh.

4. NO REASON
I can't stress this one enough. This is NOT A VALID EXCUSE. I come from a city with ten times the number of people using the metro escalators, with MILLIONS of journeys every day. Not once in all my many years as a Londoner have I ever been so fucked off with the shitty shitty broken escalators that I wanted to rant for all the world to read about it. In fact, Stockholm you are SO SHIT AT ESCALATORS I think you should just LOOK AT THIS FUCKING HUNDRED YEAR OLD WOODEN ESCALATOR IN GREENFORD THAT IS STILL FUCKING WORKING AND LEARN SOME LESSONS.

FUCKING LOOK AT IT!

picture is from Ewan Munroe

5. NÖDSTOPP
Because there are trolls everywhere and not just on the internet, some people think that there are not enough escalators already out of service that they need to PRESS THE EMERGENCY STOP BUTTON FOR NO REASON. You know this has happened because there is a big flashing sign above the escalator that says NÖDSTOPP. Again, after a lifetime of living in London (millions of journeys, millions of fucktard trolls there too) I have never encountered an escalator that was out of use for several hours because someone pressed the emergency stop. That's probably because the sign that says Emergency Stop is about that big, under another sign that says PENALTY FOR IMPROPER USE in that size font. Also, it's a small button in the centre of a framed module placed in the centre of a large gap between escalators, so pressing it is a bit like a fairground attraction designed to make you lose money. Meanwhile the Stockholm emergency stop is a huge, round, shiny, emergency button that is, frankly, tempting.

I stand by my 1/3 of escalators statement (and I'll continue standing there because the travellator is out of service.) If an escalator is not escalating then what is it? And if an escalator falls in a Swedish wood and there's nobody around to see it, is it out of service? The answer is yes.

Day 1114: Bed Time

I've been in this country for 3 years now, it's really flown by! My swediversary was the 10th of August, but I was busy, well, living and it slipped me by.

My quality of life has dramatically increased thanks to immediate hot water from mixer taps, double paned windows in every building, Ecco shoes, great holidays at work and people putting their shopping in considerate lines on the conveyor belt when paying.

But one aspect of my life declined in quality when I moved in with my sambo. His bed was SHIT. Too soft. Saggy in the middle. 120cm wide - good for a single person, not great for two! It looked approximately like this:

Why did we have such an awful bed for such a long time? First we lived in a small apartment....now we have moved. Second, beds are expensive in Sweden. Like srsly. I bought what I thought was an expensive bed for myself in England, it was hand made by a small ethical company, had a great guarantee and was comfy. The bed we've just bought was FLIMMIN' FOUR TIMES MORE EXPENSIVE. Sweden wtf.

It's probably because we've actually done a common Swedish thing and bought two beds that go together with a single overlying mattress (or two). It's called a continental bed because I can only assume people on...the continent? A continent? Somewhere anyway, sleep on these kinds of beds. More bed = more mattress = more springs = more foam = more expensive.



I know it's going to be worth it. The bloody thing is so huge we can probably set up a net in the middle and play tennis. Roll on bed time...

Day 1099: Britain's a bit shit

A common feature of British culture is to focus on the negative. We do this because we are a self deprecating (not defecating!), cynical bunch and maybe also because to some extent, Britain is a bit shit.

What better way for me to convince you that Britain is a bit shit than by first bringing your attention to the amount of literal shit everywhere on the streets, on the pavements, on grassy areas, in front of your garden gate, by your front door, just, everywhere. When I used to work in Gillingham, a fairly deprived bit of Kent, I was treated to a daily rainbow of differently coloured dog turds representing the vibrant spectrum of tones dog poo can achieve if left for extended periods of time next to their more recent neighbours. That was five years ago and since then street cleaning budgets have been cut in what I can only assume is a cultural project to help the nation discover yet more nuances of the colour brown/grey. A small amount of internet searching reveals that in England and in Sweden, between 10-15% of dog owners answer that they do not pick up after their dog. Metro helpfully points out that in Sweden these figures mean 8000 dog turds are left on streets or in natural areas every day. If the same percentage of dog owners in Britain do the same, with a conservative estimate of 5 times the number of people, that's 40,000 dog turds in a country half the size. Sweden's measly 8000 turds could have 21 square miles each to sit in. I would say that Britain's turds would get 2 miles each but I already know that a large majority of them are right next to each other in Gillingham.

