Blodstenen

We've had a bit of luck this week. Much to our surprise, we've been offered a lease on a student apartment, which today we signed. I know that doesn't seem like such a big thing—I mean after all, we're in a student apartment right now. The difference is that right now we have a second-hand lease, which is only good through August. This new apartment is a lease in our own name, good for as long as one of us is a student here.

We've been applying for likely looking student places since late February when we first learned about Studentstaden, the student apartment company here in Uppsala. Like all the other apartment companies, though, it's based on a queue system: available apartments are posted for a couple of weeks, and all the people who express an interest in them are ordered by how many days they've been waiting in the queue (not waiting for that particular apartment, but waiting for any apartment). We're up to 90+ days now, which seems like a lot until you notice that for the apartments we've been applying for the person in tenth place has typically had about 450 queue days, and the first place person often has more like 1400!

So you understand what I mean when I say we were surprised to get the offer. We started making the top 20 last month, a watermark in that being the 20th person in line or less means you have to confirm your interest in the apartment right then. If you say, "On second though, no, I'll pass," at that point, no harm done. However, if you say, "20th in line, that'll never happen, so I'll just say yes even though I probably don't want it," and then say no when they offer you the apartment, you're blacklisted for the next six months, during which time you cannot accrue any more queue days. Definitely a seller's market. Oh, and you have to agree to all this sight unseen, because the apartment is still occupied through the whole process. We didn't even see a floor plan until we went into the office to sign the lease today.

At the close of the confirmation period for this particular apartment we were listed as being 12th in line out of 13 applicants—hardly a position of strength. But for whatever reason, we wound up getting the offer. Not having seen the place except from afar, it's hard to jude just what we've got, but on paper it looks to be an improvement. The new place is a straight five minute bus ride from Jennifer's office, as opposed to her current 40 minute commute. It's on the first floor and has a south facing balcony off the kitchen, unlike our current second floor location with a north(ish) facing balcony off the bedroom. And it's located on the edge of Stadsskogen, a large and dense pine forest owned (I think) by the city. Quiet, with a nice pine scent on the air, but with a grocery store and bus stop within easy walking distance.

Next we get to figure out how to rent a moving truck in Sweden, so we can haul all of this Ikea furniture across town. I'm already having moving flashbacks. Maybe Jennifer was right, and we should have just gotten an air mattress and a couple of chairs...

more SFI

When I wrote last week about my upcoming SFI meeting, I made a crack about not expecting to start class anytime soon. I didn't really mean it, though, as I expected to come away from the meeting with a date in a week or two when I could start lessons. I should've known better.

Today's meeting was held in a high school auditorium on the west side of town. It took a little finding, as there weren't any signs posted, but I managed to get there before it got underway. There were three instructors there from SFI. Before the meeting they were all speaking perfectly understandable English, but once things got underway each of them went up on stage and gave a long presentation in Swedish, with translations provided by a man who was obviously a native speaker of neither English nor Swedish, so not only was his English difficult to understand at times, but he had to keep asking the presenters for clarifications of their very slow and deliberate Swedish. I cannot for the life of me figure out what this little exercise was supposed to accomplish, but it certainly succeeded in making the information very difficult to follow.

From what I could piece together, though, here's the deal. The SFI course runs for 30 hours a week (that's the Swedish equivalent of full time, and takes 40 hours a week to accomplish, since two hours a day are taken up with lunch and fika), and it lasts for a whole year, with two weeks off for Christmas and four weeks of vacation time. It's only about one half devoted to teaching Swedish, with the rest dedicated to a cultural introduction, job finding, etc. In short, it's not so much a beginner's course in speaking Swedish as a beginner's course in becoming Swedish. Apparently there are many immigrants who get support from the state when they move here, and they are required to take and pass the course if they don't want their aid to be cut off. It's really a massive enterprise, quite impressive even if it doesn't seem at first glance to work terribly well for me.

