Well, well, well

Color me stunned. The plea I made a few days ago to global cosmetics company Eucerin wasn't just a lament here at Well Behaved, I also sent them an e-mail through their 'contact us' button on their website. And lookee here, they wrote back to me. This popped up in my lucyarinATgmailDOTcom inbox. I've been having technical difficulties of the Blackberry variety with the lucy addy, and so have been trying to remember to log in and check it. 'Course, I don't remember to do that daily. Copied and pasted, here's their response. Please excuse the Swedish in the headers, I'll translate if it seems needed.

ifrån consumerrelations@bdfusa.com till lucyarin datum 11 januari 2010 11.00 ämne (subject) 000643344A Eucerin product

11 jan (2 dagar sedan)

(2 days ago)

Hello Lucy,

Thank you for your E-mail regarding a Eucerin Lip product. We're sorry to disappoint you, but this product is currently not sold in the U.S. by Beiersdorf.

While Beiersdorf markets a wide assortment of products throughout the world, the products can vary country to country based on consumer preferences and brand development within each country's market.

Our products, both in the U.S. and other countries, are only sold through retail, wholesale and internet retail channels. We do not sell our products directly to consumers at this time.

We are aware of U.S. internet retailers which sell some of the German Beiersdorf products: www.smallflower.com, www.eurobeautymart.com and www.germandeli.com. You may want to check these sites.

For more information about Eucerin, please visit our website www.EucerinUS.com.

Please call us at 1-800-227-4703 if you have any other questions or comments. Our phone lines are open Monday to Friday, 9:30 am to 4:30 pm EST.

We appreciate your taking the time to express your interest in this product. Your feedback helps us identify those products most desired by our consumers. Thank you again for your E-mail and your interest in Beiersdorf's products.

Cordially,

Sam
Consumer Relations
Beiersdorf Inc.

I am really surprised that I got a response. My plea to them wasn't particularly eloquent, just mentioned I'd purchased it in Sweden and want WANT WANT! Of course, none of their 3 suggestions actually sells the stuff, but I did find a Belgian company that sells it at the "right" price. They're even willing to ship to the US; as long as you place a minimum order of 130 € . That's "only" about $200. ($188.62, to be precise.) GAH!

So you're wondering, of course, why I don't just harass the fam or good friends in Sweden to hunt me up some? Mostly due to the hassle factor involved. I know, I wouldn't hesitate to ask one of my Yankee or Canadian friends to pick something up for me; and as I pointed out the other day, Swedes have no option BUT Apoteket for prescriptions and some OTC stuff, so it isn't like asking someone to run to Apoteket is going out of their way. But then it needs to be shipped and...and...I'm running out of justifications, aren't I? Hmmm. Du, Maman...kan du gör mej en tjänst? (Oh, Swedish Mama...can you do me a favor?)

Lots

I spent a long weekend in New York City over the New Year holiday, and there is lots I'd like to write about from that trip, but the posts are still growing from germination of an idea to text. Today, for my first ever-so-auspicious post of 2010, I'd like to rant and rave for a minute about a global cosmetics company.

Not surprisingly, this story has a twist of Sweden in it.

Sweden has social medicine. They figured out the whole health care mess a generation ago, and while their system isn't perfect, it is a damn sight better than the one we're used to. Even if it seems a little odd to a die-hard Yankee capitalist.

So let's set out a little scenario. Imagine a 24 year old Swedish bloke, let's call him Magnus. (Yep, that really is a common male name. I love it. Were I ever going to have kids {NOT} I'd fight DH long and hard for that name for a boy!) Anyhow, Magnus is playing football with some friends on a sunny Saturday afternoon in the park, and he takes a hard fall and hears an ominous crack when he lands hard on his elbow. His friends bundle him into a car and thence to an emergency room, where he's fixed up with a cast, good as new in 6-8 weeks, and he walks out of the hospital with a prescription for painkillers.

Thus far, it isn't all that different than what we'd do here in the US, right? Except for the fact that it didn't matter if Magnus is independently wealthy, or if Magnus had the money for the ER or not, because he's got health insurance provided by virtue of being a citizen of Sweden.

Ah, sorry. Getting a little sidetracked.

So to get his painkillers, Magnus needs to visit a pharmacy - or chemist if you're a Brit - and to do that, he has one and only one option: the state-run pharmacy Apoteket. Every tiny hamlet has its own Apoteket, even if it is only a kiosk inside a grocery store.

At 17, I stayed the bloody hell out of Apoteket, sure that someone would demand to see my health insurance card and that I'd be "in trouble" for going someplace a non-citizen shouldn't go. Hey, it made sense to me at 17. I didn't want to get sent home for any reason, so I stayed away.

Of course at 35, I have no such compunction, and I've learned well that either by looking like you know what you're doing or playing dumb, you can get away with a lot.

I was in several of the Apoteket stores this year; the trouble started in a town on Sweden's southeast coast, Ystad. Spring allergies were in full swing, and I think we (part of the team) wandered in there in search of nasal spray or something like it. At the till, I spied several kinds of lip balm and picked up two of them; one made by ACO (Never heard of it? Don't worry, me neither.) and one made by Eucerin.

I tossed them both in my bag, and I think I used the Eucerin once before leaving Sweden.

I should have purchased 20 or 50 or 300 of them, however many it would take to last me until I can go back to Sweden, because this is bar none the best lip balm I've ever used. It has NO flavor. None. Not even a whiff. I truly despise cherry or mint or vanilla or wtfever flavors are added to lip balm. Ditto camphor, which seems to be in every single "healing" lip balm. Just no. Leave that stuff out.

This stuff works fantastically. It doesn't bother my skin. (I've had issues lately with peeling lips from every freaking lipstick I put on, ugh.)

Since I didn't figure out until a month or so after I came home that this stuff was the bee's knees, I didn't start looking for it right away. When I did go a-hunting, imagine my great shock to discover that Eucerin doesn't sell Lip Active in the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, Ireland, or anyplace else that I could possibly get it from. I can't even find the stuff online with just Google.

I tried Amazon. No dice. I tried going to Apokteket's website, and just like the Bliw soap I wanted, I can't find a single Swedish vendor who is willing to sell to the US. They're polite, of course, but they explain that due to the US's complete pain in the arse border control, they can't guarantee shipments, ended up refunding a bunch of prior customers' money, and thus they quit doing it when it became no longer cost effective.

eBay! eBay would have it, right?? They'd have to. There has to be someone, somewhere in the eBay universe that would have a mad desire to sell cosmetics available only in Europe to the rest of the world, right? Indeed, there is. In Sweden, I paid about 25:- SEK, about $3.50 for my tube of Lip Active. On eBay, I can pick up a tube of Lip Active from a seller in Thailand who is willing to part with it for merely $11.39 plus shipping, plus insurance.

Now I understand that a global cosmetics company has a lot more things to think about - like protesters and animal testing, or, um, profits - than what mix of products they offer to which countries, frustrating as that understanding is. They don't care much what I want, one individual consumer me. But dammit, I want more of that stuff before I run out of what I have. I've got at least 3 if not 4 months more of winter here in Ohia, and even when every lipstick I touch ISN'T making my lips peel, they still get chapped a lot in the winter.

I also understand that paying $11.39 plus shipping, plus insurance, is one hell of a lot cheaper than a plane ticket. I do. I just don't want to part with $11.39 for something that I 'know' costs $3.50.

So, Eucerin....what do you say?? Please?? Start selling Lip Active in the US?

Summertime laziness, I presume.

