A More Swedish Life

Springtime in Stockholm

2007-05-11T16:10:00.000+02:00

An update:

Good news: my Swedish is good for reading novels, and I use it in everyday life without causing people to instantly begin speaking English with me in a chivalrous attempt to salvage what's left of my dignity.

Bad news: I haven't been able to find a steady job in Stockholm, and it's getting to the point where I'm somewhat burnt out. But: onward and upward -- let us not tarry over depressing details.

I am thinking of making my next entry about the incredibly dashing style of dress of Stockholm's octogenarians. These octogenarians are the best dressed I've ever seen, with the notable exception of my dear grandfather Theodore Alphonse, who wins the prize.

I will hopefully have my camera up and running, and then it will be an illustrated commentary on the dashing Swedish over-eighty crowd.

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-26T00:53:00.001+01:00

I'm back in Boston for Christmas, and I got a small digital camera, which will, I think, revolutionize the blog. Here are some pictures from Christmas morning.

I passed the test!

2006-12-14T13:12:00.000+01:00

Indeed, I don't know exactly how, but somehow I passed the test. Yesterday I missed school, and today we were on a field trip to the museum of the city of Stockholm, and so I don't know the details of yet and I haven't seen my corrected test. But one of my teachers came up to me and said the test was very good, that I passed with flying colors, apparently, so clearly I shouldn't have gotten so nervous. But it's impossible to know in advance how strict they're going to be!

Moving to a New Place

2006-12-13T16:25:00.000+01:00

So I don't think I ever mentioned this in the blog, but our sublet ended early -- about a month ago our landlords, who had gone on an extended vacation to Spain with their two babies, decided they wanted to be home for Christmas after all. This was all perfectly above board. From the beginning they had reserved the right to end the contract early, to give themselves more flexibility. This past month THS and I have gone crazy trying to find an apartment in Stockholm but to no avail. Every ad we could find, we would e-mail or call, only to get no response or an answering machine followed by no response. We couldn't figure out what was wrong in our self-presentation. Given that each one of these ads will get over one hundred replies, we may not have been doing anything wrong, actually. It might have just been that by chance no one ever picked us out. After a while, however, we began to have a suspicion: people were offering MORE money in their responses to the ads -- bribing people to take them. So last week we started offering a little more rent than what was officially desired. Still no response. We resigned ourselves to having to stay with friends for a few days before we went home for the holidays and then continue the search in January.

And then, at the last minute, someone called us back! It's a little apartment up on the East Island, one room and an eat-in kitchen. It's not a stylish neighborhood like the one we live in now, and there's no broadband connection, but there's a balcony and windows that have a view of the water with the cruise ships coming in. And that is some consolation, I would say.

It has been harrowing. Consider: we have to move out of our place where we live now on Saturday, and we wrangled and wrangled and now we can move in there on: SATURDAY! So it just happened to work out in the end. Everything came through in the knick of time.

Oh, and the best thing is that we can stay in this place through the end of July!

Pure Pain

2006-12-10T14:10:00.000+01:00

Now I'm not complaining, and I don't want you to get the wrong idea. But for a moment, let's just be entirely frank and admit the obvious: trying to fit in at a party in a foreign country where you don't know the language is PURE PAIN.

Imagine this: you are going to a dinner party among your friends and acquaintances. You are happy to have a chance to get out and see your friends, meet people. However, you are forced to wear a skin-tight electric purple lamé bodysuit that shows EVERYTHING (This goes for you too, guys. Purple lamé). For good measure, let's say it also has a weird flap in the back that keeps falling down exposing your butt. Something like that. Now imagine that you can't make a big deal of it. You can't talk all night about how you were forced to wear a purple lamé bodysuit with a weird flap in the back that sometimes shows your butt. Instead, you just have to act like it's the most natural thing in the world, and make small talk all night, and try not to notice that people are looking at you funny and inching away from you. And for politeness sake, you have to stay for at least a few hours.

That's what I would say is the equivalent of trying to hang out at a party with the linguistic skills of a two-year-old.

As you may have guessed, I was at a very nice party last night, one of those dinner parties where there are about fifteen people. It was at my friend Sara's; she and her boyfriend have a lovely apartment, decorated in the retro style that you see often in Stockholm, that take this look all the way:

That sort of thing.
I speak Swedish well enough at this point to just do it, just not disrupt everyone else's ease and good feeling by forcing them to switch over into English. But I'm telling you: it's pure pain. I'm committed to it, because I know it's the only thing that will make me get better, but honestly, I hate it!

Christmas Time in Stockholm

2006-12-07T23:55:00.000+01:00

THS and I went up to our spot high above the city today (already described in the post entitled A Little Trip to Europe). Here's a picture that THS took.

So Sweden is big on advent. I've never been so conscious of advent in all my life. Gosh, before I came to Sweden, I had almost forgotten what the word meant! But the thing about advent as the Swedes play it, see, is that it's addictive. Every day is a new surprise. You all are already aware of the advent internet Christmas song calendar I posted below. So I'm addicted to that. Every day I listen to the new song at midnight. And then, more importantly, there's the national obsession, the Swedish advent Christmas television show -- fun for the whole family. Every year Sweden's most famous actors and playwrights and celebrated directors and production designers etc. all get together and create a Christmas advent special. Every day everyone gets up early and watches it. This year it's about two child detectives who live in a strangely gothic industrial city reminiscent of the version of New York presented in Les Triplettes de Belleville. You can take a peak if you like, although WARNING, THE LANGUAGE OF COMMUNICATION IN THIS FILM IS "SWEDISH":

Lassemaja's Detective Agency with Realplayer

Lassemaja's Detective Agency with Windows Media Player

Swedes really go all out at Christmas time in other ways too. Everyone has these beautiful stars in their windows, and THS made sure that we had one too.

And then there's the food. Ooh la la.

I know you may think this has nothing to do with Sweden but...

2006-12-06T17:50:00.000+01:00

I got a new winter coat!

Here's me in the supermarket, wearing the new coat, shortly after the purchase:

The photo is courtesy of THS's cellphone -- so sort of fuzzy, but I think you get the idea. It's a Swedish-made coat that has padding inside it, so it's very warm.

In other news, I had the oral portion of my Swedish exam today.

There was a five minute-long text that was played aloud for us once, and then we, in our group of five, had to explain to the teacher what the narrative had been about.

My personal low point: when the teacher asked us in what era the story most probably took place, I said "some time previous Russian Revolution." What I was trying to say was "it must have been some time _before_ the Russian Revolution", but I mixed up the word for 'before' with the word for 'previous' AND forgot to say 'the', which in Swedish is added to the end of the word, as some of you may know, so it's easy to forget.

My personal high point: when, even though no such information was solicited from us, I stated that the author of the text _must_ have been Chekhov, because of the distinctively Chekhovian style. I was correct. So at least they know I understand, even if I sound like an idiot.

Tomorrow is the portion of the test where we have to write a long essay, and we have to display strong grammar skills. This is the part where I could really choke. I'll let you know how it goes.

Advent Calendar

2006-12-02T00:03:00.000+01:00

Check out this great advent calendar!

Every day of advent you get a new, very jazzy Christmas song!

Learning Swedish, Learning Sweden

2006-11-29T15:06:00.000+01:00

Last night THS and I went out. It was our mutual friend M's birthday. Although we both really should have studied, it is hard to evade going to meet someone when it's their birthday. Add to that the fact that THS and I met each other through M, and we are really obligated to display our eternal thanks.

Since I recently found out more nerve-racking information about my hard test that I have next week, I was feeling nervous. So right at the beginning of the night I announced it was going to be All Swedish, All The Time.

Oh, it was hellish. Very, very hellish. Because if you just let things take their natural course, next thing you know you're talking about magical realist elements in the novels of the Ashkenazi diaspora, or theories of nurture vs. nature, and woe to her who thinks she can talk about all that in Swedish. I just don't have the vocabulary. But I ended up there, and at other weird places as well, and I guess I just sounded like some sort of idiot savant. It worked best with people who already knew me. Those who I met for the first time just gave me weird looks. The impressive thing was that for the most part they didn't switch into English, respecting my "all Swedish all the time" rule.

After having been here for two months, I'm willing to tentatively begin my comparative study of German values vs. Swedish. This is, of course, highly controversial and polemical, but as I've said before in these pages -- I just calls 'em like I sees 'em.

German values vs. Swedish values

Germans have insitutionalized order, Swedes have institutionalized niceness.
Gernans have social beer all afternoon, Swedes have social coffee all afternoon.
Germany is heterogeneous, Sweden is homogeneous
Germans are concerned with their history, Swedes are concerned with their traditions.
Germans value intellectual rigour, Swedes value humanism.
Germans are pessimistic (even when they are trying to be optimistic), Swedes are self-assured and mildly optimistic (even when they put on an air of cynicism.)
Germans value telling the truth at all costs, Swedes avoid conflict.

At some point it would be interesting to insert Americans into this, but I've got to run and meet THS for dinner!

