Anyway, whenever there is a slow news day the papers wheel out the beavers. I wrote about a beaver stopping a train years ago when I first moved. This week there are apparently SO MANY BEAVERS in a built up, central area of Stockholm called Kungsholmen; so WHY HAVEN'T I SEEN ONE?!
It's not fair to write about beavers like they're pigeons or squirrels (actually I still get excited about squirrels. Grey = 1 point, Red = 10 points, Black = 100 points). Beavers clearly are not everywhere otherwise I would have tripped over one. I saw two rats scratching around in some rubbish on the street - the binmen have been on strike - and I got excited, but they weren't beavers. When I went to Ireland on holiday I was told there would be puffins, and there were, and I saw one. Now the papers are promising me beavers all over the shop, right where I hang about every working day, and I bloody well expect to see some goofy teeth and oversize tails.
Look, most people have exciting bucket lists and this probably seems strange. However, if I want to make a list of animals and rank them according to an arbitrary points system like I do blueberries then that's my prerogative. Actually come to think of it, hedgehogs are supposed to be ubiquitous in England and I've never seen one...
Here's my checklist and haphazard score allocation of animals I'm supposedly supposed to trip over occasionally in Sweden:
So far I have 100 points and that's for the bum of a moose I saw disappearing into some trees as I rushed by on a train. In fact it might not even have been a moose, it might just be wishful thinking. The moose at Skansen zoo don't count. Also I heard a woodpecker so maybe I can have a point for that. My boyfriend's dad sent a picture of a bear from the family cabin (Swedish people have cabins in woods. It's a thing). I got excited because we were on our way in the car and I thought we'd be in time to see it. Turns out the bear was from google images.
What animals would make the list where you live, and how many points do you have? I hope you're doing better than me.
A person has been drinking a lot of alcohol until very late at night. What should he or she think about the following day?
If he runs a lap he will burn more alcohol and therefore drive without risk in the afternoon
If he drinks lots of water and then has a sauna he will burn more alcohol and therefore drive without risk in the afternoon
Since he can't affect the amount of alcohol he burns he should not drive for safety's sake
As far as I know, there is no focus in the English theory test on alcohol (or how to best drive to reduce environmental impact). There is definitely no mention of running a lap (who outside Sweden stays up all night drinking and then goes for a run in the morning?!) or having a bloody sauna (In Stockholm you're never more than 6 feet from a sauna, while in London it's 6 feet from a rat.)
Furthermore, most commercial passenger vehicles like taxis, buses, logistics trucks and even my learner driver car are fitted with "alcolås" or alcohol lock, and the engine will not start if the driver fails an alcohol breath test!
Last week I had what can only be described as a "fucking shit day".
In England, when you have a fucking shit day, the remedy is to tell everybody about your fucking shit day, and revel in the sympathy that comes in the form of other people telling you about their fucking shit days. You all laugh together about how some days that you think are going to be normal days SUDDENLY turn into fucking shit days! Through this cleansing ritual, everybody purges. The cathartic venting of the fucking shit days leaves you feeling ready to face the next fucking shit day.
This is not what I have experienced in Sweden.
If you tell people about your fucking shit day, one of two things will happen. Either:
1. You will get a lot of "Åh nej, vad synd" (oh no, what a shame) which is probably heartfelt, but coming from a culture in which people don't really express their sympathy through high-pitched pleasantries, everything just sounds diabolically fake.
2. Uncomfortable body posture and rapid subject change. Fucking shit days are shit, nobody wants to think about them right? Quick, make the person who had a fucking shit day feel better by not thinking about it!
After my venting of this particular fucking shit day went catastrophically off the rails, I got to thinking about exactly why Swedish people are so uncomfortable in taking solace in the fact that other people's days are just as fucking shitty as their own.
And I couldn't help but think about how every fucking shit day, or every fucking shit facet of every fucking shit day, is often turned into a thinly veiled but totally ridiculous positive aspect. Like when my driving instructor looked at the rain lashing against the windshield through a foggy grey haze of blääääää and suddenly came out with "Oh fantastic! Now it's autumn!" I was so thrilled that she was using a bit of sarcasm I actually laughed! Until she followed up with "time to light the candles, wear comfy clothes and get cosy at home!" and I realised she was being totally unironic.
I constantly wonder how people here are able to sustain hours long conversation about running and going to the gym, when those are, realistically, obligatory time devourers that detract from ACTUAL HOBBIES and PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT. But now it completely makes sense, doing repetitive exercise is so dull that it must be MAGICALLY TRANSFORMED into a positive, lest people actually start discussing something negative and we all have to get uncomfortably shifty and change the subject of conversation. So now we all have to talk about how great it feels when to have "träningsvärk" (training aches) and how some shoes that somebody purchased for running are so himla fina (blooming lovely).
