Day 591: The Tax Man Cometh

"Insert witty and or insightful quote about taxes here". That's right, you can't avoid them (except you can if you try. Or if you put all your money offshore. Or if you have a cash in hand job. Or you lie about how much money you have.)

I'll start again shall I.

That's right, it's time to tell the government how much money you haven't got. Except in Sweden where the tax office already knows exactly how much money you haven't got and just wants you to pat it on the back and tell it what a good job it's done following your every financial move. They send you a list of all your money's comings and goings and then all you have to do is go online and tick a box to accept the sums, which for the most part are correct.

It's a damn good thing the tax office is very well organised here because I don't generally have a fucking clue what's going on with my money when everything is explained to me in English, so I have no chance when everything is explained in Swedish. Tax language is one of many languages in which you can understand the individual words in a sentence and still not understand the sentence. For example, this gem: "8.3 Förlust fondandelar m.m. Förlust från bilaga K4 Avsnitt A, K10, K12, avsnitt B och K13" (Loss of mutual fund shares etc. Loss from attachment K4 section A, K10, K12, section B and K13)

One thing I can claim here, which I can't claim in England, is a tax rebate for travelling more than 2 kilometers to work! If you spend more than 10,000 SEK then you can claim tax back on anything you spent. According to Wikipedia the "reseavdrag" or travel compensation works on the principle that your job helps you pay tax and anything which is to the detriment of you working and paying tax should not also be taxed. But it is also pointed out that around 50% of claims for the reseavdrag are false and ask for more money than they should...

Meanwhile, environmentalists point out that the reseavdrag rewards people travelling long distances to work and even using their cars while those who cycle can't claim anything as they don't spend more than 10k on their bikes!

I'm not going to take this up as my political fight. I'm just going to reclaim me some tax money and let you lot figure out the morals for yourselves. Happy taxing!

Day 581: Bewitching Maundy Thursday AKA Skärtorsdag

Ah those days, when we would dress up like old crones.

Easter, that time of year. Everyone's eating easter eggs and sweets and actual eggs and thinking about Jesus maybe. And most importantly the kids are dressing up as witches and going trick or treating...or, no? Wait, isn't that Halloween?

If you ever wanted to see in action the random smashing together of Christian holidays with days of other Pagan traditions, Sweden is THE PLACE. You can tell people that Christmas is in December because of Saturnalia, but nobody remembers what Saturnalia is any more. Or you can explain that Halloween is suspiciously similar to Gaelic Samhain, but people don't really know what that is either.

In England people eat buns with crosses on (because Jesus.) and eat chocolate eggs (because rebirth. And spring.) But just try to explain how little kids dressing up like crones, carrying around coffee pans with tea towels on their heads and going door to door asking for money has anything to do with Easter.

Since the witch trials in Sweden in the 1600's people have believed that Skärtorsdag, the Thursday before Easter, is the day when all the witches fly off on their brooms (or cats, or other household items) to go to a mountain called Blåkulla and have sex with the devil. If  you can read Swedish then there's a lovely graphic description of the devil's penis on the relevant Wikipedia page. Interestingly the English version of the same Wikipedia page doesn't give anything near the same level of detail.

But you know, Easter was already near the devil-witch-sex time so why not nowadays just combine everything and have the kids dress up as witches and sell cards with the Easter bunny door to door?

Witches on household items = Hocus Pocus

Quite how witches went from being detested and feared to being emulated with cutesy costumes is a little bit lost on me. How Swedish people think it's totally normal to have Easter witches and have no understanding as to why is further lost still.

Day 572: When I'm Cleaning Windows

Aah the Squeegee. A humble tool with a thousand uses. Or thereabouts.

In England the only reason I owned one of these babies was to wipe the windows during cleaning. I saw one approximately twice a year. Now I see one nearly every day.

I stole this from a guy who told me NOT to use a squeegee

I haven't showered in a single Swedish shower that didn't have one. (I say I see one NEARLY every day because....I don't have one in my flat! I suppose you could accuse me of not assimilating the culture.)