Since I've come out of the dark ages and use an RSS feed reader to follow the various blogs I like, I've found it easier to include more and more and more blogs and newsfeeds. The reader tracks two of Sweden's biggest newspapers for me, the Svenska Dagbladet (The Swedish Daily Blade) and Sydsvenskan (The Southern Swede). Both big newspapers, both on the newsy beat 24/7. So every time I open the feed reader, the count is over 100. 50 or 60 or more of the new, unread items are from the newspapers. And I can't deal. I end up clicking the "mark all as read" button rather than slogging my way through the headlines.

I read Swedish OK. I speak it far better than I write it, but I'd judge myself at about a 4th or 5th grade reading level, whereas my writing looks like a 2nd grader. I'm overly proud, even smug sometimes about my ability to speak it, I haven't had to say, "I don't understand" in a very long time. Conversation is noooo problem. The only way I've managed to retain the Swedish all these years (and the 18th anniversary of the day I left for Sweden was this week, damn, when did that happen?) is because I've worked hard at it. Often. The rise of teh interwebs really helped that, because even back in those dark, early days of the technology, all of the major media jumped right on board and I could look at the newspapers. Sometimes it made me sad to even see Swedish written, because I missed it a lot. And the Swedish newspapers, even the reputable ones, tend toward the tabloid end of things, much like the British press. Three inch tall screaming headlines, sensationalism at its finest. Sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying, always attention-getting.

Anyway. I'm off track. Again.

When I'm speaking Swedish, I understand it with no problem. When I'm reading it, sometimes I have to read it out loud, sounding it out, reading the same sentence 3-4 times before I get a grasp on it. For an avid reader, it is frustrating, to say the least. But this dis-inclination to read the headlines is an odd thing. I changed the language setting on both Facebook and GMail to Swedish, and I'm dealing fine with that. Of course, you're seeing the same thing all the time on both of those, your in-box for e-mail and the list of who has commented on what for Facebook. Whereas the headlines change frequently, so I'd actually have to work at that. Mmm-hmm, I'm calling that. Summer laziness.

Oh, it's ON.

I've been hinting that I was going to write about this for a while, but rather than make it to actual text, it has been floating about in my head for quite some time.

Being "on" is related to being a guest. Related to good manners, and showing the nicer side of yourself. (Yeah, it's hard.)

While I was in Sweden with the Rotary GSE, I was "on" whenever I was awake.

For me, this meant being gracious and polite, being enthusiastic even when I felt like shit, and having an open mind to trying everything that was offered.

Being on is a little like acting. You're smiling, being cheerful, and listening intently even when you're pissed, unhappy, and bored.

I love Sweden. I love its people, its culture, its food, its language, its cities and its countryside. There isn't much I don't love about Sweden. But even someone as Swedish-crazy as I am can get to the end of their rope.

The Swedish diet is quite full of herring. Fried herring. Pickled herring. Sour pickled herring (bleh!). Herring sliced up and mixed with other stuff and baked into a casserole. Then there's the boiled potatoes, smoked salmon, low-brow caviar, lingonberry jam, and Swedish meatballs. I like all of those things, with the exception of the sour stuff. I really like Swedish meatballs and boiled potatoes with lingonberry jam. (Don't knock it 'til you've tried it, sweetcheeks.) I got really tired of the herring during this trip. Thankfully, no one served the team sour pickled herring. But the rest of it, pickled and fried and casserole-style, man-oh-man did I get tired of it.

When we would arrive at wherever we were going to have lunch, and the menu was herring again, you couldn't roll your eyes or show exasperation. You had to be polite and cheerful, non-snarky and appreciative. That's what I mean by saying that I was "on" all the time. Being a gracious guest isn't a huge burden to bear, but it can certainly get old after a while. (Like 5 weeks.)

All of this makes me sound like an entitled, ungrateful, and overprivledged brat. I am exceedingly grateful for the chance to visit Sweden on someone else's dime, and to have learned everything that I did, to have met everyone that I did. Really and truly. Being in Sweden makes me happy. Speaking Swedish makes me happy.

Not having my own space or my own stuff for five weeks isn't with the happy-making.

I got into a tiff with one of the other team members during the third week we were there; it is a long backstory, but relates to exactly what I'm talking about.

He is one of those people that thrives on having someone to pick on, to belittle, as compensation for what I don't know, but I'm assuming he does it to compensate for a tiny male appendage. He teased me about shirts that I wore, which had the logo of my employer embroidered on them. Small and tasteful, business attire (shells to wear under suit jackets. fine-gauge sweaters.) that I wore on a near-daily basis. I own eight of these embroidered shirts, which run the gamut of colors and are, as I said, tasteful. He started a pool to guess which color and style shirt I'd wear the next day.

I put up with this for a while, silently, or chuckling along with everyone else. I've had experience with his type before. Letting them know that they're getting to you is like pouring gasoline on a fire, so I kept my mouth shut even though it annoyed me. It wasn't enough to get worked up over, and it kept him from being obnoxious to the Swedes. No worries, I'm a big girl and can handle being teased.

I put up with it even when I didn't think it was funny anymore. I kept quiet when he actually drew a complicated matrix in his notebook, showing the mathematical probability of which shirt I would wear which day. I'm enough of a grown-up to admit that the geek in me was vastly entertained that he was that much of a geek too, despite the uber-urbane airs he put on.

I put up with it when he invited one of the Rotarians that we all really liked to join the pool, even when it made me feel like an ass. It made me feel small and provincial and stupid.

The point at which I no longer put up with it even came AFTER he announced the winner of one of his ridiculous pools at A FORMAL ROTARY GATHERING WITH 30 PEOPLE IN ATTENDANCE. Talk about feeling like an asshole. He explained (in English, with no translator) what the pool was about to the assembled guests, all of whom were Swedish, i.e., non-native speakers of English. Then he announced the winner. A polite round of applause followed. None of the Swedes really understood what it was all about, other than it was making fun of Lucy, ha-ha-ha, isn't Arnie Asshole funny.

I said nothing at the party. I said nothing for another two days, at which time he invited two more Rotarians, who were our guides/drivers for that day to join the pool while we were having coffee at a cafe. That was my breaking point. I'm not sure why that particular bit was the breaking point. I didn't say anything to him previously because I knew it would simply get worse, but that right there? That was IT.

As he went to hand the notebook to the Swedes for them to note their guesses, the notebook came to me on the way to them. I took it, handed it back to him, and said, "Could you please find some ONE or some THING else to pick on? Because I'm over it." My tone was nasty, but at my normal volume. My facial expression was pissed. My intent was not unclear.

{In my defense, I didn't punch him in the face, tear his stupid notebook to shreds, dump my hot cup of coffee over his smug head, or do what I wanted to most, which was kick him where it would have hurt. Bad. Real bad. I resisted those urges.}

Our hostesses for the day were shocked. Stunned silence greeted this outburst. Then he said, sounding like an innocent little boy who doesn't know any better, "Really?"

"Yes, really," I snarked back. "Enough."

The Swedes tend to be stoic. Public disagreements are rare. Shouting at someone in public is absolutely a faux pas. I didn't shout at him, but the moment was very, very awkward. Moments later, we all cleared the table, put our dishes where they belonged, and walked out.

I walked with one of the hosts, starting a conversation about something trivial. She was a typical Swede and being polite as they usually are, she didn't ask for details about what had just happened. The rest of the team followed clustered in a group behind me, whispering to one another.

Fucking fantastic. Oh, and oops.

My team leader pulled me aside a little later and didn't tell me off, but she did say that it was unfortunate that I'd chosen to bitch him out in front of our hosts. I agree; it was. Presenting a united (and happy with one another) front to the Swedes as a team was important. We specifically sidestepped political questions because we didn't agree about the president, or anything else in American government, for that matter, and we didn't want to seem fracturous.