Happy Thanksgiving

2006-11-24T03:38:00.000+01:00

A Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

The Handsome Swede and I decided at the last minute that we would celebrate the holiday, and went to the supermarket around eight at night. We bought a whole chicken, and potatoes for mashing, and a Swedish cheese cake.
The chicken turned out divine -- we baked it in rosemary and olive oil and garlic and black pepper and fresh lemon. It was moist and tender and delicious. The mashed potatoes, however, led to a wee altercation. CERTAIN people wanted them with skins on, others with skins off. But the potatoes were very delicious as well in the end. We made gravy with the run-off from the roast chicken, and so the gravy was rich and rosemary flavored.
The Swedish cheese cake turned out to taste like an almond rice pudding. We ate it with whipped cream and giant blackberries. The entire dinner was scrumptious.

So I think tonight I had my first Thanksgiving dinner since 2001. THS had his first Thanksgiving ever.

On Burning Out

2006-11-23T14:49:00.000+01:00

I've noticed that I'm beginning to experience some burn-out with Swedish. One of the most frustrating things about learning a new language, if you're me at least, are these cycles of highs and lows. For a long time you feel like maybe TOMORROW you're going to speak fluently! I liken it to the state of mind of a donkey when he is following a carrot on a stick in front of his nose. Or the eager attitude of a dog who has recently heard the word "treat". You just get all excited, and bound around, or rush ahead at high speed with your head out the window of the car and your tongue out. And then after a while, presumably because you are human and not a donkey or a dog, you realize that it took them a thousand years to develop this language and you're not going to be able to speak it exquisitely tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, or EVER.

This is all very terrible. But the problem becomes even worse because actually the ability to speak a language well depends on self-assurance. The cruel irony is that the more optimistic you are, the better you speak, and the more downtrodden (realistic) you are, the worse the sound of the words when they come out of your mouth, and the more shattered your grammar becomes.

Oh cruel world!

The day I came home from Swedish class having been chosen to take the test early, mistaken for a Swede because of my accentlessness, and having just ruled the literature discussion, THS was astounded by my apparent progress in one day.

A few days later, I had ruminated a great deal after having written an essay riddled with obvious errors, and THS couldn't understand why even my accent was so much worse than just a few days before. I told him it was slump time.

Anyway, lucky for me, I've done this before, and I know how it goes. You get all excited and make rapid progress, then you get a taste of reality and stagnate for a while, plateauing out, and you think you aren't learning anything. Then you get your groove back and you're suddenly at a much higher level than you were at the beginning of the plateau, proving that you actually made subconscious progress.

When I was in highschool, I was generally a very good French student. I felt very confident in class, although I couldn't make head or tail of novels without a dictionary. Then my senior year I went on an exchange program to Ivory Coast, and upon arrival had a crisis of confidence that led me to be "the girl who can understand French but cannot speak it" for my ENTIRE stay in that country. I hardly said a word to anyone the entire time, following directions but never speaking unless spoken to. Finally the last night, as my host family was taking me to the airport, I started talking in the car. And talking, and talking, and talking, and talking. My host family was in shock. "Mais Ida, tu parles tres bien le francais! Pourquoi est-ce que tu n'as jamais rien dit!?" They assumed it was a case of treachery. But I really HADN'T been able to speak French until that moment. Lo and behold, when I got back to the US, I was quite fluent, and have been able to read novels without a dictionary ever since.

I really don't understand how these things work exactly. I surmise that there is a lot going on even when you think there's nothing going on, so long as you are immersed in the culture.

Now with Swedish there is a danger this subconscious work won't happen when I have my lows, because THS and I speak English here at home, and I am doing a great deal of writing in English. We'll see how I fare.

For now, however, let it be known that I'm in a language slump.

A Little Trip to Europe

2006-11-20T15:35:00.003+01:00

Yesterday it was sunny and bracing, and as it was a Sunday, everyone was out walking. For anyone who has never been to Stockholm, it's built on an archipelago, a series of islands clustered tightly next to one another. THS and I live on the Southern Island (SÃ¶der) where there are many hills and rocky ledges. Our Western edge faces the north, and along this Northern edge of the island there is a great cliff. You can walk along the edge of the cliff and look down at the water far below that separates this island from the old town (Gamla Stan), and see the boats and spires and bridges off in the distance. I wanted to catch the sunlight, THS had to study, so I went off walking on my own. I walked along the edge of the cliff along Montelius VÃ¤gen, which is sort of a boardwalk. (Please note that I do not have a camera, so none of these images are mine.)

The view from MonteliusvÃ¤gen is of Gamla Stan, the old town, which from this vantage point looks something like this:

And this:

Then I went down a very steep, old cobblestone road, and made my way over the bridge that you can see in both pictures.
I walked around the old town for a long time, and it was lovely.

I went into some churches, and some free museums. At some point along the walk, I caught myself thinking reflexively, "How lucky I am that I can make trips to Europe so easily now." Hahaha! I was surprised at myself -- that even after living on this continent for all these years, knowing the reality of life here, I still have my childish conception of Europe as a place where you visit churches, look at old towns, take in 'culture'.
I didn't think I still had these simple-minded associations.

But recently I was reading some advice to a writer who asked how she might reinvigorate herself after having worked herself down to a state of torpor where she had no ideas left. The advice she received was that she should forget literature. For a long while she should simply go to museums and spend hours looking at art. Any art that pleased her. And then she should go to concerts and hear music that moved and inspired her. When she returned to her manuscript she would be replenished. As a young person, there was always something about travel to Europe which had this effect on me -- it filled me with new strength and ideas. Probably these happy memories are part of why I've ended up here. The interesting thing, however, is that the reinvigorating aspect doesn't seem to come from the variation in scenery. There's something about walking in Stockholm that is inspiring and rewarding, even if you live here all the time. In that sense, I am terribly glad that I can "go to Europe" so easily.

Updates

2006-11-16T11:13:00.000+01:00

Lots to report!

1. I went to the doctor for the first time in Sweden this morning. Or rather, what I THOUGHT was the doctor. You all may recall that a few weeks ago I received a letter from the government, or, as THS calls it, "Papa," saying that I was due for my yearly gynecological exam. Turns out when you go in for your routine pap smear, you don't see a doctor, nor a nurse, but rather a midwife.

The medical facility was in one of those luxurious, blonde-wood Scandinavian buildings. The office itself, while looking in most ways like a doctor's office, was all about the cozy, as per usual. In the waiting room there was soft, pretty, yellow lighting. Tea candles flickered on the side tables, and a big pitcher of water with lemon stood on a tray. Not far off was a massive children's play area with expensive looking wooden toys. The midwife who checked me out put on a linen apron when she did the exam that looked like something you'd buy at Laura Ashley Home. She was cool but not unfriendly. It was fine. So to sum up, I'd say Martha Stewart might have been anticipated here. But she can catch up -- I envision a new magazine entitled Martha Stewart Hospital Living. Generally I think your experience at the doctor's tells a lot about the culture you're living in. Some day maybe I'll get around to describing my crazy, crazy, German doctors.

2. Earlier this week I was one of only four students in my class of fifty who was cleared to take the national test in December. The way it works is that we have the choice of doing this course in ten weeks, twenty weeks, or thirty weeks. Twenty weeks is the recommended period, but this way, if I pass I'll get to finish it in ten. It was a nice thing, and yes, you're right to assume I'm proud of it, but there was also a pretty negative aspect as well.

At first, it didn't seem as if it was anything special to take the test, just par for the course. My teacher, Helén, whom I adore for the most part but who has already proven herself to be less than diplomatic on other occasions, came right up to me as class was ending. She returned my essay, and then spoke to me very casually about taking the test in December. So far so good. It all seemed perfectly casual and normal, not as if I was being singled out.

However, at the time she spoke to me, I happened to be sitting directly next to my Egyptian friend, Atef, who could hear everything she said whether he wanted to or not. It so happens that Atef and I have been talking about trying to finish the course as quickly as possible from the beginning. He has been here three years, and is eager to learn Swedish quickly and efficiently now that he has some time off work (when he first got here he didn't have time to learn Swedish academically). He's very fluent, and very intelligent. This school where I am now is touted as a "flex" school, where students supposedly can move through at their own pace. So that's why he's here. He really wants to finish up and take the test. So Atef went to her just a moment later and said he'd like to take the test as well. Right in front of me, whom she had only just invited, Helen told him almost flat out that he couldn't take the test. Only those who were invited could take it. It was only then that I realized that it was exclusive -- I think if I had known I would have at the very least distanced myself so that I wouldn't be standing RIGHT THERE as she was so curt with him. It was very embarrassing. And she didn't say: "You're just not there yet," because frankly, I'm sure she isn't even aware of what his Swedish level is. In a class of fifty, how could she be? EVERYONE in the class is pretty fluent, in their way. All that had happened to decide who was to take the test was that our reading journals, which we turn in to the teachers every week, had been evaluated to see at what writing level we were. The few good ones were allowed to take the test.

In any case, I felt really bad for Atef, and I have trouble understanding why they discourage a motivated student from taking a test. It would just mean that he'd study harder and with more interest for a few weeks, even if he did fail in the end. How can that be a bad thing?