If only...

Day 1014: All you need is a dead parrot and you've got yourself a sketch

I've written before about catastrophic fuck-ups made by the local transport services in Sweden and even though I risk turning my blog into an unending rant about how piss poor communication is for passengers in the event of a service problem I feel like I have to share what happened today on a seemingly innocent replacement bus.

Now, it might not be as stupid as last week when my bus driver terminated early and ordered everyone onto the bus in front, which had done the same thing with its own passengers, before two completely empty busses drove off leaving a hundred or so very baffled commuters behind, but it probably could serve as a Monty Python sketch (or at the very least, a Benny Hill circular chase.)

Essentially what happened is that a vital tube line had a "power outage" (could be a code word, who knows) for a large portion of the route. When I went downstairs into the bus station as directed I could feel that there were a lot of very angry people wanting to get somewhere in a hurry. I don't really know where I got this mysterious feeling, but it may have had something to do with the two couples having a massive shouting match in the middle of a bus door about whose buggy got on first and is entitled to space. Or the crowd of people jostling to get on another replacement bus. Or the number of people shouting and swearing and cursing and yelling....bear in mind this was on a pleasant, sunny day in the middle of the afternoon and not in a blustery, miserable rush hour (if it had been, I would probably now be dead, judging by the patience levels of the people present).

I decided not to take the shouting-buggy-crazy-parents bus to the local train station, and opted for what I thought would be the safer choice, a rail replacement bus.

Oh how wrong I was!

First and foremost, I should have noticed that the bus driver had no idea what he was doing when he couldn't figure out how to close the doors. By the time he actually managed that, at least 20 additional overenthusiastic people had crammed themselves onto the bus. Some passengers were so angry about this that they began heckling, shouting and swearing at anyone who even looked like they might consider, maybe, turning their head towards the open doors. It was around about this time that I noticed there were two slightly, shall we say, unhinged people centred in the bus who wanted to complain, loudly, about things and get some feedback. Having worked in a library I have a wealth of experience with these kinds of people who, having nothing else to occupy them at around midday on work days, thrive in spaces with seating, warmth and plenty of people with nothing better to do that sit and listen and/or respond to them. Unfortunately, most other people don't have this wealth of experience and are like cannon fodder.

The part that these unhinged people enjoyed the most about the journey was when the driver took off in completely the wrong direction, heading north instead of south for 5 minutes along a road which only ended when you got to the roundabout to come back again. The driver, sensing that this was perhaps not the best thing to do with a bus full of very angry, very crowded nut-nuts, decided to tell everyone via intercom he had driven in the wrong direction because he was feeling stressed. This triggered a near riot and a scrum of know-it-alls shouting different suggestions for the best way to drive. Because, naturally, when you're stressed and driving a large vehicle, what you need is 30 different suggestions for the best route.

After what might have been the longest 20 minutes of my life covering ground that the usual train covers in 2 and standing in the middle of a crowd of people screaming either directions, complaints or "leave him alone he's stressed" we eventually arrived at the next tube stop. A good number of people chose this point to abandon ship, and I was relieved to see that the craziest were among them. But my relief was short lived since they were replaced by equally as crazy people. One man began punching the doors when the driver didn't follow his advice about what route to take. Although I was rather inclined to join him, since the route he had in fact taken was one that went twice around Raspberry Mountain, yes that really is a real place, rather clearly demonstrating that he had no fucking idea where he was. His response to the door-punching man's cries of "where are you going? why are you going here again!?" was to point one of the members of the scrum and say "he told me to go this way".

