Name day

Did you know that today, 6 October, is Jennifer Day?

Neither did I, but today my office mate S. wished me a happy name day. The name days in Sweden are a little different than the saint days, and the calendar includes all officially recognized names, whether they were saints or not. This way, traditional Swedish names like Linnea and Torbjörn and Malin and Magnus get their proper day, and no one need feel left out. S. said that it is traditional to get a small gift, or maybe breakfast in bed, on your name day. I didn't know about it in time to ask for breakfast, so instead we're going to split a beer with dinner. Happy Jennifer/Jenny Day, everyone!

Find your name (or the closest Swedish-government-sanctioned equivalent) here!

Coming Home

As Joe already mentioned, I got back just a few days ago from an unexpected trip to Michigan for my grandmother's funeral. Eight months in Sweden has not been enough to wipe out all memory of home, of course, and Michigan felt like it usually does (although sadder than usual, of course), but here's a few culture-shock sort of things I did notice.

1. I don't miss English. I felt compelled to read every billboard and piece of advertising that I saw. It's very tiring. I had no idea that it was so relaxing to be able to just ignore everything extraneous. U., a former co-worker of mine who has spent lots of time in cultures other than his own, told me that one thing he liked about living in another place is that it was nice to ignore things. I didn't fully understand him then, but I do now, and he's right. It's much more peaceful, being able to ignore ads and inane mobile phone conversations and the news. If I want to learn something about anything, I have to consciously pay attention.

2. I do miss nature. Michigan seemed so green and lush, really just teeming with plants. (Perhaps the previous week's record-breaking rainfall and flooding in the wake of Hurricane Ike had something to do with it, too.) And on warm days in September, crickets cricket endlessly, and cicadas join in during daylight. I saw some cousins from Utah who usually come to Michigan earlier in the year, and they noticed it as well—the air of Michigan is a wall of sound this time of year. I also saw many blue jays and gulls and LBJs, red and fox squirrels, and of course one usually also sees chipmunks, possums, raccoons... there just aren't so many small creatures around in semi-suburban Sweden. On the other hand, lots of small cute critters means lots of road kill, and I don't miss that. Road kill is not pretty. I have only seen one road-killed animal in Sweden, a badger, and at the time, I was frankly so distracted by the fact that it was a badger (the first wild one I've ever seen) that I wasn't as appalled as I might have been. I'm sure Sweden has plenty of road kill, but I don't drive, so I don't see it.

3. Uppsala is my home now. Michigan is and will always be my base, sure, but coming to Uppsala was coming home. I'm glad to be able to say that I felt this way, because to tell the truth I was afraid that I might not. Probably this won't be home forever, but for now it feels as much like home as anywhere I've ever lived.

Kanelbullar Dag

It's 4 October already, and you know what that means: Cinnamon Roll Day! OK, so you probably didn't know that—I certainly didn't. Nevertheless, for the past ten years or so, 4 October has been National Cinnamon Bun Day in Sweden. It was first celebrated in 1999, when Sweden's Hembakningsrådet wanted to celebrate their 40th anniversary, and picked kanelbullar as the symbol of home baking in Sweden. The day was apparently celebrated with such gusto that it became an annual event, with bakeries across the nation produce vast swathes of cinnamon buns to sate the sweet, cinnamony cravings of the masses. After all, what better way to celebrate Sweden's tradition of home-baked goodies than with a trip to your local commercial bakery?

As good semi-Swedes, we could do naught but join in the festivities. So this morning I hopped a bus downtown to go to our favorite bakery, Forsa, to procure a few wonderful little kanelbullar. Now, your everyday cinnamon roll in Sweden is not too dissimilar from what you'd expect in the US: a simple swirl of sweet dough, with a cinnamon-sugar combo along the inside edges. The main differences are that in Sweden you never see them topped with icing (instead there's a sprinkling of nib sugar), and most Swedish buns are heavily flavored with cardamom (so much that it nearly overwhelms the cinnamon, actually, which is sort of unfortunate). Forsa's kanelbullar are a different matter altogether: each one a nest of fine strands of cinnamon-dusted dough, lovingly hand-woven into a unique pattern. Mmmm. Of course, at 12 SEK a pop, they should be good.