3. Back to topic: since finding out that I'm going to take this darn national test, I've been stressing myself out. Apparently it will be in the first week of December. THE FIRST WEEK. I really would like to pass it; I still don't think it's a great thing for me to be in this course forever, as my savings dwindle, much as I'm enjoying it. On the other hand, it is a bit ridiculous. Supposedly the test is the same one that Swedish fifteen-year-olds take before they enter highschool (gymnasium). I will have had all of SIX WEEKS of Swedish study behind me when I take it. I'm good at languages, but I'm not THAT good. I have never even learned the Swedish past tenses (I keep meaning to study that but I always get sidetracked!). I parrot what I hear people say, which works okay for the most common verbs, but it doesn't give me very much latitude in terms of expressing myself. I end up just making up past forms of verbs, which drives THS crazy. What I am good at is studying for a specific test. But there are no sample tests available, so that's out the window. I can't decide whether to resign myself to not passing, or to stay stressed for the next three weeks as I try to do the impossible.

4. Because it's my obsession and all I do with my time, I'll tell you more news about my Swedish studies, but I do apologize because I know it's boring. I'll forgive you if you stop reading here.

-- I still can't manage to speak with my Swedish friends in social settings, and that's sort of uncomfortable and depressing.

-- BUT I have completely switched over to Swedish for daily errands, with capital results. Today at the doctor I spoke Swedish from start to finish, and it was glorious.

-- In class on Tuesday while we were doing small group work and I had to repeatedly explain what words meant (ah, ye olde helper, German!), one of my fellow students asked me by the way if I was a Swede. I assumed she was making a complimentary joke because, well, as I said, I am not THAT good, and secondly, um...shouldn't it strike her as unlikely that a Swedish person would want to take this Swedish language course?? But in the end she turned out to be in earnest. All in all, she doesn't seem to be the brightest light on the Christmas tree/Menorah, but it still made me feel good, bless her soul.

Swedish Food

2006-11-08T16:20:00.000+01:00

There has been some interest in the question: what is Swedish food like? I thought I'd address just that.
First of all, Swedish food is both the best of times and the worst of times. Because Sweden is one of those northern countries that built up a culinary tradition before the advent of refrigeration, you can taste the heritage of various preserving techniques that were once used to get food through the long winter. We're talking salt, vinegar, and smoked and pickled fish. A tendency not to incorporate fresh vegetables into recipes. However, that said, the Swedes have two things going for them: a commitment to quality, and a truly incredible, absolutely heavenly, serenely blissful ability to make pastries. They blow the French out of the water when it comes to pastries. This is a little known fact.

Take the princess torte:

My friends, that green "icing" exterior is actually the most delicately chewy, exquisitely almondy marzipan you've ever had in your life. That top layer of whiteness is ever so lightly sweetened whipped cream. The thin purple stripe is a layer of preserves.

This is not something that you find in pastry specialty shops here and there. No, no. This is something available for your eating pleasure in every little cafe and on every little dessert tray on every street corner. It's traditionally a birthday cake, but seems to be eaten all the time.

Or consider the semla. Oh yes, consider the semla.

The first time I saw a semla, I thought it looked sort of gross. Is that how you feel, looking at it now? Are you more of a chocolate person, not a cream puff/doughnut type of person? Well, my muffins, you are on the wrong track. Although the semla looks as if it's going to taste like something from the Crispy Cream Corporation, you bite into it and discover a series of complex, sophisticated tastes. The bun itself is of cardamom wheat, sweet but also nutty and spicy, "which has its top cut off and insides scooped out and then filled with a mix of the scooped out bread crumbs, milk and almond paste, topped of with whipped cream. The cut-off top is then put back as a lid and dusted with icing sugar." (Courtesy Wikipedia).

My friends, you WILL like Swedish pastries. You won't be able to help it.

Winter Comes

2006-11-05T12:07:00.000+01:00

On the night of October 31st-November 1st we got our first big snow storm. Even by Stockholm standards, this is an early start to winter. The busses stopped running, and the poor trees, who had only just gotten around to losing their leaves, were weighed down by the snow, and they lost branches.
The Handsome Swede has always promised me that winter in Stockholm is the nicest time of year. Why? Because, he says, of the sensation of coziness.

Swedes use the word "cozy" in English far more frequently than we actually make use of the word in the States, and I'm assuming that as I have more interaction with them in Swedish, the Swedish word will come up pretty often as well. Walk into a restaurant, and immediately a Swede will begin sizing up the coziness factor. Perhaps everyone does this, but Swedes seem to do it more consciously and with more precise deliberation. They know a thing or two about cozy.

So what exactly is cozy? Well, for this discussion of winter's onslaught, let us limit ourselves to a certain sub-genre of coziness. When you are in close proximity to cold, dark, freezing wetness, but you are nevertheless dry, warm, and in the light, the sensations of warmth, comfort and protection are heightened and more perfect.

The Swedes are very good at producing cozy. It's almost a national art.
I am discovering the joys of it as we speak. Here in Stockholm, rooms are very warmly lit with reds and yellows. Good heating with no draughts is a given. And the architectural joys of Stockholm -- its narrow, winding, hilly, cobblestone streets redolent with the scent of the ocean; 17th and 18th century buildings with gables and ornate iron gates and cupolas and vaulted ceilings and fireplaces, and candles in the windows and unexpected, tiny fanlights with yellow light shining through -- remind one somehow of a medieval fairy tale, which is a very cozy thing indeed.
So I'm not unhappy with the coming of winter. The streets are even more beautiful in the snow.

TAKING STOCK

I've been here for a month now, and I can begin to take stock. Learning Swedish, as you've probably gathered, is going well. I like this place as much as I thought I would. The people that I've had reason to interact with have shown me nothing but kindness.

There is a great deal I still miss about Berlin however. What I miss most painfully are my books. I miss them much more than I thought I would. As I go about my writing here, I'm always thinking of some reference I'd like to dig into. An article I read on the internet makes me want to review Grass' Tin Drum, or I want to know what Nietzsche meant when he wrote this or that, and my comprehensive Nietzsche, my Tin Drum, aren't here. Living without a personal library gives a feeling of living in suspension, without having your feet on the ground.

Another thing: I'm a bit confused about how to go about making friends so that I have a peer group here (this is something that I've learned is important only over time -- I really didn't used to understand just how important it is.). However, that will be helped enormously when I have the language, and have a job. Both things that will come with time.

Yet another, and this one is pure bellyaching really: is that there is an enormous difference between Berlin and Stockholm in terms of the price of food, both in restaurants and in supermarkets. The result is that I can't afford to eat fruit and vegetables in the way I used to, and I can't afford to get out of the house as much as I like. I'll confess that in Berlin, where a restaurant meal sets you back five dollars, I ate out four nights a week. I loved the change of scenery that came with eating out, being around people in interesting locales. Here we eat in every night. I'm only just beginning to learn about which frozen vegetable are tasty if you can't afford fresh (who knew that frozen dill tastes just as good in a sauce as fresh dill???), and how to pick out the cheapest types of fruit. So it's all working out, really, but it has demanded some serious adjustment.

Generally I'm very happy with the move, so I don't want to give you the wrong idea. But I felt that I would be remiss if I only gave you the positive side of things. Uprooting yourself and moving to a new place and then growing roots in the new place so that you know how to thrive like an expert is a process that takes years, even if it's a short plane ride that takes you from one place to the other. However, I do believe that the rewards are high. There are different schools of thought on this, but in my short life, my experience has made me believe that you never really get uprooted from a place after leaving it. It will always be in your heart, and so when you put down roots in a new place, in effect you're adding places in the world where you feel happy and comfortable, not trading in.

Everyone is different of course. Especially socially. Some people have deep attachment to the old boys and girls, their oldest, dearest, family and friends, and a move like this would cause them to pine for the dear ones who are no longer near by. I can understand that well. Then there are those who are very talented at making friends, and within six months of a move like this, they have surrounded themselves with a new circle of people, even as they stay in touch with the old. And then there are people like me, introspective and in large part introverted, who, although attached very deeply to people, always feel somewhat removed from others by virtue of their need for solitude, and I think my type weathers moves most easily, because it is not so very jarring to go from spending a good deal of time alone in one country to spending a good deal of time alone in another.

But I'm not a robot or a lone wolf. I do have the need for a social life after my fashion, and the process of getting one is never easy. As per usual, I'll keep you updated.

Big Brother Sweden

2006-10-30T00:13:00.000+01:00

I don't want to alarm anyone, but today I got a letter in the mail from the Swedish government saying that a pap smear has been scheduled for me for the 16th of November. I asked The Handsome Swede about this, and apparently that's how it always is. The government makes preventative care appointments for you automatically. They don't rely on personal initiative at all. This, I knew about before I came here. And yet, there was nothing approaching my shock when I got a letter in the mail only one month after arriving saying I was due at the gynecologist. I have to say, I'm all for it when it comes to healthcare. But who knows how far this will go? What's next: a letter saying it's time to invest in bonds? Write my will? Fear is in my heart.

The Maelstrom of Immigrants

2006-10-28T01:20:00.002+02:00

Now I've been through a week of my Swedish classes, and I can give you a much more precise idea of what's going on.

There are over fifty of us in my class. I dub it: the international house of Bedlam. Over in one corner we have the Russians, in another the Angolans, not far off the Afghanis, and toward the front: the three Mohammeds. I haven't quizzed everyone yet on where they are from, but so far I've met an Iranian, an Egyptian, an Angolan, a Korean, a Jamaican, a Hungarian, a German, and yes, even an American. I have made friends with the Iranian and the Egyptian; we sit together. The funny thing is that people never raise their hands. The teachers (we have three now) have to be careful to calibrate the timing of their questions to us, because as soon as they ask, cacophony reigns. Although all the students seem to have been living in Sweden for several years already, and based on their loquacity as they holler out long-winded answers, I'd have to say they all seem fluent in Swedish, down to a man they have incomprehensible accents. I can't understand a word they say. Not a word. The teachers are often equally stymied.