It is quite possible that we could be the only Americans that some of the people we met would ever see. For example? If you've only ever met one Puerto Rican, and she/he was rude and nasty, you just might form the opinion that every Puerto Rican was a nasty brat. Likewise, if the entire group fought the whole time we were there, Swedes that we met could get the impression that all Americans behave this way all the time. As ambassadors of our country, we needed to act the part. I wasn't "on" in that moment, not at all.

I have yet to apologize to him for biting his head off. I have no intentions of doing so, either. He never did ask me for an explanation of my behavior, but if he had, he'd've gotten chapter and verse on what an asshole I thought/think he is/was. Nothing else was said about it for the entire journey, although one other teammate did ask later that same day if I'd thought of perhaps pulling him aside and asking him to stop before verbally attacking him. No, I didn't. Because I knew what would happen, he'd keep it up AND make it worse.

What's that? What does this have to do with routine? Meh. Not much. I wasn't following the Nice Girl Routine there.....

But there are some people who just bring that out in me. Thankfully, I no longer have to deal with him frequently. But if I did? And he was still a pain in the ass? Oh, it'd be ON then, my friend!

New Friends and Old

I took nearly 500 pictures in five weeks in Sweden. Not quite 500, but awful close.

There was a team of Swedes here in Oh-hia-ia before my team went to Sweden, and we were fortunate enough to meet them before we left, and to see them several times while we were in Sweden. The Swedish team leader teased our team that we'd never be able to take as many pictures as they did. Five team members, five weeks, and they took a combined total of over 6,000 pictures. I did some quick math, and that adds up to somewhere between 35 and 40 pictures, per person, per day for the entire trip. That's some serious shutter-bugging.

For a basis of comparison, my 460 pictures works out to 13 pictures a day.

I don't know how many we as a whole team took - because my team hasn't compared notes yet - but one of our team members took all of maybe 5 pictures over 5 weeks, so there's no way we'd even come close to a combined total of 6000.

I don't consider myself a good photographer, and my digital camera is old. I have a really good 'real' film camera, but I didn't take it to Sweden because it is too heavy, too big, too much to carry around, and getting the pictures developed (it uses Kodak Advantix film, not just regular 35mm film) is bloody expensive. Even though I knew it would take better shots, I left it at home.

I was able to share my pictures online with the other team members as we travelled, updating nearly weekly with pictures I'd taken and using FTP to share them. There are several pictures I took that I love. But another team member has studied photography, and she brought a digital SLR camera. I've been nagging her to share her pictures, and she finally did get them shared with everyone yesterday.

As I looked through the pictures, there's a great one of my team leader with a Swedish friend of hers, someone she's known since 1987, and looking at it, I had an "awwww" moment. He's one of the new friends that I made and wish lived closer so I could see him often, although he's an old friend for my team leader.

Among the pictures I shared with my team were several of my Swedish Mama and Papa, people the team didn't get to meet. (That whole they-live-350-miles-away-from-Skåne thing was really a barrier!) I was bummed when I went to visit Mama & Papa that I didn't get to see any of my "old" Swedish friends; it was a holiday weekend when I was there, and almost everyone had skedaddled out of town for the holiday. My best Swedish friend: in Stockhom, roughly 90 miles away. My Swedish 'sisters': one went to Skåne when I went to Västmanland, the other was moving that weekend. Many of my host parents' friends from back then: retired, and either living somewhere else in Sweden, or snowbirds, and not 'home' in Sweden from various southern European places.

I didn't really have close friends in my class at school in Sweden, although I liked many of them. Since the inception of the EU, many of my former classmates now live and work in Germany, Austria, France, and England, so not much chance of seeing many of them. I ran around with mostly older kids, who had already graduated, and these days have families with young children. Perhaps it was silly, but I didn't want to intrude on what is a big family holiday and instead asked Mama to pass on my greetings to them. I also, selfishly, treasured being able to spend time with just Mama & Papa, something I've never been able to do before when I've been back in Sverige.

Some of this ties back into the hemlängtan I was talking about the other day. I've always said that visiting Sweden is more about the people than the place, even though I like the place a whole hellava lot. I miss both, but given the choice to go to Sweden, or to see the people, one or the other, I'd take the people over the place any day.

I hope that some of my new friends come to visit here in Ohio. I made the offer to everyone I met (well, everyone I met that I liked, of course!) The focus of both Rotary Youth Exchange (RYE) and Group Study Exchange (GSE), is to further understanding, build networks, and to focus on how we're more alike than we are different. People who have been with either RYE or GSE learn new perspectives, and hopefully, work to make the world a more peaceful place. Yeah, yeah, lofty and naive ideals, I know. But I'm hopeful that that the new friends I made will remain part of my life. Even if all I can do for a while is look at the pictures.

Hemlängtan

Swedish -- of course -- for 'homesickness'

How is it possible to be homesick for someplace that isn't your home? I don't know. The way I feel about Sweden is NOT the same way that someone would feel about a favorite vacation spot...like on a bad day, you wish you were there instead of wherever "here" happens to be. No, this is more than that. Sweden isn't my home, and really, I can't honestly say it was my home when I was an exchange student, either. Home then, just as now....Ohio, USA.

I got an e-mail last weekend from a Swede, showing a picture of his new sailboat and his faithful canine companion, a pug, in a harbor near Jonstorp, Skåne. As the picture opened on my browser, it showed the harbor in the background first, and then the boat and puppy appeared. The first house that came clear, a yellow 2-story with what must be a stellar view of the water, hit me like a shot to the gut.

Swedish houses out in the country, summer cottages, usually, or old farmsteads, tend to be one of two colors, red or yellow. A very distinctive red, and a particular shade of yellow. When I was 17, someone in Sweden told me a story of why, exactly, those two shades of those two colors were used, but I don't remember the details. It probably had something to do with class status, once upon a time, nobility vs. non-nobility, but these days, even though Sweden still has both royalty and nobility, they're pretty egalitarian.

That yellow two-story house in the picture my friend sent to me says "SWEDEN!" at the top of its lungs. I can imagine how the place is furnished. Light blonde wood. White walls. Light-colored window coverings. No attached garage. Sparse furniture. The windows have latches that require downward pressure to close. The kitchen is large, but the appliances are small. Everything is orderly. Bookshelves line the walls in every available space, and the books are mingled with small curiosities from all over the world. There's an orange or blue Dala Häst on a shelf, along with a few small pieces of crystal from Orrefors. Every wall has artwork. Family pictures from the recent past are small. Pictures from the early days of photography, or paintings of ancestors are large. Light is abundant, each room has big windows. There is no air conditioning, because until the very recent past, it has not been necessary. (Sweden has felt the realities of global warming.) Rooms that have been redone (at least the bathroom, if not the entire house) have radiant heat in the floors, and you never place a foot on an ice cold floor on chilly mornings. Places near the water, be it the ocean or one of the many inland lakes, have a breeze that cools the house when the windows are open.

I suppose that it is only natural to be thinking a lot more about Sweden than usual, having only recently returned from there. In the normal course of life, I did/do think about Sweden nearly daily, so it isn't that this line of thought is unheard of. I often wish I lived there. I often wish I could spend more time there. I often wish that I could see my host family more frequently, and I don't care which side of the pond that happens. (I've been trying to convince them for years that we should meet up in Florida in the winter, with no success. Of course, they've been trying to get me to Croatia, where they have a second home, for nearly two decades, with no success there, either.)

I wish I could say that I remember what I felt like when I came home from Sweden in 1992, but I can't quantify that other than by saying I was miserable, and an incredible brat to everyone in my life, I do remember that. I had wanted to stay so badly, and Mama wanted me to stay too. She in fact encouraged me to stay after my visa expired, enraging my mother a little. Ooops. At 17, I didn't know how hurtful me saying I didn't want to come back to America was for her. That was never my intention. On the other hand, I know that I could have done much more to attempt to stay, including the very easy step of having a conversation with the immigration authorities, but I never did.

