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!

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.

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.

 

Want it OR Delayed Gratification

My last job left me very, very poor. That whole commission racket? Sucks big hairy goat balls. I had less money in the last few months than I had when I was working part time and attending school full time in my early college days.

I know, talking about money, my money, your money, any money that isn't tax dollars, is kinda verboten in contemporary American society. I don't care. Much.

Hilariously, every time I've been back to Sweden since my exchange year, I've been asked how much money I'm making. I think that's funny because when I asked my best Swedish friend how she was doing after the death of her dad in 2002 when I visited in 2003, there was a collective gasp in the room and an awkward silence. Oooookay, then. Asking me how much money I make is OK, asking you how you're dealing with an incredible loss, not OK. I get away with doing things like that because I'm not Swedish, they forgive me the intrusion because they know that Yanks are a wee bit more open then they are. I had prefaced the question by saying, "I know y'all don't talk about this, but I'm going to ask anyway..." but even so, every other conversation in the room ceased, and all heads turned my way.

I felt bad for embarrassing my friend, because she didn't like being the center of attention, but I know everyone else in the room wanted to ask, and couldn't. We moved to another room for a more private conversation, and she told me she was doing OK, giving more detail that she might have otherwise given someone else. I apologized for putting her on the spot, and the subject was not brought up again during the remaining time I spent in Sweden.

When they've asked me about money, I'm never embarrassed, just usually shocked into silence for a second, until I remember that this isn't a taboo subject there. And then I need to do some quick mental math to figure out how much the figure is in kroner. I consider the folks in Sweden family; and I don't care if they know how much money I make. Besides, they answer honestly when I turn the situation around and ask them.

Suddenly, with my new job, I've got a little more of it than I have in a loooong time. (OK, we get it, you like your new job. Get over yourself already, will you? ~ editor)

And since I have more, I want to spend more. There's a bunch of bento accessories I want, since I'm using my bento box daily. Rice molds, sauce bottles, egg molds, a sushi mat, teeny-tiny cookie cutters....oh, and I'd like a few more bento boxes, just because they're so cute.

I'm really vain, and I want to have my teeth whitened. I know, I know, that's a very silly, very expensive, and very vain thing to do. But. I had a professional portrait taken recently, and was appalled, really appalled, at the color of my teeth in the picture. I asked the photographer to whiten them with his neat-o digital photography tools and he obliged me, thankfully, because I didn't want my teeth showing at the color they really are.

I want to go to a con later this year, and that costs money too.

Plus there is a credit card I want to pay off, all sorts of "stuff" I want for the house: a self-winding hose reel, because doing it manually is a pain in the ass, new lawn furniture, a new bed, a new dishwasher, a new stove, and I'd like a cleaning lady....of all of those, only the dishwasher is something that we need. Our current one is dying a slow, painful death. It works, but it takes several hours (more like 8) to run the basic wash cycle.

Oh, and the car needs new tires, the current ones are so bloody noisy and crappy. Not to mention a new car is in the future, a year or two down the road.

But I can't just go and buy all that stuff willy-nilly. I need to save, take some time to build my savings back up.

I'd be doing my part to stimulate the economy, true, if I did rush right out and buy all that stuff, but growing maturity and perhaps the fact that my parents retired recently has me thinking about needing to save for my own retirement. Going to work for a new company means that I've had to fill out all the paperwork for a 401(K) all over again, and at some point, I'll have to get my act together and get the little bit of money from the old job rolled into an IRA.

Y'know there's a good reason I'm not working for the financial industry anymore. 'Cause jeebus, that stuff is dull! Thank goodness I have someone I can rely on for that stuff; I could do it myself, yes, but I don' wanna.

Retirement savings are the ultimate in delayed gratification, no? You're working, you're working, you're saving, and day-to-day, you don't think about retiring. You don't think much about the future. Most of us don't think much beyond tomorrow, or next year. But especially for women, this is a vital issue. Not that you boy-os don't need to think about it, but in general, you make more money than we do, and in general, you don't live as long as we do. So you've got more money at the end of your working life, and you don't need it for as long. Sorry. Them's just the facts.

Are you saving enough?