Look at IKEA. Everybody knows that it's actually Dante's undiscovered next layer of hell going round the place, but somehow couples and families make a day out of it. What better representation of the Swedish ability to put a happy face on a dog turd is there than the global effect of IKEA. "Oh we have to go and spend money on crappy furniture to fill our home with utilitarian things, instead of buying all the cool shit we though we could have as kids when we imagined being adults and having money!! Yaaaaay! Let's clap our hands everybody and buy some sub-par, poor quality lingonberry jam!" Cue several hours of dead time looking at a mock up of a house you'll never have, followed by getting home and pretending you've accomplished something.
The big dream of most Swedish people is family life, why has nobody here got the message that family life is basically the epitome of drudgery? Oh wait - they have got that message, and they relish the challenge. If anyone can make the shitty nappy changing, weekly food shopping, temper tantrum throwing, super stressed school running, never ending laundry doing, relentless time slipping, constant lack of sleep giving destroyer of personal life dreams that is family life into a super happy fun time, it's got to be Swedish people.
If you're going to have a family, at least revel in the joy of sharing how shitty that makes you feel with other people. If the time you have to spend burning calories is greater than the time you spent enjoying the consumption of calories, at least burn a few of them in a circle jerk of anger with other people who feel the same. And if you have a fucking shit day of any kind, it is your privilege - nay! it is your RIGHT to have your shit day affirmed, confirmed and appreciated by fellow shit day havers.
Otherwise you might end up like my old neighbours; your anger (that you thought was magically transformed into joy) just bubbling up inside, ultimately culminating in you throwing plates at your partner during a blazing row at 4am. Then again, people in adjacent flats listening through the walls probably just told themselves: Oh nice! Now they have less washing up to do.
We all just had a lönehelg (löne = salary, helg = weekend).
Lönehelg refers to the weekend directly after the 25th of the month when most people get paid. It results in a measurable phenomenon in which high numbers of people who are really fucking bad at planning their household economy rush out and buy copious amounts of shit. This probably happens even in other countries, because hey, people are the same everywhere really; but Sweden has nearly double the amount of retail space per person than the rest of western Europe. They really outdo themselves in shopping as a hobby, and in morosely wandering around the bland shopping centres with their entire families pretending to enjoy the same 4 chain stores repeating ad infinitum. And for the love of Odin, DON'T GO TO IKEA ON A LÖNEHELG.
It's not just physical items either; restaurants, bars and clubs make more income on a lönehelg than at any other time of the month (except maybe at Christmas, Valentine's day ... you get the point). An important cultural facet of Swedish life consists of knowing the song Kung för en dag (king for a day) by the holy saint of pop music Magnus Uggla who is known hysterically and exclusively by Swedish people and absolutely nobody else, anywhere, ever. The song satirically explains exactly what happens to the average dumbo every 25th of the month, who spends all their money in an orgasm of stupidity and then goes back to eating instant noodles on the 26th.
Fortunately I survived my lönehelg with most of my wallet intact. No noodles for me! Break out the champagne everybody!
Four years ago, on Saturday 10th August 2013, I moved to Sweden.
And four years ago to the day, on Wednesday 21st August 2013 I received my person number, making me an official part of the Swedish machine and able to pay my kronor to the män.
Looking back at my old blog posts is quite interesting for me, it makes me reflect on how much is so completely normal now that I would not even notice, let alone write a post about.
Here's a trip down my memory lane.
1. Public Art
In some of my earliest posts I wrote some comments about the "strange" public art around, usually derisively. In London there is a total lack of public art in public spaces (although sometimes there is poetry on the tube!) so they really stood out. Now I don't even notice the public art and that's quite sad! Instead I notice how shit everywhere else is without really being able to put my finger on why it's shit...
2. The eternal struggle of the laundry room
In my old flat the laundry room was a novelty in the beginning of my living here and it became a convenience - multiple washing machines at once! A big room to dry clothes! Several dryers! A mangle (that I'll never use) !!! And so socialist, surely it's much better for the environment that everyone shares rather than each person having a private machine?
Well now I live in a new, much bigger, building and Fuck That. I want my own machine! I want to have a clean fluff filter on my dryer that doesn't make my clothes dusty! I want my clothes to dry for as long as they need without running downstairs to hastily grab everything still damp from the drying cupboard so the next wanker can use it! I want to wash after 10 bloody PM if I bloody well feel like it! And most of all, oOoohh most of all, I want to avoid the wash slot booking system that the residents association fucked up and left 3 people with 1 key to the same booking mechanism, so that my booked time is randomly moved around the booking board and makes me believe I am developing Alzheimers because I think I've forgotten which time I booked.
