Election time

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Jennifer The big election day was the weekend before last— we had a few other things on our minds so didn't pay too much attention at the time I'm afraid— but I did get into town to take some pictures of the campaigning and the little huts ("valstugor") that each political party had put up to be a center point for distributing literature, have rallies, etc. The huts were set up in the main square in town (the one that the buses don't go through just at the moment!). They split themselves up neatly and by color coding: the left-leaning (Rödgröna, the'redgreens') parties on one side, the center/right folks (The Alliance, the 'blues') on the other side. Rödgröna are what you might expect: the communists, the social democrats, and the environmentalists (although the greens do not always hold with the reds in voting). Joining the redgreens were Sweden's famous Piratpartiet, the Pirate Party, who value freedom of expression and bandwidth above all and appear to have claimed purple as their color.

The Girl who was Annoyed by Stieg Larsson

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Jennifer I have heard that the Stieg Larsson thrillers have been all the rage in the US; of course they were popular here a little beforehand. Hollywood has taken notice, and they are filming the first book now ("The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" in English, "Män som hatar kvinnor" på svenska). (Of course it was already made into a perfectly decent movie in Swedish, but never mind.) And... they have decided to film parts of the movie in Uppsala! (The line at the bottom of the sign says "Uppsala. Borrowed by Oscar. Every day since 1984 [when the last movie, "Fanny and Alexander," was shot here].)

Fauxll

JoeSummer appears to have ended here. Actually, it ended on August 23, according to the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute.

That morning, in a press conference that was supposed to be about the low pressure system sweeping through the south of the country and triggering gale warnings in the Skagerrak, one Linnea Rehn was asked if this was the start of Autumn. Her response, as far as I've been able to piece it together from various radio and newspaper reports, ran something along the lines of:

Vacation in Switzerland

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Jennifer We had two and half days of touring in Switzerland—should have been three and a half, but for the infamous behavior of EasyJet, about which Joe has promised to write later—anyway, we still had some time to fill with touristing.

We landed finally in Geneva on Thursday afternoon, where we were met by G. who was in the area anyway, and he loaded us onto a train for Neuchâtel, getting out himself at a half-way point for more wedding preparations. (The train ride, though quiet, punctual, and smooth, was not terribly encouraging for the rest of the weekend, as the rain pelted down...) We were then picked up at the train station by C., G.'s mother, who gave us a quick driving tour of town for orientation. Then to their house... and what a house! A spacious three full stories broken into three apartments, with different branches of the G. family living on each one, each one owning their share of the whole place. After some coffee, and showers, and rest, we gathered for dinner, during which a bright double rainbow manifested on Lac de Neuchâtel. Not much was visible past the lake on the first evening, but we were promised views of the Pre-Alps for sure, and perhaps even Jungfrau in the Swiss alps and Mont Blanc in the French Alps if the weather cleared.

Woman, best friend of human

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JenniferAs a little vacation, we attended the wedding of our Swiss friends G. and D. this last weekend. We stayed in the town of Neuchâtel, while the wedding itself was held in Coppet, with a reception in Crissier. Lots happened, so the report will be delivered in parts...

Cruisin' in Åland

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JenniferEarlier in the spring, our upstairs neighbor P., who is an enthusiast of America in general, told us that he wanted to do something nice for us, and take us somewhere (within driving distance, for reasons that will become clear) to see more of Sweden than we've been able to. After some debate, he decided to take us to one of his favorite places, which is not strictly speaking in Sweden at all. The Åland island chain lies between Sweden and Finland, and is politically a part of Finland, although the residents speak a dialect of Swedish, and the islands enjoy some degree of autonomy that includes a tax exemption on alcohol. Many of the Baltic ferries therefore are based in Åland, so that they can sell booze cheap in their large duty-free stores. The eastern edge of Åland is only about a 2 hour ferry ride away, and it is a popular place to go for a week or so on holiday, while day trips are also popular.

