1st Post

Hello everyone back in the States. I’ve been here a week, when I started this post anyway, and I can confidently report that Sweden fucking rocks. The women are beautiful (most of them, there are still ugly ones, but say the average in the US is 6, the average here is at least 7, if not 8 (and I’m not being insensitive, just observant)), the cars are small and the cities are quaint and beautiful. Everything is substantially more expensive as well, but I have hardly spent anything since I’ve arrived. Frugality though, I fear, won’t last long.

Social Observations

The stereotype that Swedish people are reserved and somewhat cold is mostly untrue from what I can tell. The other children at school are interested in the new kid from America, or at least seem to be. And they don’t come off at all as removed or introverted. I would say they are more socially comfortable, and (this may sound weird), capable. They don’t laugh at things they say before they’re done saying them, and they don’t feel the need to fill a silence, even in a group. A conversation may be skipping along happily, and then everyone just stops talking and there are anywhere from a few beats to several minutes of silence. As with anything there are exceptions, but the overarching theme holds. Compared with American kids, with their god damned “awkward” and their superficial fucking schmooziness, Swedish kids are cooler by leaps and bounds. Ergh. I know that’s fairly unwarranted statement to make, but I hold that it is fairly unwarranted. Not completely so.

Girls touch each other. I was quite surprised the first day of school. They have summer holiday, similar to how it is in the States, though I’m fairly certain it isn’t as long. In any event, kids have several weeks they don’t see each other as often, so they’re excited to see each other again at school. The girls are very unabashed in their excitement to greet each other. I almost wish I had pictures to better illustrate what I’m talking about, but you all may take me for a pervert if I did. Kissing is commonplace. Like walking up, cradling their head in their hands, and kissing right on the mouth kind of kissing. Ass grabbing/smacking, general groping, grinding, hugging, jiggling/cupping boobs, yea they get all over each other. Happily though, males do not take part in any such ritual. Hugging would be as intimate a greeting you would see.

When you’re talking to somebody there’s this really odd thing that happens. They start gasping. It’s hard to describe through a computer screen, but that’s the best word for it. Say two Swedes are talking, blah blah blah, just about their day, or whatever. If one is relating their story, the other listens, and draws in short, sharp breaths (gasps) to show that they have heard what the other is saying or agree with them. It’s really weird. I first observed it when I was to fika (another very Swedish thing I’ll talk about further down) at Roger’s (one my host dads, the other is Andreas) parents. Supposedly old people do it more, but I’ve noticed both old and young do it. I thought they were choking on their spit or they were seeing something startling, so I was looking over my shoulder to see what the hell there was to gasp about and then I was ready to use the Heimlich to rescue them. Based on everyone else’s reactions though I soon figured out what the hell was going on. It’s like a nod. But instead of nodding they go *gasp*.

I played a game called kubb today. It is an ancient Viking game and it’s fun AF. There are two players on each team. It is played on a small area designated by four stakes forming a rectangle, inserted into the ground. I played on a beach, but you can play on any flat area of land. There are five small rectangular prisms of wood that are spaced evenly between the stakes at either end, which the players must remain behind. There is a taller rectangular prism placed precisely in the middle of the playing area, which is known as the king. The game is played by throwing wooden clubs at the opposing team’s small rectangular prisms; each player has three clubs. The object, as you may have guessed, is to knock over the other team’s small rectangular prisms of wood. When this happens, that is one is knocked over, the team whose block has been knocked picks up the fallen block and tosses it back into the half of the area opposite them formed by the king and the other team’s blocks. Given the block lands in this area (which it almost always does) the block is stood up, and then the team that just threw that block must now knock that block over before they can knock over any other blocks. Once they have knocked it over, they may attempt to knock the other blocks between the stakes. If a team fails in knocking over any blocks in the half rectangle which they threw there, then the opposing team may now stand as close as the nearest block. Once one team has all of the other team’s blocks knocked over, they may attempt to knock the king over. However, both the last block(s) and the king must be knocked in the same turn. That is if there is one block left and I have one club left, assuming I hit the block it’s pointless because I don’t have another club to hit the king with. If a team knocks over all of the other team’s blocks and the king the game is won. Knocking the king over before the smaller blocks have been eliminated is to forfeit the game, much like sinking the 8 ball prematurely in pool. I’ve included a diagram to help illustrate:

