Day 1420: Beans, beans the musical fruit.

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!

Day 1413: Balcony Wars

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.

Next thing I know, the balcony opposite is no longer half obscured with a moulding bamboo mat, no. Now it has...wait, are those...herbs and edible plants? In a variety of window boxes? Plus they've put a HEMTEX©®™ tablecloth over their Café Set©®™. And some fairy lights, aww. WELL LOOK WHAT I JUST BOUGHT MOTHERFUCKERS. 

Fairy lights, aww.

Day 1392: Buy and come

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.

Day 1385: Squeeze day

"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..?

Happy squeezin'!

Day 1378: Carry Fart

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.

Day 1364: Always drive on the right side of life

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...

Day 1321: Aborting the abortion of abortion education

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.

Day 1314: Congratulations Rudolf & Ralf

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?

Day 1307: Ants

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.

Day 1300: Ruotsinsuomalainen

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.