3. Passive Aggressive Swedes
Honestly this is something I've never been a fan of, as my four year old post will attest. I am perpetually amazed by the Swedish dedication to packing their rage down into a decrepit corner of themselves before either a) blasting it out in a well penned note or b) not doing that, and randomly exploding at service personnel in an uncontrolled immense offload that usually has no sense of proportion in relation to the minor or imagined injustice they witnessed.
I'm learning how to drive, and I recently pulled out in front of a fast moving Volvo because I had the right of way. The Volvo did not think I had the right of way and beeped at me. I thought nothing of it because I am a learner and learners make mistakes, but my instructor was worried. Why was she worried? Because very often, drivers who feel slighted by being made to slow down for 2 seconds of their day by a learner will sit on that RAAAAAAGE all the livelong day until they make it to a computer where they will write that well-penned letter and report the driving school for malpractice. Who has that much time and energy to waste being angry all day at a FUCKING SHIT LEARNER DRIVER? Swedish people with comfortable lives and no real problems, that's who.
Beer is drunk by the following categories of Swedes:
Old/Middle aged men who drink Pripps Blå with lunch (a korv med bröd or a hamburger) because that's what they've been doing since the 70's and they never got the memo about bowel cancer
Youth who get fucked up on Friday and Saturday, usually other days too, live only for that, and hang around in obnoxious groups passive aggressively saying snide comments to passers by but never actually doing anything serious
20-30 somethings who say they like fun, but they will make penance for their beer by running or going to the gym every god damn day, so that they only thing they actually have to talk about while drinking beer is how they went running. Repeat ad infinitum
5. Knäckebröd
I commented early on that knäckebröd tastes like cardboard, now I quite like it. I still can't spread butter like a Swede, though.
6. So. Many. Candles
Of all my blog posts, I think I spent the most time researching not one, but two lists of names for candles in this country. I have only continued to be amazed by how much people love them, have them lit for no reason, how many shops are dedicated to them and how important they are for the concept of "mys" (cosy). I can probably not remember all of their names now by heart, but I definitely own a lot of them. I don't light them. Why are they here? How did they get here? A mystery.
7. Language Skillz
Two years ago I passed a TISUS test and recieved a qualification in Swedish language that allows me to study courses in Swedish, and convert my English teaching qualification to the Swedish system.
I am an avid reader in English, an avid speaker in English and, clearly, an avid writer of random crap among other things. I'm even an avid teacher of English! I am none of these things in Swedish, I am not the same person in Swedish. And I never will be.
Do I think I was actually good at Swedish two years ago? No. Do I think
I'm good at Swedish now? No. But the system thinks I'm good enough and that's worth a lot to me.
8. Nature
I've really enjoyed being closer to nature here than I ever have been in
England, and I'm not even a huge outdoorsy type. I've blogged about
being able to ice skate on frozen rinks in winter, about going to the forest to pick berries, about seeing the northern lights and about picking enough apples to make my own cider! I've now made too much cider and am officially SICK OF IT how cool is that!!?!? Time for a new project... Beer?
Sometimes I complain about things, we all do. But overall I have it good here in Swedenland and I'm really grateful. When I look at my old blog posts it's obvious I've had a learning curve, a really nice one, learning a new language, getting to like new food, seeing some amazing places, benefiting from the high quality of home life and work life, meeting new friends.
It is interesting, and sad, to feel more detached from my old home and more attached to my new one, while forever feeling that I don't really belong in either any more.
I don't write about politics much on my blog because that's not my bag, baby. However this is as good a time as any to note that fascism is on the rise everywhere and it just doesn't make sense to an immigrant like me.
There are a lot of people who have left one place and moved to another, who feel like they've been moulded into something new that doesn't quite fit into a preassigned, nationalism-shaped hole and drop down into the waiting box of a homogeneous society.
And if I with my English stereotypes am feeling a bit like I've slipped between the cracks of two nations into the arsecrevice of uncertainty that this metaphor turned into, then I can't even begin to imagine how people whose original culture is nothing like the Swedish one must feel.
Anyone from elsewhere who can make sense of this much darkness, cold, passive-aggressive, self absorbed, gym-obessessed, well designed, self-congratulatory, individualistic yet somehow socialist perfectness, you da real MVP.
My friends and family have all decided, independently from each other, that I need a jar. It would work a bit like a swear jar, only instead of me adding money every time I swear I would instead add money every time I start a sentence with the words "In Sweden..."
Instead of just telling you all the weird crap that came out of my mouth I've gone for a more interactive format. Come on down and play my:
THINGS ABOUT SWEDEN TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT GAME!
