1. Salty Licorice (holy ammonia chloride, Batman)
Salty Licorice is strong black licorice laced with ammonia chloride, the stuff you use to clean your bathroom. I'm not fucking kidding its hideous. But in my mind I can't stop eating it because my find is not prepared to deal with its reality. Eventually I'll probably get to like it. It costs about $.10 a kilo and Swedes will eat anything that's cheap.
2. Strange Fellowship with Berries
Swedes spend entire days picking them by the bucket. This obviously goes back to the day when Swedes were poor and didn't have supermarkets. I don't know why they still do it... but it must really annoy the birds and squirrels.
3. System Bolaget
All liquor stores here are owned by Mother Sweden. They are open from 9 to 5 and if you want spirits, wine, or beer over 3.5 percent alcohol you must go there. They are never open when you need them, and they are very sparsely located. The prices are designed to scare you sober. The cheapest bottle of vodka costs $30 and there are no six-packs. You have to pay full price for six separate beers. Being the lazy bastard I am, I buy the 3.5 beer from the supermarket. It's relatively cheap and 6 of them will give you a buzz.
4. Pancakes, bacon, and fried eggs are not breakfast foods.
A Swedish friend named Johan (what else) told me that English people are so ugly by the time they turn 40 because they eat sausages and grease for breakfast. Maybe he's right but at least they get sausages for breakfast.
5. Smoking is gross but snuff is de rigeur...
Smoking will be banned indoors from Sweden starting June 1st, 2005. Which is okay because no one smokes here... they all use snuff. Which my mom used to find in my pants pocket as a kid and I eventually stopped using in favor of smoking because girls thought it was gross. No one thinks it's gross here and everyone claims it's safer than smoking... and it gives you a buzz close to shooting a speedball. So I guess I'll get used to it.
6. No Fat Bastards
You can't buy pants larger than 34 inches in most stores. Even fat Swedes have little waists ans huge bellies. Thankfully I am losing weight due to the System Bolaget and constantly eating muesli instead of sausage for breakfast.
7. Mexican Food Sucks Here
Nachos here means ten corn chips with tomato sauce and creme fraiche poured on top. Expect to pay 70 kronors ($10) for this. If you complain they will think you are insane. Fajitas cost $30 and are not even half the normal American portion. So now I make Mexican at home. Negro Modelo is not to be found even in my closest System Bolaget.
8. Learning Swedish is Difficult
Nobody (except my sweetie Linda of course) will speak to me in Swedish once they find out I am American and hear my awful Swedish. How am I supposed to learn?
9. Free Language Lessons?
In Sweden its the right of all immigrants to get free language lessons. Most are in the daytime, although they don't pay you to take them so supposedly you're supposed to starve to death and live outside. Also, it's acceptable to start SFI classes six months after you get here. I'll know freakin Swedish by then.
10. Why am I living in Huvudsta?
Apartment rent prices in Stockholm are easily affordable... but there are exactly 0 apartments avaialble to rent in Stockholm. So if you want an apartment you have to live in another town, buy a place, or get a second-hand contract which you cost you twice as much as the apartment is supposed to cost.
Okay that was unfair and possibly unfunny. But next time I'm gonna do 10 Things I Don't Understand About Americans. That will be even more unfair and more unfunny.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Job Interview for Sloth
It's been a month and I now have a legitimate job interview coming up. I must say I am excited.
The job is for a Webmaster position with some Swedish dot com which I will not mention at least until I get the job maybe.
I want to get a job because honestly its little boring sitting around all day with no money to spend on Playstation or a new Gaming PC.
It would be different if I were writing like made finishing TLDDGH (my new novel) or working on my third novel (Stabbing at the Heart of Paris) or even my short story, oddly enough called Floccinaucinihilipilification, but I'm not.
I spent Sunday hungover and Ingrid took a picture of me passed out on the Tunnelbahna. In my defense it was 3:00 a.m. and the fucking trains only run once per hour.... so what was I supposed to do? I hate always being the drunkest one at a party but I am pretty much socially a wallflower without the booze so I end up being the entertainment. And everyone knows being entertaining is tiring. If you look closely at the picture you can see the wine stain on my pants. I must have spilled my last glass.
The last two days I was on a mission to walk from Downtown to my apartment in Huvudsta. Its far by most people's standards but I managed to do it today. Yesterday (and all the other days) I kept getting lost and ending up on the opposite side of the city. As the Swedish say when they are happy... hurrah hurrah.
The job is for a Webmaster position with some Swedish dot com which I will not mention at least until I get the job maybe.
I want to get a job because honestly its little boring sitting around all day with no money to spend on Playstation or a new Gaming PC.
