The post "Post-Påsk Post" Fiasco Post

I had originally intended the following post to follow Joe's Easter post:

Post-Påsk addendum: A quick addendum about Easter here—like kids asking for candy, there are some more Halloween-ish prank traditions associated with this holiday. At fika Thursday, V. mentioned that this is the week during which you are supposed to do silly things like sneak "Kick me" signs onto the backs of unsuspecting classmates or colleagues (I didn't notice anyone doing this, but I checked myself when I got back to my office), and Z. said mentioned that when she lived in a large apartment with several roommates, someone switched all the labels on their personal foodstuffs. The oddest thing that happened this week was that all members of my department got an email from the boss on Friday, written so she said from her husband's email address, saying that her office had burned down because her broom had backfired as she was on her way to Blåhall, so she won't be getting out emails for a while. The last last sentence from the mysterious email said that the firemen advised her to go home and drink something strong. It is not clear to me whether this is her joke on us, or her perhaps her husband's joke on her, but I guess I'll find out Tuesday, when the normal work schedule resumes.

Well, it turns out it was no joke whatsoever. My advisor's office (and the adjacent office, and part of the main lab) got burned to a crisp last Friday. She was working in the afternoon, reading in the break area, when the fire broke out in her office and smoke started pouring out of her office door. She sounded the alarm and got out, after initially trying to put it out herself. Fortunately no one was hurt (being a holiday, no one else was around), the things that were lost are replaceable, and in a strange coincidence, earlier in the week she had just moved some personal items that would have been irreplaceable.

So her office is uninhabitable, the lab cannot be used, and they only let us in this morning long enough to get some things and get out, because they (the local equivalent of the HazMat people, I guess) are not happy about the air quality in the second-floor corridor yet, as a lot of plastic was burned and the smell is still quite strong. We got a tour of the damage, too, (see the gallery for pictures). I have things I should read anyway, and can and will do this reading from home, but when will I be able to go back work? I'll let you know when I do...

Glad Post*

*That's a (very) little Svengelska joke. The traditional Easter greeting here is Glad Påsk, and the 'å' is pronounced a lot like a long 'o' in English.

It's Easter, as I'm sure you've noticed, and an early one at that. Just about the earliest Easter there can be, and the earliest any of us likely to experience or have experienced (Easter hasn't fallen on it's earliest possible date, March 22, since 1818, and won't again until 2285). Which reminds me, Happy Easter Birthday, Aunt P.! It's going to be a long haul until the next one for you (2060, I believe), but take it from someone born on Modal Easter Day, it's not such a big thing.

Birthdays aside, Påsk is a pretty big deal in Sweden, as it turns out. Well, not so much the day itself, but it's the center of a four day national holiday: Långfredag, Påskaften, Påskdagen, and Annandag Påsk. It's a time for spring things here, just like everywhere, I suppose, specifically spring cleaning, airing out the country house, feeding the witches candy, changing the curtains to something flowery, decorating the house with birch twigs covered in colorful feathers, and eating turkey. Yes, you heard me right: turkey. Not a common bird here at all, but apparently something of a Påskaften dinner tradition, and Påskaften is the day for all the big Easter family celebrations here, not the day itself.

Right, so, witches. You see, the thing is, in Scandinavia, Easter is when all the witches go to meet the devil (or possibly Odin) at a place called Blåkulla. Since they are all on the road (as it were), there's a chance that one of them might decide to get off the broom for a while and stop by your place en route. The wisest course, as someone who doesn't want to be on the witches' bad side, is to have something handy with which to bribe them to leave you alone, and the most popular choice of bribes is sweets. Naturally, the children of Scandinavia, being a bright and enterprising lot, are not about to let such a golden opportunity pass them by; so, they traditionally dress up as witches and go door to door asking for candy. Let me emphasize hat last bit: asking. None of this, "Give me candy or I'll do something bad to your house," stuff here. In fact, when you give them candy, they are supposed to give you a Glad Påsk card in exchange. Oh, you're allowed to give them money instead, if you prefer. Say what you will about them, those witches are always practical.