Cinnamon Bun Day, Waffle Day, Semla Month—I wonder what other food-holidays lie buried in the Swedish calendar? We'll just have to wait and see, I suppose.

There and Back Again

As you've no doubt noticed, Cheap Seats has gone dark for the past few weeks. For those who don't already know, the explanation for our silence is that we made an unexpected trip to Michigan following the death of Jennifer's grandmother. I returned to Sweden last week, and have spent the intervening time catching up on schoolwork; Jennifer got back yesterday morning.

This is, of course, a blog about our life in Sweden, so for the most part we'll probably let our sojourn in St. Joseph, with all its ups and downs, go without comment. Being back in the US even for a few days did provide some interesting contrast to life in Sweden, however, and we'll probably talk about that some. But just to get the ball rolling again, here's my return to Sweden:

Landing at Arlanda my flight dropped into a fog so thick that the first sign of the approaching ground was when disembodied treetops suddenly appeared outside the window. It persisted all through the train ride home (which, incidentally, involved a 10 minute wait and a 17 minute ride—about 5% of the time it took us to get from O'Hare to St. Joe), giving way suddenly to clear skies and sunshine just a couple of kilometers south of Uppsala.

I suppose I should have felt something on seeing the spires of Uppsala Cathedral rising above the city from a distance, some sense of home or something, but honestly all I felt was exhausted. And then a little confused, when I saw that in my absence someone had covered Stora Torget in a layer of sand ( I still don't know what that's all about). No time to worry about that though, as I made for home, dumped my luggage, got my bike out of storage, and set off for class. I was only 15 minutes late—would have made it, too, if the flight hadn't been 30 minutes late.

Höst arrived in the week I was gone. The leaves have changed color, it's cold and wet, the forest path I bike to school every day is covered in pine needles, and the sun is setting at 6 every night.

I managed to stay awake until midnight that first night, and congratulated myself on having beaten my jet lag; waking up at noon the next day quickly put the lie to that, unfortunately, and I spent the rest of the week coding every evening until 2 or 3 in the morning, and never managed to get to sleep before 4 AM. There is a certain freedom to suddenly deciding at 2 AM that you're hungry and just making yourself a ham sandwich, but after four days straight of ham sandwiches I'd had plenty of freedom, thank you very much. Now my missed assignments are done with one way or the other, and Jennifer's back, so I can take the Bill Withers off the stereo, stop eating ham sandwiches, and go to bed by midnight for the first time since my return.

Naturally, Jennifer is now wide awake.

A Night with the UOGB

Tuesday night, along with our Swiss friends D. and G., we attended what was (for us, anyway) the most eagerly anticipated Uppsala cultural event of the fall: the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, performing live at the Regina Theater.

They performed a number of their standards, like "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," and their "Life on Mars/My Way/Substitute/etc." medley. They also played a bunch of stuff we hadn't heard before, such as "Anarchy in the UK" performed in the style of a Simon and Garfunkle sing-along, "Pinball Wizard" as a sea chanty, and an old George Formby ukulele classic "Leaning on a Lamp Post" as Russian folk music (doing a pretty good balalaika impression). It was, in the words of the London Telegraph, a "plucking good time."

The concert ended around 9:30, so even after hanging around for a bit while D. bought one of the group's DVDs and got it signed, it was still early enough for us to go out for a beer. Tuesday night is pretty slow in Uppsala, and several of the bars downtown were already shut for the evening. We wound up at an Irish pub on Stora Torget called O'Connors, rumored to have the best pint of Guinness in the city. It also has live music every night, but it's big enough that we were able to score a table far enough away that we could hear each other as we rehashed the performance.

Well, that was the plan, anyway. While G. and I were ordering at the bar, one of the gentlemen at the next table struck up a conversation with D. and Jennifer. He turned out to be extremely talkative, and more than a little drunk. I never caught his name, but we did learn that he was a born-again ex-skinhead of Sami descent (and, in some ineffable way, also Jewish). He spent the next hour telling us all about his congregation back home (part of a Boulder, Colorado based Baptist splinter church), the superiority of Eastern spirituality to Western, and his Swedish folk/punk band; in fact, he spent so much time talking to us that eventually his drinking buddy, a young raggare* who never said a single word, got up and silently departed.

