Disturbing Landmark

Last night we crossed a threshold of our sojourn in Sweden: the end of darkness. Last night, for the first time this year, true darkness never came to Uppsala, leaving us instead with a night-long astronomical twilight. Astronomical twilight is the darkest of the three degrees of twilight, the lightest being civil twilight, with nautical twilight falling between the two. What does this mean for us? Well, it's still getting pretty dark at night, although the nights are getting shorter fast. But in a few weeks we'll see the end of astronomical twilight for the spring, and then by June, with the sun rising at 3:30, we'll see only 3 hours of nautical twilight in the middle of the night, culminating in a week where a few hours of civil twilight will have to pass for "night".

I think I'm glad I finished sewing the bedroom curtains this week. Between the blinds and two layers of curtains, the bedroom is pretty dark at night now, and can be made tolerably dim at mid-day. So with sleep masks, it may be enough to see us through the summer. Oh, and a heavy cloth to cover Jennifer's latest acquisition: the world's brightest alarm clock.

I'll put a chart of our sunrise times on this page in the next couple of days, but if you're curious in the meantime I wrote a little web sun rise and set graphing page. It still needs a bit of polish, but it's functional as is.

The Swedish word for the day is gardiner.

Cultural Notes Part 1: Enjoy the Silence

In the last post, I mentioned that the stereotype of the singing Swede has perhaps some basis in reality. Here's another one: the taciturn Swede.

Swedes apparently don't like to say any more than necessary. A business transaction, say buying a hot dog on the street, takes the following words: "En värmkorv." "Tolv." (hand over the money, receive hot dog and change if appropriate). That's it. No words like "please" or "thank you" are required or expected. If you say "Tack" to the vendor, you may startle them.

While this taciturnity does not generally hold in social situations, it can happen there too. In my second week at work, I finally got up the courage to go out to the lunch room, joining five other people there at a table that comfortably holds six. Some conversation had been going on when I first got into the room, but then it petered out and was replaced with... nothing. Silence. I sat there, feeling this silence growing and growing, and I am fairly sure my face was getting redder and redder. I ate my lunch as fast as I could and scurried away. I did go to the break room for lunch the next day, but I waited until I was sure there wasn't anybody else there. Five minutes later, of course, someone came in to eat their lunch... and sat down across from me without saying a word, or even looking at me. Once again, I fled for my office at the earliest possible moment.

I have since figured out that there are two things going on here. First, unlike fika, lunch is not necessarily considered a time for socializing; many of my co-workers use lunch to catch up on the news (our department has a subscription to the local daily), and anyway, you're busy eating, so why would you talk? The second thing is that Swedes seem to be completely comfortable as part of a silent group. It can feel quite unfriendly at first, but it really isn't. Even at fika, in which social interaction is expected, sometimes a silence falls that is simply not broken for minutes, if ever. Such a prolonged silence can herald the end of a particular fika, but it doesn't have to—sometimes some people get up and leave, while others remain seated, and continue to sit in silence.

The silence is a little strange, from the perspective of a chatty American like myself, but I have come to appreciate and enjoy it. I no longer have to fight the instinct to break a silence, and honestly it's a relief to not have to come up with small talk or a new topic every time the conversation runs out. If you don't want to talk, you simply don't talk. Feel free, however, to sit back, relax, and enjoy the silence.

A choir concert

A couple of weeks ago, Joe and I went to a concert in a church in downtown Uppsala. My office mate S. sings in the Uppsala Kammarkör, and he sold me a couple of tickets to their performance on 6 April.

The church is an Uppsala landmark, appearing on tourist maps and brochures. It is not, however, one of the classic old churches that are found here and there in town. The first time we saw the building, we both assumed that it was built by communists some time in the early 1960s, and we dubbed it "Our Lady of the Secret Police." There's just something vaguely East German about it, to my eyes.

The 30-voice choir was joined by an 18-piece orchestra for the concert, in which they sang Mozart's Sparvmässan and Kröningsmassan, both i C-dur. I don't think I have ever heard (or even heard of) the Sparvmässan before hearing it at this concert (S. told me he had never heard of it either, until they were handed the sheet music). The program says that not much is known about this piece other than that it was first performed on Easter in 1776 in Salzburg's cathedral. It is a fine piece with some interesting tempo changes, not Mozart's best, perhaps, but perfectly lovely to listen to.

The second piece I have heard before, of course, and the choir did a wonderful job with it. Their female soloist is excellent (S. later told me that she is also a scientist by day, working in the biomedical research center), and their voices filled the church so that you felt you could almost float on it. This feeling, of the air being saturated with sound, is something recorded music can never reproduce, no matter how good your speakers are.

