The weather

So that's it—I've nearly snapped. I made it through autumn with its chills, winter with its alarmingly short days, and a spring that was long and cold and in which the icy slush seemed to stick around forever. After all that, two weeks in June has almost done me in.

After the beginning of May was so unusually warm, and then a nice sunny weekend or two, everyone was looking forward to a glorious summer. However, since the start of June, the weather has been just crappy. I'm not the only one to think so—even the Swedes are complaining about it. Swedes talk a lot about the weather, but they don't often complain, exactly, it's more like someone will say "Vilket vädret!" or "Det regnar" and everyone else will make non-verbal agreeing kind of noises. Foreigners who dare to offer an opinion about the weather, either negative or positive, are often treated to a rather gleeful description from a native about how it can snow in June. But no one is (half-)joking about it anymore. My attempt to be positive at Thursday morning fika, saying that perhaps it was a tad less dark that it had been earlier in the week, was met with universal scorn. "How can you say that that it's less dark?" scoffed a professor. "Dark is dark." He went on to relate that the whole summer could be like this, no warmer than 10C and raining. It's happened before.

So far, it's looking like this may be just such a summer, and the awful realization of this possibility is sinking in to even the most stoic of the Swedes. K. declared at lunch on Wednesday that summer is over: we had it in May, and that was all. Yesterday afternoon, Joe rode his bike through a cold rain in order to bring cookies in for my birthday fika and was completely soaked by the time he got to my workplace. A.-S. arrived in the upstairs break room first, and the three of us sat around the table in silence for a few moments. She looked outside at the dark and the rain, and sighed. "It's bad," she said. "It is not fun anymore." This, from her, is an outpouring of grief, a cry of outrage against an uncaring universe. It's a complaint.

And now there's proof: this article in thelocal.se (in English) says that the meteorological agency agrees that this is in fact the coldest start to summer in memory.

Sigh.

Fika småpratar: A Freudian slip

At afternoon fika today I attempted to speak Swedish, and was describing one of my samples. I'll report the content of the conversation in English, with the Swedish in parentheses:

Me: "I have a sample that comes from... Wolf Island." ('Jag har en prov som kommer ifrån... Wolf Island.')

Grad student N.: "Every beer?" ('Varg Ö?')

Me: "Ahh... one more time please?" ('Ahh... en gång till tack?')

N.: "Every beer?" ('Varg Ö?)

I admitted defeat. "Wolf Island," said N., "Varg Ö." Which is literally Wolf Island: Varg = wolf, Ö = island. I had misheard "Varg Ö" ('Wolf Island') as "Varje öl" ('every beer'). Everyone had a good chuckle, including myself. "Sure, sure," I said, "Varg Ö. I could have figured that out. I have to remember that the first thing to do when someone speaks Swedish at you is not panic."

Silence fell.

"When someone speaks Swedish at you?" said K., sounding almost hurt. "You make it sound like it's an attack."

Oops.

A game in Stockholm

Joe is awfully busy with homework and tests and group projects and things like that these days, so last weekend I trundled off into Stockholm by myself to watch a soccer game. Good thing I checked the home team's website just before I left and found out that the game was not being played where I thought it was being played—that pitch had been usurped by the European women's championship rugby tournament. Instead, it was being played in an even cooler place, Stockholms Stadion, which was built for the 1912 Olympic games.

Stadion is a red brick pile, in that early-20th century nouveau/deco style that I really like. The northeast stands have a wooden roof, the columns of which have been decorated in simple style to be evocative of a long house. The king has his own covered seating area, complete with potted flowers (he did not deign to be present at the Djurgården-Linköping ladies football match, however). The stadium is sort of strange size, being too big for small sporting events (like women's soccer) and too small for big sporting events (it was really too small even for the 1912 Olympics). It's now often used as an outdoor concert venue. It lots of little decorations and embellishments—one of my favorites was this walrus-head poking out of the wall and now being used as a hose-keeper.