It would be hellish if it weren't also hilarious. The Swedish teachers, who are 30-ish Swedish women, are already betraying signs of burn-out. But they are very nice, very funny, and very smart. For whatever reason, I'm not having any trouble with the Swedish level. The other students look at me funny when in our small-group discussions it becomes apparent that I don't know how to say basic things like "fat" and "orange", but I don't feel embarrassed to speak Swedish with them, and my fluency is skyrocketing. I can express my opinions pretty well, using skeleton key expressions like, "let's not waste time" and "they are all very bad," and "that's difficult". In fact, I've found that the phrase "that's difficult," fits into all situations. ALL. Somehow in class I don't even think about the fact that I'm speaking Swedish. It just seems to come naturally. I always get my point across more or less, even without having the words I need, and that's exhilarating. Verbal fluency and active vocabulary do not run perfectly in tandem, I'm discovering.

I haven't spoken to the other American yet. She is a well-to-do(-looking) woman in her mid-forties with the flattest, most tone-deaf Swedish you've ever heard. As soon as she opened her mouth I could hear she was American, and then she went about forcing the teacher to correct all of her pages of fill-in-the-blank grammar exercises for her, instead of just asking a specific question, while the rest of us floundered.

As I mentioned, I've become friends with an Iranian and an Egyptian. I like the Iranian in particular. She's a young woman who emigrated with her husband three years ago. She's very sweet-natured and has enormous eyes. If she can get through this Swedish course, she wants to go to florist school and become a florist, her dream job. Whenever she talks about becoming a florist she blushes. I'm not kidding. To illustrate her personality further -- at the school they sell coffee and cake during the breaks, and she went to get a coffee and when she came back she suddenly cried out, because she still had the fifty cent coin in her hand she was supposed to pay with. She kept yelling and grabbing her cheeks, and ran at full speed out of the classroom to go pay for it.

She had an education as a schoolteacher in Iran, but after she finished, couldn't get a job because she was "not fundamentalist enough". The only way she could make money was to have private students come to her home, hardly a living. When I asked her whether, if I went to Iran, I could just cover myself with a chador and blend into the crowd outside, she seemed amused, and explained that there were many, many details of appearance in a woman which make it obvious whether or not she is fundamentalist, and that she herself, without any make-up or anything else, was still often insulted on the street for her non-fundamentalist appearance.

By the end of December we have to read a Swedish novel that takes place in Mozambique, rather well-known (it seems The Handsome Swede had to read it in highschool himself) and we have to keep a reading-diary that chronicles our reflections and criticism. We also have piles of grammar sheets to fill in all the time too, and a number of essays to write. The course focuses on getting us to a point where we can use Swedish critically, to make arguments and essays with strong theses.

Given how many students are in the class and how browbeaten the teachers seem, the quality of teaching will inevitably be somewhat poor, but school need not always have good teaching to have something to teach.

My first class

2006-10-21T15:12:00.000+02:00

On Monday I went to my first day of SAS, the Swedish course that I was assigned to that I was so afraid of. It was just an introductory meeting, not an actual class, so I didn't get a sense of the level of Swedish of the other students. But there were two teachers, and I could understand everything they said, which was encouraging. Looking around, it seemed that I was the only non-refugee in the class.

To take these government classes, you have to be living in Sweden legally, not as a tourist, of course. And there are three types of people who would be living in Sweden legally: people here on student visas to study at the universities here, who would already speak Swedish or have university Swedish classes. Then there are the so-called love-immigrants, and I fall into that category -- we're here on "family ties" visas. Then there are the refugees. Sweden has one of the best records in the world for granting asylum to the politically persecuted and war refugees.

Clearly the refugees are much greater in number than the love immigrants, so it's not really surprising that my class seems to have few of the former. I don't know the nationalities of all the people in my class yet, though. I'll give you an update later. The only person I know for sure is the guy who sat next to me. He's Congolese. He's been living in Sweden for five years. He said he went to Paris for a while and lived there, but came back to Sweden because here in Sweden, everything is paid for by the government. Hmmm...

Anyway, with him I had my first naturally occuring Swedish conversation. It wasn't somebody humoring me, it was a real live conversation. So that was nice. Altogether I'll be spending fifteen hours a week in class, which is pretty much. I'll let you know how it goes.

Ch-ch-ch-changes Already

2006-10-14T09:06:00.000+02:00

Bloglings, a new, scarier epoque in my Stockholm experience has begun, an era in which I must take Swedish far more seriously.

I finally had the documents I needed to go to the SFI central office (Swedish for Immigrants, the place where I waited in vain for several hours in my last post). I got there at noon and was sent upstairs for a drop-in placement test. My understanding was that this was mostly to see whether you were illiterate. They have separate classes for people who have higher education in their home country. So now the harrowing story of how I came to spend FIVE HOURS there.

First I had an interview. This was only about ten minutes long. The woman asked me questions very slowly, like where was I from (it turned out she had lived in Boston herself, many years ago when her husband was at Harvard medical school), how many years of education did I have behind me, etc. She was very friendly, and I was pleasantly surprised I could interact with her in Swedish without using any English. However, I was, uh, not eloquent. Whenever she asked me something, I looked at the ceiling, became highly pensive, and then said either "good" or "not good" after giving up on finding my vocabulary words which appeared to be playing hide-and-seek on me. Sometimes I accidentally put in German words. I waved my teach-yourself Swedish book at her and showed her what chapter I was on in the hopes that she would telepathically know all the details of my Swedish level. She seemed to consider. In what I saw by her expression was a long shot in her opinion, she got out a little book and opened it to a short text in Swedish and made me read it out loud. I did, and then she asked me if I had understood. Actually I understood everything. But I forgot the word for everything and so instead I nodded my head vigorously and showed my teeth. Then I went into an excited monologue about how 2/3 of Swedish words are encrypted German ones, except for my recent experience with the Swedish names of flora and fauna, these being entirely Swedish. Of which she understood: ZERO. Why did such a nice, intelligent lady understand only 0.00 percent? Because my monologue sounded something like this:

"Swedish and German like, very like. I know word Swedish sound German can we say 75 of 100? Yes, yes, you know? But some not like, these...(long pause as I look out the window searching for words) these, you know? (The light of understanding did not cross her face, and I saw I would have to plow forward.) Yes, ah, eh, some Swedish word not like German: these NATURE."

I will cut short my reminiscences of this interlude now. But let's just say there was considerably more time spent trying to get across what I meant by "nature".

So that was a little embarrassing. She pointed to a couple of words in the text and asked me what they meant instead, and miraculously I was able to begin to get across to her that I knew the meanings. Because of my vigorous head-nodding. At least she saw that I was TRYING to express that I understood even if I couldn't paraphrase them.

So then she consulted a computer and told me I could start SFI classes some time in the middle of next week, since they were all full at the moment. She gave me a piece of paper with the number of the office so that I could call and find out which school had a place. Then she told me I'd have a short written test in the other room.

We went to a big room with many desks where many people of many nationalities were sitting and taking tests. Along the side were computer stations, where one or two people seemed to be taking computerized tests. She explained to me very slowly and clearly that there were three topics for a writing sample, and that I only need pick ONE, NOT all three, as if it were really common for students not to understand that. And I'm sure is is common. I thanked her, and she left, saying goodbye and that I didn't need to come back to her when I was done. She left my file with the teacher at the front of the room.

So the test was easy. Just what's your name, where are you from. I was sort of giddy at how easy it was, and got a bit fancy, just for fun. For the writing topic, I chose "Describe a trip you have taken". I decided to describe my first trip to Sweden. I got very involved in it, biting my pencil and forgetting everyone in the room. I carefully only used Swedish phrases that I had painstakingly memorized from my grammar book and from pop lyrics, but with different nouns. I talked about how I had been nervous to come to Sweden because I loved THS, but was worried that I might not like his country, and what would become of our love then?! I must say, it was heartrending. Very heartrending.

I handed in my test rather proudly and was already on my way out the door when the teacher came and gave me ANOTHER test. I thought, "Okay, the test was longer than I thought," and sat down again. This time it was reading comprehension. It was a news story about a robbery. So I filled that out, teaching myself the meanings of words by their contexts. It took me a long time, but I did it too, feeling pretty confident I understood everything, and really pressing myself to flip things this way and that so that I could answer questions properly. (Something I've learned over the years: use tests against themselves! Most of the information you need to get a test right is contained within the test. Few tests are tests of knowledge, most are logic problems. The key is time -- you're dead if the test has a time limit. This one didn't). I turned it in, and the teacher glanced at it and then gave me two MORE worksheets to fill out, with two more texts to read, and another little essay to write. At that point, I realized the things I was being asked to do were getting harder.