I hate to say this, because it feels fiercely disloyal to the region where I lived as an exchange student, but I thought that Skåne was incredibly beautiful, even prettier in parts than Västmanland is. They're radically different, and so I treasure them each in their own way, but were someone to offer me a choice of job & apartment in Stockholm or Malmö, I'd have a hell of a time picking one over the other. (n.b., we ain't talking about reality here, folks.)

Hemlängtan means literally 'to long for home'. An accurate descriptor of how I feel about Sweden. It is with wistful longing that I look to the north and east, wondering when I will get to go back.

Just when you think it can't get any sillier

I mentioned the Eurovision Song Contest briefly in a recent post. I realized when I wrote it that if you've never heard of Eurovision, you'd be baffled by my passing reference to it.

There is an exhaustive Wikipedia entry about it here, but in its simplest terms, think American Idol meets the Grammy Awards. European countries that are members one of the Europe-wide broadcast networks send entrants to compete at a contest, which is broadcast live throughout Europe over 3 nights. Most countries hold a contest to determine who will represent them, and have very specific rules about who can and can't enter.

In Sweden, they hold a contest called Melodifestivalen, quite literally, the Melody Festival. I remember almost nothing about Melodifestival, so I looked it up, on the ever-reliable Wiki. Turns out it wouldn't matter if I remembered how it worked, since they changed it in 2002. I have no recollection of who won while I lived there in 1992, but it appears that the final of the whole Eurovision was in Sweden that year, as 1991's winner was Swedish pop artist Carola. Hmm. No memory of that, either. Clearly, this made a big impression on me.

Or - y'know - not.

Melodifestival is a big damn deal in Sweden, as is Eurovision.  I'm not sure why, although perhaps the facts that the contest begins in Sweden in February, when sun is in short supply, the nights are long, and the weather is crappy probably have a whole lot to do with it.

This year's contest for all of Europe was held while I was visiting Sweden. I watched the first of two semi-finals live with my Familjen Svensson, and the second I ignored. The final was on a Saturday night. Mr. & Mrs. Svensson took me with them to a stand-up comedy show that night, and so we only saw the end of it.

Watching the first semi-final had me in hysterics. Poor Daughter Svensson. She's 15, and this all matters a great deal to her. Her mother and I laughed our way through it, especially after the first act, Gipsy.cz.

If I'm supposed to take that seriously, sorry. Not so much. The superman costume was just too much. Once back home, though, I've been reading about the artists involved in Eurovision, and it turns out the Gipsy.cz has been influential in opening a dialog with the Romany people in the Czech Republic, and are highly respected there. Huh. In'trusting.

Although much of this contest is sung in English, the songwriters are mostly not native English speakers.  So there are hilarious song lyrics that rhyme or work into the rhythm of the song, but make absolutely no sense.  Or, even better, there is a blend of English and whatever the native language happens to be, just like "Aven Romale" above.

This year's winner, Alexander Rybak of Norway, is absolutely adorable, although it wasn't my favorite song of the contest by a long shot.  The opening riff on the violin is unmistakable, though, and very catchy.

I liked several others much better, among them Turkey with the very silly Dum Tek Tek, Portugal's Todas As Ruas Do Amor, Iceland's Is It True?, Romania's The Balkan Girls, which was just as silly as Turkey's entry, and my favorite, Armenia's Nor Par (Jan-Jan), sung brilliantly by sister act Inga & Anush.  I like listening to them sing, and shocker, they are actually classically trained musicians.  Plus, check out the costumes.

Jan-Jan doesn't have any more intelligent lyrics than the rest of the bunch, but even better, it has a dance.   I wish I had instructions in English, but there's only Armenian.

How can you not like a song that has its own dance?  Nor Par (Jan-Jan), by the way, translates to New Dance (My Dear).

As if that wasn't bad enough, hustling through the Copenhagen airport to catch my flight home, I stopped in an electronics store and bought the Eurovision CD, with every song in the contest on 2 discs.  To the tune of 221:-SEK, or roughly $30.  Who was I saying was silly?  The Europeans for getting all wound up in the contest, or me, for spending $30 on a CD full of trashy pop with no real redeeming qualities.  Tough call, that. 

get, acquire, take, recieve

All translations for the Swedish verb "att få". As in to receive a present, be gifted with something, or in the context of illness, to catch something.

I was having a conversation with one of my hosts in Sweden about Sweden and Swedish. (wow, that sounds a weeee confusing. Are ya with me?) We'll call him Per. It was all I could do not to roll around laughing on the floor at this comment of his:

I think you like Sweden.

Hmmm, I wonder what made him think so! The rest of the conversation was also amusing, but more for semantics of grammar than 'funny'. I have to take it in Swedish, then in English for it to make sense.

Per: Du få flytta hit. (You should move here)

Lucy, (through giggles): Gärna! Det finns några problemar med det; jag har ingen jobb, kan inte lasa eller skriva så bra på Svenska.... Willingly! There's only a few problems with that; I don't have a job here, I can't read or write so well in Swedish....

Per: Nejmen entligen. Du skulle trivs har, och vi behover ju folk som ville vara har, och ville jobba. (No, really. You'd do well here, and we need people who want to be here, and want to work.)

Translation is NOT an exact science, and translating directly to English from Swedish can result in errors like this:

"Since five years, I have been working for ABB,"

instead of

"For the last five years, I've worked for ABB."

Yes, I really read that in a Swedish person's English translation of their own bio. Urgh. Doesn't anyone proofread ANYTHING, anywhere in the world? Good to know that the crappy grammar of the common era isn't limited to English. /rant.

So what he said, du få flytta hit, can be translated a few ways.

There, it means 'should', but that's not what he said. By saying it that way, his intention is that Sweden should make it easy for me to move there, that someone should take care of all the logistics and paperwork for me, and hand me a residence permit. The mythical "they" should just handle it.

That'd be nice.

Perhaps the correct comeback would have been "and when do I start working for you?"!

The "Yes, I do TOO speak your language" game.

Oooooh, one of my favorite games to play.

For a reason that is unknown to me, many Swedes that I met in Skåne simply didn't believe that I speak Swedish until they actually heard me talk.  I don't know if there's been a rash of Yankees there that couldn't or wouldn't learn the language, or if they've been told so by their educational system.  We filled out a massive amount of paperwork prior to leaving.  In the space provided for "languages other than English spoken" I wrote Svenska.  I wrote several e-mails in Swedish to various people who contacted me before we got there.  Even after all of that, if I had a dollar for every time I heard the following sentence, I could retire.

Men Gud, du pratar otroligt bra Svenska. 

But, God, you speak unbelievably good Swedish.

I heard it so often that I got tired of hearing it, and had to contain my urge to roll my eyes.  I wanted to say, 'yeah, srsly, it wasn't that hard' or blow them off somehow, but that would be both obnoxiously rude and incorrect.  Learning Swedish WAS hard, took me a long time, and has been a struggle to maintain.  But I got tired of being complimented for something that comes kind of naturally to me, like being complimented on riding a bike well.  It just got ridiculous.  I realize that this is petty and a very inconsiderate attitude.....and that doesn't change it a bit.

Because I got fairly tired of explaining how and why and when I learned Swedish, and how I've managed to keep it up over the past 17 years, sometimes I just didn't bother to inform someone new that I did, in fact, understand everything they were saying.  

We visited a very special secondary school, a high school that is a boarding school for students who want to major in agricultural studies in college.  We were given a warm welcome by the school director, and then spent time with the two sub-school directors, one who dealt with animal husbandry and the other who handled the crops.  The school is huge.  As we were touring campus, we were ferried around by 4 horse-drawn carriages, each driven by a student.  Each time we stopped, two additional students would hop off the carriages, and keep the horses still while we were shown around.  