One nice thing about following a relatively obscure sport, with low attendance, is that security is rather relaxed. So when I sat myself in the media section (complete with desk and chair with a backrest), nobody said a peep. Perhaps it was not quite as posh as the press boxes at the football stadiums at UM at MSU, but it was a big step up from the bleachers I usually find myself in. It was extra fun because I met a friend there, and we yapped happily about soccer through the whole game, which itself was a good one—here's my write-up if you're interested. Also, it was warm in the stands, being in the full sun and out of the wind. All in all, a really good day.

Fika at the Soldier's Holt

Not a five minute walk from our apartment is Soldattorpet, which means "The Soldier's Holt." The Upplands regiment of the Royal Army had several companies; Upsala [sic] Company in turn had eight soldiers, one of whom was sponsored by the village of Norby, which is now the suburb of Uppsala that we live in. In or around 1680, Norby set aside a small area of land for its soldier to farm and live on (a "torp"), and this particular torp has had a soldier living on it up until the 1940s. A local nature trail, one of Linnaeus' botanical walks, has a trailhead right beside it, and apparently Soldattorpet a popular place for people to sit after their stroll through this end of Stadskogen.

The house isn't generally open to the public, but a few times a year the Soldattorpets vänner society sponsors an afternoon fika. 20SEK gets you some good strong coffee, a choice of baked goods, and the chance to either loiter outside at a picnic table or in the grass, or sit inside and imagine living there yourself. The house is tiny (about the size of our living room), with two stories (a ladder up to the second), and the red color is typical for the region. Its back is to the forest, and its front faces onto a rocky pasture in which one can find our local runestone (more on that later). There are two outbuildings, a woodshed and a smaller shed built partially underground (root cellar? sauna?), and a modern outhouse has been discretely tucked into a glade near the road. There are two rooms on the first floor, with a large fireplace set in the inside wall for the kitchen/living area and presumably the upstairs as well.

We stayed inside, in part because the society had laid out some pictures and historical treatises on the place, and in part because it was not really warm outside. We flipped through the books, then wandered outside to inspect the property (about 2 acres), visit the old fruit trees, admire the sheep pasture... then the clouds started rolling in, and Joe suggested we get for home. We almost made it—in the five minutes it took us to walk back to our apartment past the field and then forest, the gentle rain turned into hail, and we got pretty wet. Joe, in shorts, needed a cup of hot chocolate to warm up from our coffee break.

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The little village of Norby is quite proud of its history, I think; at their website you can read all about their general history (first mentioned in writing in 1299), or very specific histories, such as the etymology of the name of each street (no fewer than eleven streets are named after mushrooms, see them listed under "Tema Svampar").

Fika småprater: Evaporated milk

Det finns ingen "evaporated milk" i Sverige. Well, that's not entirely true, of course, but it is an odd specialty item that you can only find in the foreign section of some grocery stores, or Asian markets. For some reason evaporated milk came up at fika last Wednesday, and the Swedes had never heard of it. Sweetened, condensed milk, yes: evaporated milk, no. "It's not sweet?" they said, puzzled.

We have a few cans of the stuff (country of origin: Holland) that Joe found on the "discontinued" shelf at a grocery, and we had used half of one for macaroni and cheese the other night, so I took the rest of the can in to work yesterday morning. The fika crowd peered at it skeptically. "But it's a little yellow," said S. doubtfully. Well, yes a little, because the lactose carmelizes, and so it's a little sweet too, but not much. Bravely, K. took a small spoonful of it. "It tastes like milk," she said with surprise. Yes, yes, it is milk, just milk, I reassured her. Others took small amounts, and each one of them said "It tastes like milk" in the same odd tone of voice. "Milk but... more milky," said someone. "But it's in a can," said E. She looked at the bottom. "It says it's good until January 2010," she said with a tone of disbelief. "Was this some sort of American invention for the nuclear war?"

It makes me wonder what other little cultural differences remain to be unearthed. It also makes me wish I could adequately convey the intense and grave suspicion with which they all regarded that poor can of evaporated milk.