It was while I was filling these ones out (now it was about the medicinal benefits of white onions, and a woman thief who swallowed all the jewels she stole), that I realized that there were three teachers at the front now, and they were talking to each other and looking at me. Getting nervous, I handed in these tests, and just then yet another teacher came in, this one very sharp, strict, and brisk looking, obviously some kind of authority. I couldn't understand everything they said, but a nice looking teacher said to me, "Your Swedish level was very bad in the interview," and she gestured at my file, "but you write extremely well and you don't have any problem with these comprehension tests." I looked at them, and didn't know what to say. Literally. So I said all I could say in Swedish: " I know German." I thought a light of understanding would cause their eyes to sparkle then, but no such luck. Apparently many Swedes do not consider their language similar to German. Probably only something they'd find out if they happened to study the language.

I was handed yet another test by a young teacher, but then the authority figure began to say something, and a discussion ensued. I didn't get everything, pretending to be busy with my new test, but what I managed to understand was:
"Have her do it."
"No, but if she can't speak, it won't help."
"It doesn't matter, speaking, she can learn."
The test I had in my hand was pulled back out of it. I was steered toward one of the computers, and sat down in front of it. Even once I was sitting there they continued to argue over me. I tried to look as innocent and David Copperfieldish as possible.
Finally with a clack of her heels, the boss teacher turned and went out loudly and forcefully. It seemed I was to stay at the computer. I looked at the screen and saw that it was the national test. 2 hours and 15 minutes. Aaaghhhii! I had already been taking tests for two hours! I was hungry and thirsty. But I'm so timid, I didn't want to rock the boat or have to expose my inability to talk Swedish by trying to ask in Swedish for a food break.

And yes, I had finally met my match. This test was timed. AND I was hungry and impatient. AND it was incredibly hard. There was a listening comprehension part that made you listen to Swedish radio. The essay questions for the writing part gave you a choice of topics like, "What if the world's oil supply were to be exhausted?" and "How might our society best organize elder care?"

I took the test for a long time. There was a reading comprehension part where I NEVER did manage to figure out ANYTHING about the topic. Finally, the room that had been full when I came in was empty. It seemed to be getting dark outside. All the teachers were gone. The boss woman with her clicking heels and brisk speech came back eventually. She asked how it was going. I said something like, "It...too...haard...for...me..." She told me they were closing. She took me into her office.

She was the kind of person who always sounded angry even when saying kind things, so it took me a while to figure out that she was saying that no matter how I did on the test, it was simply very good for me that I had taken it, in light of having little background with Swedish.

Then she looked at my results on her computer. She congratulated me because apparently I got a perfect score on listening comprehension. But the other stuff was abysmal. As expected. She said many things very quickly then. I got that she had decided I was a "fast learner" and that she had a school for me where I should start monday where they had classes for flexible, speedy learners. Then she handed me a sheet of paper, and I saw that I wasn't being sent to SFI at all anymore, but something called SAS, which appears -- now that I've had time to research it -- to be preparation for university study in Swedish.

The ironic thing is that my Swedish wasn't even good enough to understand where I was supposed to go on Monday morning, and I was so intimidated by my new persona as "the girl who knows Swedish" that I was ashamed to ask, because I picked up that she had already said it more than once.

So now I have to get up early on Monday and call. Jeez.

And who knows how much of a disaster this class will be when I show up -- the deaf, dumb, wonder girl.

The good thing is that whereas Swedish has been a play-language for me up til now, suddenly after that string of never-ending tests and interactions, it's all deadly earnest. (To my addled brain at least.)

Living in Stockholm

2006-10-10T13:57:00.000+02:00

This move has been more disorienting than I expected. It's like walking into a pitch black room. At first you think, "Okay, easy-peasy, everything in this room is black," but then your eyes begin to adjust and you realize nothing was ever black, there are all different colors everywhere, but while your eyes are still adjusting you can't even tell what things are. "Is that a red, or a sort of orange?" you ask yourself, and as long as you don't know it feels strange to take on the task of describing it all on a blog. And I guess it's not just describing Sweden, but my own feelings as well, as long as everything is still in flux.

I've been studying Swedish like a deranged person, that's all I've really been up to. But I'll give you some particulars, too. Because it is less daunting, I'll give you them in list form.

WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO; PARTICULARS

1. We went back to the apartment we're moving into on the 16th to learn about the laundry room, sign the contract, etc. It was extremely pretty in the evening, very nicely lit, and the kitchen, I must say, is fantastic. Hello Scandinavian design, I love you.

2. I got my personnummer, which is my Swedish social security number. For those of you not familiar, the personnummer, in Sweden, is far more powerful than a social security number in the U.S. With a personnummer, I can walk into any doctor's office or hospital and be treated, I can register for the university, anything I want. This went faster than expected. THS and I went to the tax office on Monday and they said I'd get it in a week, but it showed up on Thursday already. The next day, Friday, I went down to the SFI office (Svenska för Invandrare, or Swedish for Immigrants, the free Swedish as a second language classes offered by the state) but it was closed.

3. THS took me to the library and we checked out Astrid Lindgren children's books for me to learn Swedish from. We got various difficulty levels so that I could move up with time: two early-reader picture books, one more normal picture book, and one full-length novel -- The Brothers Lionheart, which THS told me he loved as a child. (I didn't get any Pippi books or Ronia the Robber's Daughter, because I read those as a kid in English. For me, the whole advantage of learning a language from great stories is that even when you're sick of dealing with the foreign language, you still keep plugging away at it in order to find out what happens next. This effect would be completely lost if I were to read something whose plot twists I already have filed away in the back of my mind somewhere.)

Upon return from the library, I read Assar Bubbla with great success. I got the whole story right away without a dictionary, which was shocking. I had assumed it would be much harder.

4. Monday I went down to the SFI office again to register for my Swedish class, and I took the Brothers Lionheart with me just to have a look at, since I was most excited about it, given THS's great review. When I got to the place, it was jam-packed with foreigners of every stripe. It looked like the Registry of Motor Vehicles in lower Manhattan or something. I took a number, and there were forty people ahead of me. So I sat down with The Brothers Lionheart and started to read, and the first two chapters were the saddest thing. I couldn't help myself, I started crying right there at the SFI office. Of course all these Russian, Chinese, Chilean, and Iraqi people with nothing to do but wait were staring at me, thinking I was a nut case. I mean, I wasn't bawling, but I had to keep wiping my eyes, and I believe they were red. Of course I felt absurd for crying in public, but also I felt a little strange to be sitting there waiting to sign up for SFI when I was able to read this book effectively enough to bring myself to tears. I think it's due to Astrid Lindgren's extraordinary gift for communication -- she writes in a way that's very easy to understand, and her writing contains a great deal of repetition in an incantatory way, so that if you don't have a word the first time, it soon comes up again, used in a similar but not identical context, and when it comes up a third time you begin to grasp it.

The other issue is that Swedish, as I'm discovering more and more, is a kind of encoded German. (Sorry, Swedes, I know you won't like this, but I'm just calling 'em like I sees 'em.) It's not that German and Swedish are similar like French and Spanish, where tons of words are automatically recognizable as cognates, but rather that you can begin to catch on to the ways in which about 2/3 of Swedish words are drastically morphed versions of German ones. So I'm finding that I have a pretty significant leg-up with understanding Swedish if it is written. As far as being able to understand spoken Swedish, and producing language myself, I still have a long, long way to go.

To get back to the SFI office: my number finally came up and I went to the front and within 30 seconds had been told that I needed more than a Personnummer to sign up for classes, I also needed a Personbevis. Which seems to be some kind of identity certificate. Now, because I looked around the entire office, I can say with assurance that there was no such basic information made available to the public so that they wouldn't sit there for hours needlessly, crying over The Brothers Lionheart. However, I probably should have found out about it on the internet beforehand. The good news is that I won't have to wait in line again, because actually you go straight upstairs for a drop-in test, if you have everything.

5. THS and I went to a record shop one afternoon to hear a Scottish band called Camera Obscura play a few songs, and since CO is an Indie band, the crowd was all Indie, which in Stockholm seems to mean something like: only wears 1960s clothes. So it was like we were in a Godard film, probably Masculin/Féminin, which I hear was shot in Stockholm anyway.

Sudden Luck

2006-10-03T11:49:00.000+02:00

So, just one day after I was complaining about my stress over the apartment situation, we found an apartment. It's not ideal, because it will only be until the middle of January, but certainly not bad at all for starters. It's in a great neighborhood: a nice part of Södermalm, which is the East Village of Stockholm, artsy and off-beat. THS and I had assumed we'd have to get a one-room place here, because things are so expensive. While this place is in fact about the size we'd assumed, the space is divided into two rooms. Perfect, since that way we can each have our own space.

Arrival in Stockholm

2006-10-01T13:30:00.000+02:00

I got to Stockholm on Friday. The flight was uneventful except when it was delayed because of what appeared to be a drug bust.

But that's another story.

Since getting to Sweden, I've been volatile. One minute I'm extremely happy and excited and studying Swedish with manic energy, the next minute I'm in a panic. What I'm most worried about is finding an apartment. Right now, THS lives in a student apartment that is about the size of a fancy shoebox. Moving around gracefully as a couple would require us to be athletic midgets. I'm on the big/messy side, and THS is on the even bigger/also messy side, and we're actually doing pretty well with it under these circumstances, but still the plan is to move out to another place by the end of the month.

