Student Exams

I had an interesting weekend in Stockholm. The inlaws were in town from Jönkoping as well as Linda's sister Pia who lives in London. Pia is Linda's older sister and we get along great.

Pia's old boyfriend called her "the cockney Swede" because she has a cockney British accent whereas Linda had a more classic British accent (I don't know what it's called but its annoying and sounds like one has never been soiled... they use the words 'proper' and 'right' alot).

Thankfully Linda moved to America for a few years and developed a more interesting and international melange of British, Swedish, and the awful nasal American twine that we have. Most Americans don't know this but they sound fucking terrible. No we don't have a cold pandemic we are Americans... and when we say words with R in them we sound slightly retarded. But in our defense at least we don't sound like extras in the cast of Mary Poppins.

Anyway... on Friday we went to Linda's cousin's Student Party. A Student Party is a typically Swedish high school graduation affair where the kids dress up as sailors and ride around the streets of Stockholm in the beds of large tucks blasting bad music (Survivor, Europe, awful hip-hop, bad house music, etc) and drinking beer and sparkling wine. They wave and shout at people and the trucks toot their horns and its all very strange.

The parents go bananas over the whole thing. This is a huge deal. Families gather at various points around the city and hold up large signs of the graduate as a young child or baby (usually doing something embarrassing) and yelling "Hurrah Hurrah Hurrah" and taking pictures.

After the trucks stop, everyone goes to the graduate's house and eats a smorgasbord and drinks alcohol until late in the night. Now the Swedish student is officially an adult and gets a free University education, travels for a year, or gets a cush job with tons of vacation and benefits.

It's nice to be Swedish, although it looks a bit silly sometimes.