Here are some things I've said during the last month. See if you can guess why I said them. Answers are lower down, just highlight all the text in the red boxes. Good luck.
1. In Sweden it's legal to hog the middle
2. In Sweden they'd probably put sugar in it
3. In Sweden I get £150 a year towards it
4. In Sweden if a war broke out they could round up the chosen scapegoat group really easily
5. In Sweden there'd be better planning
6. In Sweden it's illegal after four hours because of animal cruelty laws
7. In Sweden there are even more, it feels like there isn't a single woman without one
8. In Sweden it would be worse, they'd start at 7am
1. On the motorway with my sister as she rarely changed lanes 2. When eating a curry and asked if curry is good in Sweden 3. After my mum asked if I get paid to do exercise 4. Discussing how the Nazis rounded up the Dutch Jews with brutal efficiency because the population register was so organised 5. Showing a friend the construction of a tower block with no parking built in 6. Talking about leaving dogs unattended and how doggy daycare is ridiculously expensive 7. When someone noticed a lot of pregnant women or women with prams 8. Waking up to noisy builders outside the house at 8am every weekday
How did you score?
0-2 You know nothing, Johannes Snö
3-5 You either know me or Sweden very well
6-7 Were you with me when I said these things?
8 You are me.
This weekend I was on salad duty at a BBQ so I made a bean salad as I often do. There's only one ingredient that is tricky to find and I usually just leave it out, but since I'm on my summer hols I actually had time for once to try and find them. Presenting;
HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER RUNNER BEANS
Runner beans are readily available in England but finding them here is trickier. Translator programs can't translate "runner bean" into Swedish because they give "löpande bönor" (running beans) which is probably helpful in an extremely specific situation. Wikipedia suggested rosenbönor as the Swedish translation, so I asked a few Swedish people if they've eaten rosenbönor and suspiciously they had not. I showed them pictures of runner beans, they had never seen them and couldn't give me a name. Brytbönor was one suggestion, but those are large green beans and not the flat runner bean. The confusion
stems from the fact that all of these similar beans (green, runner,
haricots, kidney, flageolet) come from the family Phaseolus vulgaris and Wikipedia lumps them all together unless you know what to search for and give a specific term.
I basically gave up after that.
But as the picture above can attest, runner beans do, in fact, exist here. They are called skärbönor (cut beans) presumably because you have to cut them into bits before eating. But they're bloody expensive and hard to find, so this supports the theory that Swedish people don't know what they are and don't cook with them. Just one of many foods that vary from place to place!
My sister in England has a balcony, sometimes she goes out there for a smoke, the rest of the time it has some malnourished plants on it. Another person I know has a balcony and it serves as a bike rack. One couple have a little strip of a balcony, not quite big enough for furniture, and they use the balcony to take pictures showing everyone how amazing their flat is but then they go inside to share the pictures.
Meanwhile, in Sweden... I returned from holiday only to discover that I have unwittingly entered into a balcony war of one-upmanship with my neighbours, because balconies are SERIOUS BUSINESS over here. And people actually use them.
Actual photo of my balcony
Despite the fact that outdoor areas are basically uninhabitable for half the year, Swedes go to great lengths to decorate their outdoor areas. As summer begins, around about May/June, all the magazines, shopfronts, websites, department stores, newspaper adverts, huge billboards and everything else imaginable go full force with DECORATE YOUR OUTDOOR AREAS. They haven't quite added the OR ELSE yet, but it's implied. And in true keeping with the rest of the typical Swedish house, the balcony gets filled with this season's latest trend consisting in the form of whatever the shop Hemtex has as its latest cloth pattern, and whatever the magazine Sköna Hem churned out from its hulking great impracticality generator.
Like this.
OOh..Aaah so beautiful! So mysigt! (cosy).
Yeh. 'Till it rains like fuck as it always does in the Swedish summer. Apparently summer is either used for going to a cabin somewhere in the woods OR running backwards and forwards putting out and taking in a bunch of fucking pillows and rugs.
What about this:
Wow, such cosmopolitan, very city.
Too bad Stockholm IN NO WAY resembles New York where that picture was clearly taken. Also, are they sure that's not just a cafe they've stolen a picture of? I often wish my balcony was a cafe for 50 people.
Alright, this:
This one's bordering on practical, it's just some metal furniture from IKEA and a plant box. And then 5 strings of PAPER LANTERNS that you have to fucking RUN OUT AND COLLECT IN A MESSY BUNCH when your romantic date moves inside but you look out and its PREDICTABLY RAINING. Also, eating Al Fresco in Sweden, let me tell you about that. You optimistically put all that shit outside, forks and plates and crap, then you sit there with your food and you're either SWEATING LIKE A BITCH within 5 minutes if you get sun on your balcony, or you need 5 layers of clothing before giving up and going inside if you're in the shade.
