OK, this blog thing didn’t work out quite the way I had hoped. For various reasons (some more interesting than others), I didn't get around to writing as much about being in Sweden as I had hoped. This blog dried up faster than skagentoast left out on a bench in Gustaf Adolphsparken during Midsommar. But I only feel a little guilty. The internet is lousy with unfinished blogs so what’s one more? But with little more than week to go before we head home, I’m going to give it one more shot and just dump some stuff and call it day (five months). First up… Black people. Where have you been?... WE"RE BACK, BABY! It only took a few months of being in Stockholm but… Black people are back, baby! Ok, they never really went anywhere. Black people were definitely in Sweden before I got here, and they’ll be here when I leave but for a while I was wondering if there weren’t as many here as I thought there would be. When we got here in March, when the weather was kinda grey, kinda cold and generally meh, I didn’t see many black people just walking around on the street, sitting in the coffee shops or bars, or even riding the subway. A few – maybe one or two in a week – but not many. The few black people I did see were working at gig-economy jobs – mostly food delivery, zipping around the city on some form of two-wheeled vehicle – bikes, scooters, etc. A couple seemed to be heading to an office job, and I saw one guy working in a grocery story. But they were all mostly working, but not just hanging out. And we went to a variety of places, from the upscale neighborhood we were staying to the more blue-collar Sodermalm and in-between. Even black folks of the tourist variety were few and far between. “Now Ken,” you’re probably asking, “how can you say that? How can you be sure there were no black people around? Who would notice if there are or aren’t black people around?” And if you ARE asking that question, you’re probably white. Because black people KNOW when there are or aren’t other black people around, thanks to many work, education and travel situations. We don’t NEED other black people around, but you definitely know when you’re the only one there. But lo and behold, mid-May came and with it, like some sort of diasporic tsunami, a wave of black people suddenly appeared on the street. And when I say suddenly, I mean like out of nowhere. Just one day, no black folks walking on the streets and then… KA-BOOM!!! Black folks! I almost stopped dead in my tracks when I walked out our door on day, went down the street, turned a corner and saw more black people than I had seen in two and a half months. Just… out there. Walking. Hanging. Families. Friends. Single people. Just laughing and having a great time, riding the subway, going up and down Sveavagan. Like it was the official day black folks in Sweden were supposed to come outside and nobody told me. I’ll leave it to other people to provide theories (and if your theory is that I just wasn’t being observant, see paragraph six). I haven’t asked anybody who lives here about this, because frankly it’s a weird question. Going up to a black person - even as another black person - and yelling, “Where the Hell were you???” seems rude. Get 'em while it's hot... SWEDEN SWEATIN' It’s been unseasonably warm in Sweden, and even the local residents say so. Global warming? Maybe. But it’s not been good for a sweat machine like me. I sweat. A lot. I don’t know if it’s because there’s so much water in and around here or what, but Sweden is a very… moist country (sorry). I walk to the grocery store about four blocks away and by the time I get there I’m dripping. And because very few places have air conditioning, I’m walking around shopping for jordgrubbers and flop-sweating like Louis Armstrong after running a half-marathon. I’m not the only one who knows it’s hotter than normal. I’ve seen lots of people and businesses buying brand new fans to try to move some air around inside. Where most folks and businesses in the U.S. just pull the same fan out of the basement or closet each year, people here are having to buy one new since, I guess, they’ve never had a need for one before Even using a fan isn’t an easy job, since most buildings in Sweden are designed to keep heat in and windows don't open all the way or open in ways that don’t accommodate fans (open only slightly from the bottom, for instance). Folks here don’t seem to be bothered by that, judging from the way they flock to the parks and outdoor cafes trying to soak up as much sun as they can (Yes, I realize they have months of darkness so don’t try to explain it to me). Any