About that last one...

Some of you know I am not even IN Sweden right now. "How is he watching Swedish TV then?" I´m NOT. I wrote a few ahead so I would have some spares. Keep an eye out for some photo essays...

I am writing to you now from sunny Barcelona. All I can say is, while it is cold here (40s-50s), it is WAY warmer than Stockholm, which clocked in at a cool 16 degrees with accompanying snow and darkness when I left. (Carrying my rollie-bag through the one-can´t-roll-a-rollie-bag-through-this snow the entire ten minute walk to the train station at 6:30 on a Saturday morning was NOT amusing. [I may or may not publish a blog entry solely on spelling "rollie"...])

I flew to London for the weekend to visit my dear friends Kevin & Jay. We walked around balmy London, did cultural things like visit the National Gallery and even saw the American disaster movie entitled, "Match Point." OH, I think I left out a word or two. The sentence should have read "disaster OF A movie." Ugh. SO don´t bother.

I jetted off to Barcelona for the week to investigate English-teaching opportunities and just because I like the city. It is even balmier here than London, but still cool, and as mentioned before: WHO CARES? Been doing the art thing and as my schedule is panning out, it looks like it will be a major visual art week. Went to the Picasso Museum yesterday, the Museum of Contemporary Art today. Will go to some galleries tomorrow and then Friday to the Joan Miró foundation and the National Museum of Catalunya where there is a large Cubism exhibit.

I have been staying with some relatives I reconnected with recently. My dad's brother's wife's father's sister's son's ex-wife, Ana, and her daughter, Eva. Seriously. They had an extra room and it has been so lovely spending time with them. Ana's generosity is astounding, as I have not seen her for probably twenty years! Eva and I hit it off and it has been nice catching up on roughly a million years or so.

I return to London for the weekend and then head back to Stockholm, where I promise to squeeze some more culture out of the city. I will post photos from this little jaunt in southern Europe when I get back next week. Just wanted to check in.

All for one and one for all...

The uniformity here kills me. Everyone has the same baby stroller and the same black/navy pea/overcoat with the same striped scarf tied in that I'm-a-model-you-know-what-I-mean way. This is a functional society, so everything works. But when they find something that works, they stick with it. And only it. Not a lot of variety here, folks. Often makes one squirm a bit. Me, in my gray-and-red Eddie Bauer ski jacket from a million years ago. THAT stands out. It is like a walking Banana Republic ad over here. Or a country full of well-dressed homosexuals. Even the women dress like gay men. They certainly look sharp. They have chosen a couple of very flattering styles with which to become zombified oompa-loompas. (Are they oompa-loompas or are they the guards of the palace of the Wicked Witch of the West? I have the oh-lee-oh song in my head and I think the oompa-loompas had a wholly different tune. The tune in my brain is definitely more cold, sullen and dreary than the whistling melody of the seven dwarves.)

And they all speak the same language. (The Swedes, not the dwarves. Well, the dwarves DO, but...) I have an aversion to lingo. I find lingo pretentious and try not to use it. Especially to people outside the milieu. While some jargon is necessary, I find it can be alienating and "clubforming." So, I try to steer clear. ANYWAY, (Don't give me an online microphone, people. You all know me. I ramble...) ANYWAY, I am having a mild aversion to the "lingo" of Swedish. I find it silly that everyone uses the same word to say "Right" ("Precis") or "absolutely" ("absolut"). I think Swedish has a smaller vocabulary than English and so the words are used more often. I never believe MYSELF when I use jargon, so I am having that same reaction to using the colloquialisms of Swedish. I feel mildly pretentious. Does this make sense to anybody?

I have to say that the Swedish sense of humor is quite good. Even the TV commercials are subtle and dry. One phone company's campaign uses video and concert footage of David Hasselhoff without commenting on it. Hysterical.

PLEASE TELL ME YOU'LL VISIT THIS WEBSITE TO SEE THE COMMERCIALS! http://www.djuice.se/sweden/services/addArchive.jsp
CLICK ON "VISA FILMEN." There are THREE of them.

