Stockholmies

Sign-lations week 4

Saw this flyer taped at Långholmen this morning as Zeke and I were out walking in the rain.  Thoughts?

Fullkorn ≠ full of corn

Growing up in my family means that you appreciate root vegetables, all things cabbage, and herring (unless you’re my sister and deathly allergic to fish). We come from hearty Eastern European stock where fresh citrus was a delicacy. Lucky for me I was born in California and, with the exception of my years in Boston, never knew hardships coming across produce. I knew that moving to Stockholm, after a summer of being spoiled by the California farmers markets, meant that I would reconnect with these old familiar foods. I also knew that along with the beets and cabbage would come an assortment of mushrooms that I had only seen overpriced on the shelves of shmancy grocers. I’ve partaken in most of the produce but have yet to tackle the wall of canned and preserved fish that constitutes a very large refrigerated section in every market I’ve perused. We’ll report on the adventures of canned, fermented, and spreadable fish another time.

 

For those who know me, it’s not a surprise that I’m writing about food. I love food. And for those who know me even more, it’s even less of a surprise that I have a love-hate relationship with food. My list of food allergies is long. Most relevant to my new Swedish life: my list of food allergies is in English. In the U.S my nemeses soy and corn hide in most prepared and packaged goods; they hide under aliases in long lists of ingredients. I expected that they would be hidden much the same here, and they are. But, what I didn’t expect was that the words to describe these simple and common foods would be so hard to come by. The cereal and bread aisles are filled with containers advertising fullkorn, much to my surprise and relief fullkorn does not mean full of corn. In fact, the word korn might not even mean corn. Some online sources (1, 2) tell me that it means barley or grain (therefore fullkorn means wholegrain), but others like this one tell me Korn: grain, kernel, corn, barley, barleycorn. So what happens if we search the word corn for its Swedish translation? Well, we get the following: säd; majs; kärna; liktorn; spanmål, korn. Fortunately eating corn doesn’t send me to the hospital, just makes me feel lousy for a while.

 

Sign-lations Week 3

I was quite impressed with the responses to week 2, so here's a simple one.  This sign seems easy enough to understand, but what we loved about it was that it was on the sidewalk and bordering a street that doesn't allow cars on it. 

Again, for those new to sign-lations here's the basic idea:  I post a photo and you interpret it. Translating (when in Swedish) should be off limits as it certainly makes for more entertaining translations.

Saturday morning

On our walk to Tantolunden for Zeke's morning run, we passed along this mirrored mosaic storefront right along the water.  While Zeke sat nicely and watched the ducks and geese, I tested out the photo posting from the iphone. 

 

Sign-lations Week 2

A quick reminder about how this works. I post a photo and you interpret it. Translating (when in Swedish) should be off limits as it certainly makes for more entertaining translations.

This photo is from our visit to Stockholm last year, but it really stood out to me. As we walk the streets and see amusing signs, street names, and advertisements, I'm frequently amused. Perhaps I'm just easily amused.

etta vecka (first week)

Our first week was marked with a number of major successes.  We:

1. registered and received person numbers
2. opened a bank account
3. purchased new cell phones and opened accounts

Additional minor successes include getting transportation passes for the month, setting up our kitchen with most of the basics, and finding dog parks for Zeke.  I even made it back to the gigantic IKEA today to pick up a rug to warm up the living room.  Unfortunately, though lucky for us, most of these interactions didn't require us to speak or learn any Swedish. 

Then there were the small victories such as visiting a coffee shop and, all in Swedish, ordering two coffees to go, asking for more milk, and saying goodbye.  I finally understand why we did all of those silly exercises and fake dialogue in high school French class.   Funny enough when I'm in one of those situations we practiced in Madame Beauchamp's class, I want to speak French.  I guess that those exercises really drilled the niceties into us.  The thing is that even though almost everyone here speaks Swedish and English, they could also probably understand anything that I might throw at them in French or even Russian.  It's pretty amazing and makes me feel dumb.

As we get the logistics of the move under control, we look forward to more exploration (and hopefully more interesting blog posts to go with it). In the meantime, here are some photos of our new home .

Måndag (Monday)

After a nice weekend we decided that it was time to deal with getting officially registered in Sweden, but not without tiring out Zeke first.  We ventured to a nearby island, Langholmen, which looks like a giant park on the map.  The walk was short, perhaps the closest of all of the parks we've gone to so far.  Although it's short, the walk is very nice.  The terrain is gorgeous; lush and rocky.  It's a lot more fun than standing in the field, and gives us all a bit of a workout.  It's unclear whether dogs are actually allowed offleash here, but we saw at least six others roaming free and no one seemed to mind much.  Just over these boulders (see photo on left) we spent some quality time throwing Zeke's favorite toy, which we call the peanut and REI calls the gourdo (well, really it's Ruff Wear that named it). This thing has lasted forever and traveled from Boston to California and now to Sweden.  We spent an hour exploring the park and throwing the peanut around until returning to the apartment.  I packed up our passports and paperwork and we went off to become official.

We went down to the Tax Agency to sign up for the population register and get our personnummer.  To be able to do much of anything here, we need this number.  We need it to open a bank account and to get our ID cards. In turn we need these things to do other things - apparently we've read that you can't rent a dvd without this card.  Whether or not this is still true, I don't know, but if these ID cards can be important for such small things, I suspect that over two years here we'll want to have them.