Living as we do in a building of the more or less itinerant, we didn't actually get any Easter witches dropping by, but we armed ourselves with candy just in case. There's a lot of the stuff you'd expect, like peanut M&M things, and little fruit jellies, and gummy this and that, and chocolate covered marzipan. There's also a lot of marshmallow hens, and banana flavored slugs, and salted licorice so salty it burns the tongue (seriously, ouch!).

My favorite new Easter treat, though, has got to be Påskmust. This is a soda only available at Easter. Well, Easter and Christmas, because it's actually Julmust, and they just relabel it in the spring. Whatever you call it, it's sort of an unnatural cross between a Dr. Pepper and a Grape Nehi, which as long as you keep it really cold is quite tasty.

Another Påsk tradition we latched onto is that of Påsklillja, which despite the name are actually yellow daffodils. They're sold in grocery stores all over the place in the weeks leading up to Easter. Either we got a particularly prescient batch, or the Swedish florists really know what they're doing, because both pots of flowers we got waited until Easter morning to suddenly burst into bloom. On the other hand, they might have done a day earlier if Saturday hadn't been the coldest day of the winter for most of Sweden. For us, it alternated between glaring sunshine and near-whiteout-condition blizzard all day, with a low of -12° overnight. We headed out during one of the sunny bits to go and see the crocusses coming up all over the castle lawn, and to wander around the eerily deserted downtown area (most shops seem to close for the whole four days). Then it was home to shelter from the storm and have a dinner of Påskmust and Spaghetti Carbonara, followed by an encore presentation of "The Kipper and the Corpse."

By the way, if Swedish Easter traditions seem odd to you, check out this nugget from Wikipedia:

In Norway, in addition to cross-country skiing in the mountains and painting eggs for decorating, a contemporary tradition is to solve murder mysteries at Easter. All the major television channels show crime and detective stories (such as Agatha Christie's Poirot), magazines print stories where the readers can try to figure out who did it, and many new books are published. Even the milk cartons change to have murder stories on their sides. Another tradition is Yahtzee.

Oh, those wacky Norwegians! Well, I'm off to try to solve "The Mystery of the Bean Soup Recipe," and Jennifer, as you can see, is hard at work studying her Swedish. Happy Easter!

Junk food

Some weeks are long and stressful, and you're tired, and hungry, and in need of something quick, tasty, and greasy. Some nights, you just need fast food.

This week was such a week, and tonight was such a night. There is in fact a McDonalds just down the block from our current apartment—you can see it in this picture taken from our front window. It seems to be a fairy popular destination for local teenagers, but we haven't tried it, preferring instead to walk the extra block to a place called Max, in a nice old building next to the old City Hall in Stora Torget. Max is a Swedish-owned fast food joint that got its start in northern Sweden, and outcompeted the local McDonalds up there so completely that the McDonalds closed, and Max has since expanded southwards. Max proudly advertises the fact that all their beef and chicken products are grown in Sweden, and are therefore carefully regulated. (The Wikipedia entry for Max, as of today, reads more than a bit like someone in their own marketing division may have written it.)

The Max menu is a lot like McDonalds. Burgers, fries, chicken nuggets, fish sandwiches, etc. Max also sells some things that McDonalds doesn't, like bean salads and lite beer. Other differences include the fact that the chicken nuggets taste like chicken, and they have really really good onion rings. (Whatever other culinary oddities they may practice, there is no doubt that the Swedish people have mastered the art of deep fat frying.) As a customer you also get your own copy of the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter to peruse as you eat from the comfort of bright green plastic chairs.

Another big difference is the price. Fast food does not mean cheap food. The delicious and nutritious meal pictured here (Joe's chipotle burger meal (a brand new menu item, and rather tasty), including fries and drink, and my onions rings and 9-piece nuggets, including two sauces (note that they say "Homemade" on them—it is unclear what that means in this context)) set us back 131 SEK. Still well less than half of what you would pay for dinner out anywhere else that we have seen. And, on those rare nights when you just need fast food, it's worth it.

Grocery Shopping, Revisited

Tonight, by special request, I'm going to take a moment to answer a few questions about Swedish grocery stores.