day of the week, they’ll plop down in a park, in the most open, sunny area they can find and just stretch out for hours (weirdly, despite that, there aren’t too many deeply tanned people here.) All of this, in a way, is good for a non-sun person like me because it means I can always find a seat inside a restaurant or bar. So, I guess there IS an upside to climate change. For me. A fish that has been monged. , but FISHMONGER MEMORIES Bought my last fish the other day from my fishmonger. Did I tell you I had a fishmonger here in Stockholm? Yeah, I get fish from the fishmonger, usually on Tuesdays. I’d say, “Hey, fishmonger!” And he say, “Hej!” and then he’d mong me some fish. Usually Arctic Char or perch or halibut. And then he’d give me some tips on how to cook it in the oven or something. I’d say, “Thanks, fishmonger.” And he’d say, “Tak!” I think everyone should have someone who mongs fish for them at least once. He was there on the last day, but he wasn't working behind the counter. There was another guy there, not as old as the original fish monger, but a monger nontheless. He was... a younger monger. A photo of the bartender and owner I pinched from their Facebook page. THE BEST MARTINI My problems obtaining a simple martini in Sweden have been well-documented. I got one served to me in a tumbler filled with ice, one that was pretty much just vermouth and one that was all ouzo. But I gotta hand it to the bartender at The Bear in Mora. There’s nothing about this place that says “martini”, from hundreds of pictures on the wall of rock, jazz and literary folks like Frank Zappa, Charlie Parker and Hunter S. Thompson, to the old guitars on the ceiling, to the stage where rock bands played before the pandemic. And especially the bartender, a big, burly bald guy with a beard and arms like smoked hams. But adventurous me asked for a martini anyway. I saw all the liquor bottle on the wall, saw they were offering a few other types of cocktails and figured, OK, I’ll give it a shot. After some three-way translations between the bartender, the Turkish owner and me, we were able to all get on the same page about what a martini was and how it should be made. And on his first every try… he nailed it. It may not have been the best martini I ever had but it was pretty good. The right mix of gin and vermouth. Shocked So, if you’re ever in this small city in northern Sweden (which means you’re probably looking for the place that makes the wooden horses), stop by The Bear and have a decent martini, one of their really good burgers and a shot of raki, a Turkish liquor the owner gave us at the end of the night. It’s great if you don’t have any plans the next morning. SKA: THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE You want to get into a conversation while you’re traveling, get yourself a ska tattoo. In so many places, it’s a sure-fire conversation starter. Among folks who listen to ska, of course, but there’s more of them than I expected. Though maybe the same thing happens to people with AC/DC tattoos, I don’t know. THINGS ABOUT SWEDEN I PROBABLY WOULDN'T GET USED TO IF WE LIVED HERE FOREVER
THERE WILL BE A TEST ON THIS... For the trip back we have to do the whole COVID-test-within-72-hours thing again. Fingers crossed...
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About masks, the New York Yankees and Easter witches… Strange to think that we’ve been here for more than a month now. Time sure flies when you’re avoiding Covid. #Winning. Not that we haven’t had plenty of opportunities to catch it. In fact, most of Sweden have been trying their hardest to give us Covid. Not intentionally, I don't think just… nobody in Sweden wears a mask. Nobody. Not one person. Man, woman or child. No. Body. Ingen. (That’s Swedish for “nobody.”) And when I say ingen, I mean nobody, and when I say nobody, I mean, OK, ALMOST nobody. You’d think that with the number of cases inching upward instead of down, people would see this thing isn’t going anywhere and the number of people wearing masks on the street and in bars and in the grocery stores and riding scooters (more on that later) would go up as well. But, nope. If there are 200 people walking on the streets, 99.786 percent of them will not be wearing a mask. Just walking all up into H&M and Louis Vuitton and Asian Post Office (a restaurant, not an actual post office), and K25 (a restaurant, not a mountain) like nothing’s been happening in the world, pandemically speaking, for the past year and a half. Just… la-dee-da, whistle whistle whistle, strolling down the avenue. Unlike in the U.S., they don’t NOT wear them