Stockholm has one of the tightest real estate markets in the world, thanks to a combination of arthritic rent control and incredibly high demand. We are following several sites that have listings, but every time we call about a new ad, the person tells us the place is already gone, specifically that within five minutes of placing the ad online, the phone began to ring off the hook. So it seems if you don't call within the hour you have no chance. This has also been confirmed by several Swedish friends of mine who had occasion to sublet their apartments in Stockholm.

If any of you bloggie readers out there (assuming readers of this blog exist...(?)) know of a computer program that will monitor when a site is updated and automatically send you a notification e-mail or better yet cause your computer to loudly ding, let me know, will you? I think that would be the ticket.

In happier news, THS and I had our first extended interaction in Swedish today. It was our trip to the grocery. We spoke entirely in Swedish the entire time. Luckily I'm pretty good at correctly guessing the meaning of things he says, even if I can't understand every word. Meanwhile, I can't produce complete sentences to save my life.

So a typical interaction, translated, was like this.

ME: That! I want! (Pointing with an articulate finger)

THS: What, beets?

ME: No! No!

THS: Oh, you want pickles?

ME: Yes.

THS: Okay, let's get pickles, these ones over here are good, they're the least expensive brand and I think they're also pretty tasty.

ME: No! I want...they sour...

THS: You want sour pickles? Honestly, Ida, I think all pickles are sour and there's only one kind here, anyway.

ME: I want sour dill kind...

THS: There's only one kind, and none say dill on the label.

ME: No! There are two type pickle...sour with dill...and...and...and...and...and..and ...you know...and...(low moan of frustration)

THS: And what?

ME: Forget, forget. No pickle for me.

THS: What other kind? Say it in English.

ME: NO. NO PICKLE FOR ME.

As you can observe, I was very purist about only speaking Swedish today. I paid for it in many ways, not the least of which was picklelessness. The thing is, I don't like bread and butter pickles. Not at all. The risk was simply too great that I would end up with that egregrious pickle type.

Ah, the sacrifices one makes for language and taste.

I bet you're wondering whether I, a 27-year-old woman, mind having the communication skills of your average 1-year-old infant.

To that I would say: My friend, better not to think about it.

The Berlin Era: A Reckoning

2006-09-27T19:03:00.001+02:00

I only have two more nights in my apartment here on the Grunewaldstrasse. Today I went to my boss' place and returned all of the materials I have for giving tours, and paid in my last tickets.

I've got the entire contents of my wardrobes out on the floors, and I'm trying to decide what to take with me for my More Swedish Life. Ibuprofen, yes. Sewing kit, yes. Most of my clothes, no. (I have a lot of clothes.) Oh and my books. I don't even want to talk about it. They're not coming, the poor dears. I'm trying to transfer all of my CDs onto my computer, a project I should have started much earlier...

The sun's going down here in Berlin, and I don't know when I'll be back. I'm listening to German film music from 1929 to 1950 -- so mostly Nazi-era music. It's mediocre with the exception of the wonderful Hans Albers and Marlene Dietrich. But it's a Berlin mood.

I'm getting a bittersweet feeling of nostalgia for my life here.

So I thought I'd write up a reckoning of my time.

I came to Berlin in early January 2003, and I've stayed until almost the end of 2006. So almost four years.

I've enjoyed being at the university. The Berlin universities are giant, with no money, and no personal attention -- so one is simply an anonymous face amongst the hundred thousand students. But it's been a wonderful way of observing the intellectual culture here, getting tuned in to German literary theories and conflicts, and the people who set the tone in those worlds. Also, it's been very helpful in guiding my reading. My university life has helped my bookish pursuits stay on a sophisticated level. This is important, I think, because since I've had a lot of good quality food for thought, my appetite for German literature and history hasn't waned, as it otherwise might have.

I worked for a long time for the Harvard Center for European Studies, every week assisting at their transatlantic dialogues that compare the European and American political, economic, and cultural systems. This was also a thorough and enviable education.

But it's been working as a tour guide of Berlin which in the end has enabled me to put down the deepest roots here. There's nothing like being asked to be an authority figure about something, even in a modest way, to make you invest deeply. I think mostly because of this job, I've done more than live in Berlin. I've really appropriated Berlin in a way that is not typical for five years in a place (I was here for a year before this four year period). I've become more at home here than I've ever been anywhere. I look around with a kind of surprise and realize that I know my way around every neighborhood; I know where most streets are by name alone. I know how much every ticket on the subway costs. I know when each neighborhood was built, also when many individual buildings were built, where the bombs fell and what they took out and what was rebuilt. Who lived where, when, and what each architectural style is called. There are hundreds of street corners in this city which fill me with associations, both personal and historical. I can't say that about any other city. And what this knowledge gives me is a four-dimensionality of experience. Berlin has become the ground for my imagination and dreams, and a very fertile ground it is. Furthermore, no one is more suprised than I am at this happy proliferation of my knowledge of Berlin. I may sound as if I were crowing over my achievements, but honestly, I'm awed by what happened while I wasn't looking, just in the course of my work.

I'm glad to move to Stockholm, because 1) I love novelty and 2) as those of you who are faithful readers know, I'm currently admiring Swedish society above all others, and to be honest, I prefer Swedish social culture to German. So I want to see how happy I can be there, with my wonderful THS, who has transformed my life and from whom I don't want to live separately.

But that doesn't mean I'm not already nostalgic for the good years I have spent here in Berlin. It's goodbye to this cryptically exciting and pulsing place, the place that has seen me into adulthood.

Dental Despair

2006-09-25T17:10:00.001+02:00

1. My mom's dentist took an x-ray of my teeth while I was in the U.S., and called back to say I had a cavity in one of my rear molars, and should schedule an appointment.

2. Because I have dental insurance in Germany, I scheduled an appointment to get the cavity fixed here.

3. Today I went to the dentist here in Berlin, who was recommended to me by a friend, and she looked at the SAME x-ray and told me she didn't see a cavity, then looked in my mouth and said I didn't have any cavities.

4. THEN she said that while I didn't have a cavity, I did have a tooth that was discolored, and that it needed a root canal.

5. I told her I was leaving for Sweden on Friday, and she said she'd try to get it done before then.

6. Then she started drilling into the back of my favorite front tooth. She claimed I needed no anaesthetic, because it was dead. Then she hit a nerve and I screamed.

7. I have to go back Thursday for the rest.

8. This had better be finished before I leave, because Sweden, although a very fine place, does NOT offer dental coverage as part of its "universal" package AND I just quit my job, and thus I am broke.

ugh, ugh, ugh.

Moving to Sweden is turning out to be very stressful indeed.

Tying up loose flies

2006-09-24T16:57:00.000+02:00

I just got back from giving my very last tour of Berlin. Yesterday I gave my last tour of Third Reich sites, the day before yesterday I gave my last tour of the concentration camp memorial of Sachsenhausen, and now, today, it was my last tour of the great sites of central Berlin. And I leave for Stockholm on Friday, just five days from now. I will leave it to you to imagine how glad I am to be finished with my very, very repetitive job.

So now it's just me and the kids sitting around waiting for the Berlin experience to come to an end. Ah, the kids. Who are "the kids", you might ask. Ah, who indeed! The kids are the fruit flies. About a week ago my drain in the kitchen got infested with fruit flies. There must have been some little bits of something they liked down there, because I'm telling you, they went forth and multiplied as if there were no tomorrow. Actually, to my understanding, this was more than an 'as if' scenario, given that the average lifespan of a fruit fly is 24 hours.

Which brings me to why I casually refer to them as "kids". By my calculations I'm dealing with fellas who are all under the age of "one" (day), so it seems fitting.

Now the kids have been deprived of all food sources by me and clorox, and they are feeling piqued, let me assure you. They're flying very slowly, nearing the, um, end of their Berlin experience.

The next few days are going to be very busy; I've still got so much to do before my departure.

I'll update soon.

Vive la Suède!

2006-09-16T19:29:00.000+02:00

The Handsome Swede suggested that my entry for this week should delve into my expectations of my new life in Sweden. I can't say for sure, but I suspect that he suggested this because he thinks that my expectations are, in a word, grandiose.

He probably has a devilish scheme to draw me out through flattery, luring me into innocently prattling on about Sweden, thus exposing my streets-are-paved-with-gold social theories, so that in a year's time he can sit me down in front of this entry and force me to see how wrong I was, how disillusioned I've become.

Well ha ha! I've figured you out, THS! You won't trick me!

But still. On second thought, it does seem like it would be interesting to write up what I think about Sweden now, and then in a year's time I'll treat ye, the faithful readers of A More Swedish Life, to a reckoning. How does that grab you? You can think of me as a lab rat. Experiment: what becomes of a starry-eyed girl's dreams about Sweden after one year in the land of the midnight sun?

So here it goes.