The two students riding along with me had no idea I spoke Swedish.  I have a hearing problem, and mostly I wasn't listening to their conversation because it was windy and I couldn't hear them.  However, when I heard the words, "han är snygg" (he's cute) I listened a little harder. 

Turns out they were talking about one of my colleagues, another Yankee team member.  

It is possible that we are the only Americans some of these people will ever meet, and I hate for them to have the impression that we're all rude, obnoxious, loud boors.  (See my previous post for further info regarding my opinions on that.)  But I also enjoy tweaking the occasional nose!

As I looked around, a question occured to me.  I saw a parking lot, a small one, and I wondered if students were allowed to have cars at school once they had their drivers' license.  So I asked.  In Swedish.

Both girls blushed a lovely rosy red, having been caught like a kid with their hands in the cookie jar.  They answered, in the negative.  They are not allowed to have cars at school, even after they get the license.  But most students wait to get the license until after graduation anyway, because getting a license in Sweden is difficult, expensive, and time-consuming.  (That's a story for another time.)  They're far away from Mom's (or Dad's) car, and don't have the time.

After they answered my question, they started whispering to one another.  The wind had died down a little and I could hear them if I strained.  The conversation they had after they found out I speak Swedish....well, let's just say it makes me laugh thinking about it.

"Ooh, that's embarrassing," said the blonde one.

"I feel a little dumb," said the brunette.  "Did she tell you she spoke Swedish before we got in the carriage?"

"No," said the blonde.  "I wouldn't have talked about that cute guy if she had, or maybe I would have asked if he has a girlfriend.  Is she Swedish, or is she one of them?"

"I don't know," the brunette said, looking at me out of the corner of her eye.  "She doesn't sound American.  Do you want to ask?"

"Absolutely not!" The blonde replied.  "We already look like idiots, let's keep quiet."

I didn't interrupt them, but I was having a hard time contining my giggles, and reining in the few motherly urges I have.  No, he does not have a girlfriend, but he's also much too old for you, young lady!!

I've pulled that trick, explaining only after the fact that I speak Swedish (and even once or twice English) to someone, and it never gets old.  Never, never, never.

The reputation proceeds us.

A glimpse into my traveling journal.

Copenhagen International Airport.  22 May.  Waiting for the international flight from Denmark to Atlanta to board.  Homeward bound.

The stereotype of "the Ugly American" is alive and well, for good reason.  I'd like to think that I'm not one of those people, but I probably am from time to time, just like the rest of the population.  

The United States has a restriction on carrying liquids on to a flight, no more than 3 ounce bottles, and only what can fit into a quart size zipper bag.  Fine.  I abide by the rules, even though they're a) stupid and b) don't do anything to keep us safe on flights.  C4, the world's most explosive device, can look like a solid bar of grey soap, but you can bring solid soap on board no problem.  You can't clear security at any airport with a big bottle of water.  But you can buy a bottle after you clear security, or fill your own bottle from a tap or water fountain, noooo problem.  You can also buy larger sized bottles of shampoo or hand lotion or liquid soap or soda or whatever at the shops inside the airport after clearing security. Yep, this makes excellent sense.  Why the rest of the world jumped on board this boat of insanity, I have no idea.  But they did.  Even flying within Europe, you can't take more than the prescribed amount of liquids for a flight within the US.  Gah.

I drink a whole lot of water.  Lots.  Every day.  I like water.  I'd rather have water than almost anything else (except coffee) most of the time.  Airplane rides always make me parched.  Instead of buying a bottle of water in those BPA-plastic-fossil-fuel wasting containers, I have a Nalgene that I fill up, usually from a water fountain.  

Copenhagen airport has you pass through security, and then a second checkpoint at the gate, where only ticketed passengers for that particular flight can sit in a waiting area.  Once you're there, you're there.  No running elsewhere to buy a book.  Fortunately, there was a restroom at the gate, although it was sans water fountain.  So I went to stand in line for the bathroom, knowing that tap water would be available.  Not my preference (especially from a bathroom sink, although public restrooms in Scandinavia in general are really clean) but not going to kill me, either.  

Of course, there was a long queue for the ladies room.

There was a group of Red Hat Ladies traveling home to Pittsburgh.  There was a group of college kids from some school in (I think) Idaho.  They were all Chatty Cathys.  One of the Red Hat Ladies decided that since there was no queue for the men's room, she was going to use it.  She told the rest of the people on line so, loudly.  

I'm not opposed to using a men's restroom (or a handicapped stall) when there is no line for those facilities and there is a line for the ladies'.  I am opposed to you declaring it for all and sundry, at the top of your lungs.  Say it with me:  TAAACKY!

Directly in front of me in line was one of the college students, and she was full of complaints.  The food on her European trip hadn't been to her liking.  It was colder in Denmark than wherever she had been last.  It was raining.  Europe is full of pay toilets, which had both surprised and annoyed her through her travels.  She was thrilled that the airport restroom didn't require a payment.  Her group had been in Europe to study European religion, both before and after the Protestant Reformation.  She hadn't been impressed with Europe's cathedrals, or the various local guides they'd had in said cathedrals.  (I should note here that she had been in Europe for all of two weeks.  Um?  Not enough time.  And she wasn't impressed with Notre Dame or the cathedral in Vienna?  WTF?)  She told me all of this with no prompting and no questions from me, other than a raised eyebrow and occasional "mmm-hmm".

She also was very annoyed that the airline required everyone to be at the gate an hour before departure.  That was the biggest complaint; sitting still in one place for an hour.  They're not even boarding, ffs, why do we need to be here?  Whine, whine, whine.  I can't keep my mouth shut (who knew!) and I felt the need to explain to her that we need to be there before the plane takes off because 200 people are going to board, and that takes time - you ain't the only person on the flight, sister - and if you get there and board the plane at the scheduled departure time, along with 200 of your closest friends, the flight?  Will be late.  Ohhh.

The line moves forward, slowly, even with everyone using either restroom.  College Girl goes into the men's.  When she comes out, the water in the sink was still running.  I glanced at it as I walked by, and thought that it was an automatic tap, one of the ones with a heat sensor or motion detector.  So I didn't turn it off, because I thought it would turn itself off.  When I came out of the stall, though, it was still running.  Grrrr.  Waste of water, environmentally irresponsible, rude....pick any one of those, and you have enough to really irritate me.

When I returned to my team in the waiting room, College Girl was a few seats away, and I heard her telling her friends (again, loudly) that she never turns off the taps in public restrooms because she's just washed her hands and the sinks in public restrooms are sooooo dirty, you know?  Someone else will turn it off.  Whatever.  And like, I don't want, like, to get germs on my clean hands and stuff.  

Much eye-rolling from me ensues.  She wasn't paying attention to me, and I didn't want to get into an argument, so that's a good thing that she wasn't watching.  Her thoughtlessness and very self-centered outlook were annoying.  It also embarrasses me when people that I share citizenship with act like that: loud, full of complaints, bratty, self-centered, and a closed mind.  Yeah, things are different in Europe.  It isn't America.  The Europeans operate a little differently than the Yanks.  That does not mean that you should be passing judgement on the way of life in another country.  And things like that are the reason that Americans have such a bad international reputation.  

I do realize that some of my irritation was misplaced.  A convenient target and outlet for other feelings I can't do much about.  When I'm leaving Sweden (OK, technically Denmark this time, but just across the bridge from Malmö, Sweden) I'm always tired, a little bummed because I never know when I am coming back to Scandinavia, and dreading the trans-Atlantic trek home, as it is long, boring, and usually crowded.