Please don't take this rant as anything more than observational.

Oh my god, Dr. Carter just proposed to Abby. Gotta go.

A sleepy town...

I am the only one awake in the wee hours in this little apartment complex. I am ALWAYS the only one awake past a certain hour. This is what I see when I look out the window: nary an illuminated fönster...


This town is crazy with its uniformity. Everyone goes to bed at a reasonable hour because everyone gets up early for work the next day. It is not a 'round the clock city. This city certainly DOES sleep. When I'm lying in bed, I see this...



I wonder if anyone but me gets sucked into the late night American sitcoms with Swedish subtitles. Did I mention I watch Sex and the City, Scrubs, Drew Carey Show, and Seinfeld AFTER "E.R."? If "Oz" comes on, then I know it's WAY too late. I should really call it a night after SATC, but they're addictive. Just like home.

Saw my friend Jon Kinnally on "Will & Grace" this evening.








Just like seeing Marc Forget on the finale of "Sex and the City" a couple of weeks ago.






So nice to have my friends with me in Stockholm...

Brighter?

Better?



Brush your breath with Dentyne?

Where have all the Koreans gone?

My dear friend Yongsun asked the age-old question: "No Koreans?" when looking at my Swedish class. I have not met any Koreans at SFI. I failed to mention the many gals from Thailand, but until today, those were the only people from Asian countries I have met until today. Today, I met a young Chinese man who came to Sweden from Wisconsin via New York. He came to Wisconsin from China via Virginia, I think. He says it is much colder in the midwest.

My dear friends Lawrence and Rebecca, who have adopted two adorables from Korea, also asked me if there are a lot of Koreans in Sweden. They told me that Sweden is one of the countries with the highest number of Korean adoptees. Here is a shot of the two cuties who call me Unka Tiss. (Actually, only Thomas calls me anything and he has graduated to Unka Kiss. Grace just stares at me.)

Swedish for Immigrants

So this is where I take my "Svenska för Invandrare" classes.

It is called Globen (the globe) and is an arena much like Madison Square Garden, only smaller.

I go to a learning center that is attached to Globen, called Lernia.

Fascinating.


Four hours per day, five days per week. We study grammar, learn about Swedish society, practice conversation. Most of the teachers are good. The students are all nice because we are in the same boat. Nobody cares if you make a mistake, we all laugh because it could just as easily be another one of us.

People från runt globen: Germany, Russia, Serbia, Croatia, Iraq, Spain, Cuba, Chile, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Uganda... It's quite interesting to hear Swedish spoken with so many accents.

Clockwise from left: Eva (teacher), Nayla (Morocco), Sura (Iraq), Susana (Spain), Josef (Ethiopia), Annmarie (New Zealand), Javier (Cuba), Marius (Rumania), Pino (Belgium)

Swedish TV is unbelievable. Wow.

This post is a little delicate, so don't read on if you don't want to see the word "penis."

Or "balls."

OK, so I am watching this show which is quite funny. Two wild-and-crazy Swedish guys who do wild-and-crazy not-necessarily-Swedish things. This week, they are in Indiana at the Mr. and Miss Nude America "pageant" out in redneck land. Now, for kicks, they entered one of the guys (Filip) in the Mr. Nude America contest (as "Dr. Phil"). While preparing him for his walk, they were trimming his pubic hair and his partner spread washable Elmer's glue on his own face and made a mustache and soul patch from the trimmings. That is just the beginning. He then proceeded to interview some of the "audience members" in this get-up. And, wow. Americans certainly giggle a lot when they are mildly uncomfortable. And, wow. These were not the best representatives of our country, however real they be.

Now, you must understand that Swedish TV does not blur out ANYTHING. I saw so many PENISES and VAGINAS and BOOBS, it was unbelievable. They even interviewed a "Mr." contestant with an elaborate cock ring, zoomed in on the equipment, asked him to remove it, lift his penis and "expose" his balls. All this was caught on camera. It was crazy. And this was at ten o'clock on a Monday night.

It's ironic that it takes Swedish television to show what is ACTUALLY going on in the United States.