Once my boyfriend complimented me on doing a thorough job of wiping down the glass. I explained that I have window cleaners in my family. Also there's great novelty value in being a naked window cleaner. (Sometimes I have so much fun I actually wipe the glass down and then push all the water across the floor into the drain. SUCH FUN TO BE HAD IN SWEDEN.)

On a (not totally unrelated) side note, did you know the Romans and Greeks used to Squeegee each other over 2000 years ago at the baths? Tru story bro. I don't do this myself but I thought I would share. PICS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN:

trust the University of Oxford if you don't trust me

What do you use yours for?

Day 551: Möte

This is the scene: you're at work, there's a meeting and you're sitting with your colleagues. Probably your boss is talking, probably someone is taking notes, probably some decisions are being made or something is being discussed so that a decision can be made. More than likely it's boring but necessary.

If this is a scene you recognize then you don't work in Sweden. I just sat in a staff room for the last hour and a half and for a good hour chunk of it a group of people were having their weekly möte (meeting). This consisted of them discussing the blue/black gold/yellow dress for 45 minutes (nej men! Jag ser blå! Nej men du ser guld! Men titta här det är blå! Men titta där det är guld! Ååååååh neeeeeeeej ooooooh aaaaaaajj vad konstigt! Etc etc 45 minutes later.)

Now I'm about to leave the room and there are two more meetings happening, consisting of two groups of three women drinking coffee and gossiping. "Maybe they're not meetings" you protest. Then why do these peoples' timetables have a big MEETING written on them?

I myself have been in many a möte. They last around 3 hours, although a good 45 mins of this consists of chatting and drinking tea/coffee, or on a really good day cake and tea. The other 2h15 mins is people telling me things they could have emailed me, and people complaining about things that never change, never will change and no amount of complaining can change. Occasionally there will be a show of hands to vote on an issue that we never hear about ever again. More than once the phrase "vi får återkomma till det här senare" (we'll come back to this later) is used to dismiss an issue without resolution, rest assured we never återkomma to it senare.

Sometimes we have meetings about meetings. The topic of the meeting will be "what shall we discuss at the next meeting" or "how do you think the last meeting went". The interesting thing about my meetings is that I work exclusively with foreigners, with the exception of the Swedish management. My group are all English, and when asked to give feedback we always write that we want concrete direction from the management rather than an endless stream of dialogue about what the focus of the next meeting should be, but I suspect we're fighting a losing battle against a long-established and well known phenomenon. Also, being English, we don't really want the status quo to change, we just want to complain. I love 45 minutes of tea and cake and several hours' opportunity to complain about the way things are.

It does make things take longer though, this ample opportunity to sit and chat. Masters degrees take two years instead of one, waiting for a doctors or dentists appointment takes ages not because of overcrowding but because of work/life balance, kids don't learn to read and write until they're 7 because they have to have time to play and chill out and students carry on being students until they're about 80 years old.

Maybe I'm making too big of a leap between having a directionless approach to meetings and having a keen sense of work/life balance and maybe I've never seen how focussed workers in the private sector are during their meetings but I'm still willing to bet they have a decent spread at the Fika table.

The room is set up for hosting a meeting

Day 543: GRAVEL

AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGG  SO MUCH GRAVEL!

IT GETS IN MY BOOT SO I TAKE OFF MY BOOT AND SHAKE OUT MY BOOT THEN PUT ON MY BOOT BUT SOMEHOW THERE'S MORE GRAVEL ALREADY IN MY FUCKING BOOT! How is there gravel already in there?! I haven't even put my foot down! Can it teleport? Can it fly?

YEAH IT CAN FLY, WHICH IS WHY IT SMASHES LITTLE HOLES IN THE CAR WINDSCREEN WHEN YOU'RE DRIVING ON THE MOTORWAY!

And just look at this PILE OF SHIT I have to walk past on every FUCKING street corner! and LOOK HOW MUCH FUCKING GRAVEL IS IN THE BACKGROUND! That's not even the HALF OF IT.