S. and I talked a little about the concert the following Monday, and about signing and music more generally. S. is a music buff, of course, and he also enjoys all types of music, and especially going to concerts. He is of the opinion that current technology makes the traditional recording industry obsolete, and he thinks that musicians are going to have to go back to earning their money the way they did in the old days—that is, from live performances.

One popular stereotype about Swedes is that they all sing a lot, and I have no evidence to dispute this stereotype. I have been told that big parties like Disputationsfests almost always include some singing, both set performances and sing-alongs that include everyone, and I have the impression that the more formal the party, the more singing is expected. Fika talk has included discussions (and sometimes nearly arguments, which are not common here) about the Eurovision song contest (last mentioned here). And when music is discussed at fika, people do not hesitate to sing a bar or two of something aloud, to jog someone else's memory.

S. even asked me if I were interested in singing in the choir, as they need some more people for their spring and summer concert plans. I, err, demurred. I will need to spend a lot more time breathing the air of Sweden before my voice is anything close to those that I've heard so far!

Spring is here

Yes, it's definitely feeling like spring time. The banks of the river are lined with office workers on fika, and students who appear to be studying how to be on fika, presumably as part of some local version of a high school civics class. Out here in Flogsta, the lawns are filled with cats hunting leaves and tiny insects which may or may not actually be there, as well as Swedish girls playing lawn games which seem to involve making elaborate arrangements of various sized wooden blocks and then occasionally picking one of them up and throwing it at some of the others, no doubt governed by some advanced heuristic beyond my ken. And, of course, the "Puck" has returned, or so the extremely colorful signs at virtually every bus stop in the city inform me.



Being a higher primate, my attention is of course immediately attracted by colorful, not to mention shiny, things, so naturally I've been curious about this hockey-puck-like ice cream confection which has, apparently, made it's much anticipated return to the quickie marts of Sweden. So it was that today, on my way home from the grocery store, carrying my canvas sacks full of fresh vegetables1, I decided that such a lovely spring day called for an icy treat, and I got myself a Puck. Mmm, I thought, I haven't had a nice chocolate covered ice cream popsicle in years.

Well, I still haven't. If I'd paid more attention to the words on the brightly colored advertising, I might have noticed what I instead discovered to my horror at the first bite: that's not a tasty chocolate shell, it's lakrits. That's right, lovely vanilla ice cream encased in a thin, crunchy shell of salty, salty licorice. I still shudder to think of it.

Oh well. At least it isn't actually warm out, yet, seeing as how all of our spring clothes are sitting on a wharf in Jersey.

1 I keep forgetting to talk about the fresh vegetables. Yes, in fact, there is plenty of fresh produce. In the winter it seems to come mainly from Spain, with some other Mediterranean locales thrown in for good measure. Just this week, though, local produce is starting to show up in street stands downtown. Hopefully we'll report back from a Farmer's Market soon.

I'm an Idiot

Ever since my first trip to a grocery store in Sweden, I've been muttering (mostly to myself, but occasionally to those around me), "Chervil. Where's the chervil? I need some chervil." You see, I like a nice bit of egg salad—eggs are cheap and easy protein, and with some fresh chives and chervil (sometimes I use sage instead, which is a little odd, but I like it), a little lemon juice and some nice dijon1, egg salad is a tasty way to eat them.

Most grocery stores here sell a small selection of live herbs. In fact, live seems to be the only way to get fresh herbs here. In our last place this was not ideal, as I struggled to keep the little guys alive, but now we have a window shelf and a southern exposure, so it's much easier. Right now I've got some persilja, some basilika, and some gräslök2. But Sweden does not appear to believe in chervil.

Well, after grousing about it for months, I finally got around to doing a little research this morning. In Sweden, it's called körvel, which I'm pretty sure would be pronounced "chervil," but it isn't common (doesn't tolerate the cold). Swedes usually substitute spansk körvel which has a stronger anise flavor. Well, that's not going to cut it for my egg salad, I mean, I don't want more anise flavor… er, wait, anise flavor? And why do all of the pictures of chervil look like parsley? That's not what chervil looks like, it's got slender, paired leaves. Related to parsley?

I don't put chervil in my egg salad. I put tarragon in my egg salad. Tarragon is called dragon here, and it's only available in pretty much every grocery store I've been in.

I may be an idiot, but tonight I'm an idiot with tasty egg salad. So that's something.