Eventually door-puncher was released from his bus-prison (which had many windows that were locked shut for some unfathomable reason) and the crowded bus calmed down a little bit. Just in time for a parade of old people with zimmerframes to come and try to find some space on the bus. Cue a host of aggressive and very warm (no windows, remember) passengers finding any excuse whatsoever to yell "help him! help her! stand up! move!" under a thinly veiled guise of helpfulness. At the next stop, I reached my tolerance limit for all the crazy, old, unhinged, hot, know-it-all or overly-helpful fellow passengers and managed to get a skeleton service train. At this point I had very much decided that the whole situation was almost a textbook definition of ridiculous and deserved a blog post. Unfortunately there was no way to take pictures of the events for the blog, so just imagine a bus full of angry people instead. I'll leave you with an image of Raspberry Mountain.

*Not the same Raspberry Mountain

Day 1012: Give us this day our daily sourdough

England has some really, really shite bread. The number one brand is Kingsmill but it's certainly not eaten by royalty and it's probably not really a mill, either. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the Kingsmill factory was just a room full of newspapers, wood shavings and disgruntled workers shoving small quantities of these into moulds before injecting them with air and dipping them into vats of bleach until the resulting product is so white you could squish several loaves together into a human shape, leave it on a beach somewhere in Alicante and have people assume it was an average British person. But hey, you are what you eat. Such is the nature of food culture in England that "healthy bread" means the same old shit that you used to eat but with a spattering of bran, not too much though or, heaven forbid, the kids will find out what real food looks like.

Some people try to convince themselves that they are actually healthy by buying brown bread, because they heard some spiel somewhere about whole grains. But companies in the UK are ahead of the curve on that one, and sell regular old white bread with a handful of other shit thrown in to make it LOOK like it's brown. "It's got 900 kinds of seeds in it! Wow!" Yeah...but is it brown? Is it fuck.

It is actually possible to buy wholemeal bread though, and you know it's the real deal because it's got a giant heart on it, in case you missed the memo about WHOLE WHEAT AND YOUR HEART. DID YOU KNOW IT'S GOOD FOR YOU, YEAH? But even if it didn't have a heart on it, you would know it was the healthy option because, just like brown rice and brown pasta, it offers not even a hint of the enjoyment of the unhealthy option and the eating experience is very much like gnawing desperately on an MDF table at 8am when the breakfast hunger pangs take you.

You might as well just give up and go for a bread that is totally devoid of any content whatsoever and designed entirely around toasting and slathering with butter (and this is England so I really mean it, get that knife in that butter block, or just, fuck it, put the whole butter slab on the toast and then add half a jar of Robinson's jam)

Sweden on the other hand, well, there is no other hand. In this respect England and Sweden really are similar. Sweden can boast as much as it likes about its class equality (most poor choices about food are linked to lack of understanding about good food, or economic inability to buy good food) but all that means is that theirs is a nation of people who really should know better about bread and who still buy the same old shit that their British neighbours do.

They also seem to fall for the same marketing tricks, believing that additional items ground into the loaf somehow magically make it more, well, magical. Like root vegetables. When have you ever been struck by the thought that your bread is missing something and that thing...is ROOT VEG?

Even if sometimes the bread comes in a different shape here, don't be fooled! It's still full of sugar. In England the bread is full of salt, some loaves have more than a gram per slice, but over here it's all about the syrup and the sugar. I confess I do enjoy a good rye or wheat cake, but I should have known what I was getting myself into when I saw the word cake...sugar by the bucketload!