Fine, this one then:
Oh I hate to be a killjoy (who am I kidding I love being a killjoy) but NO BBQ OPEN FLAME ALLOWED ON THE BALCONY. Also just FYI nobody really likes rattan, it's fugly, hard to clean, rots and you're kidding yourself when you say its rustic and charming. Also, this brings me conveniently to another big point, carpets. Always with the carpets. Never IN the house, only OUTSIDE. Oh Sweden, you silly.
Anyway, how have I entered into a war with my neighbours? By planting some vegetables. The balcony here was a bit neglected (hey, I am English) we even forgot to take down the furniture in the winter so it sat in the elements getting covered in snow and having its lifetime merrily reduced. But then the spring came and my boyfriend killed my indoor tomato plant so I bought lots of those boxes that hang on the balcony and planted peas, parsley, rocket...well, lots of things. And what do you know? Plants look quite nice!
Cue nearest neighbour, whose balcony up to this point boasted an orange plastic chair requisitioned from inside and an old fanta bottle filled with cigarette butts, suddenly investing in what I am reliably informed is called a "café set" aka a couple of chairs and a small table. Then 6 window boxes of herbs. And a plant pot on the floor that looked vaguely similar to my own. Also candles...and a ceramic frog.
It's certainly a catchy advertising campaign this pharmacy has gone with. It would never get past the British censors.
Come and buy! Buy and come!
Britain has come a long way since Boots pharmacy started selling sex toys, I was amazed by (read: I cringed at) how dated this article from 2004 sounds, with such prudish rediculousness as:
"Unless one derives a certain pleasure from such activities, does one
really want to purchase one's raspberry ripple-flavoured lube alongside
those buying haemorrhoid cream and waterproof pants?"
Nevertheless, I think I'll have to wait another decade or more before I see dildo adverts on the London underground.
"How do you translate klämdag to English?" asked my driving instructor today. "It's not squeeze day, is it?"
No.
The sad fact is that British and American people take work far too seriously to be even semi capable of accepting the existence of a day off for no reason other than that it is placed between two other days off.
If there is a bank holiday on a Tuesday or a Thursday then it is generally accepted that little to no work should be done on the intervening Monday or Friday. Everybody likes a four day weekend, even the boss. In summer there are three potential klämdagar, one just after the first of May, one just after Ascension day at the end of May and then immediately another one on the 5th June just before National Day. This year the latter two fall on Tuesdays so there has been a blissful diminishing of the total number of Mondays in the year.
There has been a noble attempt to make klämdagar about klämning (squeezing) of boobs, to raise awareness of breast cancer:
But then when they made the English posters, the term "squeeze day" didn't translate so well...
First of all, why is squeezeday all one word? And secondly, what even is a squeeze day!? And third off, why should there be a squeeze day every month if we don't know what the real meaning of squeeze day is?
Ah, perhaps a squeeze day is a day with Capri Sun..?
This weekend was a long bank holiday so some friends and I took the opportunity to do like the Swedes and stay in a cabin somewhere near a lake and a load of mosquitos.
It was there that I came to learn of the Carry Fart (Bärfis). These are small bugs that emit a bad smell when threatened. Of course I've heard of stink bugs, but Carry Fart is just such a ridiculous name it warranted a blog post all of its own.
In Sweden people drive on the right side of the road. Which is to say they drive on the wrong side of the road. As an experienced passenger I know all to well the confusion of striding purposefully towards the left hand door, opening it with flair and finding a wheel and some pedals that shouldn't be there. Having done this 1,704,720,347 times, it is perhaps now my turn to start reciprocating to all those people who have motioned me to the other side of the car and ferried me across the country (or, more often, home from the pub. You tha real MVP).
Today in my first lesson for 10 years it all came back to me; how to find the biting point between the accelerator and clutch, how to shift gear with your left hand, how to position the car in the left hand lane after a turn, how to use the cars on the left hand side to help you position the car and how to always keep going on a main road and don't stop for cars on small side roads. Oh no, wait. That's not AT ALL how you drive here.
First of all my new fangled car doesn't need you to press the accelerator AT ALL to find the biting point, it starts moving by itself when you release the pedal. Then there's the gear shift, obviously that's not AT ALL on the left. As for positioning the car on the left after a turn, don't do that AT ALL unless colliding with large oncoming objects is your kind of fun. And okay, I didn't really struggle with these things, they're mostly for comedy value, but the priority to the right rule (högreregeln)? That's not a thing AT ALL in England.