Can you describe what the stores actually look like? For instance, do they look like Rogers? With one exception, the Swedish grocery stores of my experience have been significantly smaller than their American counterparts. This is, no doubt, partly due to the fact that we are still living downtown; however, the ICA a few minutes from our new place in Flogsta is no larger than the downtown ICA or the Hemköp across the street from me as I write this. Part of the size difference comes from the fact that grocery stores here sell little other than, well, food. Oh, sure, there's an aisle of paper goods and cleaning supplies, and a few toiletries, but no greeting cards, no pharmacy, no wine and very little beer (nothing with more than 2.5% alcohol, in fact), and no magazines other than a few at the register. Beyond that, though, the stores here simply don't have as many choices for any individual item. For example, any given store will only have about half a dozen varieties of Campbell's soup, and maybe only a dozen varieties of soup all told. Instead of an aisle of breakfast cereal, there's maybe 8 kinds of prepared cereal, plus some muesli and oatmeal and whatnot. Say you want to buy something like refried beans? Expect one brand of beans, available in one variety. For something more popular, like tuna, maybe two brands plus a generic, each in two or maybe three varieties.
Not so much Rogers as Zicks, in other words.

Are there carts like ours? Well, slightly smaller, but yes, they do have shopping carts. They don't get used too often, though. They have the same little baskets that American stores use, as well. The most popular option, though, is something I hadn't seen before. It's sort of an oversized basket that has one handle you can fold out to carry the basket, and a second handle you can fold out instead to drag the basket behind you like a little cart (Did I mention the tiny wheels? I should have mentioned the tiny wheels. Note to self, mention the tiny wheels next time.)

Does one go through cashier lines? Yes. Again, similar, but smaller. The main difference is at the tail end of the register counter. They all have a belt the cashier can put your food on after it's been scanned, but they also have a sliding divider. The cashier pulls it to one side, and all the food goes sliding down to that side of the counter. Then, before they ring the next person up, the cashier slides the divider over to the other side, and the next person's food goes down the other side. They do this because after you pay, you'll be down there bagging your groceries, and they don't want to wait for you to finish.

Are there baggers, and will they help you to the parking lot? First of all, no, there are no baggers. In fact, it's rare for a store of any kind in Sweden to bag your purchase for you. As for helping you to the parking lot, well, most of the stores I've been to so far don't have a parking lot. Get out of downtown, and many will have a small parking lot (although it isn't in any way unusual for you to be expected to pay to park there while you shop), but in the downtown area there aren't any parking lots like that, just structures.

Even if they had parking lots, I doubt anyone would bag your stuff and take it to your car. Swedes make a big deal about equality, and to them bagging your groceries for you isn't service, it's servility, and it makes Swedes very uncomfortable (both to give and receive). They tend to view American customer service as disingenuous at best, and invasive at worst.

I assume you use your own bags... Yes, I use them all the time, not just at the grocery store, because with few exceptions all stores charge you for bags. They keep the bags at the start of the register line, and if you want one you put it on the conveyor belt with your stuff, and they sell it to you. Only a few crowns, but it adds up.

How often then do you grocery shop? Pretty much every day. Most people seem to stop at the store on their way home from work and buy a day or two worth of food. Keep in mind that most everyone is walking, biking, or taking the bus to the store, so no one buys more than they can carry.

Have you found Swedish brand of food that you really enjoy? Well, Hemköp had Mamas Meatballs on sale for 15 SEK per kilo last week, and they were pretty tasty (not to mention the cheapest food we've found in the whole country).

And the important question—can semlas be sent across international borders? I don't think there are any international accords preventing the shipment of semlor across borders, but they go stale wicked fast. A day old semla can be partially resuscitated by serving it in a bowl of warm, cinnamon scented milk, but after that they're pretty much done. Anyway, it's Easter in a few days, so semla season is just about over!

Well, that's it for this week in grocery shopping here in Uppsala. Next it's back to the pharmacy!

"Bandy, bandy (la la, spela bandy)"

The title of today's post should be sung to the opening line of "Monday, Monday" by The Mamas and the Papas (where spela means "play"). It's a sort of in-joke here, to sing a song about bandy (which has the reputation of being an old-fashioned sort of sport) to the tune of a popular, kind-of-hippie song. And the title therefore neatly covers the two big events of the day.