Sweden, as far as I can see, and to quote The Guardian, is the most successful society the world has ever known. Here is what was written recently in The Economist:

The Nordic region has the world's highest taxes and most generous welfare benefits. And yet Sweden, Finland and Denmark (Norway's oil sets it apart) have delivered strong growth and low unemployment, and rank among the world's most competitive economies. Nordic companies are strong in technology and research and development. Their health-care and educational systems are much admired. And, unlike other European countries, most Nordic states run healthy budget and current-account surpluses.
Sweden, whose 9m people make it by some way the biggest Nordic country, is a particular favourite. A year ago the Guardian, a British newspaper, said it was the most successful society the world had ever known. As if to bear this out, the Swedish economy grew at a sizzling annual rate of 5.6% in the second quarter of 2006, enough to trigger a spate of interest-rate rises by the central bank. Sweden's big companies, such as Ericsson, SKF, Telia and Volvo, are breaking export records.
A visit to the capital, Stockholm, confirms that life for most Swedes is pretty good.

This is all very true, but a bit abstract. You have to understand how moving Swedish society is for me, on a micro-level. I went through this short, stress-free procedure to get a visa for Sweden, and now I automatically have full and unlimited health insurance, for which I do not pay. As do all Swedes, and all immigrants to Sweden. That might not seem like very much to you, reading it now on this page. But maybe you've never known what it's like to be unable to go to the doctor. To have to be afraid of getting sick because you'll get sicker and sicker before you go to a doctor, and then when you do, you watch as the financial stress wears you down, body and soul.

And for those of you who think that people who have health insurance go to the doctor more often unnecessarily and create a gluttonous, wasteful system -- Swedes pay LESS in healthcare costs per capita than do Americans. And their healthcare system is as good or better, with, for example a much lower infant mortality rate than in the States. So they're literally putting less money out per person, and getting better care. How is it possible? Well, if everyone has to pay into health insurance automatically through taxes, and it's not something that the healthy can elect out of (because they can't afford it, like most American recent college graduates and Wal-mart employees) then the whole system stays well-funded at the exorbitant expense of no one -- a well-oiled, efficient machine.

David Leonhardt writes in the New York Times:

"In Greece, the government and individuals combine to spend about $2,300 per capita on health care each year, and the average life expectancy is 79 years. Canada, where the hospitals are probably cleaner, spends about $3,300, and people live to about 80. Here in the United States, we spend more than $6,000, yet life expectancy is just below 78.
The most obvious difference between their health care systems and ours — that their governments provide universal insurance — certainly plays a big role in the cost differences. Look behind the receptionist at your doctor’s office, and you will very likely see a staff of people filing claims to different insurance companies. The insurance companies, meanwhile, employ a small army charged with figuring out how to avoid covering the unhealthy."

Now I know what you're thinking: Oh sure! But I would never want to pay through the nose for all of this, with such high taxes! And it's true taxes are very high. But not in the way you might think, and not as punitively as you might think. First of all, Swedish income taxes are not higher than they are for Americans -- of any income bracket. Where Swedes pay out is in sales taxes. You may disagree, but I think this makes the situation a shade different in terms of the perception of freedom and comfort.

Secondly, the Swedish welfare state -- what you get for your high taxes -- is far more nuanced than you might expect. Unlike, for example, here in Germany, the Swedish welfare state is carefully calibrated so that the more you pay in, the more you get out. A high-income family that has a baby, for example, reaps significantly more in childcare benefits than a low-income family. This is to
ensure that the welfare state is not perceived by the wealthy as being a charity for the poor that has little to do with their own well-being. Everyone benefits. The universities are top-notch and entirely free of charge, for rich and poor alike.

Before you assume I'm a fanatic, however, I should say there are some thing I don't like about the system. I don't think unemployment benefits should run on for years, because I think it skews incentives in the wrong direction. I also don't think that there should be two and three year paid maternity leave, instead favoring Sweden's well-endowed low-cost guaranteed early childcare.

The problem with extended paid maternity leave is that it discourages the equal hiring and promotion of women in the workforce. No matter my feminist ideals, if I were running a small business and had to choose between hiring a man and a woman of child-bearing age, I'd go for the man, because even if I could afford to pay the maternity leave, I'd be losing out on the investment of time and training in the woman if she became pregnant. If you're a small business struggling to survive, it's unduly punitive and a structural favor to men. Every time I hear of a woman in Germany or Sweden who is working for a few years at a company just so she can get pregnant the minute she's worked there long enough to get the paid two-year-leave, it makes me sick. If you look at any one of these countries that give extended maternity leave, women are not advancing. It's just built in.

And here's where Sweden brings tears to my eyes. Do you know how they're considering dealing with this problem? Unlike me, they don't want to get rid of extended paid leave. They're thinking of FORCING parents to share the maternity/paternity leave. So that yes, there will still be people who work for a few years just to get the parental leave, but by law it will be split between the father and the mother. So that anybody of baby-making age can be discriminated against, man or woman. This is what is really unbelievable to me, and what really moves me.

Coming from America, you don't even think that such an enlightened paradise as Sweden could exist in real life, even if you don't necessarily agree with all of the particulars. Political debate in Sweden is on such a high level of humanism, it kills me. And the country is an economic powerhouse. They sacrifice so little for what they have, it forces all of us to rethink our most basic assumptions.

So there, I've said it. I think Sweden is a political paradise. And in the grand tradition of the men and women, the huddled masses, who made their way to our great shores seeking freedom, I've found in Sweden the greatest political freedom I've ever known, in the sense that there's a possibility of justice for all. The U.S. is run by a man who thinks that the 90 Million Americans who don't have health insurance are going to be okay. You may not see that as a reason to elect to be part of another society, but I do.

Travail of the Apartment is over!

2006-09-13T17:19:00.000+02:00

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I have succeeded in renting out my apartment. It's an Australian couple who both have fellowships from the Academy of Arts. Very nice, friendly and intelligent people. I feel so lucky! And so relieved!

Learning Swedish

2006-09-10T00:29:00.001+02:00

So. I'm teaching myself Swedish with a book that I got here in Germany. And although it's been going real swell so far, there is one problem. The book is so dry that reading it is similar to spending an afternoon watching your fingernails grow.

Each chapter has a short text that you read with the help of a little lexicon that comes right after. There is also a CD where the text is read out loud.

As a special treat for you, bloggies, to give you a sense of how special this book is, I'm going to quote at random from the text.

Here it is:

Skrivbordet står vid väggen mellan bokhyllorna.
Datorn står på skrivbordet.
Skrivbordsstolen står vid skrivbordet.
Fönstret är mellan skrivbordet och sängen.
Sängen står i hörnet.

Below, my translation. (A note to Swedes reading this: pay close attention to how I effortlessly capture the timbre and bria of the author's original melody in my English version, to say nothing of my almost -- wouldn't you say? -- 'sixth sense' for the nuances of your mother tongue):

The desk is next to the wall between the bookshelves.
The computer is on the desk.
The desk chair is against the desk.
The window is between the desk and the bed.
The bed is in the corner.

I bet at this point you all are wondering what happens next, right? Am I right? Well someday you too might be learning Swedish, and I wouldn't want to spoil anything for you, so I'm not going to give it away. But I'll tell you this: it involves a _night table_ and it's not just in the middle of nowhere!!!

Now, as some of you know, I have learned several languages in the past, and at this point, when I have a language to learn, I don't beat around the bush. Here's the secret to not beating around the bush when learning a language: ROTE MEMORIZATION.

Anyone who tries to pass off language acquisition as something "fun" or "creative" or "self-actualizing" hasn't yet known the crippling humiliation of the disease known as 'failure to communicate', which is at it's most ravaging when you're standing naked in a communal Chinese shower room and can't find how to turn on the non-icy-icy cold water (HINT: in case you find yourself in this situation and haven't yet learned Chinese -- there IS no non-icy-icy water).

You just memorize until your eyes and/or ears hurt, to say nothing of your brains, and then you go to bed in deep despair at how empty your life has become, (but congratulating yourself on your iron-fisted discipline,) only to discover when you wake up the next morning you've forgotten everything. Then you memorize it all again. Repeat as necessary.

Right, so given that my linguistical methodology involves memorizing entire passages of text in their entirety so that I can recite them like a 19th century pupil declaiming Lord Tennyson or a cult victim chanting his "credo", you can understand that I am not crazy about this book.

It's cramping my style.

So what does one do in THIS situation, oh disciples of Ida's school of second-language acquisition?

Well, if you're me, you supplement your textbook memorization with the memorization of the lyrics to POP SONGS.

But here again I've been stymied. The only Swedish song which I have thus far gotten around to memorizing has a rabble-rousing rhythm and a melody to please the crowds, but unfortunately after I learned the song I discovered what the lyrics meant.

I am going to give you the translation directly, we'll skip the original Swedish this time.

Here it is:

I read in the newspaper,
that as of now, I have a chance
to fly for a low price to a foreign country.
That's good for me,
but bad for you,
because if I see you smile
at another guy,
I'll take a plane to Paris,
and live in a hotel
for an evening --
suit yourself!

[Chorus]
I'm going to jump down from the top
of the Eiffel Tower
if you cheat on me.
I'm going to jump down from the top
of the Eiffel Tower
if you mistreat me.

Charming lyrics, no? Almost makes you feel like the author of them is NOT A PSYCHOPATH. Almost.

So at this point I have a LOT of options when I'm speaking to a Swedish person. I can make casual observations about where things are in the room. That's fun. And I can make scary-manipulative stalker-like threats about how I'm going to kill myself with the use of national and/or world monuments if I'm mistreated. Also a laugh.

Sample Conversation:

Me: Hi, I'm Ida!

Swede: Hi Ida, I'm Björn.