In England if you're driving on a main road then you've got the right of way. If you're driving on a side road and you approach a main road, then you have to wait for traffic on the main road to stop before you can progress. Simple. But not here. Not everywhere that isn't England apparently. Here you have to have CONSTANT VIGILANCE against pesky cars, trucks, vans, bikes, UFOs, trailers, caravans, camels, horses, husky sleds, snowmobiles and amphibious craft from the right. And a myriad of signs that could potentially tell you to do otherwise.
Besides the troublesome priority-to-the-right rule, the other big obstacle is the language. Sitting in a meeting, lecture, class conversation group or coffee shop and communicating in Swedish is all well and good. Trying to grasp the intricacies of some instructions containing 3 new words that you have to guess from context while simultaneously looking in 3 mirrors, pressing two pedals, manipulating a gearbox and watching for oncoming traffic is an interesting new stretch of my mental multitasking capacity. Many times when something unexpected happened I automatically started speaking in English. Kudos to all those who don't have the luxury of a global language as their default setting and who manage to translate their outbursts to the correct language.
I suppose I'd better get back to learning some things for the theory test (what should you do if you hit a moose?) and dreading spinning around on the halkbana, a slippery road mimicking ice that you have to pass a test on. Wish me luck...
In January 2017 I read that Trump's administration were passing a Regan era rule that every Republican government has passed upon coming into office. The Mexico City policy, or the global gag rule, means that any charity awarded funding from the United States can't even so much as mouth the word "abortion" when engaging in overseas family planning without losing all of said funding.
Without delving into all the reasons why properly funded and carefully offered advice about abortions saves thousands of impoverished and uneducated women around the world every year, I'm just going to say that of all the myriad shitty things I read about the world while trying to avoid reading anything at all, I was particularly depressed about this one. How can I, a single individual, possibly try to counteract the sweeping loss of funding caused by this rule? Why did I care so much? Well, because I value and am thankful for all the freedoms I experience as a Swedish citizen and I wish that all the women who experience seven tonnes of shit in their lives every day could have even just a fraction of the freedoms I enjoy.
I almost went off into my dark place to brood about the untold evils of this world, until I read that the Netherlands would work to actively combat the loss of funding caused by the withdrawal of American aid to family planning clinics. And then, Lo and Behold, Sweden also got involved. As did Denmark and Belgium. It is undoubtedly a delicious feeling when you meet a fellow person who shares your views, but to know that whole countries with large numbers of people felt the same as I did upon reading of the reinstatement of the gag rule and WANTED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT is pretty fucking sweet. Some people alone can't make America sized money grants, but some countries together can make much more of a difference.
The Swedish national society for sexual education (yes - it's a thing!) sent out public information about the change in US policy and gave instructions on how to donate. Even though I'm not a big fan of charity (since really philanthropy is just rich assholes being benevolent with their hoards to causes they believe in) this particular charitable donation, if used to help women learn about and have access to safe abortion, sends a very clear "fuck you" to the rich asshole who doesn't want money spent on such things. And that is one "fuck you" message I am happy to spend my money on.
Every day in Sweden is somebody's name day. Today is the turn of Rudolf and Ralf, who will receive a small gift and maybe a card from any traditional parents, friends, grandparents, godparents, relatives or teachers left in the land. All Swedish diaries will tell you which name day is today and a lot of people have the RASPBERRY ALMANAC in their workplaces to make sure they remember to buy chocolate for Anna, Sven, Olof and the rest of the cast of Frozen.
The royal family's name days are worthy of little flags on all the buses, but if you're a dirty foreigner like me with a dirty foreign name THERE'S NO GIFT FOR YOU. Although this twee little website believes in NAME DAYS FOR ALL (Alla i Sverige har rätt till en namnsdag!)
Ah, yes one of the great political struggles of our time. Hey, if they're successful then Sven and Anna will only have to share their day with 931 other names. What is your name day?
Today I heard the expression "myror i benen". It doesn't mean the same thing as "ants in your pants". In fact, just like in French, it refers to restless legs syndrome. I drew a horrendous commemorative cartoon in MS paint to celebrate.
If you got in your secret time machine, went back to 2010, accosted me and told me I would one day live in Sweden I would have said "Let me go before I call the police". But then as an afterthought I would have sniggered and said to myself "I hardly even know where Sweden is, let alone what the language is like." So believe me when I say that it is surreal learning Finnish phrases on Swedish packaging and that it is surreal for Finnish, quite possibly the strangest language on the planet, to be on my linguistic radar. Me. Someone from an island that languishes at the bottom in Europe for teaching kids a second language and pretends the old Celtic languages don't really exist.