Meanwhile back at the apartment, Zeke was relaxing.  He's all registered and just needs a visit to a veterinarian here to obtain a pet passport.  Since we're in Europe and travel is so easy here, we'll want to take advantage of it; a pet passport makes it easier for us to bring Zeke along.

So, these are the exciting logistics of our setting up residence here in Stockholm.  We hope to soon be sharing great adventures with you.

veckoslut: lördag och söndag (weekend: saturday and sunday)

With various chores done, our stress levels were returning to more manageable levels, and our jetlag was starting to give way to a more normal sleep schedule.  We spent the weekend searching out nearby dog friendly locations and showing each other neighborhood discoveries we had made while dividing and conquering our long list of tasks earlier in the week.  We strolled along Hornstulls Strand to Tantolunden.  This gigantic park has a number of large grassy fields, good hills for a nice walk, and mini-golf.  Not the gigantic Scandia amusement park mini-golf I remember, but a cute little mini-golf area. 

Then as we continued winding around the park we came across neighborhoods of itty bitty summer cottages with thriving beautiful gardens called kolonilotter. National Geographic describes it nicely:

"Swedish phenomenon kolonilotter.These are tiny, tiny cottages where urban-dwelling Swedes recharge their batteries with the help of nature and some healthy gardening."

We saw these last year in a different part of the island, but were shocked by the number of them there.  A local closing up her cottage until next summer told us that Tantolunden has three neighborhoods of these kolonilotter.  The pictures don't really show proper scale; these places really are quite tiny.  For you New Englanders think Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond.

The park was great - lush and beautiful.  The people we met, for the most part, were quite kind.  But after our exploration and eventual discovery of the fenced dog park, and my getting bitten by a dog whose owner was a bit frustrating, it was time to head back.  Meandering back to the apartment it occurred to us that everything we're used to, including how people express concern, exasperation, or frustration, are potentially foreign to us.  Though it seems obvious, when you yourself are frustrated, it's certainly easy to forget.

Söndag was a rainy day; all day long. 

ett och två (one and two)

We arrived in Stockholm safely with no luggage missing, Zeke relatively happy, and found our apartment quite easily thanks to the GPS we rented along with the car.   More to come on the apartment and all that later.

Our first day we unpacked, bought some basic groceries, and explored our little neighborhood by foot.   We lunched at the pizza place around the corner ordering one of the few pizzas that we could manage to translate with our knowledge of English, Russian, and French and our pitiful knowledge of Swedish - ham and mushrooms.  As we sat and waited for our food, we looked around the place, taking in the fact that this was now our local pizza joint and that we felt terribly out of place here. Just past Dave's head a television was playing some American program from a couple of decades ago featuring feathered hair and bad acting.  As I glanced back lated I noticed that on the television a gentleman was playing the piano and next to him were people playing BINGO.  Yes, that's right, they were watching televised BINGO.  Okay, let's step back a second.  First someone decided to televise it and second, someone actually changed the channel to watch it.  Huh?  Perhaps there's some play along option to keep people entertained, but whoever changed it was either a customer eating in a public restaurant or an employee of said restaurant.  Had we felt a little more confident in our Swedish speaking skills, perhaps we would have asked a question about it or figured out that in fact, it's a parody on boring games people play.

Our lack of Swedish, though not an impairment to basic life here, is definitely getting to us.  We know enough to say that we don't know much, if anything.  People are very patient so far and a few have been helpful in teaching us words pertinent to whatever situation we happen to be in at the moment. All that said, we feel rude and stupid.  And it's only a matter of time when this catches up with us, if it hasn't already.

We were at the market yesterday buying more groceries (lots of small trips because we have to walk and carry everything).   There were lots of familiar things and many less familiar things.  Craving spaghetti and meatballs for dinner I searched through the meat department. Some of the packages had drawings indicating what kind of meat was ground up inside, others simply did not.  And meat isn't cheap here - not at all.  So, I picked something that looked beefy, wasn't too fatty, and didn't seem too expensive.  I later realized, while eating dinner, that I had no clue what I cooked.  Our little travel dictionary (the big one is in the box that I sent to the office) just said that it was fresh meat.  That is was.

With our fridge and pantry slowly filling with the basics I thought that it was time to tackle the apartment.  Though fully furnished we still needed a few basics - sheets, towels, dish towels, dinner plates that fit into the dishwasher - and so off I went to brave the world.  I had wished Jody were with me for this excursion to what I've read is the biggest IKEA around.  I think that all of the previous IKEA practice worked in my favor; despite not knowing the language I managed to pick up two bags worth of stuff, pay for it (sometimes a challenge), and get back on the returning bus in less than an hour.  Go me!

 

Sign-lations Week 1

While I compose a summary of our first few days and potential mishaps here in Sweden, I thought that I would introduce a little game that might go on to become a regular occurrence here.  The idea is similar to that of someone posting a photograph and asking for people to come up with captions.

Here I will post a photograph of a sign that I come across while walking around town.  Sometimes I know exactly what this sign means, and other times I will have no idea.  I invite you to think of what the sign means and encourage that you not try to translate the Swedish but rather make up something completely bizarre.