It would be different if I were writing like made finishing TLDDGH (my new novel) or working on my third novel (Stabbing at the Heart of Paris) or even my short story, oddly enough called Floccinaucinihilipilification, but I'm not.
I spent Sunday hungover and Ingrid took a picture of me passed out on the Tunnelbahna. In my defense it was 3:00 a.m. and the fucking trains only run once per hour.... so what was I supposed to do? I hate always being the drunkest one at a party but I am pretty much socially a wallflower without the booze so I end up being the entertainment. And everyone knows being entertaining is tiring. If you look closely at the picture you can see the wine stain on my pants. I must have spilled my last glass.
The last two days I was on a mission to walk from Downtown to my apartment in Huvudsta. Its far by most people's standards but I managed to do it today. Yesterday (and all the other days) I kept getting lost and ending up on the opposite side of the city. As the Swedish say when they are happy... hurrah hurrah.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Bestiality on the Rise
According to The Local, an English newspaper printed in Stockholm, bestitality is on the rise in Sweden. I find this to be a bit odd. I mean, with all the hot women here it seems bizarre. I would understand in other places, like Arabia, Wales (with all those sexy sheep), or New Jersey... but Sweden, come on now.
Apparently the ban on bestiality was lifted in 1944 along with the ban on homosexuality. And since then things have been taking off gangbusters. Same sex marriages are legal here now, however this doesn't extend to trans-species unions.
Curiously enough, the main concern in the article is that people are hurting the animals. At first I thought... no way is a normal man going to hurt a horse, but then Ingrid told me they often use a knife to cut the animals first (I can't imagine what for but she assures me it's common).
Until next time... remember if you are going to have sex with an animal, do it in Sweden where its legal. But don't do it in front of me. Because I will call the police on you anway.
Apparently the ban on bestiality was lifted in 1944 along with the ban on homosexuality. And since then things have been taking off gangbusters. Same sex marriages are legal here now, however this doesn't extend to trans-species unions.
Curiously enough, the main concern in the article is that people are hurting the animals. At first I thought... no way is a normal man going to hurt a horse, but then Ingrid told me they often use a knife to cut the animals first (I can't imagine what for but she assures me it's common).
Until next time... remember if you are going to have sex with an animal, do it in Sweden where its legal. But don't do it in front of me. Because I will call the police on you anway.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Time to Get Serious(er)
Well I am over my jetlag and over my sickness and Monte is gone although the hangover still lingers. Now it's back to finding a job and learning more Swedish.
Thursday was drunken and Friday was insanely drunken. I can't remember what we did Thursday but Friday Linda Monte and I went to a museum, The National Museum, which is more or less free and features some great design from the past 100 years plus paintings from Northern Europe over the past 500 years.
Monte and myself really seemed to like the Bacchus & Ariadne paintings the best because they all show people drinking and fucking. Linda seemed to like the ones with horses but that's no surprise (not because she likes to fuck horses although she did marry me, ha ha).
That night we went on a "cheap beer crawl" which went from 4:00 p.m to 4:00 a.m. and ended up not being cheap but very fun and scary so who cares. I am still shuddering over some of the things that transpired.
Saturday night I was hungover as a mother and Linda and I went out to Drottningholm to have dinner with the King's neighbor. If you recall its where we stayed earlier... almost four weeks ago. It's the large white house that has been to two World's Fairs... Paris in 1886 and the one in Rio (I don't know when that was and am too lazy at the moment to Google it).
Before when we stayed on these same grounds, we stayed in the guest house so we never got inside the main house. Well its like a museum. There are ivory sculptures, Chinese cabinets, and other worldly artifacts, fanciful woodwork, a wine cellar stocked with up to 300 year old wine, and my favorite thing of all, a wireless internet connection.
The man, whose name I will not mention by name for fear of embarrassing him, was absolutely funny and cool for such a successful international businessman. He made jokes and told anecdotes that were actually funny, invited his own friends and neighbors to meet us, as if we special people, and tried to plan out the rest of our lives in Sweden by making suggesting where to buy property and how to avoid paying more than one's fair share of taxes.
For dinner we had champagne and beer and for the main course a Mongolian Beef Stew which is served in a large charcoal-fueled copper pot which is filled with water. When fuel is added at the bottom a jet of fire five feet high comes out the top and scares everyone at the table (everyone was a bit taken aback by the host's enthusiasm for this unique feature of the pot). Inside the pot everyone puts meat and veggies and kind of eats them after they are cooked like a fondue... and at the end you eat the soup that the pot makes. Yum.