because of some stupid, nonsensical, stick-it-to-the-libs political BS reason where death is apparently preferable to admitting that a scientist may know more than you. They don’t equate wearing a mask to censorship which, as a censoring device, a loose-fitting cloth mask is pretty shitty. Nope, they just don't wear them because…I don’t know why they don’t wear them. Either they’re arrogant enough to think they won’t catch it, or they think they’re already doing enough or they’re overly trusting of their fellow man (something I, most certainly, am not). It’s not like they were one of the first nations to respond to the pandemic and get it wrong.1 People here are willing to follow all the government rules regarding Covid. Nobody I’ve seen complains about the bars and restaurants closing at 8 p.m., or occasionally having to sit within a partition, or being told they can’t come in a place because they're at capacity. But the mask thing? No thank you, they say. There was a mini-protest a few weeks ago because the government merely MENTIONED they were considering a lockdown. While it didn’t draw a lot of people, it probably had some support. Social distancing is not a thing here. If there are seats right next to one another in a bar, they have no problem bellying up and standing within sneezing distance of someone else. And they ignore the government “mandate” to wear masks on public transportation. The few people who do wear masks are (from what I can determine just by looking at them) either foreigners like us who’ve read the newspaper recently, actual Swedes who’ve read the newspaper recently, or people who just like wearing masks. Because so many people are NOT wearing masks, you sometimes feel a little self-conscious when you walk down the street wearing yours. Like you’re being overly cautious. Seeing someone wearing a mask is like seeing walking down the street in an orange plaid suit. You just notice it and go… “Hmph.” It should be more than that, but that’s where we are here. A lost New York Yankees cap looking for its next owner. I’ve been looking it up on Google and I can’t find any evidence the New York Yankees ever played a game in Stockholm*, or anywhere in Sweden for that matter. I haven’t seen a New York Yankee fan bar where they (secretly) show the games at 4 a.m. And there are a few statues of old kings and whatnot that kinda look like Lou Gehrig or Paul O’Neill, but they most certainly are not. So, no, there’s no clear indication of a rabid New York Yankee fanbase here in Stockholm. So, I have no explanation of why so many people here in Stockholm wear New York Yankees caps. And by so many, I mean a lot more than you’d expect in a Scandinavian country with no dedicated baseball stadium. Enough people hear wearing New York Yankees caps that you’d stop, look around and say “Hey, why so many New York Yankees caps?” Further puzzling is that there are basically no other MLB team caps to be found on Swedish or Swedish-visiting heads. I did see one old guy inexplicably wearing a Cubs cap but, who cares?2 I don’t know if it’s considered some sort of status symbol – NYC being an international center of hipness and coolness and in the area we’re staying, one with high-end shops, being full of people who seemed to be concerned with hipness and coolness. But a lot of folks think that it gives them some sort of swag. Or maybe they are actually people in Stockholm who are right now debating if Mike Tauchman really is the answer at first base, or wondering if Trey Amburgey will ever get the call-up with such a packed outfield, or is he gonna stay in Triple A Scranton for another season. Which is yet another reason why I should try harder to learn Swedish. FUN FACT: Easter in Sweden3 is often celebrated by children painting their faces, dressing up as witches and going door to door looking for candy. Which, thinking about it, makes as much sense as a rabbit distributing eggs. 1. How Sweden first handled Covid.
2. The only connection I can find is that there’s a town called Stockholm in northern New York state, so the people here feel some sort of kinship because of that. But then, they just skipped right over the Mets… 3. Easter in Sweden. Below is a visual representation of what it looks like trying to get through the airport to your international flight in the era of COVID testing. Now, I’m not complaining. Well, OK, a little. Things are dicey now and I know precautions are needed. After all, an airport is one of the most crowded, shoulder-to-shoulder places around next to a major league ballpark’s men’s room during the seventh inning stretch.