Thankfully, College Girl and her compatriots were way in the back of the plane, and I didn't have to listen to their inane chatter over a 9 hour flight.  The Red Hat Ladies sat by us, though, and man!  As we were boarding, they were rude and impatient with everyone in front of them in line stowing their luggage in the overhead compartments.  Simmer down, sweetie, it takes all of 30 seconds to shove a carry-on up there, and no one is taking "your" space for their bag.  I promise.

Hm.  I think it is time for me to either get some sleep, or lock myself in a room alone away from other people for a while.

here endeth the entry.  A note after getting home, though:

The college kids all applauded and cheered when we got on the ground in Atlanta and the pilot or the lead flight attendant said "Welcome to the United States" which I thought, again, unnecessary, tacky, & loud.  But I realize my interpretation of that behavior -- which is that they were cheering because Europe was just so different than home, so awful -- is unreasonable.  They were just glad to be home.  

As am I (mostly) to be perfectly frank.  I just wish I was able to visit Sweden more often, preferably on an annual basis.  For more than the two weeks of vaca I'm allotted.  That'd be nice.

Obligatory Complaint

I had a list.

I usually do, but this one was different because the opportunity to purchase the things on the list had a limited window.

Five weeks.

With very little shopping time to myself, I think it is important to note.

Because my time was limited, the list was long, and I stayed mostly with families who lived far from the centres of the cities I visited, I knew it was important to tell my hosts what I wanted to buy while I was in Sweden.  Without me telling them, how would they know?  Generous hosts, all, but mind readers they are not.

My first day in Sweden, I explained to host #1, A, that I wanted the following before I left Sweden, and that I thought mailing these things home was the best way to go.

1.  Harry Potter, books 2-7, in Swedish.  I already own the first one in Swedish, and reading books like HP are helpful in retaining my language skills.  Nothing too challenging, I'm not reading Proust, ffs.

2.  Metric measuring cups.  I bought a set when I was 17, because even then I liked to bake cookies and make dinner.  But I bought cheap plastic measuring cups, and they've been through the dishwasher about eleventy billion times.  They're getting brittle.  So I wanted a metal set.  Natch, all of my Swedish cookbooks are in metric measurements, so of course I need metric measuring cups.

3.  Swedish pop music.  Yep, bubblegum Brittney-esque pop, by artists like Kent, Carola, Lisa Nilsson, stuff that is repetitive and frivolous.  For the same reason as the HP books; listening keeps my language skills active.

4.  Solstorm, by Åsa Larsson. [Sunstorm]  This has been translated into English, and I read it in translation a few years ago.  Good book; I've been trying to get my grubby hands on the original Swedish since I saw the book on the library shelves.

5.  Geisha, chocolates made by Finnish candy-maker Fazer, for my sister.

6.  Digestiv (brand name) crackers.  Mmmmmm.

7.  Stig Larsson's "Männen Som Hatar Kvinnor," [Men Who Hate Women] which was published in the US as "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo".  No relation to Åsa.

8.  Billinge cheese.  A long shot, but a hopeful one.

9.  Swedish coffee.  Lots and lots and lots of it.  The Swedes drink far stronger coffee than we do, roast the beans to a darker hue.  Gooooooood stuff.

10.  Orange marmalade.  Yes, I know it can be purchased in the United States.  I don't care, I wanted a specific brand.

11.  Dalahästar.  I have one of these traditional symbols of Sweden of course, but I wanted a few to give as gifts.

My host A told me that she'd need to stop at a grocery store on our way "home" that first day, and I mentioned a few of those things.  "Ah, you should be able to find everything there," she assured me.

I doubted that; in my experience, Swedish grocery stores were small, especially in the smaller towns like where she lives.  

I had a bit of a shock when she parked the car in the parking lot of an enormous department store.  Bigger than a Super Wal-Mart, this place, an ICA Maxi Stormarknad made me feel like the country cousin in the big city.  It had everything.  Shoes.  Clothes.  Books, magazines, small appliances, groceries, just about anything you can buy at a Super Wally's or SuperTarget.

I picked up the Harry Potter books, measuring cups, the Digestiv crackers, and some coffee there.  I found the music later that week while in the big city.  I mailed everything except the fragile crackers home to the US the first Saturday I was in Sweden.  

I looked for the rest of my wish list throughout the rest of the time, and found most of it, too.  I bought Swedish organic honey in addition to the marmelade, more coffee, (hey!  I have to stock up when and while I can!) Solstorm and even found Geisha and mailed it to my sister in New York.  I never did pick up the Stig Larsson book, but someone else did, and agreed to trade Stig for Åsa when I finish reading it.  

The weeks flew by.  I stayed with a divorced lady in her 60s, a family with older kids (20s-ish), I stayed in an apartment that I shared with another team member, a retired couple who were both on marriage #2, and then the most fun, a "familjen Svensson", typically Swedish family.

Where we would be talking about the average American family in the media or in conversations, the Swedes talk about "The Svensson Family".  2.5 kids, house in the suburbs, both parents with full time jobs.  My Familjen Svensson were a hoot.  It is important for me to note here that I really liked all of my hosts, and they were all very pleasant to live with.  All were very welcoming, extremely generous, helpful with my inability to navigate anywhere on my own, and tolerant of my foibles when I speak Swedish.  When I say they were the most fun, I mean Familjen Svensson had the sense of humor that most matched my own, and the parents were about my age.  Agh.  I'm botching that explaination.  

Anyway.

In their guest bathroom, they had some wonderful soap, bliw Björk & Äng.  Bliw is the brand name, and it took me more than a week to figure out WTF 'bliw' meant.  Not that brand names need to mean anything (Xerox, anyone?) but 'bli' is one of the many "to be" verbs, and so I thought it had to mean something.  Yeah.  It does.  Print b-l-i-w on a piece of paper, and then turn it over and hold it up to the light.  (small letter b, alltså) b-l-i-w backwards is W-I-L-D.  Duuuuuh.  "björk" is birch, and "äng" is meadow, or heather, depending on your translation source.  It smells wonderful.

So I bought some of that, too, and decided that I was carrying it home rather than shipping it.  I bought a 300 ml pump soap dispenser - 300 ml = about 1-1/4 cups - plus a refill for the dispenser.  Both made it home just fine, in a suitcase that I ended up checking.  Tripple-wrapped in plastic.  Just in case, y'know.

As soon as I had a chance when I got home, I Googled BLIW.  Here's a shocker: a scented soap that I love, and can use on my sensitive skin.....is available only in the Nordic countries: Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, & Greenland.  Grrr.

I did not find Billinge cheese, either.  Rather, I did find it, but weeks before we were due to come home and it would have gone bad before I got back to the States.  So I opted instead to wait, and that was folly indeed, because I never saw it again.

I didn't buy nearly enough coffee, either.  (Cosmic question:  is there such a thing as 'too much' coffee?!?) 

When does that next flight back to Scandinavia leave?

Processing...

You know how the computer gets too much information or tries to open too many objects and it tells you "PROCESSING" along with the gif of the hourglass?  That's how I'm feeling; I'm attempting to process everything I've seen and experienced over the past five weeks.  I have no idea where to start to begin telling the story of this journey.  

Fortunately, I kept a journal, and was zealous about writing in it nearly daily.  So if I wanted to, I could detail each day for you.  I think I'll resist that urge, though, and keep it to broad impressions and a few specific stories.

I've been to Sweden four times; as an exchange student in 1991/1992, visits to my host family in 1999 and 2003, and this 5 week visit.  When I was an exchange student, I didn't want to return to America.  It felt like a sentence passed by a stern judge; as punishment for being born in the United States, you must return there.  I have a very hard time being objective about Sweden, and I would still like to live there, very much.  So many things they do make sense and work so well; and yet, for the first time ever while visiting, I could see the cracks on the surface of a not-perfect society.  