The Sami eventually got caught up in a confusing conversation with a waitress, in which he first needed to pay for his current beer, and then received another, larger beer he hadn't ordered and apparently didn't need to pay for; armed with his new beer and in need of a smoke, he eventually stumbled off. At that point we all decided to call it a night.

I leave you with one of my favorite UOGB numbers, unfortunately not on the playlist for us as Peter didn't come along for the Sweden tour:

*Raggare is a Swedish word describing a member of a Swedish subculture marked by pomade hair styles, Rockabilly music, cowboy boots, blue jeans, classic American cars, and a vocal pro-American stance. For more info, see the wikipedia entry.

Moose Safari

This week M., a new exchange student in Jennifer's lab, invited us to go on a moose (elk) safari, as she was taking some visiting family and had some room in her car. So, this afternoon we loaded up and ventured out into the wilds of Vansjö. We left an hour before our safari was due to start, having been told by another coworker that it only took 30 minutes to drive there.

Turns out it takes more like 45 minutes, not counting the 15 minutes you lose when you assume you've gone to far (based on the above-mentioned coworker's advice) and backtrack to find a filling station. Luckily we had a reservation, so they gave us a couple of minutes grace, but even so we were the last ones in, right behind a father with two little golden haired daughters. We were then delayed a couple of additional minutes when a series of miscommunications led the ticket taker to assume that Jennifer was the mother of said little girls, and a lot of confusion over who was paying for whom and why ensued. Once we had that straightened out, it was on to the elk (moose).

Gårdsjö Älgpark may be only the third largest moose (elk) park in Sweden, but its proprietor is quick to point out that it's the safest, thanks in no small part to it's Jurassic Park inspired system of control gates. It opened only last year, on a 16 hectare family farm to the northwest of Uppsala. At the moment it has a grand total of 6 elk (moose), but 16 hectares is enough space to properly house up to 10, so they're currently manufacturing additional elk as quickly as they can (i.e., about 2 new moose (elk) per annum).

Why all the space? Well, the thing is that elk (moose) like to eat. A lot. They don't reach their full growth until they are about 6 years old, at which point they weigh in around 600kg, but in the summers leading up to that point they can grow by as much as 2kg per day. That takes a lot of moose (elk) chow.

The "safari" consisted of two farm tractors pulling flat bed trailers, with about 50 people on board. As we pulled into the first enclosure we could see our first elk (moose), which was making a beeline for the nearest feeding trough, no doubt in response to sound of approaching tourists. When we got there he was waiting patiently for us. He was introduced to us as Gunde, a two year old male. As the proprietor of the moose (elk) park gave his spiel and took questions, Gunde single-mindedly plowed through his trough of chow, then took a few minutes to pose nobly for pictures before trotting off after his keeper into the next range.

The keeper returned followed closely by Göta, the female elk (moose) who he says tends to lurk around him protectively. She was in turn accompanied by her three month old twins, Ilsa and Ida.

At the next stop we watched a demonstration of a moose (elk) being fed milk. The elk (moose) in question were a pair of one year olds named Holger and Helga, and they certainly seemed fond of their milk. As they chased the keeper with the milk bottle around the enclosure, they kept making these deep snuffing noises, which were pretty impressive. Got some lungs on 'em, moose (elk) do.

Holger was a little skittish compared to the rest, because it's heading into the autumn and mating season. This was actually the last tour of the season, although they pick up again in late October after everyone has calmed down a bit. Anyway, the season was no doubt partly responsible for the fact that the elk (moose) were all a little shy of the tourists. Jennifer's temporarily adopted daughters from earlier were visibly disappointed that they weren't going to get to cuddle with a moose (elk), so much so that eventually the proprietor relented and carried them one at a time over to the nearest elk (moose) for a quick pet.

That little family drama averted, we headed back to the cafe and gift shop, where the Swedes all tucked in to fika and everyone else stocked up on moose (elk) themed merchandise. They also have a small Santa Claus museum upstairs, but none of us felt like shilling out the extra 10 SEK. It's possible that one or two of our party may have felt themselves compelled to purchase a small cuddly moose (elk), but who can blame them? I suppose that last pretty much sums up today's lesson: elk (moose) are adorable, in a huge scary sort of way.

Note: for an explanation of the differences between elk, älg, and moose, I direct you to an earlier post, Giant Elk Alert!