After dinner we had coffee and ice cream and cookies and brandy and whiskey and talked until 1:00 a.m. Nobody could believe how late it was and he drove us home because the buses were closed and it was not too far. He is going to meet up with my dad in Washington next week and apparently they are good friends so I will probably see him again. My dad just got a new job as a board member of an international sugar corporation in London (he has been retired for 7 years and now he has like 5 jobs, mostly honorary positions, at 63 and I can't even find one job and I am 34) so he will be visiting us in Sweden a lot which means more visits to the King's Neighbor. In truth we were already invited back so I must have done something right.
But I am torn between living a slacker life and getting serious and getting another 9 to 5 and try to make some money. I have completed a novel which I think is publishable but nothing is happening, not that I am trying very hard for it to happen. I am about to finish another novel which I feel is better. And there is the book of short stories. I need to get an agent and then get published... so I can travel and drink and do readings and then I wouldn't need to hang out with my Dad's friends who have somehow mistaken me for a serious person. Although that would still be great. Ah, but I am rambling now... so until next time.
Thursday was drunken and Friday was insanely drunken. I can't remember what we did Thursday but Friday Linda Monte and I went to a museum, The National Museum, which is more or less free and features some great design from the past 100 years plus paintings from Northern Europe over the past 500 years.
Monte and myself really seemed to like the Bacchus & Ariadne paintings the best because they all show people drinking and fucking. Linda seemed to like the ones with horses but that's no surprise (not because she likes to fuck horses although she did marry me, ha ha).
That night we went on a "cheap beer crawl" which went from 4:00 p.m to 4:00 a.m. and ended up not being cheap but very fun and scary so who cares. I am still shuddering over some of the things that transpired.
Saturday night I was hungover as a mother and Linda and I went out to Drottningholm to have dinner with the King's neighbor. If you recall its where we stayed earlier... almost four weeks ago. It's the large white house that has been to two World's Fairs... Paris in 1886 and the one in Rio (I don't know when that was and am too lazy at the moment to Google it).
Before when we stayed on these same grounds, we stayed in the guest house so we never got inside the main house. Well its like a museum. There are ivory sculptures, Chinese cabinets, and other worldly artifacts, fanciful woodwork, a wine cellar stocked with up to 300 year old wine, and my favorite thing of all, a wireless internet connection.
The man, whose name I will not mention by name for fear of embarrassing him, was absolutely funny and cool for such a successful international businessman. He made jokes and told anecdotes that were actually funny, invited his own friends and neighbors to meet us, as if we special people, and tried to plan out the rest of our lives in Sweden by making suggesting where to buy property and how to avoid paying more than one's fair share of taxes.
For dinner we had champagne and beer and for the main course a Mongolian Beef Stew which is served in a large charcoal-fueled copper pot which is filled with water. When fuel is added at the bottom a jet of fire five feet high comes out the top and scares everyone at the table (everyone was a bit taken aback by the host's enthusiasm for this unique feature of the pot). Inside the pot everyone puts meat and veggies and kind of eats them after they are cooked like a fondue... and at the end you eat the soup that the pot makes. Yum.
After dinner we had coffee and ice cream and cookies and brandy and whiskey and talked until 1:00 a.m. Nobody could believe how late it was and he drove us home because the buses were closed and it was not too far. He is going to meet up with my dad in Washington next week and apparently they are good friends so I will probably see him again. My dad just got a new job as a board member of an international sugar corporation in London (he has been retired for 7 years and now he has like 5 jobs, mostly honorary positions, at 63 and I can't even find one job and I am 34) so he will be visiting us in Sweden a lot which means more visits to the King's Neighbor. In truth we were already invited back so I must have done something right.
But I am torn between living a slacker life and getting serious and getting another 9 to 5 and try to make some money. I have completed a novel which I think is publishable but nothing is happening, not that I am trying very hard for it to happen. I am about to finish another novel which I feel is better. And there is the book of short stories. I need to get an agent and then get published... so I can travel and drink and do readings and then I wouldn't need to hang out with my Dad's friends who have somehow mistaken me for a serious person. Although that would still be great. Ah, but I am rambling now... so until next time.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Hungover in Huvudsta: Part Två
Monte came back from Prague and we stayed in. I don't think he slept much in Prague. He said it was dirty and made him glad to come back to Sweden where everything is clean and people don't look at you like they want to rob you. The next morning we started drinking at 9 a.m. and then headed out to El Giganten electronics store to buy a certain DVD player which came with a free mountain bike which I being the cheap bastard that I am was going to give to Linda for her birthday present. Well she wants a bike, I reasoned, and and I want a DVD player so it all works out.