Every other time I've been to Sweden, I've been supremely reluctant to leave.  This time, as our departure date approached, I had mixed emotions.  I wanted to come home.  I missed my husband.  I got tired of living out of a suitcase.  I was tired of having my daily schedule set by someone else, and tired of being dependant on someone else to drive.  (The team was not permitted to drive in Sweden.)  I also wanted to stay, as usual.   Nothing new there; what was new was that I thought long and hard about just what, exactly, I would do for a living in Sweden. The short answer to that is: I don't know.  My Swedish Mama would love it if I lived there, and I have an existing network of contacts, too.  That certainly doesn't guarantee employment, however.

Quickly, the big changes that I noticed....

1.  There is more English in the Swedish language.  

When I made this observation, Mama said, "Yeah, and in 30 years, the Swedish language will disappear."   I don't agree with that assessment, but she's partly right.  They don't even realize that they're sprinkling everyday conversation with English words...prime example?  I sat in the terminal at Hven Traffiken, a ferry that runs between Landskrona, Sweden, and the island of Hven.  I was early that day, and waited for the rest of the team inside because it was chilly.  I deliberately eavesdrop when I'm in Sweden; my excuse is that I'm improving my language skills, and even if a conversation is deeply private, the chances of me ever meeting (or hell, even seeing) these people again is nil.  Anyway.   I was eavesdropping on the conversation between the clerk at the ticket window, and a woman inquiring about the schedule of the ferry and ticket pricing.  As the clerk detailed the information the woman answered by saying, "Ja.  Ja.  Javisst.  Yes.  Yes.  Ja.  Ja."  You don't need to speak Swedish to spot the impostors in that phrase.  Responding to a yes-no question by saying "yes-yes" in English isn't uncommon, or even noticed by native speakers.  

When I was an exchange student, it was cool for kids to use bits and pieces of English, but that was something that they did intentionally, for attention.  This is not the same thing, but I guess if you're not observing the phenomenon, it would seem like nothing new.  Whenever I pointed out the increase in the use of English, though, my hosts would say that it was hardly surprising, considering the increase of use of computers, the rise of the Internet, and the rising cooperation between Sweden and Denmark, since the Öresund Bridge opened in the early 2000s.  

2.  The popular game of "Blame the Immigrants" is sadly on the rise.

Sweden accepts refugees from many war-torn regions of the globe, and because the Swedish population is mostly the same ethnicity, foreigners stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.  Being "different" is not desirable.   Sweden is a welfare state; refugees get an enormous amount of help from the government in the form of: providing someplace to live, Swedish as a second language classes for free, money for food, utilities, schooling for their children, and free medical care.  Who wouldn't want to come to Sweden from places like Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia?  But then after opening those doors, the Swedes get vastly annoyed by refugees then bringing their entire extended family into the country, and the fact that many refugees don't work and form expatriate societies.  Shocker, right?  Shell-shocked people from warring countries band together in a foreign country.  Huh.  Whoda thunk it?  This game of blaming immigrants for rising crime and flagging property rates irritates the living hell out of me.  All of your society's ills can not be placed at the feet of a small number of foreigners.  If that is indeed the problem, then to me, it seems that there's quite a simple solution: quit allowing people to immigrate.  Wow.  That was tough.  As an American citizen, I can't just decide that I want to move to Sweden.  I need to a) have a job waiting, b) marry a Swede, or c) have a lot of money.  Believe me, during the Bush administration, I thought often about applying for political asylum, but that really isn't even possible.  If however, I'm fleeing war or political persecution, getting a residence permit in Sweden isn't as hard.  Change those laws, and you solve the problem, right?  I know, it is hardly that simple.

3.  Somewhere, in the last 5 years since I've been there, Sweden completely revamped their postal system, and local post offices are a thing of the past.

IMNSHO, this is BRILLIANT.  The postal system operates sorting facilities, and still employs letter carriers.  But if you want stamps, or to mail a package, they've outsourced that to grocery stores, convenience stores, and lottery outlets.  It is still official Swedish Post; but they slashed operating costs by billions.

I sent postcards home, lots of them.  After we'd been there for a few days, I started looking for a post office, because I needed stamps.  The logo is easy to recognize; a blue horn on a yellow field.  I looked EVERYWHERE.  Finally, out of frustration, I asked one of our drivers if she could help me find a post office.  She looked at me like I had three heads, and then burst out laughing.  "When were you here last?" she asked, still giggling.  

"Five years ago," I said, mystified.  

"Oh, yeah, then you wouldn't know," she told me.  "We lost all the post offices a few years ago.  It was huge news.  You didn't hear about it?  Your family in Kungsör didn't tell you?"

"Um, no...we usually talk family news, births, deaths, weddings..." I trailed off, feeling dumb.  

But that's the truth.  I seldom -if ever- discuss the news in the US or in Sweden when I call them.  So the closure of several thousand post offices was not on my radar.  Once I was clued in, the official retailers were easy to spot...same logo, just smaller, and instead of "Sveriges Post" (Sweden's Mail) the signs said "Post erbjudande" (Postal retailer).

4.  The murder rate, and crime in general, is on the rise.

One of our official visits was to a regional police headquarters, and we met both the regional chief of police and the information officer, i.e., press secretary.  I asked them point-blank what they attribute the rising murder rate to, and they both told me murders are on the decline.  There's just more media attention when someone is murdered.  Riiiiiiiight.  There's a bridge in Brooklyn for sale, too.  I don't think they were lying to me; I think they're lying to themselves.  Statistics can be spun any way the wind blows.  I don't know what the deciding factor in that increase is, but I am very sorry to see it.

5.  In the same vein of things that I'm sorry to see, huge retail outlets on the outskirts of towns are also on the rise.

Think Super-Wal-Mart.  These huge "varuhusar" are something new for me in Sweden; my small Swedish hometown had a town center, and a shopping street closed to vehicle traffic.  Most if not all Swedish cities had the same layout.  Sadly, the big retailers are doing the same thing they've done here in the states:  they're killing the mom-and-pop shops, killing the traditional butchers and cheese shops, along with small and unique stores in very small retail space.

Finally....

6.  The Eurovision Song Contest is still a completely ridiculous circus of insane pageantry and silly music.

And I loved every minute of it.

Over the coming weeks, you'll hear lots more about all of this, I'm sure.  For now, though, I'm processing.

Counting down

I'm leaving the country very soon.  To go where, you ask?  Sweden! I shout.

I haven't written about this to date even though I've known about it since January 4th because I was having a hard time trying to figure out how to explain what I'm doing.  Without talking specifically about my job and where I'm going and why.

I'm not sure that I've figured that out; muddling through as usual.  

I have partly my job to thank for this; and partly the fact that I was an exchange student in high school.  Part of my work takes me to community groups to speak about our product.  My overall field could - -partially - - be explained by one word:  Marketing.

There is one large specific civic organization that I particularly enjoy speaking to, because it gives me a chance to mention my exchange year, and how much it changed my life.

Someone in the audience always, without fail, asks where I went, and if I can still speak the language.  I almost always smart off to them på Svenska as a response, after telling them it was Sweden.

Early in January, I spoke for this group.  About an hour after returning to my office, I got a telephone call from one of the members, asking if I wanted a spot on a team going to Sweden in April/May.  Ha, twist my arm, buddy.  Nooooo.  *eye roll*  

After jumping through a few hoops, and some crazy machinations, I got permission from my employer to do this, to be gone for about 5 weeks.  I still can't believe they said it was OK, that all the relevant details just kind of fell into place.  And there were a lot of them.  Insurance, for one.  My employer provides INCREDIBLE health insurance, but my leave of absence is 5 weeks long, most of it unpaid.  If they're not paying me, then I don't have the insurance benefits.  Hurdle #1.  Hurdle #2 was the whole money issue; unpaid for 5 weeks?  Eeek.  Got around both of those with some time, effort & planning.

