The arrival of a new bird in the garden, a Eurasian Jay, inspired me to break my 188 day silence and share with everyone the joy and lunacy of Swedish bird names. 1. NUT SHOUTER (Nötskrika, Eurasian Jay)
2. NUT WAKER (Nötväcka, Nuthatch - Ok that one's funny in English, too)
I know what you're not thinking, I haven't updated the blog in many moons. This is because, as it turns out, working a full time job and being a full time masters student erodes your free time (WHO'DA THUNK IT?!)
But for my fan, here is my (brief rundown) of things everyone should know about Swedish university.
1. It's free! And the government gives you some money to study!
2. It's not free enough, you still have to buy food and rent and you know, live in Sweden, one of the most expensive places on this Earth.
3. If you're studying a set program, you don't automatically get enrolled on your courses. You have to apply for them externally. And hope you get in. To courses on your program. That you're already accepted to.
4. Many professors make up grading criteria as they go along, even though they provide you with official grading criteria at the start of the course.
5. You get almost unlimited chances to retake things you failed.
6.Lecturers always try to make group work a thing.
7. Half the people on your course are somehow already employed by the university.
8. Don't ask the studievägledare (study councillor) for advice, they do NOT know what they are talking about.
9. Don't talk over Swedish people in the seminar, even if they've been stuck in a repetitive feedback loop for the last 10 minutes and you have something much more pertinent to say.
10. Wait 10 minutes for them to finish. Then wait another minute in awkward silence to allow time for someone else to potentially speak and get stuck in a feedback loop.
11. Listen to that person say the same thing over and over in a variety of different ways because they want to avoid the one minute of awkward silence that follows their stopping speaking.
12. Spend a 45 minute seminar wanting to kill yourself.
13. Coffee break! You always get a coffee break, at least one an hour. THANK GOD.
14. KAMRATBEDÖMNING. Never get constructive criticism from a professor. The preferred method is to get other students who don't know what they're talking about to give half-assed feedback on your papers.
15. Nobody buys books. If they do you should mug them because they must be millionaires. Professors will lend you books and look the other way while you scan them.
16. At least one lecturer will be from Skåne and completely incomprehensible.
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.