Fika is the Swedish word that means “time for drinking coffee or tea, eating, sitting in a cozy chair, and socializing”. Funnily enough, “fica” is Italian slang for vagina. It is not going for coffee, and it isn’t tea time. It’s fika. It can last for hours (though I haven’t experienced a marathon fika as of yet). Starbucks has, from what I could find in my research, four locations in Sweden. It doesn’t matter the specific number, only that Starbucks has a very small presence here, and it’s because Swedes don’t fit their business model. Where in America, you go to Starbucks on your way to work, Swedes go to coffee shops and have fika, that is sit and socialize. Starbucks wants to serve lots of customers overpriced and sugary coffee in rapid succession, not serve four people a few cups of coffee and some snacks while they occupy sitting space for an extended period of time. Think if you had a Starbucks full of Swedes. The place would be full, and you wouldn’t be making any more sales than those when they first walked in. It makes economic sense, then, that Starbucks doesn’t build here. It’s obvious that those are two huge generalizations about two groups of people, I know people go and sit down at Starbucks in the US, with their pseudointellectual glasses and their fuckin’ hipsters scarves and what not…and similarly a Swede may go for a quick cup of coffee if they feel like it, but the overarching cultural trends behind these generalizations hold true. When Swedes go for fika it is a social event where in the States is doesn’t carry such a significance. I love me some fika.

Economic Observations

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, everything is much more expensive here. Currently the exchange rate between the USD and SEK is 1:6.5. That is, one American dollar buys you six and half Swedish kronas, or simply “crowns” (that’s what is on all of the money, pictures of the royalty and little crowns). With that fact, it takes many, many crowns to buy anything. In America we think $20 is, $20. And we know how much twenty dollars buys. You can go out for lunch, or go to the movies, or buy an inexpensive article of clothing, etc. Twenty crowns buys nothing. The other day I bought two things at school, something to drink and some other thing small and it was twenty crowns. My first reaction was, “Holy shit!” but then I remembered to divide twenty by six and a half, which comes out to just over three, or to be exact, 3.076, so it was about $3.08. Which is completely reasonable, and I was perfectly content with my purchase. It’s really difficult though, to think that 130 crowns is $20, or that 3000 crowns is about $462, which is how much you could easily spend going into any clothes shop.

Tipping doesn’t happen, generally. It’s nothing like in the States, where if the service doesn’t suck, you’re pretty well expected to tip. There is no such stigma for not leaving a tip. People are not assholes for not tipping or for tipping very little, because no one is expected to tip in the first place. I don’t have any numbers handy, but wait staff are paid a very good wage, which isn’t surprising given the socialist-ness of Sweden. As such, tips aren’t necessary for wait staff to survive, or any other tipped employee for that matter.

Gas is hugely expensive. It costs fifteen crowns a liter, which, to save you the math, is $8.73 a gallon. Most of the price comes from taxes, which apparently prevents harm to the environment and builds roads (it does build roads, the roads here are all pristine from what I’ve seen) so I don’t know how much actually pays for the gas. I don’t know how much it is in the US, but it doesn’t matter because we have some cheap AF gas, yea, $3.70 per gallon looks like a steal. Volvos, Saabs, Ford, Fiats, they’re everywhere. Not as many Japanese cars (Toyota, Honda) from what I can tell. Of course, cars are small here, as well as the roads. The road that I go to school by is just slightly wider than one lane in the US. There’s a very cozy feel to it. And cozy means holy-shit-I’m-going-to-be-run-over-or-clipped-by-the-approaching-vehicle. There are no ditches. The little depressions on either side of the road that are supposed to be the ditches are as wide as one my strides. That is I can literally walk across them. I can cross the entire roadway, ditches and all, in four steps.

Language

It’s difficult to describe how Swedish sounds. It doesn’t sound like German, which it’s ach’s and it’s sch’s and general phlemy-ness and severeness, it is nothing like French, with its nasally mushiness and smoothness. It is a lazy language, there is very little hard pronunciation. Things are just kind of…soft. But it isn’t so soft that it’s mushy and gelatinous. For example, when you say tippety-top, you have two hard t’s in tippety-top. Tuh and tuh. There just isn’t that in Swedish. If there is it’s at the beginning of a word, so it is with the “t” sound anyway. K can make the normal “kuh” sound and a “sh” sound. Swedish uses the “sj” letter pair to make a really odd sound. The number seven is spelled “sju” and pronounced like “whoo”. Ya know the episode of Family Guy where Stewie says “Cool Whip” as “Coo Hwip”? Yea, if you say “whoo” like “hwoo” that’s how you say seven in Swedish, and there are a lot of words with that “hwoo” sound. There’s lots of blending syllables, like mumbling almost. Say this sentence in English, as you normally would. Now say this one with a relaxed jaw, and don’t move your mouth as much, and kind of mumble. This is somewhere close to speaking Swedish, but the trick that Swedes can do is they can mouth their mouth properly and still sound like they have shit in their mouth. I don’t mean that as an insult, but it is really weird to hear them pronouncing Swedish carefully (like when you’d teach someone how to say properly) and it still sounds like they are doing just the opposite, that is not articulating clearly and effectively. But, if the language sounds like that, then it sounds like that, so they really are pronouncing it (and teaching me) properly. They also roll some of their r’s, which I think is weird AF, being pretty far removed from Spanish and what not. As I learn more I’ll accordingly be able to better tell about it.