Me: Sooooooo...Björn! If you aren't nice to me, I'm going to jump down from the top of the Tower of London/Space Needle/the pyramids/Mount Kilimanjaro [the cool thing here is that I can pick any one, since proper names don't change much in different languages. Example: Erie Canal in Swedish is "Erie Kanal" -- fair game I'd say, no?]

Swede: Uh...

Me: Hey! That chair is against the wall.

Oh, and then I found out that the Swedish pop star who wrote the lyrics to the above song ended up killing himself by jumping under a train. Depressing, and yet not entirely unexpected.

I will keep you updated here at A MORE SWEDISH LIFE as I make bold strides further into the thickets of the Swedish language.

In the meantime, you all can see who can come up with the best joke based on the fact that the Swedish word for day sounds like the English word 'dog' and the Swedish word for morning sounds like the English word 'moron'. Ah, good times in the language lab.

another correction

2006-09-10T00:29:00.000+02:00

As of now you have a feature where you can e-mail these posts. It's the little envelope icon at the bottom.

Differences between Berlin and Stockholm

2006-09-02T23:00:00.000+02:00

Berlin is very, very cheap. Stockholm is one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Berlin has 3.4 million people. Stockholm has 1.6 million.

95% of the original buildings in central Berlin were either destroyed or heavily damaged by bombs during the Second World War. Sweden has not been at war since 1809, when they lost Finland to the Russians. Ergo Stockholm is pristine.

Berliners' fashion can best be divided into the four categories of people who wear it:

1) Bourgeois German: Women in their late thirties, forties, and fifties have their hair buzz-cut and dyed a deep purplish cranberry. They wear comfortable brown leather shoes, and have husbands who also wear comfortable brown leather shoes. They wear matching canvas coats that are expensive-looking.

2) Mainstream youth inspired by the mainstream: These young people are almost entirely non-descript, conforming as they do to the international clique of normality. That is, they wear black pants or jeans, polo shirts and t-shirts. I'd go on, but it's just not that interesting. Suffice it to say, they're barely noticeable, but everywhere.

3) Berlin academics/Berlin clubkids: I shouldn't put these two together, but in Berlin there is a fluid line between the student crowd and the club crowd. The students tend toward vintage clothing, mostly late seventies at this point, in shades of red, brown, dark green, and black (yes, SHADES of black -- mostly the faded shade.). The club kids tend toward vintage clothing and clothing that is new and costly but LOOKS vintage, and it's mostly early eighties at this point. You can see how it gets confusing.

4) The anything-goes people who are wearing sarongs: yes, they wear whatever they find at the consignment store, and it's often a strange-looking bandanna from 1999 or a pineapple festooned sarong. They live in Kreuzberg.

Stockholmians' fashion sense can of course ALSO be broken down into categories, but, friends and blog-o-lovers, I am not advanced enough to do that for you at this point.

Still I will tell you how Stockholm fashion APPEARS to me.

Everyone, from age nine to ninety-nine, is so spiffy it's almost military. They do not wear sarongs, they do not wear drab, shapeless car coats made of canvas, (they certainly don't wear sneakers unless they are of a rare limited edition) they do not bend to flighty eighties come-back fashions in neon tones, nor do they wear vintage clothing that has faded from its original black. No. The Stockholmians look as if they were all secretly preparing to play in an Antonioni film. Everyone got a part both glamourous and tragic. Here the dapper 65-year-old who came to the big city to make his fortune as a poet, but longs to return to his weatherbeaten sailboat, Anastasia; there the long-tressed mistress of the doomed physicist whose eyes are full of a melancholy beauty; ah, and there the doomed physicist himself, with his unlikely cravat... THS also recently remarked that they all seem to be going to the same dermatalogist, and s/he is _good_.

One enjoys being surrounded by such beautiful/beautifully turned-out people. And yet, one wonders whether one might not be driven crazy by it all in the end. In Stockholm, clothing must match, and I don't mean: avoid putting purple with orange, I mean avoid putting navy-blue with black (no no!) and red with brown (no no no!) and, alas, green with blue (jeans).

So what matches in Stockholmland, you may ask? Well, as has been so painstakingly explained to me: grey matches with light grey. And various shades of navy blue all match with each other. And white, even in Stockholm, still matches with everything.

A Room with a View

2006-09-01T09:21:00.001+02:00

Here is the website I'm using to try to rent my apartment in Berlin:

http://grunewaldstrasse.tripod.com

THS made it for me. As you can see, it shows all the rooms in my apartment. Actually, the very last photo of the redbrick house is not a view from the window, as implied, but the building itself.

correction

2006-09-01T09:21:00.000+02:00

It is now possible to leave comments in the comment section anonymously and without having a blogger account. Phew!

The Ticket is Bought!

2006-08-29T17:15:00.000+02:00

My ticket to Stockholm is purchased! I depart for Stockholm on September 29th, in exactly one month's time.

Now the only things I have to do are:

Sublet my apartment (this is the most daunting task).

Set up a new bank account that allows me to take care of my banking online.

Get everything in my apartment repaired so I don't get panicky calls from my new tenant.

Move all my personal possessions I'm leaving behind here in Berlin into the big wardrobe in the extra room.

Do everything that I have always wanted to do in Berlin but have always put off until later because time was limitless.

Here are the things I _have_ done:

In my passport there is already an Uppehållstillstånd -- my two-year visa for Sweden. (Two years is just what they give you; I'm only planning on staying one year for now). The application process involved an interview at the Swedish Embassy here in Berlin, with me and The Handsome Swede, to see whether we were an actual couple or merely vagabonds trying to scam the Swedish government, slyly slipping an American girl into their healthcare system.

It all seemed very cinematic with a tinge of espionage-flavored possibilities at first. We would be interviewed separately, asked lots of personal questions, and then our answers would be compared to see if they were in accordance with one another. The Handsome Swede (who I'm just going to refer to from now on as THS, since I'm tired of typing his honorific moniker) and I were very nervous and had rehearsed for hours beforehand, arriving at the embassy bathed in sweat. THS had actually memorized the names and birth order of all my mother's siblings, thinking this might be part of the test. I went first. And then it turned out -- I'm not kidding -- THS could HEAR my entire interview through the puny wall that separated me from the waiting room, where he was meant to be leafing through the shiny come-to-Sweden brochures. ("Some people think of us as the conscience of Europe, but we think of ourselves as a simple, friendly nation with great cuisine and a sparkling coastline offering some of the best luxury accomodation options on the market.)

So if THS could hear my interview, then he knew how to answer each question, exactly as I had. AND they never asked about my mother's siblings. So theoretically, he was in the clear. But THS is a man of integrity, or, alternatively, stubborn as a mule, and there was one question which he answered in direct opposition to mine! Just like that! I believe it was this one:

MY INTERVIEW:
Q: Are the two of you interested in staying in Sweden long-term?
ME: Sweden might indeed be a place for us to settle. [THS] has strong roots there, and probably wouldn't want to stay away from home forever. As for me, I am more of a wanderer. So we'd both be happy to stay in Sweden.

HIS INTERVIEW:
Q: Are the two of you interested in staying in Sweden long-term?
THS: No way. _I_ am a wanderer. I long to live abroad. [...TOUCHÉ...]

About a month later THS got a call to his cellphone from the Swedish Immigration Board. A woman said, "I'd like you to be apprised that your partner's residence permit status is being sent out, and you should receive our decision within the next few days."
THS: "Can you tell me what the decision is?"
(Long pause, then, in a breathless, excited voice,) "She's getting in!!!!!"

This was my first lesson in the difference between Germany and Sweden. In Germany, bureaucrats take their jobs VERY seriously. In Sweden they joke around, and even allow tonality into their telephone voices.

The Premise of this Blog

2006-08-29T16:39:00.000+02:00

Welcome, oh blogolytes. If you are here, then perhaps it is because you have chosen to join me, vicariously at least, on my journey from Berlin to Stockholm, from Berliner to Stockholmian. In other words, I'm moving, and you want to know how it's going.

A little bit of background if you dont' know me already:

I'm an American originally from Boston, via New York, and I've been living in Berlin now for almost four years. I speak fluent German, I'm a student of German literature at the university here, and I work part-time as a guide of Berlin, giving historical walking tours. My area of expertise is the Third Reich and Holocaust. I have a happy and settled life here in Berlin (albeit somewhat impoverished.) So why am I moving to Stockholm?

Why indeed!

A year and a half ago I met the sweetest, wittiest, most debonair, funniest and most brilliant and most considerate man in the world, a certain person I'll call for now: "The Handsome Swede" until I get his permission to use his real name on the internet.
To make a long story short, he and I fell in love, he extended his stay in Berlin. Things got more serious. Eventually, however, he had to return to his studies in Stockholm. For the academic year 2005-2006 we visited one another regularly -- I think I made five trips to Stockholm in all, and he the same, so we saw each other almost every month. But it was taxing, as such things are, and now I've decided to move to Stockholm to be with him.

So.

That is the premise of this blog. There are more harrowing travails being documented at this very moment at other weblog locations, so if you want excitement, that's where you should head. This blog, oh friends and family, is merely so that you can keep tabs on my small-time yet momentous life-change at your leisure, should you ever have a moment of boredom that needs filling in a pleasant way.