This post was inspired by my search for a new daily bread, since moving to a new city we no longer have access to the delicious bread that was made in small, local factory that did its own deliveries. Now it's all about the big supermarkets and their big selection of SHITE. Everything is either bad, sourdough or a combination of the two with something experimental thrown in. Ah yes, sourdough. That's a big trend here. Everything is sourdough all the time. Especially when you don't particularly want sourdough. Here have some sourdough, it wouldn't be a complete blog post about Swedish bread without some.

Day 957: Is the gym a hobby?

There are lots of things I've adapted to here in Sweden. The standard awkward silences that happen because people are so socially retarded. The catering to people's every, tiny, emotional or physical need. The parents asking me if class is cancelled on a Tuesday because "it's nearly Easter". The pickled herring.

But something I really, really struggle with is the idea that going to the gym is an acceptable hobby.

Today in the virtual toilet paper that is the Metro I read an interview with a girl who was extolling the virtues of becoming a midwife in Sweden. And while there's nothing wrong with being a midwife or having children, I won't go into my even longer rant about how short sighted Sweden is in its flagrant and sustained moral bombardment of the whole population to pump out as many FUCKING CHILDREN as possible RIGHT NOW. Instead I'll tell you about how this particular midwife wannabe wanted everyone to know that her ONE AND ONLY HOBBY is "Crossfit Training". I was so incensed by this shitty nappy of an excuse for a hobby that I stuffed the whole newspaper down the side of my seat and did not read any more.

To me, going to the gym is very much like going to work or doing the hoovering. You don't want to, don't like to and you don't have to do these things, except there are certain benefits to your going and doing them (such as you don't get fired or suffer severe allergic reactions to ten tonnes of dusty shit). I can accept that going to the gym keeps you in shape and helps clear away the diabetes collection which you so lovingly store in your arteries. In fact, I'm well aware that you can get an endorphins rush from going to the gym that could give you the illusion that you have done something fun that may make you believe you've been engaged in a hobby.

But, if your life is so FULL OF MEANINGLESS SHITTY SHIT that you then go on to, not only tell your friends about how you lift weighted objects in the air repeatedly and put one foot in front of the other at different paces for half an hour on a machine, but also confess, nay BRAG, to a national, widely-read newspaper that this is your MAIN source of entertainment, then I can only PITY YOU. But the sad thing is, she only has Crossfit as her hobby because this whole ridiculous nation expects and DEMANDS that a person, especially one who works in healthcare role, LOVES AND CHERISHES AND ADORES AND CARESSES AND PROBABLY EVEN HAS SEX WITH exercise.

In fact, the "midwife" might not even be a midwife. She might just be a stock photograph of a generic blonde woman which the bollocks Metro newspaper dug up in order to further its buttmunch excuse for journalism. "Any news today Sven?" "Nah not really, just run some propaganda about 1. making more babies 2. filling in gaps in the work market and 3. going to the gym, people in the Nordic market really dig that shit". AND SO THEY DID, THANKS SVEN. Wow Sven man, you deserve a raise. You managed to concoct something which ticked all three boxes in one fell swoop, and made me gag so hard my colon nearly came out my mouth.

Next time you feel yourself about to tell people how great your run/gym/spinning class/yoga/INSERT GENERIC MOTION ACTIVITY HERE was, just STOP and think. Was it sociable? Out of the ordinary? Funny? Unusual? Did you learn something you can share with other people? Did you create something you can show to others? If you answer no to these questions and you open your fucking trap anyway to talk about running on a treadmill then you are effectively a SPORT JEHOVAS WITNESS and NOBODY LIKES YOU. (Unless you're in Sweden, where people will let you speak without listening to you and then contribute their own story about running on a treadmill which you will enjoy to the same degree as they enjoyed yours. Ad nauseam if you are in a group of Swedes. And I'm not sure if this counts as them "liking you" but for some reason faking an interest in other people's treadmill activity while repeatedly cooing stock phrases like "jaaaa, aaaah, aaaah, mmmm. Just det. Vad bra! Vad spännande. mmm. Ja." is the height of social capability here.)