Yeah that's right, I made the picture XL so YOU have to look at this fugly shit, too.

Really I should be thankful for the gravel because it stops me from falling on my arse when the floor is nothing but ice. BUT I'M NOT! LOOK HOW IT FUCKS UP MY NICE WOODEN FLOOR:

LOOK AT IT!

Door mat? Gravelly. Escalators? Gravelly. The bottoms of my shoes? Gravelly. Busses? Gravelly. Trains? Gravelly. Shops? Gravelly. My whole FUCKING LIFE RIGHT NOW? GRAVELLY.

One advantage is that when you vacuum the house it makes that satisfying gravelly noise because the hoover is picking up so much gravel. I guess that means I have to change the bag more often though, fucking gravel.

Eventually the council will come and pick it all up again, so that's nice. Not in my house though. Or in my shoe. And they won't fix the car windscreen or empty my hoover bag. Fuckers.

Day 533: Chess

Chess is really fucking popular here in Sweden!
Who knew!

I saw a man playing chess on his phone during his commute and I thought "Blaaaarrgh chess." This is because I have no patience for chess (or yoga, but that's another story) and I thought playing chess would make my commute feel longer, not shorter! It reminded me that I've seen a lot of people playing chess on their phones, not to mention a lot of little kids and teenagers playing chess at school of their own free will. Every classroom in primary and secondary school usually has a big box of chess boards and pieces for children to play with from the age of 6 onwards. And they know what the pieces fucking do! (Not like some kids I saw in England once who were just eating the pieces.)

The superabundance of chess is due in part to generous state funding. Sweden's Chess federation has a well organised committee and spends their money wisely on many projects, there are chess events and clubs all over Sweden and the sport is linked closely to schools. In comparison to the English Chess federation the Swedish website is sleeker, has a flashy logo and has a much catchier URL suggesting that it is, in fact, the go-to place for chess. The English website looks like some chess nerds had a panic during their 5 minute break from chess and asked their non-chess playing friends to throw something together with some non-state awarded pennies they saved while not playing chess.

So why does Sweden play more chess than England? Er, well, actually it probably doesn't. I haven't done a whole lot of research, but my limited digging did show that there have been significantly more notable chess players in England than in Sweden. (The problem with my research is that it's from English Wikipedia, there wasn't a corresponding Swedish list). All I can say is that I have definitely seen more people playing in Sweden and that chess has a much better public profile here than it does in England, almost undoubtedly thanks to the uptake of chess in schools. The only place I've seen kids enjoying chess in England was working in a private school, suggesting that good old Swedish socialism has spread the game across the masses, rather than keeping it as the preserve of the intellectual (read: rich) elite.

Otherwise we can thank the long history of chess in Scandinavia for its being an established game; Vikings brought the game to Sweden in the first Millennium having received it during trade in the Middle East and Byzantium. The famous Lewis Chessmen found in Scotland were made in Norway and the current world chess champion is a Norwegian. The most common and famous opening chess move is even called the "Scandinavian Defense".

The Lewis Chessmen, British Museum

As I said, chess is really fucking popular here in Sweden and who knew!
Well, now you do.

Day 527: Spongebob Square

Don't get me wrong, Spongebob Squarepants is probably weird in all languages. Here's the English version if you haven''t heard it (where have you BEEN?)

But there's just something ridiculously hilarious about Svampbob Fyrkant, as he's known in Swedish. I think it's just something about how fucking LITERAL the name is, I just don't know. Hey kids, this is a show about a FOUR-CORNERED SQUARE that is also a SPONGE! (Or possibly a mushroom or a scourer depending on how your translate svamp....context is important, kids!) Also, somehow it's more surreal maybe, that it is in fact Bob who is square, and not his pants. Mind. Blown.