Approximately 5% of the population in Sweden are native Finnish speakers thanks to a long and complicated history between the two countries. This involved at some points the systematic enforcement of Swedish over Finnish in Finland itself and it was relatively recently that Finland stopped making all their public signs in Swedish too. The most famous product of the Swedish/Finnish cultural blending was the Moomins by the Swedish Finn (Finlandsvensk) Tove Jansson. Confusingly, native Finns living in Sweden are known as Finnish Swedes (Sverigefinnar.) Finnish and Swedish are in absolutely no way alike, since Finnish developed from a completely separate language family (the Uralic langauges).
Nevertheless, most Swedish people know one or two bits of Finnish. Here's my handy-dandy guide for anyone finding themselves in an inevitable "Swedish-people-pretending-they-know-some-Finnish" conversation, in which people shout stupid phrases at each other in a pseudo-Finnish accent. EI SAA PEITTÄÄ
They'll explain that they got this one from all the Finnish electric radiators. It means "do not cover". Except in all my years of being in Sweden I have NEVER SEEN A RADIATOR WITH EI SAA PEITÄÄ ON IT! YKSI KAKSI KOLME
When they say this it will sound like a witch uttering a spell, but it just means "One, Two, Three"
KIITOS
Again, it sounds mysterious and foreboding, but it's just "Thanks".
RUOTSI/SUOMI
I know this one from working in schools, but everyone else knows this from seeing the dictionary cover "Swedish, Finnish"
RUOTSINSUOMALAINEN
If you want to contribute to the slinging of pointless phrases, this would be a safe bet; it's long, impressive and most people don't know this one, it means "Finnish Swedish"
PARASTA ENNEN
Admittedly this was probably the first Finnish phrase I learned since it's on every item of food: "Best Before". It's so different from all the other Scandi languages on the packet I reckon it should be one of those memes:
HYVÄÄ
Oh this, you definitely can't avoid this. They won't just say "Hyvää" though. They'll say "HYYYYYYVÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ" like a constipated duck. It means "good". SUU AUKI SUUREMPAAN
Only use this in extreme circumstances. This is my trump card, my Ace, my crushing blow. Nobody will know what this means, and if they do then they're Finnish and you should be ashamed of yourself for shouting pointless phrases at them in their own language.
Living in Sweden means making regular trips home to see the family and reconnect with close friends. Fortunately for me, home is London and no matter how many times I go back there, I always find new and exciting things to do, or still enjoy some old favourite haunts. For anyone making a trip to London, here's what I got up to in my "Sportlov" that you might like to try, too.
1. Fuller's Brewery Tour
The only large scale brewery left within London, Fuller's are a huge commercial enterprise most famous for London Pride beer. Funnily enough the largest market for exports is....Sweden! Tours of the brewery run every day, and include a tasting at the end. I've been on tours of smaller breweries before, and still this tour taught me a lot. Check it out here.
2. Colombia Road Flower Market
I took my mum out for the day and while we were having a coffee we noticed EVERYONE was walking past with bunches of flowers. Eventually we asked an American sitting beside us about the source of the flowers and it was Colombia Road market. Every Sunday officially until 2pm this busy market is bursting with sights and smells of thousands of flowers and plants. Although we were late, at about 3:30pm, it worked in our favour as all the stalls were closing and offering cut prices on everything!
3. The Farm
There are several farms to be found even in the deepest recesses of the concrete jungle. Usually nestled on unwanted land beside railway tracks, gems such as the Kentish Town City Farm and the Spitalfields City Farm offer quiet oases and an opportunity to see week-old lambs and kids just a few steps from the mad, bustling tourist hotspots. This time I even managed to meet Britain's rarest goat, the Bagot. There are fewer than 100 of them and they rarely venture out of Staffordshire!
4. Covent Garden
With throngs of mindless tourists, endless repetition of high end chain stores and a really bloody old tube station that can't cope with 10 people let alone 10,000, Covent Garden is not one of my, or any Londoner's, favourite haunts. It is, however, very convenient for friends who want to meet despite living an hour away in opposite directions. If you end up there on a weekday, charmless chain Dirty Martini have happy hour all day and Flavour-of-the-Month restaurant Dishoom have a branch nearby if you like waiting outside in a storm for an hour for a table. Keep your eyes peeled at the tube station for free bus pass holders!
5. Late Night Movies on Sky
We just had to pay for our TV license here in Sweden, even though I never watch TV. It's time for me to seek out something similar to any of the myriad TV services in England, which you can pause, rewind, record and manually control. Absolutely great for randomly watching old movies you'd forgotten even existed (I watched the Fifth Element and the Jungle Book just because. And yes I have Netflix, but sometimes you want fate to decide your movie choice!)
