Diversity in Swedish

I’ve been pretty busy lately so I’ve fallen behind in blogging. I was going to take it easy tonight (and possibly blog). But, then we lost electricity, for no apparent reason – and my computer battery is fully charged. So, here we go - this is the first of the catch-up posts.

Tuesday night a big group of people from my department went to an event that was suppose to be celebrating diversity at the KI. They advertised a talent show, dinner, drinks, and live music for 100 kronor (which is about $15) – a bargain.

The event was at a place called Cirkus (celebrate diversity at the circus – hehe!). When we arrived, we were given a hotdog and juice box outside the place – which was kind of funny but we were also worried that was the extent of the dinner and drinks.

Then, onto the show. There were several acts that we’d expect to see – flamenco dancers, a capella groups, singer and pianist pairs, a street dance group, a guy who swallowed a sword etc. Unfortunately, that made up only about 20% of the show. The rest of the three hours was all talk (panels on diversity, politicians, etc) – in Swedish! Now, I understand that I’m in Sweden and I don’t expect everything to be in English. But, the invitation was in English and it’s about diversity! Only 10 million people in the entire world speak Swedish. Only 2 of our group of 15 or so understood what was going on. They were bored too so we all scooted out early.

Luckily, they were serving dinner and drinks already so we were rewarded with no lines and plenty of places to sit. The after party was a lot of fun. Alexandros (one of the grad students in my department) was the DJ for the evening. There was also a live band. We had fun dancing for the rest of the night.

For Boston, for Boston.....

Saturday night, I met up with friends at an "American-style" sports bar to watch the Swedish hockey finals.

Sure the bar looked like a generic sports bar/restaurant but the prices were a bit more steep then in the US. I thought this menu was a good example since it's mostly in English (med kyckling is with chicken). One USD is equivalent to about 7 Swedish krona. (So, yes, that cheeseburger is $17! This is pretty typical.)Apparently, at sports bars here, you can't sit at a table unless you are ordering food. Since we were just having a few drinks, we stood in the bar for the game. Look what I saw on the wall across from where we were standing........which was only a small part of the Doug Flutie shrine.....It was a good hockey game - relatively high scoring and close all the way through. It was game six in the series, which ended up being the final game. There was only one person who was a fan of one of the two teams playing and his team lost. A few groups around us supporting the winning team ordered bottles of champagne at the end of the game. I've seen people order celebratory shots before but champagne seemed a bit much!

It's like April in Stockholm

The Swedish expression "like April" is used to describe things that are unpredictable. Now I understand the expression. After snow on Monday, the weather warmed up quite a bit. By the weekend, it was like summer. It was nice and sunny, with temperatures in the low 70s. Keep in mind that the average high for April is 47 and in July it's 71. Also, snow is in the forecast again for Thursday.

Anyway, back to fun in the sun.....Both Saturday and Sunday I went to afternoon barbeques with friends.

Saturday we went to a park on a lake that has bbq setups. This park was in the suburbs not to far from where I live. Here are some pictures:On Sunday, we went to a park by the KI. They didn't have bbqs there but the grocery stores sell little one-use bbqs. As you'll see from the pictures below, we weren't the only ones with the idea to bbq in the park. I went to the grocery store on my way home. It was really crowded and EVERYONE there had a bit of sunburn. Pictures from Sunday:

Uto - part 2

We woke up Easter Sunday to another sunny day. Again, it was really warm in the sun but chilly in the shade and just plain cold when the wind picked up.After a big breakfast and a lazy morning, we headed out by bike to explore the southern part of the island. The island has a lot of iron mines and the southern part is used for military training. The signs said that there was no shooting that day so we rode our bikes around the uninhabited part of the island. We saw the big attraction - the iron mines.
We weren't impressed either. They are all flooded out and there isn't much to see. It became a joke. We also say another historical site which was even less impressive - a place where there use to be a house that some guy lived in and he had a cow. (We had a Swede with us so the significance wasn't lost in translation. It wasn't really there to start with.) There was also a huge Dutch windmill - the most impressive "tourist attraction".
We had a nice picnic lunch on the beach on the south shore.
After lunch, we played in the barracks and shelters, climbed on the rocky shore, and collected bullets and grenade parts. Then, we biked back. In just a day and a half, we biked the entire island.Back in the cottages, we had a few cocktails and played a lot of cards. Eventually, we had a curry dinner. I attempted to make a bunny cake. It failed for many reasons but this is what it looked like in the end. It tasted ok but not much better than it looked.Monday morning we woke up to snow! Seriously! This is what the stuga looked like when we were leaving.

Easter Adventure in Uto

For Easter weekend I went to Uto with a group of people from my department. The trip was kind of thrown together last minute. Since it seems that most people here leave town for Easter, those of us left behind went out to Uto, which is part of the Stockholm archipelago, for 3 days. There ended up being 9 of us, with 8 countries represented (US, Canada, Sweden, Columbia, Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, and Australia).It takes about 3 hours to get to Uto using public transportation on a holiday weekend, the last hour of which is by boat. We all ended up getting up really early on Saturday to make the morning boat (there are only 2 a day).We stayed in stugas (little cottages) that were behind a main house. This was one of our 2 stugas.
When we arrived, Don, the owner of the house (and the stugas), invited all nine of us to his yard for a "welcome drink". He was very impressed at how multi-national our group was. He was a talker so he told us all about his island while asking us about our home countries.Next, we went into the town center - which consisted of a grocery store, a bakery, a clothing and knickknack store, and a bicycle shop. We found the bakery amazing. There was a rack of different breads with prices and a box of money. No one was working there! You picked up your bread and left your money. There was actually a good amount of money in the box. We were feeling kind of silly here.We rented bicycles for the weekend so that we could see the entire island. (This was the first time I've rode a bicycle since I could drive.) On Saturday, we biked around the northern part of the island for a couple of hours. The scenery was beautiful. Here's just one example.After that, we relaxed on the porch and enjoyed the rest of the sunshine. After salmon and potatoes for dinner, we played cards and chatted for a while. We were all exhausted so we were all in bed by 10:30. To be continued......

Easter Witches

Today (the Thursday before Easter) is fabled to be the day that the witches fly on their brooms to meet Satan. To celebrate this, Swedish kids dress like witches and go door-to-door exchanging pictures they have drawn for candy. I guess it's kind of like trick-or-treating.

I didn't actually see any of these witches since I was either at work or busy preparing for my last minute weekend trip.

I'm back-posting to stall while I collect pictures from Easter weekend. More back-posting to come. (I've been inserting place holders.)

Flowers?

I'm not sure if this is an Easter thing or an early spring thing but these sticks with colored feathers are EVERYWHERE! I'm guessing it's because, although it feels like it should be spring, there aren't many real flowers around. Anyway, it's kind of weird. Even stranger is that people actually buy these. The picture above is from in front of a florist.