Är ni med, barn? / Are ya ready kids?
Aj aj, kapten! / Ay Ay Captain!
Jag hör er inte! / I don't hear you!
Aj aj, kapten! / Ay Ay Captain!
Åååååååååååååh.. / Ooooooooooh
Vem bor i en ananas djupt i det blå? / Who lives in a pineaple deep in the blue?
Svampbob Fyrkant! / Sponge Bob Square
Gul och porös, absorberar som få! / Yellow and porous, absorbs what he gets
Svampbob Fyrkant! / Sponge Bob Square
Jag varnar dig kompis, visst finns det en risk! / I'm warning you friend, of course there's a risk
Svampbob Fyrkant! / Sponge Bob Square
Bob får dig att gapa precis som en fisk! / Bob makes you gape just like a fish!
Svampbob Fyrkant! / Sponge Bob Square
Redo? / Ready
Svampbob Fyrkant! / Sponge Bob Square

Day 524: Swedish Advertising

Advertising. It's the bane of existence...right? The comedian Bill Hicks once asked people who worked in Marketing to kill themselves, such was his hatred of people trying to sell us stuff.

But today during my commute I realised that, actually, billboards here in Sweden aren't always trying to sell me stuff. I've accidentally stumbled upon this subject before, while talking about the Feminist Initiative spreading awareness and Anarchists trying to destroy adverts using counterproductive methods. In these posts, the adverts mentioned were spreading information for public awareness rather than for sales purposes, and this seems to be fairly common. Here are a few pictures I took today in the tunnelbana in Stockholm, all of these are next to, or opposite, each other:

"Recycle if it's beyond saving! Do an Electrical cleanse!"

"We must be better at economising the world's resources"

"Choose the right fish for the future"

So there's the proof, public awareness campaigns are, indeed, common.

"But just how common?" I wondered. "And how likely am I to see some interesting information instead of being encouraged to buy something?"

That's when I did some very low intensity research. A sample you might say. I made a tally of every single advert I saw for the rest of the day and put them into categories; "Selling" if the advert wanted me to buy a product, "Public Info" if the advert wanted me to make more ethical/environmentally friendly choices, "Education and Training" if it was a school or college being advertised, "Gym/Public health" as a separate category (because even though they're businesses I feel it's a bit more public-health orientated than being encouraged to drink coke) and "Event" for concerts and sports events. The results are in!

Predictably "Selling" has the majority. But interestingly it doesn't even make up half of all the adverts I saw. And even more interestingly, there were very few different companies which actually make up that block of 39%. Around a fifth of all adverts I saw in the "Selling" category were from Coca-Cola  while a further sixth of the adverts were from Volvo. There were none, or very few, of the adverts I would describe as common in England, such as for McDonalds.

The "Public Information" category weighs in at around a quarter of all the adverts I saw. For someone desensitised to seeing them, perhaps this does not seem too high a number. But for me, coming from a country with next to no such adverts (and more importantly, a country which doesn't invest enough money in such projects to allow widespread advertising) a quarter is A LOT. I'm impressed that everyone is told to save the environment, consider the chemicals they put down the drain, recycle, eat sustainably and god only knows what else on a daily basis.

All this being said, I can appreciate that some of the adverts I've labelled as "Public Service" are still, implicitly, trying to get people to buy things, albeit more environmentally friendly things. So that just raises the question, are Swedes obsessed with saving the planet because their adverts encourage them, or do the adverts target the enviro-conscious Swede because that's just the way they are?

Day 516: Swedish Girl Starter Pack

There is a lot of this meme going around at the moment. My commute today amidst an army of clones inspired today's post.

Day 511: The White Line

The definitive worst thing about snow is its ability to melt and refreeze into an ice rink making all roads treacherous. This week my boss sent everyone a "welcome back to a new term" email, in which the bulk of the words were spent detailing how she had decked it outside a school and we should all take care not to fall over out there!

There's only one place of refuge at a time like this, the centre of Uppsala. God knows how much money is spent on this but the entire central portion of the city has underfloor heating which melts all the ice. The line where the heating stops is clearly visible.