Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Många stulna saker

JenniferThis post is in progress, and functions at the moment mostly as an excuse to put a link to our visit to the National Gallery (aka the "Crap Sweden Stole during the Thirty Year's War" museum) in Stockholm last February. To the left, Carl Larsson's famous art nouveau-ish 'Midwinter Sacrifice', made to fit in the main hall.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

School daze

JenniferAt US universities (well, in the Midwest anyway), a 'student fair' usually means a chance to get candy, leaflets, pens, and maybe cheap or free condoms from your school's safe-sex organization. In Sweden, at the 'student fair' you get candy, leaflets, pens, and free condoms distributed by several state-sponsored safe-sex groups. Here's a picture of the swag I was handed at last week's Humanities Day fair in my classroom building. I think it is a pretty accurate representation of student life here.

Clockwise from upper left: bookmark from the Studies in Arts, Languages, and Theology; Linnaeus bookmark; student government sink scraper (it says "You don't have to take the shit alone" on it) holding a condom from the Condomera, or 'More Condoms' (they do nothing else except distribute condoms at the university); 'hon-han-hen', advertising for the debate about gender pronouns in Swedish; the red thing, a postcard for the government-sponsored sex-ed organization (they distribute condoms both at the university and to high schools); postcard of a moose, with a chocolate from the local cultural museum sitting on it (the chocolate is an ad for their current exhibit about coffee breaks); a postcard for Culture Night with a teddy-bear face reflector and yet another condom sitting on it; a bicycle trail map for the city; yet another condom; yet more chocolates (the square black things saying 'Uppsala' on them).