One of the biggest complaints about SFI has always been that being so large, it couldn't address the varied educational needs of its students. So now the classes are being split into three schools, and that's what today's meeting was about. The first school is Liber, which is aimed at people going into a field which requires higher education. The second is Lernia, which is for other professionals (construction, service industry, transportation, etc.). The last is Cederblad, intended primarily for those seeking more menial employment, but also covering people who aren't required to take the social education aspects, or who need to take the language lessons part time.

Here's the kicker, though: the purpose of the meeting was for us to decide which school we wanted to enroll in starting this coming August. I mean, I knew the wheels would turn slowly, but does it really need to take six months before starting class? This, of course, severely limits my options, as I'll be starting classes at the University the last week in August, so I certainly won't be able to do 30 hours a week of language study.

All hope is not (yet) lost, however. When I cornered the Liber presenter after the meeting broke up, she admitted that actually they didn't have any concrete information about how the various schools would work yet. Liber claims that it will provide a completely flexible learning schedule to accommodate professionals and students, and it may even present some online options. So I'm signed up for another informational meeting about Liber, to be held sometime in June. And if that doesn't work out, I can always bail to attending a couple of evening Cederblad lessons per week for some language practice.

But for now, I'm left to wonder where that copy of Beginner's Swedish has gotten to?

Eriksleden

Today is St. Erik's Day in Sweden. Erik, more specifically Erik IX, was a 12th century king of Sweden who was (probably) murdered at Uppsala, (possibly) at or near the location of the present Cathedral. His head was (putatively) cut off, and a spring (purportedly) popped up where it came to rest. Oh, and he led a crusade against the Finns. That's pretty much all that anyone knows (or at least, chooses to believe) about Erik, but nonetheless he's quite a popular Saint in these parts—despite the fact that he was never actually canonized.

Well, "real" saint or no, it's his day today, and on St. Erik's Day it's traditional to walk Eriksleden, a medieval pilgrim's path that goes from the church at Gamla Uppsala, where Erik was buried, to the cathedral in Uppsala, whence his relics were later translated. Today's weather being not only cold and windy but also quite wet, I think we can leave Erik's spirit to wander on it's own, but I did walk Eriksleden a couple of weeks ago back when it was being unseasonably warm and pleasant. At first the well marked path hugs the river bank, but then it takes off inland, going past the Tuna Allotments (more later, I promise) and through some apartment complexes before cutting over the E4, through several fields to finish at Gamla Uppsala.

Anyway, if you're curious, you can check out the gallery for an overview of the walk.

Oh, and happy belated Norwegian National Day!

The end of the "Lille Lennart Lottery"

The "Lille Lennart Lottery" ended last week, and I saw "Lennart" this afternoon, as she was brought round by her proud if somewhat tired looking parents. Her name is not "Lennart."

A couple weeks ago, as we headed into dates that people had bet on, Lennart (the name and the yet-to-be-born infant) once more became an item of fika gossip. It was mentioned that one baby was named Lennart in 2007, so maybe there would be two this year, then four next year, eight in 2010, as so forth. "In the future we will all be named Lennart!" said N., which produced another round of hysterical laughter.

I can't really think of any other name that I've heard produce this effect. Someday I am going to name something Lennart just so that I will be guaranteed a laugh when I tell a Swede about it.

Oh, who won the lottery? Well... "Lennart" did. She was born on May 5, of all things, the day the doctors predicted! I blame my officemate S., who sometime in April was heard to say something very close to "Only an idiot would bet on the predicted day." And in fact no one did. So "Lennart" gets the pot, a grand total of 240SEK. To be far to S., I agreed with this sentiment, and I myself took May 4, after most of the other participants had picked days that were quite far from May 5.

An exception to that last statement was L. He came by my office last Friday and was looking rather glumly at the calendar I had posted on our door (he had chosen May 6). He stared in silence for a few moments, then said, "You know what I've learned from all this? I've learned that no one trusts science, not even scientists."

So welcome "Lennart," and by a strange coincidence, welcome also on May 5 to my newest first-cousin-once-removed. Hey, cousins, are you sure I couldn't talk you into naming her "Lennart"?