1 This is silly, but may I just add that the Grey Poupon here is outstanding mustard? I got a small jar our first week here, and we've been amazed at how much more flavorful it is. Maybe it's just fresher—America's Test Kitchen says that dijon loses heat rapidly even when unopened. Anyway, it's good stuff.

2 The chives took some searching—for some reason, chives and dill are sold in smaller pots, and placed next to the fennel in the fresh produce section, instead of off next to the potatoes and onions where the rest of the live herbs go. It's not just a single chain doing it, either, it seems to be everyone.

Apoteket, Eventually

This week I finally ran out of my US prescription medicine, so today I went back to Apoteket, the state-run pharmacy monopoly here. You may recall from a while back that we were waiting to make doctor's appointments until we had gotten our registration from Försäkringskassan. This is because the documentation we had been given said we should register with Försäkringskassan as soon as we arrived, and the helpful (seeming) man at the local Försäkringskassan office said, "You fill out these forms, then we send you a card, and then you can go to the doctor." Well, after three weeks of waiting for a Social Insurance card to arrive, a couple of phone calls revealed that we needn't have waited: Försäkringskassan covers things like pensions, long-term disablility, and worker's comp, but it is unrelated to the national medical insurance scheme (which, I guess, is just so ubiquitous that Swedes don't even think to mention it). All this is a Good Thing, because as non-taxpayers (Jennifer's stipend is tax exempt) we aren't eligible for Försäkringskassan benefits.

So, that's three weeks wasted. We then set out to make appointments to see a doctor, which took another 5 weeks or so. One of the ways in which the Swedish health care system is different than that of the US is that every neighborhood in Sweden has a Vårdcentral, which is not a hospital so much as a clinic. When you need any kind of non-emergency medical care, you start with your local vårdcentral. There you are assigned a doctor, who is essentially your primary care physician, who writes your prescriptions and refers you to other doctors. The vårdcentral also serves as your local urgent care clinic, where you can get a same-day appointment for non-emergency-but-still-urgent stuff.

OK, so after two months I finally had an appointment, and somewhat anticlimactically, it lasted for all of five minutes. My doctor looked at the prescription bottles I brought in, typed on the computer a bit, and then we were done. I expected to be poked and prodded a bit, maybe get a bloodwork order, or at least a request for medical records, but instead he seemed quite happy to just fill my (admittedly innocuous) prescriptions and be done with it. Here's the cool part though: no written prescriptions. He wasn't just typing up a scrip to print out, he was actually putting a prescription in a database. Once they're in there, you can go to any pharmacy ("In Sweden," he hastened to add) and they just look it up and fill it. Here we go, I thought, finally we begin to see the benefits of living in a socialist paradise, where everything is centralized and standardized. No transferring prescriptions from one pharmacy to another, no waiting a few weeks to fill a new one then realizing you've lost that critical little piece of paper in the meantime.

Fast forward to today. I went to the Apoteket branch downtown, and this time I took a queue number for the recept line. After a few minutes, my number was called, and I went up to the appropriate counter. We haggled for a few minutes about my legal status:

You have ID?

Yes, here you are.

But you do not have a personal number?

Yes, I do.

[Some typing] But you do not have the last four numbers.

Yes, they are xxxx.

[More typing] But you do not have a personal number.

No, I really do.

But this is not you.

No, that's someone else. But that's not my personal number.

Because you do not have a personal number.

Because I do have a personal number, and that isn't it.

…and so forth. Eventually, we reached an agreement: I exist, and have a personal number. And, incidentally, prescriptions. Hooray. So the pharmacist filled my prescriptions, printed a bunch of stickers which then got attached to the pill boxes, the bag she put them in, and then to multiple copies of little yellow forms, two of which got handed to me. She told me I could pay the 600 SEK I owed up at the front, and that was that. As I turned to go, I happened to ask about the yellow forms, and she said, "You must bring those back when you refill the prescriptions." I allowed that I was confused, because I thought all that was in the computer. Well, it turns out it was in the computer, but no more. Now that it had been filled, I had to hang on to those pieces of paper and bring them back every time I got a refill, otherwise I could never get any more pills.

So I've traded a piece of paper I have to not lose for two weeks for a piece of paper I have to not lose for a year. Perfect.

Incidentally, if 600 SEK seems a little high for two prescriptions, well, it sort of is. But it is for three months, and you only have to pay the first 1800 SEK of your prescription costs per year, with the government picking up the tab for everything beyond that. So it's not so bad, really.

Now, to find a place to stash these little pieces of paper for the next three months. If only someone in Sweden sold hanging file folders with which to fill the hanging file cabinet we bought…