Day 950: Ode to Uppsala

As you may have guessed from my previous post about looking for flats, I'm moving. And this means leaving the lovely city of Uppsala, a student town with a population of 100,000 people just 50km or so north of Stockholm. When I moved here from London just two and a half years ago I had no idea how to speak Swedish, a severe lack of friends, a fear of cycling, and no idea what it was like to not live with my mum. Fortunately I leave Uppsala considerably better prepared for Swedish life than I was when I came. Here's my tribute to all the things I will miss the most about Uppsala, or to put it better, all the things I will come back to visit, in no particular order:

1. Fyrishov

Sometimes, when I get my fat ass out of the chair I'm in, I go swimming here and it's brilliant. I usually get a lane to myself, I can listen to "Workin' 9-5" while I swim thanks to the old ladies swim exercise class and on Saturdays there's a disco in the adventure pool with a disco ball. I don't think there's a pool like you anywhere else in Sweden, Fyrishov, and I'll miss you.

2. Fyrisån

Through the middle of town runs the Fyris river and it's part of what makes Uppsala so picturesque. In the summer it's a cheap and underestimated day out to hire a canoe and paddle through town, or away from town towards Ulva Kvarn.

3. Distance to nature adventures 

There are so many great Nature places just on the doorstep. I've seen cows being let loose at Stabby gård, skated on a frozen lake at Österbybruk, been swimming in water that was so cold I lost all my breath when I jumped in at Fjällnora, went on a frozen forest walk in Färnebofjärden national park, and met all the baby goats at the goat farm in Långtora. These are just to name a few things!

4.  Close to other cities

I like cities as well as nature. When I've not felt like being in Stockholm, even if it is only 70km away, I've enjoyed Gävle's giant straw goat and railway museum, and Västerås' weird half-submurged hotels and excellent water park.

5. Living max. 30 minutes away from anybody, ever. (Even that guy who lives in Gottsunda)

Yeah. Gottsunda. I'll still come to your party, though.

6. Apples

Thanks, Uppsala, for making it so easy to a) find apples and b) press them into juice so that c) I can make loads of cheap, tasty cider. You can't do that in London so easily.

7. Student life

Farewell to students wondering around in costumes, people with boom boxes, people with Unicycles, people in formal wear, choir songs outside the window on the night before a gasque, gasques (like a formal dinner in a college until everyone gets absolutely fucking WANKERED.) and just general studenty madness.

8. How quiet it is when all the students leave

Yeah the student life brings some charm, but it its lovely when they all piss off.

9. Small social groups

I met pretty much everyone I know in the town through the Meetup website. It was quick and easy to meet great people from all over the place, all ready to hang out and have fun. I don't think it will be so easy and so straightforward in any other place!

10. Young people the majority

Being a student town, Uppsala has a lot of people around my age, making it even easier to meet friends with similar life experiences. Again, this is not something I expect to encounter in Stockholm!

11. Beautiful buildings

Here's a picture. 'Nuff said.

12. Cycling around

I only just got a bike, after years of people taunting me and wondering why I didn't have one. In the short time I've had it, I have definitely enjoyed the convenience of cycling around, usually on special bike lanes which are separate from traffic.

13. Fewer people, less noise

Yep, it's definitely lungnare here than it will be in Stockholm.

14. Valborg

If you're read my post about Valborg in Uppsala you'll be suprised to see it on this list, but I will miss the party spirit people get on the day, and watching the funny little boats crash their way down the river while drinking champagne at stupid o'clock.

15. Spex

After a year or two I finally had enough grasp of Swedish to go and see a Spex, a play performed by students during which the audience can shout things and make the actors improv changes to the plot, dialogue or, well, anything, to hilarious effect.

16. Lindvalls coffee making the station smell like sugar puffs

If you commute at a certain time on a certain day, you'll get to smell the roasting coffee wafting over the whole train station from the downwind Lindvalls coffee plant. I think it smells like sugar puffs, but that's just me!