Hurdle #3 was just work in general.  How to be gone for so long without causing harm to my employer?  I'm still not sure that's going to work perfectly, but s'OK.  The work will still be waiting when I return.

Times like this, I'm glad that I have OCD.  I make lists, obsessively.  The current to-do list tacked to a magnetic board in my office is 5 pages long.  Probably 2-1/2 pages of the list have a check mark, meaning they're done, next to each item.  Every time I think of something else that needs done, I write it down, no matter where I am or what I'm doing.  It gets added to the master list at the earliest opportunity.  Hopefully, nothing slips through the cracks that way.

So what the heck am I doing in Sweden for 5 weeks?  Um.  Lots?  How to explain without all the gory details?

The trip is a vocational exchange.  That means that I will visit businesses similar to the one that I work for here in the US.  We will visit schools, civic and community organizations, government offices, hospitals, almost any place of business or work that you can think of.  The idea is to see how someone in another country does your job, what challenges they face, how they work around it, what government regulations they have, how they solve problems.

There are many reasons that this is so exciting, but the primary one, for me, is this:

At 16, when I was an exchange student, I thought Sweden was perfect.  Their public schools are in fantastic shape.  Ditto their roads, their cradle-to-grave health care system, their government, their public transportation system, hell, their EVERYTHING.  From the perspective of an unemployed high school student, that is.

What I have come to realize with the passage of time is this; I was NOT a taxpayer, I was NOT a voter, I was NOT a gainfully employed member of society.  I didn't pay bills, or have any responsibilities, and I was 3,000 miles away from my very strict parents.  In my mid-30's, I recognize now that the strict rules of my parents' house did me more good than harm, but at 16, I wanted to be able to do whatever I pleased.  I was a grown-up, after all, of course.  (Somewhere in Florida my mother is rolling her eyes!! {Hi Mom!})

So it will be extraordinarily interesting to see things from an adult perspective, and to learn things that I didn't last time around.  How it all works, and does it all work, if you're out there trying to make a living?

I'm also going to get the chance to visit some Swedish traditional craftspeople, among them weavers of traditional patterns.  I'm so excited about that.  Has nothing to do with what I do for a living, but it is still something that fascinates me.

Finally, I hope to have a chance to see the family that I lived with as a teenager; I am still in close touch with them, and they know I'm coming.  Where I am spending the vocational exchange, though, is about 350 miles south of where I lived as an exchange student, so I won't just be able to pop in to see them whenever I have a minute.  The Swedish spoken in my destination spot is different from what I'm used to, as well; the best example I can come up with is that it would be like dropping an upper-crust Bostonian in the midst of Cajun country; yes, they're speaking the same language, but no, they don't understand one another so well.  My inner language geek is ecstatic, the opportunity to study the differences between regional dialects! The part of me that doesn't like being able to understand the answer when I ask where the bathroom is, on the other hand, abjectly terrified.

During the time that I am away, I sincerely doubt that I will have any time at all to update Well Behaved.  Posts usually take me about an hour to write, and I am given to understand that almost every moment of every day is taken up with something.  We've been told to expect 16-18 hour days, and to sleep whenever and wherever we can, because it will be a mighty precious commodity!  I am not taking my laptop, and therefore internet access will probably be restricted to checking e-mail on my Blackberry.  Mobile blogging is a PITA, so I doubt I'll be doing any of that.

Departure is on April 19th.  Between now and then, I have two major events to cover at work, and countless details to take care of for the trip.  I've already decided what to pack (ha, OCD @ work again, I have a list!) but there are all kinds of things I need to actually gather together and put in suitcases.  I may not be able to write much between now and then.  We come back on May 22, when I'm sure I'll have so many stories to tell that I think it is safe to assume that regular posting will resume then.

In the meantime, Söt om dej, och vi sees/hörs snart!

Take care of yourself, and we'll meet again soon.

 

Connectivity

Teh internets are amazing.

This is hardly news, we all know that.  The depth and breadth of information (and misinformation) out there is astonishing.

I had to write an essay recently, partially about my experiences as an exchange student.  As I strolled down memory lane and looked at the paperwork I still have (among many other things, the letter I received telling me I was accepted into the program) I remembered something long forgotten.

It was Superbowl Sunday in 1991, and all of the potential exchange students were required to attend a meeting at an extension office of a local university, to find out which country we were assigned to.

I found my name on the list, and next to it was the word in all caps: SWEDEN.  My stomach flopped.  What the hell?  Sweden wasn't my first choice.  It wasn't my second or third or fourth, either.  My first choice had been Australia, followed by New Zealand and England.  

In high school, I had ever-so-wisely chosen Latin as my language to study, and many countries (Germany among them) required at least two years' study of the language.  I had been to Spain and France, and didn't really have any desire to spend a year in either place, unless I could specifically choose Paris or a large coastal city in Spain.  The powers that be had told us over and over again that we didn't get to choose a city, so Spain & France weren't even on my list.  

I was afraid to go somewhere that I didn't speak the language, hence the choices of Australia, New Zealand and England.  Sweden had been number six or seven on the list of ten I submitted along with my application.  Denmark and Czechoslovakia had been on that list too, as those are countries where some of my great-grandparents had come from, but I had never - even for a second - entertained the thought that I wouldn't get my first or second choice.

On that day in 1991, here's what I knew about Sweden: my great grandmother Hannah Rebekah had come from there in the early 1900s, and so I was of Swedish decent.  Swedes were blue-eyed blondes.  It had the same climate, roughly, as Alaska.  Stockholm was the capital.  The official language was Swedish.

That's it.

I did not know where in Sweden I was going to go; that information came later.  The Rotarians told us that Sunday that we would probably get a letter from our host-family long before the official paperwork from the Rotary Foundation turned up, and that was true for most of us.

I had made a friend at those Rotary meetings, a guy who was my age, and also going to Sweden.  He called me a few days after that Sunday meeting, and told me he'd gotten a letter from a family in Umeå, a city in the north of the country.  I had, by that time, obtained a map of Sweden, and when my letter turned up, I spent a long time searching that map for the town that it had come from.  

In those pre-internet days, I couldn't just Google "Västmanland Province" and take a peek at what popped up.  I went to the main branch of our local public library and searched some more.  It wasn't until I spoke with my host family via telephone - - over a crackly international line - - that I found out where, approximately, my new home was.

I'm preparing to head back to Sweden soon, and since I don't have a chance to speak Swedish every day, I am spending some time each day reading the headlines on the main Swedish newspaper websites; Svenska Dagbladet (The Swedish Daily Blade), Dagens Nyheter (The Daily News), even Google's Swedish News.   

Besides those sources, I can also listen to Swedish radio, twenty-four hours a day, courtesy of the internet, by just going to www.sr.se.  That's the state-run "official" radio, and the options there are dizzying.  Since I am going to visit an area that is geographically quite distant from my Swedish "home", I'm listening to a station from that region, because the accent is quite different, and a little difficult to follow.  It would be roughly akin to a Bostonian trying to understand someone from bayou country in Louisiana; they're speaking the same language, but can barely follow one another.

I'm confident that by the time I get there, I'll have no trouble at all understanding the dialect, although I will probably never be able to pass myself off as a native of that region.

If I was doing this twenty years ago, though, I wouldn't have those avenues of newspaper and radio (and heck, probably TV, too, via YouTube, I just haven't investigated it yet) open to me.  It really fascinates me that the world is so incredibly connected; and yet, I couldn't tell you what my next door neighbor does for a living.