But like everything there is a catch. I used to be a bicycle affecianado and I can't buy her just any bike, it has to at least be something decent. The ad is short on the details of the bike so I haven't bought one yet because the store doesn't have them in yet. Monte noted that the salespeople looked in dread of the whole bike giveaway deal. That last thing they want, he noted, was to deal with 10,000 bicycles being shipped to the store on top of the usual retail hassles.
When I checked the store with Monte, the bicycles weren't in yet so its a bit of a stalemate. I was feeling paranoid in the place and I was afraid of having a panic attack and freaking out. Luckily I didn't. I had a whole host of irrational fears running through my head that I cannot explain. Monte and me pointed ourselves to the closest drinking establishment, a nice outdoor cafe in Medborgarplatsen and stayed there until 5:00 when the indoor pubs openened.
We hung out in the area because its where all the cheap drinks are. Cheap means between 5 and 7 bucks a beer mind you but at least there is none of "that tipping bollocks" (as an old Welsh mate called it) like in the USA. I justify it to myself to that every time you pay $7 for a beer you are putting kids through university and putting food on the table of old folks and subsidizing the Swedish welfare state. I am all for that, as I will soon be benefitting from it, especially if I keep up my drinking.
Monte and I hit some pubs in the Slussen area, inlcuding a disappointing O'Leary's Boston Pub that I was hoping would be showing some American sports but only had lame Champions League football like the British and Irish pubs. The guy that started the pub wasn't even American, he was a Swede who married a yank back in the 80's and decided to capitalize on it. The place was filled with Boston sports memorabilia (8 million kronors worth apparently) but the beers (Sam Adams in bottles for 36 kronors) were cheap although the atmosphere was a bit corporate and we are not that corporate (especially when we've been drinking all day)so we went to Kellys for shots, beers, and dinner and then to Stringfellows in Saint Eriksplan for a final beer before washing down with a Lapin Kulta at 7-11 before coming home and passing out.
Today I went shopping at H&M since it was there Spring sale and some cool Winter stuff was now on sale (its still freezing here if you ask me... spring or no). Then I went to sign up for Swedish Immigration classes. I love the idea of being an immigrant. How cool. I hope when I have kids and they find out they are children of an immigrant they don't get alientated and turn out to be crack dealing vandals that tag the Tunnelbahn with indeciperable scribblings.
More drinking to come...
But like everything there is a catch. I used to be a bicycle affecianado and I can't buy her just any bike, it has to at least be something decent. The ad is short on the details of the bike so I haven't bought one yet because the store doesn't have them in yet. Monte noted that the salespeople looked in dread of the whole bike giveaway deal. That last thing they want, he noted, was to deal with 10,000 bicycles being shipped to the store on top of the usual retail hassles.
When I checked the store with Monte, the bicycles weren't in yet so its a bit of a stalemate. I was feeling paranoid in the place and I was afraid of having a panic attack and freaking out. Luckily I didn't. I had a whole host of irrational fears running through my head that I cannot explain. Monte and me pointed ourselves to the closest drinking establishment, a nice outdoor cafe in Medborgarplatsen and stayed there until 5:00 when the indoor pubs openened.
We hung out in the area because its where all the cheap drinks are. Cheap means between 5 and 7 bucks a beer mind you but at least there is none of "that tipping bollocks" (as an old Welsh mate called it) like in the USA. I justify it to myself to that every time you pay $7 for a beer you are putting kids through university and putting food on the table of old folks and subsidizing the Swedish welfare state. I am all for that, as I will soon be benefitting from it, especially if I keep up my drinking.
Monte and I hit some pubs in the Slussen area, inlcuding a disappointing O'Leary's Boston Pub that I was hoping would be showing some American sports but only had lame Champions League football like the British and Irish pubs. The guy that started the pub wasn't even American, he was a Swede who married a yank back in the 80's and decided to capitalize on it. The place was filled with Boston sports memorabilia (8 million kronors worth apparently) but the beers (Sam Adams in bottles for 36 kronors) were cheap although the atmosphere was a bit corporate and we are not that corporate (especially when we've been drinking all day)so we went to Kellys for shots, beers, and dinner and then to Stringfellows in Saint Eriksplan for a final beer before washing down with a Lapin Kulta at 7-11 before coming home and passing out.
Today I went shopping at H&M since it was there Spring sale and some cool Winter stuff was now on sale (its still freezing here if you ask me... spring or no). Then I went to sign up for Swedish Immigration classes. I love the idea of being an immigrant. How cool. I hope when I have kids and they find out they are children of an immigrant they don't get alientated and turn out to be crack dealing vandals that tag the Tunnelbahn with indeciperable scribblings.
More drinking to come...
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