 

17. Årummet, Fågelsången, Cafe Linne, and so on!

Damn, so many good spots for tea and cake, so little time!

18. The Local

There might only be a limited selection of pubs in Uppsala, but they are some good ones. I've spent the most time in Buddy's Irish pub, in fact I've just celebrated St. Patricks day there twice in two days. I go there so much the barmen all know me so it's probably time for me to get a new local.... William's pub used to be, er, tolerable but now has a new owner and an excellent pub quiz. Maybe I'll come back for that...

19. The Northern Lights

While I've never seen them in their full, spectacular glory, the opportunity to see a swirling green glow over the town has come up several times, something which is magical to this southerner. Sometimes you can see them in Stockholm, but with all that light pollution I'm not getting my hopes up!

Day 908: Stick your signalfel up your ASS

Are you hours and hours late for work, fun or getting home?

Do you have no idea at all how you're going to get there?

Are you utterly complacent about this, and will not attempt to make any change to the status of your shitty transport system through positive action or negative reaction?

Are you not even expecting the news to pick up on the hell of your, and thousands upon thousands of others' journey or the plight of hundreds upon hundreds of freight wagons over the course of a whole day, several days or even weeks?

You must be commuting in Sweden!

With this in mind, it's important that you learn my:

 

1. Obehöriga på Spårområdet (unauthorised person on the track)  

Ah yes, god bless this wonderful shitbag who has wondered about on the railways for fuck knows what reason. Whether they were stealing some copper wires, trying to kill themselves in a quiet, understated manner or just out for a fucking stroll somewhere they don't usually fucking stroll, god bless them. They really deserved that time they effectively stole from me just for being the wonderful, considerate human beings that they are.

 Annoyance factor: 

2. Elavbrott (Power Outage)

This is Sweden, an incredibly advanced western nation with a perfectly good electricity producing industry and no drops in service even during the winter when every man and his dog has all the lights on, three heaters and an oven. There is no way the railways are having a power cut. This is just code for "Sven fucked up the wiring".

Annoyance Factor:

3. Kraftiga förseningar (Heavy delays)

This isn't an explanation. We know there are delays, we've been standing in -10 for the last 40 minutes looking at a screen which has said that our train is one minute away. Fucking liars. I'm pretty sure this is actually code for "Expect a #4"

Annoyance factor:

4. Stopp i trafiken (Stop in service)

Here's what kraftiga förseningar really means. No trains are going anywhere. (Except sometimes the trains that cost more money than your shitty commuter train, they're fine.) They don't have a reason though.

Annoyance factor:

5. Signalfel (Signal problems)

I don't know who is in charge of the signals around here but they should be fired. Out of a cannon. Into the sun. There are signal problems so often I think that train drivers would be confused if the signals were signalling. They should just burn down the whole fucking signal rig, because the smoke would be more effective at actually signalling.

Annoyance factor: 

6. Omfattande (extensive)

Omfattande elfel, omfattande signalfel, omfattande whatever. Oh god you're really fucked if they wheel this one out. Just go to the pub and sleep there instead of trying to get home.

Annoyance factor:

7. Växelfel (Interchange Fault)

Just book a holiday and go to the beach. Last July there was a track interchange fault in the south station of Stockholm. No trains could go north or south for nearly 2 weeks. Fuck that shit.

Annoyance factor:

Day 901: Flat Hunting

I'm packing my bag and movin' on down to the big (er, moderately sized by European standards) city of Stockholm!

But before I can do that, there's a lot of flat hunting to be done.

I've never been in a position to buy any kind of property in London and I probably never will (I was going to do a bunch of research and give some interesting statistics about how many people own homes in London and how much it costs but I started reading and got too angry and depressed so I stopped.) Essentially what I'm writing here is not a comparison of English and Swedish life because I don't have a point of comparison having never owned anything in England. Instead it's a look at the quirks of browsing the Swedish home market.