Svenska för Invandrare

One of these days I'll learn that I just can't do things at my own pace in Sweden. I keep falling for the same trap: I wait until I'm ready to start something, at which point I try to sign up for it only to find out that I should have started weeks before. You would think that our experience getting personal numbers, finding an apartment, seeing a doctor, etc., would have been enough to teach me this simple lesson, but alas it is not so.

Case in point: Swedish lessons. Jennifer just started her second 6-week course this past Monday. It's a nice setup, but a little on the pricey side if your employer isn't picking up the tab (which hers is). There is another alternative, though. Svenska för Invandrare, or SFI, offers a course which is free to anyone who has a personal number and a need to learn Swedish. The only drawback is that the class is full time, so you can't take it while working. Perfect! I didn't sign up right away because I didn't want to get tied down for a couple of weeks while we were apartment hunting, and then there were the weeks spent setting up the apartment, yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, by the time April approached, I figured it was time to get me signed up for some lessons, so I looked up the Uppsala SFI office online and headed down there to register. Unfortunately it was a Thursday afternoon, and the office naturally closes for the weekend at 1 on Thursdays. Undaunted, I returned the next week during the posted business hours, only to find out that they were closed for the week. No problem, plenty of time.

The next week they were open, and I sat down with an administrator-type and filled out an application to the program. When it was done, she handed me an appointment card for the next week with a time and an instructor's name. The card only had a start time, though, so I foolishly enquired how long the class would be, how often it would meet, etc. The nice lady then explained that the time wasn't for a class meeting at all, but rather an appointment to talk to an instructor about signing up for a class. OK, so things weren't moving along at quite the clip I had expected. I showed up for my appointment the next week (this was April 15th, in case you're keeping track), and chatted with a gentleman named Staffan for a while, after which he handed me a study plan, which he said I would need to bring with me to my first day of class. We had a couple of sort of awkward minutes where he seemed to think that we were done, while I was still waiting to learn things like, "When does the class meet?" and, "Where do I go?" When it became clear that I didn't understand what was going on, he explained that he had put my name in a queue, and I would get a letter from the school that actually taught the courses once there was an opening. He mentioned that there was a class starting soon, but that I almost certainly wouldn't be in that. He did think that there was an off chance that I would get a letter before May 15th.

Well, I just got the letter. First of all, let me just say that when sending letters to students who are trying to sign up for Swedish for Absolute Beginners, writing the whole thing in Swedish is, at best, frustrating. Nevertheless, after a little time with a dictionary I have learned this: the queue I've been in so far was to attend a mandatory informational meeting, during which different class options will be discussed (apparently, Edda, the school which has been teaching Uppsala's SFI classes, just split into three different schools, each with a different goal, and I have to choose with which school I would like to register).

I can only assume that the outcome of this meeting will be that I have my name placed on one of three new queues, after which I can wait for the actual class to start sometime before the ice caps melt.

A (Nearly) Successful Journey to Stockholm

It's been unseasonably warm and sunny all week, culminating in a weekend with temperatures around 25°C in the Stockholm area, so we decided it was a good weekend to get out and about a bit. What with getting settled in and adjusted, we haven't really been to Stockholm since we got here 4 months ago(!), despite it being just down the road. So yesterday we headed down to the train station and hopped an Intercity to Stockholm. Our destination: a football match at Kanalplan, the home of the Hammarby Women's Football program.

