The bright sunny Söder

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Jennifer When we woke up Saturday morning in Stockholm, it was sunny and clear, just right for a sit in a park, which had been one of my chief ambitions for the weekend. After a slightly less leisurely breakfast than we had had on Friday, Joe took off to run an errand, and I packed up a mid-morning snack and headed down to the nearest good-sized park, called Nytorget, only two blocks away. Outdoor seating at the cafes lining the square were at a premium, but there were plenty of spaces on the benches in the square, where I sat and ate my leftover pizza and watched the dog walkers and kids playing in the melting snow. I walked around the area a little bit, then met Joe on the bus, and we headed back into town for an afternoon of touristing.

A Spring View

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Sofia Kyrkan

[Editorial Note: We're temporarily skipping ahead a day for now. Jennifer's writing a post for Saturday, but she has to work some tonight, so that post won't come out until tomorrow. I wrote the following on the assumption that you'd already know about yesterday, and I think I'm just going to leave it as is.]

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Though a country be sundered, hills and rivers endure;
And spring comes green again to trees and grasses
Where petals have been shed like tears
And lonely birds have sung their grief.

-Tun Fu (ca. 750)

Stockholm is melting

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Joe We're in Stockholm this weekend, through the generosity of a friend who happens to be (a) in possession of an apartment in Södermalm, and (b) out of the country for a few days. So, for three days, we're trying out life in the big city. Now, admittedly, March in Stockholm is the off-season for a reason: caught between the rainy south and the snowy north, the weather in Stockholm is quixotic at the best of times, and after its snowiest winter in decades the thaw is proving a bit ugly. On the other hand, it's a lot easier to feel like a native when there aren't hordes of tourists on every street corner in Gamla Stan...

A little snow

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Joe It's been a long, cold winter here in Uppsala—unfortunately for me, I've been sick as a dog for most of it. I'm feeling much better now, no thanks to the local medical establishment—who ever heard of a country where you can't even get a decongestant by prescription? I mean, honestly! But I'm not bitter… and, anyway, if you're going to have a couple of weeks without more than a couple hours of sleep a night, it might as well be when there's lot's of curling on the tv, right?

Glad hjärtensdag 2010

Jennifer In my list, I said that one of my goals was to write a post a day while unemployed. That went out the window on the very first day, of course, but I intend to do some catching up with short posts: more fika- and pub-småpratar, and similar little stories of odds and ends.

I've got a little list

Jennifer I suppose I will tell the whole story later, but for now, let's stick with the short version, which is this: due in equal parts to a series of miscommunications and the slowness of the bureaucracy, I find myself temporarily unemployed. It's not ideal, of course, but I have been offered at least temporary employment (as soon as legally possible) to try to finish up one of the projects, so the situation is a little less stressful than it could be.

Kicksledding at Fjällnora

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Jennifer Last year we went to Sollentuna and then to Ekoln so that Joe could try his hand (feet?) at långfärdsskridskor, the long-distance skates favored by those who wish to travel or exercise on natural ice. But there is another option, the kicksled, or in Swedish, "spark" (which just means kick, but specifically means a violent sort of kick). Kicksleds are just that: lightweight, flexible, two-runner sleds with a seat on the front, traditionally used for getting you and all your gear out to the middle of a lake for ice fishing, and then providing you a seat while you fish. Joe wanted to try one out, as a more stable way to get some speed on the ice, and it also occurred to us that perhaps someone could sit on the sled while being pushed around by someone else.

Lost in the Woods

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JoeSo I'm on my way to campus late Friday morning, biking through Stadsskogen just like I do every day now. It's been rather cold for the last week or so, staying below -10°C pretty much the whole week, so we still have all of our snow from Christmas, which makes for a pretty ride (further helped by all the hoarfrost that was left over from Thursday's freezing fog). Anyway, I'm about two-thirds of the way through when, turning a corner, I come across a woman on skis, standing at the crossing I'm about to pass, and she says something along the lines of, "Kunna jag fråga du…"

Samma rutin som förra året…

Same procedure as last year…

JoeToday is trettonde dag jul, and with it our second Swedish Christmas comes to a close. If last year I was struck by how very different Christmas traditions seemed in Sweden compared to the U.S., this year what seems even more striking is how very much the same it all seems as last year.

Swedes seem particularly hide-bound when it comes to the winter holiday season. As evidence, I present a tale of two television shows: Kalle Anka och kompisar, and Dinner for One. Kalle Anka, or Donald Duck as you know him, is an oddly popular comic book character in Sweden, a fact which is perhaps related to the staggering and inexplicably enduring popularity of the Kalle Anka Christmas special here. The show in question is the 1958 Walt Disney Christmas special, and it has been shown on Swedish television on Christmas Eve at 3 PM every year since 1959—exactly the same cartoons, only a couple of them Christmas related in any way (and one of those complete with the awkward racism so typical of Disney cartoons from the 30s), with a live narrator every year translating for the kiddies (the cartoons are in English, with Swedish subtitles). OK, so they show the same thing every year, what's the big deal, right? Consider this: in a bad year, Kalle Anka pulls in maybe a little over 3 million viewers in Sweden—it may not sound like much, but its one third of the population of the country, and some years its closer to half. That's right, half the population of the country watches this one show. Live, mind you, they watch it live—I've yet to meet a Swede who would contemplate taping Kalle Anka.

God jul 2009 och gott nytt år 2010

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JenniferHappy 2010, everyone! We had a busy time before the holidays, as Joe had exams and project due right up until the 23rd, and I have quite a lot to do at work just now, either in preparation for leaving my job soon (yes, it will be two years at the end of this January), or, preferably, preparing to carry on with the project for another year (fingers crossed). Joe has also had a cold for a while, and frankly we were just so exhausted by the time jul came around that we mostly sat around and complained. But a few nice things have happened, so here's a run down of the last two weeks.