No pictures on this one. Use your imagination.




















OK, one.

Tomtar Gone Wild

AAAAAAHHHHH!!!! THE ONE-EYED WONDER!!!!

Jul med Familj Johnson

Ah, the post-Jul get-together. I had a lovely dinner with Sune and Gabriella and their youngest, Jakob. That's him below.


Gabriella had told me that Sune loves "tomtar," or Santas, and so I expected garish, American-style decorations everywhere. When I arrived, the house was tastefully decorated and I wondered aloud about all the fuss. "Well, Chris," Gabriella said, "I had wondered where they all went, too. Go into the den." Sune had them all set up having a little party out there.


Sune also told me that Tomten (Santa) comes on Christmas Eve (Julafton), but he sends his little gnomes to fill the stockings. They even leave little footprints in white powder, so there is further proof of their visit!

Waking up at 3 PM is normal, right?

Yeah, so I couldn't sleep last night. The LAG has set in. I was up late, back on the couch, catching up on the already-in-the-distant-past "ER" and "Sex in MY City." Finally, my head hits the pillow. For, like, three hours. I wake up, wide, as they say, at kl. 5.00 (klockan fem, as they would say HERE). So, what's a girl to do? I pick up my worn copy of IN COLD BLOOD and start to read myself to sleep.



Oddly, after some rather disturbing pages, it works. Now, the scare-me-to-death-middle-of-the-night newspaper delivery did not arrive today. Thankfully so. So, I was able to catch a few winks. OK, like, TEN MORE HOURS or so. I woke up at THREE O'CLOCK. Holy crap. I immediately get on the phone to my Swedish for Immigrants study center and tell Krister the whole story. He seemed chipper until I told him I had slept the day away and that I wouldn't be coming in for class. At least I was able to say it all in Swedish. THAT should have made him happy. He's not my teacher anyway.

By the time I left the house it was dark.



Midnight blue sky with a bright shining moon in it at 4:00. Took a nice long walk by the boats, replaced my cell phone (which hauled ass out of my pocket on Day One of my NYC trip), got some groceries and returned. I realized that if I didn't leave the house, I would have been inside it for 24 hours and that was just too much for me.



Hope you had a nice day today. It looked beautiful here, but I completely missed it. The days are so darn short. You oversleep a little and you got nothin'. Plunged back into the darkness.

Love ya,
Chris

Kristoffer, would you marry a 55-year old woman?

OK, to be fair, I was first asked if I would marry a 45-year old woman. I took it as a compliment.

In Swedish class, we were discussing age differences in marriage, all in the context of marriage versus the summarily Swedish phenomenon known as "sambo" or "living together." The term "sambo" comes from the compound word "sammansboende," or literally, "together living." So, when asked if I would marry a 45-year old woman, I responded that I was 37, so that was really no big deal, only eight years.


I thought that would take me, as they say, "off the hook." But, no, the teacher kept me squirming and wriggling while he upped the ante to 55. I said, "Kärlek över allt," or "Love above all." I sat there hoping for a really large fish to rescue me, but, no, the fisher continued to fish. He asked what my parents might think of the arrangement (with the 55-year old woman). I responded by saying that I would just talk to them and convince them of our relationship.

Yikes. Even though the class was merely five people I knew, I didn't want to get into the "well, it wouldn't actually be a 45-year old WOMAN..." story. I thought we needed to stay on topic. I have also been advised to lay a little low about that, given the variety of cultures represented in my "Swedish for Immigrants" study center. I know my silence may be considered a bit controversial, but I am there for such a short time and I knew this would blow past in moments. Don't think it didn't cross my mind, but I have found the subject a little more complex when dealing with an international community. I must add, there was reference to the domestic partnership laws for gay couples in the "sambo" literature.

I did, however, discuss the fact that the double standard with regard to age differences in heterosexual relationships was a dated remnant of patriarchy. I am sure I did not state it quite so eloquently. More like "Bad."

And, truthfully, age doesn't really matter.



All in a day's work.

Hej då.