6. Pancake Day
Shrove Tuesday. Mardi Gras, Fettisdagen...whatever you want to call it, don't forget to eat something very indulgent on this important day! I only managed 4 pancakes this year but they were really good ones! I made pancakes with my family and friends for maximum effect, but if I was a tourist I would definitely go to My Old Dutch, a fantastic pancake house!
7. London Fields Lido
Since I've unwittingly taken on some Swedish culture, I felt compelled by all those pancakes to do something physical. Somehow I managed to find the motivation to swim outside on a stormy, blustery night which whipped the steam rising from the warm water into an ethereal mist and made it feel like I was swimming in some weird pancake day Limboland. The only other people crazy enough to shower outside in the cold and dark were speaking in Swedish so that says everything really. Care to try?
8. BBC Radio Audience
If you apply in advance and get lucky, you can be in the audience for a BBC production totally free, nada, zilch, zero dollah. I went with my dad to sit in the audience for a BBC Radio 4 comedy called "Newsjack" recorded at BBC Broadcasting house in central London.
9. Board Game Bar, Haggerston
Draughts was a new place I wanted to try, but unfortunately it was completely packed out with hipsters playing Jenga and ignoring the hundreds of other board games on the shelves. You have to book a table well in advance if you want to try this place! We ended up in a nice pub around the corner called the Glory. When I sent the address to a friend she discovered from Google that this is a "Super-Gay" pub which explained the Shirley Bassey on the speakers, the glitter hanging from the ceiling and the flowers climbing up the walls. Oh, and all the single sex couples of course. It was much more welcoming than the board game place at any rate!
10. Deptford Sushi and Job Centre
From Haggerston to Deptford, I did a real pilgrimage to gentrification central on this trip . And I'm glad I did, because Deptford has some of the cheapest, tastiest Japanese food ever, and you can bring your own booze to M&D Sushi. Just down the road is an old Job Centre, turned into a pub imaginatively called The Job Centre. This was an insult to some people...
11. Troxy Music Venue
Friday night's entertainment came in the form of the Gentleman's Dub Club, funnily enough a dub band also throwing out a bit of reggae, ska, dubstep and beyond. The venue is fitted out in art deco style both inside and out, again a place I never even knew existed.
12. Crystal Maze
The Crystal Maze was a popular 90's TV show in which contestants in a team faced puzzles in little rooms found in four distinctly different "zones". If they solved the puzzles they received crystals to redeem for time in the Dome where they collected shiny tickets to exchange for real prizes. Some clever moneyspinners made a real life version of the Crystal Maze and it is so popular my friends and I had to book a spot a year in advance. It was worth it though, as we ran about and quested our way through brilliantly designed sets, revelling in our nostalgia.
13. Curry
There are a lot of Thai people in Sweden and they make a good curry, but I was raised in a country with the best Indian curries this side of the continent so I always get my fill when I go home. This time I managed to get to Angel Curry Buffet on Chapel Market with its tasty cheap eats. The Hare Krishna centre, Govindas, is conveniently central and close to Oxford Street and served us dinner before our radio show. I usually try to cram in a weekend buffet at the best of the best, Chutneys on Drummond street, but that didn't happen this time so I look forward to the next...
14. Camden Lock
My last night in London was unplanned as it usually is, and saw me ending up in Camden's Electric Ballroom again. It is in no way a good club, your feet stick to the floor, the bouncers are arseholes, the queue for the toilet is permanent and at any age beyond 18 you feel too old to be there. But nevertheless it is an old friend, always playing the shit you know and always just a short walk from home.
15. Fancy Brunch
An old friend came into town at Paddington, not my usual haunt, and we accidentally found a very fancy, very reasonably priced brunch in Michelin recommended Salt and Honey. We continued our fancy day by taking a walk through Hyde Park and Speaker's Corner over to Burlington Arcade, a very posh shopping street where some of London's ever-expanding homeless population camp outside overpriced macaroon peddlar Laduree. If anything else, London is definitely a city of contrasts.
16. Normal Brunch
I don't normally even eat brunch but I managed it several times last week. In the centre of Finsbury Park is a really laid back cafe with tasty, filling food and it was perfect for a meet-up with family.
17. Cheap Haircut
I know I just massively insulted Covent Garden but actually there is a good, cheap hairdresser there called Hair By Fairy. You don't even need an appointment, you just show up and an experienced hairdresser will cut, style, dye, shampoo or whatever-you-want your hair. A cut that would have cost at least £60 in Sweden cost me just £20 in Central London.
Whew - how did I manage all that while also watching two seasons of Merlin on British Netflix?