We didn't actually get off to a terribly early start, but by 1 PM we were on a bus to Uppsala Centralstation. Our train was a few minutes late, but we were still underway by 2, plenty of time to make a 4 PM match (or so it seemed). The trains are, of course, fast, clean, relatively inexpensive (Uppsala–Stockholm, 64 SEK per person one way), and possessed of conveniently located stations (all of which have bus service, unlike the train station of a certain mid-western university town I shan't name). We were on an SJ train, which only makes one stop between Uppsala and Stockholm (namely the airport, Arlanda), so it's a quick trip, just 40 minutes or so to Stockholm Central. From there a short walk through the station led to T-banen. It took us a few minutes to figure out tickets, a non-trivial problem. Like Uppsala, the Stockholm transit authority, SL, punishes you if you try to use cash to ride the system by raising the prices. We wound up going to a newsstand to purchase ride coupons, which saves about 25% of the cost. The difference is that the Stockholm system is divided into three zones, A, B, and C, and the price of your ride depends on how many zones you go through. We were all in zone A, so it only cost us two coupons each (two zones costs 3 coupons, 3 zones costs 4 coupons), so that's 30 SEK each. Once the coupons are stamped, they're good for an hour, which should have been more than enough time for us to head south and catch a bus to the stadium.

We were heading to Södermalm, the island just south of central Stockholm, so the train ride only took ten minutes. Södermalm has become something of a hip area in the past ten years or so, a fact not belied by the many cafes, bars, and sushi joints we were confronted with upon emerging from the train station. After getting our bearings, we hurried over to the nearest bus stop and just managed to catch a #55 bus, which should have taken us straight to the stadium.

Just as I was congratulating myself on getting us to the game just in time, I began to realize that something was wrong. Sure, we'd turned right when it seemed like we should have, but the stop we needed didn't seem to be materializing, and then we were turning in what had to be quite the wrong direction. A quick look at the map confirmed it—right bus, wrong direction. No problem, still 30 minutes to kickoff. We got off the bus and crossed the street, saw that the next #55 going to right way should be along in ten minutes, and sat back to wait. And wait. And wait. A Swedish woman escorting two cheerful Asian girls on scooters waited for a while too, before giving up in disgust and walking away, scooters in tow. Finally, after 45 minutes, a #55 driven by a cheerful if harried looking bus driver pulled up, let us on, and then screeched around the corner. Apparently there was some sort of festival somewhere in the area, and all bets were off on the bus schedule.

Back on track now, I was resigned to us being a few minutes late, but figured we should get there no later than halfway to halftime. When the bus let us off, though, we were confronted with our next problem: we could hear the game, and there was the fence, but it was at the top of a shear rock face! Grrr. I dashed ahead to find the steps, but at the top I was confronted only with more steps, a couple of sheep, and a hole in the fence. Declining to sneak into the game through the back (because, make no mistake, that's where we were, exactly 180° around the stadium from the entrance) we instead set off up the rest of the steps, from whence we wandered through a nice looking rocky park full of sheep, and a petting zoo, and a large playground. By the time we finally made it to the gate, it was about 2 minutes to the half. On the plus side, though, entrance was free (whether because we were so late, or because it was a special game, or because they never charge, I cannot say).

Perhaps, upon reflection, they don't charge because there's nowhere to sit: advertised as a stadium seating 3500, it was in reality a field with a few rudimentary wooden bleachers and a bunch of people sitting in the grass in behind one goal (sitting behind the other goal would have been a one-way trip down the cliffside), with no real space visible despite the announced attendance figure of around 1000. Jennifer managed to find us seats while I went off to get us a couple of hotdogs (first one was free, no doubt another attempt to distract us from the lack of a stadium), however when I came back I couldn't actually sit, because the spiteful relic sitting next to us refused to move out of the way to let me by, instead sitting sprawled out over what was easily enough space for two. We had been warned going in to expect foul tempered old men at any Stockholm football match, so I guess it wasn't really that surprising, but still it is always a bit of a shock when someone you've never met is so pointlessly rude. In any case, by then the second half was starting and the stands were filling up again, so I just stood for the second half.

If you're curious about the game itself, I'll point you to Jennifer's soccer blog. Afterwards we went out (the short way, also known as the front door, which didn't involve any rock climbing) and headed back to the station. It had cooled off a bit by then, and turned into a nice evening, so we stopped at a bar on the way back and had a pint of Murphy's Stout (I tried to like the local beer, but a man has his limits) and sat for a bit to do some people watching. Then it was back to the station for an uneventful trip home.

Lessons learned and whatnot, I suppose.