Food

The food is great. It isn’t that different from stuff we have back home. The one thing I’ve noticed that really bugs me is how popular carbonated water is. It’s everywhere. I like my water flat, but bubbles are fine I suppose. The glasses are also smaller here, in general, but large glasses still exist. It’s not like when you order a water and you get a liter jug at a restaurant. You get a conservatively sized glass. Candy is called godis (go-dees). It’s very commonly sold by weight. You go to the store and get your little bag and fill it with as many different kinds of candy and as much as you like, and then pay by whatever weight measure they use (some multiple of the gram). They use the metric system, obviously. The candy is delicious. And the Swedish they have here are not just red, they’re all sorts of colors and they’re all pretty good except the black ones, which taste like salty poop.

General Things

I bike to school. As some of you already know, the school I’m attending is an arts school. They call is Estetiskt, which includes film, dance, theater, music, etc. It’s pretty cool. I think there’s like 700-800 kids at the school. This is hard to write about because there are so many things to tell about. So much is different. You call teachers by their first name. Frankly, it’s weird. It’s not so bad because of the fact that I’m meeting everyone for the first time and my first impression of them goes along with calling them by their first name, but when I think of my previous teachers, and what it would be like to call them by their first name, it’s weird as hell. Think of calling Mr. Neff Alex. That’s my brother’s name, number one, so there’s that association, and number two, Mr. Neff is not Alex, he’s Mr. Neff. It’s just proper. Mr. Neff, if you’re reading this, thanks, and I miss your class AF. There are no bells. When it says on your schedule that a class starts at whatever time, it doesn’t actually start for five to ten minutes after. Teachers aren’t in the classroom when you get there. Teachers don’t have their own classroom; they just float around from class to class and teach in whichever room. There are huge breaks in the middle of the day that is completely unsupervised, which can range from fifteen minutes to two, maybe three hours. I have no fucking idea what to do during these times. Kids are not very academic here, imagine that, at an arts school, so no one studies or goes to the library. I have English (explanation later), Swedish, history, science, and then a bunch of arts classes. Some of them theater, some film, others normal art like we had at Kennedy. I haven’t attended many of my classes yet, not because I didn’t attend but because they weren’t there to attend (since I’ve started the post I have attended all of them, and they’re massively entertaining). I’ve included a picture of my schedule to illustrate this. There are no hours in the day. You just go to class when you have class, like college. It’s a very laid-back atmosphere. School lunch is free. You take as much as you want as many times as you want, and you get real AF plates and silverware. Never really thought about how much plastic Kennedy went through every day just with lunch silverware. There’s a restaurant in the school, or rather on the campus, and there’s a big dining hall where most kids eat right next to it. The restaurant prepares the food. It’s not like holy-shit-look-at-this-food kind of amazing, but it’s so much better than the food at Kennedy. And I thought the food at Kennedy was awesome coming from middle of nowhere Iowa, where the food really is shit.

To explain about the English: without it it’s a hole in my day, that could be filled by something else but I just said I’d take to class to have an easy AF class and read English novels. Plus my teacher advised me that just as the Swedish kids translate from Swedish to English, I will learn to do just the opposite. And by way of the fact that the class (as with all classes) is taught in Swedish, I can’t help but learn Swedish.

I’ve seen a total of two stop signs since I’ve been here. Two. Roundabouts are very common, and their stoplight intersections are…odd. It’s hard to describe. I’d have to take a picture. Walking and biking are very common, and cars stop in the middle of an intersection to let bikes or pedestrians pass. It’s so so so different from home.

Pictures

 A view of most of Halmstad

 A view looking north of the living room. That is James Dean you see.

Looking south in the living room

Looking east of the living room window. That's glare on the window.

 Northward in the hallway. My room is at the end to the right.

Dining room, looking westward. That's the kitchen through the doorway.

This is the countryside of few miles south of Halmstad, looking northward back towards Halmstad. The picture really doesn't capture the beauty or the vastness...

Seen in a shop...Google it if you don't get it

This is a two lane road that's as wide as a driveway. Not all of them are this narrow but I seriously thought we were pulling in to stop at someone's house.

These are Highland Cattle, one of which is taking a shit.

These are Roger's parents to the left, then Andreas in the blue and Roger on the end. Andreas and Roger are my host dads, don'tchya know.

 A man walking

 This is self-explanatory.

Look at that fuckin' duck.

Conclusion 

I’ve been here a week, and I love it. It’s a beautiful country, the people are great, and I’m giddy to experience more.

Don’t miss me too much ;) Love y’all.