For the past few weekends, and even some weekdays too, I've been looking at flats with my sambo to get a feel for what kinds of flats are on the market, how much stuff costs, which areas we actually want to live in and which areas suck sweaty, dirty balls.

Pretty much any house worth its bricks is listed on a website called Hemnet which, in typical Swedish fashion, also has a well made app on which you can draw the areas you want to search with a virtual pencil.

I get the impression that many Swedish people browse Hemnet and view flats just for the fun of it, after all it's SUCH a fun weekend activity for godawful couples with nothing better to do that ranks up there with "going round Ikea" and "checking out the high street". Hemnet sometimes gets over 2.5 million views a week, which is frankly astounding for a country with only 9.5 million people.

There are essentially 3 places to live in Stockholm, just like any other city; the expensive bit "inside the tolls" which extends just a bit north of the picture above, the slightly-cheaper-but-still-expensive bit just outside which has plenty of houses but not plenty of anything else, and the cheap bit with generous sizes for your money but long commutes with unreliable trains, questionable neighbours in some places and mind numbingly boring orbital towns in which the only source of entertainment is a big Willy.

No matter where you look, though, every flat has the same furniture because the seller has hired rental furniture from the estate agent, who in turn has probably done extensive research into exactly which furniture is best for driving up the price. All the houses are painted white as a backdrop for these items, I did a random search and these were the first 5 of the flats that showed up, all are white:

Apparently Scarlet Johansson's giant face sells well:

I know it's her because I viewed the flat and her face was CREEPY

as do apples:

I would browse for more spot-the-difference (or not) pictures but I just can't bear to look at flats any more than I absolutely have to. There are always candles, similar kinds of soap in the bathroom, fake fur throws on the balcony furniture, a funky coffee machine of some sort, fresh flowers, herbs and a good old HEMNES:

The whole time you're viewing, you're supposed to perform some kind of mental feat (a bit like Orwellian DoubleThink) in which you both appreciate the style of the room with the furniture in it, whilst simultaneously blanking the furniture out and replacing it with your own furniture. You have to see that the furniture and accessories exist and at the same time realise they do not exist in the house as you would have it. This, I will freely admit, is not a skill I have. I truly believe that I will have a HEMNES full of apples and posters of Scarlet Johansson when I finally live in Stockholm.

The oppressive samey-ness of the furniture, the plan layouts, the colours, the sales agents and the accents is only one part of a larger problem: the other people viewing the flats. The blandness of the flats is a symptom of the blandness of the viewers. The sales agents know what people like and give it to them. People queue up nicely, set their many shoes by the door and mill about in the hallway like so many shepherded sheep, looking at a pre-set list of values; is the wooden floor in good condition? Is the light coming from the south? How much debt does the residents association have? Is the floor layout original or have the occupants made changes? Is there a lift?

I viewed a flat last week and I really liked it. I would have bid for it, in fact. But it was not a very orthodox flat; the current owners had renovated, compromising on bedroom space to make room for an amazing kitchen with space for any conceivable size of party. The living room was not a standard square (Shock! Horror! Nightmare!) and the bathroom was not directly attached to the bedroom. Nobody was interested in this flat. There were no queues of shoes outside and no scrum of sheep inside. "Great!" I naively believed. Thinking this would mean a good price.

Actually what it means is that the flat would be very difficult to sell in the future and would not be a good investment. People don't like it because it doesn't meet their parameters of what is interesting. The absence of a lift, even in a building with just 3 floors, can wipe up to half a million Krona off the desired price for the flat on resale (another bizarre fact, given Swedish obsession with health and fitness). When starting out I really enjoyed flat hunting with my sambo and looking for that special place with a quirk just for us. I now realise that there can be no quirk, I have to conform to the ideals of the Swedish market if I want a sensible investment. And this, for me, sucks the fun out of the whole process.