First of all, Uppsala hosted the country-wide finals of the bandy season, for both the women's and men's club teams. We had thought about going, but it had been long and tiring week for both of us, and the prospect of paying a total of 800SEK for the privilege of standing in the cold for 6 hours was not especially appealing. 


We still got to enjoy a bit of the festival atmosphere, though, as fans started parading through the streets, singing and drumming, around 10am, and then later, between the men's a women's finals, a much larger crowd went by on their way to the stadium, strung out of blocks and stopping traffic in all directions. At one point they released a bunch of blue and yellow balloons, which we live close enough to the stadium to see once they flew above the building. 


The women's final was at 11am, and featured AIK (a famous team from Stockholm) vs IFK Nässjö (from, err, Nässjö, I think). AIK was heavily favored to win, and in fact did so 3-0, scoring all three goals in about the span of 4 minutes. The men's match featured Sandviken AIK (who we watched beat Hammarby last weekend in Stockholm) vs Edsbyn IF. I had thought Sandviken would be a shoe-in, because they really dominated the semifinal series with Hammarby, while Edsbyn just barely managed to get past their semi-final opponents Västerås. However, just 7:30 into the game, Edsbyn led 3-1, and went on to win 11-6. Shows what I know about bandy! The winners get golden helmets, as well as a somewhat silly looking trophy that I think is supposed to be a bandy ball and bandy sticks, but looks more like a walnut and chopsticks. As I write this it's now midnight, and bars are closing, so there are now revelers in the streets again, hooting and hollering.


The other big event of the day was Melodifestivalen, the Swedish finals of the schlager contest. Someone asked me at lunch yesterday about whether I was planning to watch "the great Swedish cultural tradition" this weekend; I thought they meant the bandy, but it turns out he meant this song contest, this same contest that was won many years ago by Abba, thereby launching their career. Tonight's finals would determine the contestant that Sweden will put up for the Eurovision competition, which will be held in Belgrade. So we watched most of it, being alternately amused and horrified by some of the contestants—at one point, Joe wondered aloud why someone had not set this one fellow, Christer Sjögren, on fire long ago, thereby putting him out of his misery, and saving us the pain of listening to him warble sickly-sweet sentimental songs about Europe.


The media had been making much of the coincidence this year of the bandy finals being on the same day as Melodifestivalen, and the local paper featured wise-acre quizzes to help you determine whether you were a bandy person or a schlager person. Not too surprisingly, from what little I could translate, I came out as a bandy person. But I must say that I got into Melodifestivalen enough to be incensed by some of the voting. The popular phone-in vote was done by region, and the populace of Gothenberg have much to answer for, for giving Christer Sjögren even a single point. Meanwhile, my favorite band, a sort of medieval-inspired rock band called Nordman came in sixth, while the tune I considered to be clearly the best radio-friendly piece of bubblegum dance pop, by a group called BWO, came in third. (Don't worry, you can read all about them at the Wikipedia "Melodifestivalen" link above!)


Oh, and I completely forgot to mention that, along with the general festive atmosphere in town today, we had a protest in the town square! Maybe a hundred people came marching up the pedestrian-only center of town, carrying banners and chanting "USA ut ur Irak" (I'll just let you guess what that means). But really, once you've chanted that a couple dozen times, there isn't much else to say, and the crowd sort of broke up and wandered off after a few minutes.

Apartment in a Box

I spent a couple of afternoons looking at second hand stores around town. A couple of them weren't bad, and if we were willing to take a couple of months to gather the furniture we need, and if we didn't have to pay for delivery for each item, we could put together a pretty decent apartment that way.

Alternately, I could go to IKEA, pick all of our furniture in one afternoon, and have it delivered that night for 495 SEK total.

So, I opted for that last bit. The delivery guy said, "You've got a whole apartment in one trip." Not quite, but it's pretty close. I've spent the last two days assembling flat-pack furniture (and struggling with javascript (grrrr....)), as a result of which, my planned title for this post ("I Love Flat-Pack Furniture") had to be discarded as it had developed a lack of truth. Once my hands stop hurting, I'm sure the love will return.

In the meantime, you can watch the apartment grow:



Next week: colorful stuff!