Tibble Days

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JoeE. and family (the Dutch hosts of the World Cup Final party we attended a couple of weeks back) are having their summer vacation now, and very thoughtfully suggested that we might like to use their house some while they were away, as a sort of country holiday. Even though they're gone for a few of weeks, we're only able to take them up on their offer for a few days—the hamlet they live in, Tibble, is a good 23 km from our house as the jackdaw flies, and while there is a regional bus stop not 100 m from their front door the bus doesn't run during the summer. Nevertheless, we were able to hitch a ride out last night from a friend who is in the process of buying a house out this way, so we'll have a sort of four day weekend, albeit with both of working from home for parts of it.

Aside from remembering how to use an espresso machine, this morning's most important task was getting to the grocery store, which lies 6 km away in the outskirts of Rasbo (or possibly Gåvsta? The divisions between villages are a little abstract out this way…). So I hopped on board the rather cunning cargo bicycle parked out in the barn and headed off down the road. How was the bike? I've been rereading the Aubrey-Maturin books for the summer, so with apologies to Mr. O'Brian I'll sum up the experience thus:

By the time I'd made it to the edge of the village, I could tell that she was a slab-sided Dutch herringbus that griped something awful if you tried to put her within a few points of the wind. But with her hold stowed to bring her by the bow and the wind on her quarter she was a pretty smooth sailer. Still, I was happy to get her into port before the black squall whipping in from the east caught me.

The first drops of rain fell as I was pulling in to the drive, and a few minutes later we got a nice heavy rain (our first in a while, and perhaps enough that we won't need to water E.'s garden today). Unfortunately, it also took out the power (not an uncommon occurance in these parts, as Jennifer somewhat belatedly remembered), so our lunch was simple bread and cheese (there's a fridge full of Gouda, naturally), washed down with a bit of Trocadero (a local soda that's sort of like a fruity ginger ale). On the plus side, what was shaping up to be a hot, humid day, with a high around 30°C, has turned cool and breezy.

According to the Norwegian weather service, tomorrow will have a high of 17°C, proving yet again that we are incapable of packing correctly for even the shortest of trips in Scandinavia, having brought nothing but shorts and light-weight shirts. Sigh.

Bottling summer

JenniferIt's that time of year again— sing hallelujah, the smultron are ripe! This year of course I have been keeping a careful eye on the smultron patch, noting the state of the flowers and early stage berries. Even so, it was my nose that let me know they were finally ready—their delicate sweet smell, wafting across the sidewalk on the early-evening breeze, mixed with the scent of warm pine trees in the sun... heavenly!

Dutch disaster

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JenniferThe World Cup final between Holland and Spain was last Sunday, and E. had decided to throw a big party at his house, not only for the joy and comradeship, I suspect, but also perhaps as an offering to the Fates. You see, E. has played quite a bit of team sport in his past, and therefore is a little superstitious about these things. He stopped shaving after Holland's first win; he hadn't washed his Holland jersey since then either; he was initially contemptuous about Paul the Psychic Octopus, but then he became quite a bit apprehensive, when Paul predicted that Spain would win. (In sympathy, I had not washed my orange t-shirt since the first game, and I also confess that I was more than a little worried by Paul's prognostication.)

Horrible Revelation

Joe Amazingly, we've been in Sweden for two and a half years now. How long is that? Well, last night our gregarious, raggare neighbor (a very nice fellow we've mentioned before) stopped by to surprise us with a "taste of home". He had been out waxing his recently acquired 1959 Ford Fairlane over the course of the long summer evening, and such a quintessentially American activity requires that most American of drinks, a self-proclaimed king of beers which shall otherwise remain nameless.

'Twould have been unneighborly to refuse, so I had a beer. Know what? After more than two years of being subjected to Swedish beer, which is (with very few exceptions) truly awful, this stuff (which I couldn't even bring myself to buy on the 4th of July)—it isn't so bad. I'm not saying that it's good, but it isn't actively bad.

What's next? A renewed appreciation for Oscar Meyer hot dogs?