And as we’ve seen on the news, for every 10 people who take the whole thing seriously and keep their masks on the whole time and use a lot of hand sanitizer and stay six feet away from EVERYTHING, there are another 10 jerkstores who let their noses flop over the top of their masks like it’s a crook peeking out from a sewer trying to see if the coast is clear. I feel like yelling, “Hey, geniuses, germs like nose holes too!” So, yeah, the precautions are needed. But the system itself might need a shot in the arm (topical pun). Because even after reading numerous websites to find out what we needed to d do to get where, and receiving tips from people who’ve been through it, getting from Boston to Stockholm was like playing bureaucratic Whack-a-Mole. Each step presented a hurdle that ranged from a minor inconvenience to shit-we’re-gonna-have-to-live-in-this-airport-aren’t-we? HURDLE 1: Because nations don’t always agree with each other (surprise), we BOTH had to take TWO Covid tests in as many days to meet the requirements for two different countries: One no more than 48 hours before our flight and a second no more than FOUR hours before boarding the plane to take us to Amsterdam. HURDLE 2: We had to take the four-hour-ahead test at a makeshift testing site in Logan Airport, right next to a decommissioned Dunkin’ Donuts (I assume it was shut down because maple long johns screw up the test results.) Also, the test cost $200 apiece ($100 per nostril) and was conducted* by a slightly disinterested staff who probably wished the Dunkin Donuts next door was still open. *OK, they didn’t actually conduct the test, they handed me the Q-tip and I stuck it up my own nose. But, yeah, $200. HURDLE 3: The woman at the entrance to the baggage check-in area (or rather, the series of fabric straps connected to posts that created a maze which really should have a chunk of cheese at the end) said that unless we had the results of BOTH Covid tests, she could not let us pass. Now, I knew my favorite color, the capital of Assyria, and air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow (African AND European), but because we hadn’t gotten the results of the first Covid test, we were blocked from entry. We waited several tense minutes until the email we were waiting for finally popped up in our inboxes. We were in. HURDLE 4: At the baggage check-in stand, the woman behind the counter happily took our Covid tests results, helped us check our bags, and even saved us some money by suggesting how we could shift stuff from one suitcase to the other to meet the weight list. But when we told her we were going to be in Sweden for about five months, she flinched noticeably. We thrust some papers in her face showing that this was a real university-based working trip. I did my part by trying not to look like the world’s dumbest terrorist. When she was finally confident we weren’t attempting to defect, she allowed us to proceed, but not before giving us some additional paperwork on Covid testing that she said we’d have to fill out before the plane landed in Amsterdam. HURDLE 5: At the gate, with a few minutes left before boarding, we were suddenly told that the additional paperwork we were given would have to be filled out NOW to be able to get on the plane, which, technically, is before we landed in Amsterdam, I guess, but, c’mon. I scribbled some answers on the form, and I was unsure of some of the answers, which made the whole thing look pretty sketchy, but they let us on anyway. HURDLE 6: After hanging out in the Amsterdam airport terminal for SIX HOURS, when it came time to get to our next gate, we needed to get past a customs agent who looked a little like David Puddy. He scrutinized our Covid tests and our why-we’re-staying-in-Sweden-for-six-months papers, made a phone call (mostly to look efficient, I’m guessing), then let us through. HURDLE 7: After finally landing in Stockholm, a friendly, smiling customs agent politely informed us that we weren’t going anywhere until we could not only produce the right Covid test results, but also the EXACT TIME WE TOOK THE TESTS, to insure it was taken in the proper time frame. Which meant scrolling away on our phone (me with my big, fat fingers) looking for a timestamp on one of our Covid forms and wondering if they would make us stay in this nearly windowless room for five months, unable to go forward or backward. Luckily, the Fulbright Scholar brains kicked in and the timestamp was found on the printout version of the test, which is the literal last place anyone would think to look. The race was over. Other than having to confine ourselves to a modest-sized apartment for a good portion of 2021, we don’t foresee any other major challenges in the coming months. Other than resisting the desire to yell, “PUT ON AN EFFING MASK, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU???” to an entire country every other hour. Another story… Swedish Word of the Week Akvavit – Also known as aquavit or brännvin, it’s a gin or vodka-like spirit that, according to the rules of booze, must be distilled with dill or caraway. It was believed to have been first mentioned in a set of 1467 instructions for lighting gunpowder. Exactly 400 years later, Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, which clearly means Swedes like blowing shit up. Occasionally while drunk. We made an aquavit cocktail tonight. |
HallåBecause I'm married to a very smart woman who received a Fulbright Scholarship, we're spent six months living in Sweden and, in particular, Stockholm. Having never lived outside the U.S., I figured I better keep notes. These are those notes. Archives
July 2021
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