Comrade J! and May Day

A post attempted in the vein of Wodehouse; here's a link to Comrade Bingo in case your memory is hazy

Last Thursday, Sista April, was a big holiday in these parts, in which all the Uppsala University students engage in entertainments like spraying champagne about and pelting each other with baguettes. The older and more restrained alum show up as well, in their student hats, and reminisce about the good old days, though they generally prefer to filter their champagne through the kidneys first, rather than pour the stuff directly into the drains leading to the river. As previously reported, Monty and I had met up with such a bunch in Engelska parken, where the alum of a certain age loll on the grass. It was there that we met up with my old pal Kipper (post-doc K.) and her claque, eating their s. and sipping their ch.

As we talked it happened to come up that tomorrow was första maj, that is, May Day, the Worker's Day. Kipper and her bunch were going to be spending the day in the nearby suburb of Bälinge, where Charlie and Emma (a couple of Kipper's friends sprawled on the blanket opposite us, who took a little umbrage when Kipper referred to their fair hamlet as the "countryside") have a house. We announced our intention to be in town, to watch the parades of Socialists and Communists and Syndicalists and this year even Christian Democrats. I popped a wine-soaked strawberry into my mouth and ventured my opinion that high taxes are good, because it helps us all that we pay so much so that other people's kids can have free day care. If we get so many benefits from a 40% tax rate, who knows what kind of luxury we would be living in if only we paid 50% of our salary in taxes? I would therefore be protesting tomorrow in favor of even higher taxes. "Yes, I quite agree," said Kipper, a most egalitarian type if there ever was one. "But hang on, old thing, you have a stipend, you don't pay taxes!"

That last assertion was fair enough, I suppose, but I saw no reason for the mere truth to get in the way my enjoyment of speeches excoriating imperialism and unfair labor practices and only six weeks of vacation per year and rubbish like that. So yesterday morning, at civilized hour of noon-ish, Monty and I girded our loins for the upcoming struggle and boarded a bus to the castle park, from where previous experience had shown us that one could get a taste of all the parades at once. Just like last year, the city gnomes had done an admirable overnight job of cleaning up Sista April's forgotten blankets, empty alcohol containers, and the odd inebriated undergraduate or two. The Syndicalists were observed massing in Engelska Park, site of yesterday's revelries, but we passed them by and picked a spot at the top of the natural amphitheater behind the castle. Our timing was impeccable; within a quarter of an hour Vänsterpartiets parade came marching up and emptied itself into the bowl, complete with a bull-horn wielding chappy egging them on. We toasted with water, being still rather shy of the ch. after yesterday's festivities.

It was remarkable how much this year was like last year, except perhaps we understood a little more of the speeches this time. We nibbled daintily at our brie and crackers while Comrade Bullhorn greeted us heartily as "Kamrater och vänner!" and then got down to ripping into the Idle Rich; a Palestinian spoke in English about how peaceful her people were; another speaker told us that the real enemies of the People are poverty, illiteracy, and disease ("Well, that's true enough," I thought, warming to their rhetoric). Then a sensitive fellow came down front to serenade us with a guitar and a song about how love crosses all borders, but just as he was really getting going and whipping the crowd into a nap, the brass band for the Social Democrats started drowning him out. We hauled ourselves up by our bootstraps and crossed the yard just in the nick to catch the Syndicalists tripping down Drottningsgatan, then we proceeded across the street to inspect the S.D.'s impressive amount of signage. I don't know about you, but I find reading signs while they are being marched in a quick-step down a hill is a chore, especially when they're written in a language with which one is only acquainted on a head-nodding sort of basis. What I mean to say, is that Swedish and I greet each other cordially enough, and I'm sure that, were we to run into each other in some far-flung corner of the earth, surrounded by speakers of Uigher casting rummy glances in our direction, we would fall into each other's arms and be the best of chums; here, Swedish has a distinct home-field advantage that one feels keenly at times.

That was pretty much the day, rally-wise. We sauntered along in the tail of the parade up the street and to the bus stop, passing hordes of natives re-enacting the October Revolution, in which the parts of the aristocracy were being played by ice creams on sticks. We took the hint and also the next bus for home, in order to fill a couple glasses with ice and the refreshing orange soda that we had purchased from the communist's table, for the princely sum of 10SEK—how they expect to make any profit charging only 10SEK for a bottle of orange-ade strains the old bean but they know their business best I'm sure...