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apparently misery DOES love company

This all started when I was browsing in the shops seeing if Swedish fashion would entice me to part with some more kroner.  But the palette made me feel kind of depressed.  It seemed to resemble the weather outside.  I wondered what came first…  and if, between the challenging weather patterns and all this black and grey clothing, the Swedes were depressed.

But I just thought it was more of my silly black humour.  I didn’t buy anything though.  It was all too shapeless and dark.  I guess Swedish women are so gorgeous they can wear a potato sack and look good.  Most of the clothing seemed to be working on that model.  Along with an awful lot of parkas!  If you need a black parka, this is your paradise 😉

I tried to like Acne – but it just looked mostly weird and I didn’t think it would look terribly flattering on me.  I am more a Dolce and Gabbana kind of girl.  I like it when French guys young enough to be my son come up to me and shyly tell me in broken English that they like my dress.  I didn’t think Acne was gonna get me that kind of attention…  I realize I don’t look very hip.  But it seems that looking sexy means I meet a lot more strangers – and my travel stories are better 😉

After my Swedish shopping experience I was reading a novel on the plane home called Delicacy by David Foenkinos.  It’s definitely worth reading.  But he’s French and I thought he was really picking on the Swedes with the Markus character.  And there was this big emphasis on the Swedes being suicidal.

I am a woman who enjoy facts more than chocolate so I had to get some info before I wrote about the depressing clothing in my blog.  Apparently, the Swedes ARE famous for being suicidal.  But the average Swede… pretty happy.  It would appear that really cool happy places make the unhappy people more unhappy.  Not enough other people around to commiserate with apparently.

So it would appear Sweden is a kind of Disneyland.  So, if you are more a Sartre Nothingness kind of person, you should likely hole up somewhere like the Democratic Republic  of Congo.  Lots of miserable people there to make you feel better about your lot.

Or you might just try not caring so much what other people think…

Personally I would be really happy in Sweden 🙂  But then I am pretty happy everywhere.  You make your own happiness – and a lot of your luck.

I was definitely happy when I was observing – or learning about – Swedish design.  They may dress like shapeless goths – but they like their interiors full of colour, shape and function.

I won’t bore you with all the details of everything I learned about Swedish design.  One of the coolest things I saw was the dollhouses at the Nordiska Museet.  What was especially fascinating is that they weren’t all for kids… and normally children were not allowed to play with them, just to observe.  But some of the early ones were to show people how to apply interior design in their homes.  An early version of the Home and Garden cable channel 😉

Another highlight for me was tacking on the Architecture Museum to my Moderna Museet tour.  Not only an entire history of Swedish architecture but some of the key architectural wonders happening all over the world at the same time.

One of the most interesting things I learned about was the One Million Dwellings Programme, an ambitious housing project implemented in Sweden between 1965 and 1974 by the governing Swedish Social Democratic Party to make sure everyone could have a home at a reasonable price. The aim was to build a million new dwellings in a 10-year period.  At the same time, a large proportion of the older housing stock was demolished.

In the end, about 1,006,000 new dwellings were built, which accounts for 25% of Sweden’s housing. There was criticism that the new apartments were ugly but they were modern and well-designed and generally the people who got to live in them were thrilled.  Yet another example of rational thought by the Swedes as to how to make the general society a better place.

The other interesting fact that I learned – both in Stockholm and in London – was the impact of the first World’s Fair at the Crystal Palace (London) in 1851.  I’ve been to the Crystal Palace – and to the shells of a few other World’s Fairs over my travels.  There were some interesting aspects to most visits but the importance of the concept was lost in the abandoned look of the sites.

But this is why it’s good to keep travelling… and learning stuff.  In Sweden, design is life it seems and the very first World’s Fair had a huge impact on Swedish society.  And the world in general.  Back in those days when google wasn’t a verb and the internet had not yet been invented – by either Al Gore or Tim Berners-Lee – information didn’t travel very far so the World’s Fair was a revelation… and all those interior designers selling themselves on reality TV should be eternally grateful to the Brits for kick-starting their careers generations before they were even born 🙂

In 1930, Sweden hosted the Stockholm Exhibition and introduced the world to Swedish functionalism.  Ingvar Kamprad was only 4 so I doubt he attended but the rest of the world who didn’t attend would learn about Swedish functionalism via the little company he started in 1943.  He called it IKEA…

So… it would appear the Swedes are mostly really happy, they like to dress in dark colours and they have a sense of style that is world-famous.  All the Swedes I met seemed pretty sunny… and the sun does pop out from time to time and – thanks to that Nordic light – when it does, it’s spectacular.

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artsy stuff, life philosophy, social commentary, travel stories

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from the power of horses to the horsepower of the internet

The magnificent 20th century… OK, so there were a couple of world wars, we built an atomic bomb, communism in practice was a lot less successful then communism in theory, terrorism went global – but I am a glass half full kind of girl and the 20th century also improved the lives of a lot of people.

I guess it started with the millennium.  It’s not too often in your lifetime you can celebrate an event like that.  But the first 900 years compared to the last 100.  Now that’s a hockey stick in biz speak.  Human development in the 20th century looked like the sales charts for iphones at apple 🙂

I am fascinated by the twentieth century.  Part of it stems from the fact that both of my grandmothers were born within the first decade of it and lived just shy of their 100th birthdays so their lives spanned the entire 20th century.

Of course, those were the people who grew up in the era where personal information was horded like a stack of dollar bills in an airtight safe.  And both my parents were the youngest in their families so there were several generation gaps between us and I didn’t have the vision as a teenager to ask them, “what was it like?”

Because it must have been a wild ride!  To be born into a world where electric power was new and the automobile a fairy story, the airplane an impossibility.  And then to die in a world connected by bytes of magic that meant you no longer needed to get on a plane to have a face-to-face conversation with someone on the other side of the globe.  Oh, electricity, thou art a goddess at whose feet we should all worship 😉

As I’ve already mentioned, I was really impressed by the intellectual content of Swedish museums.  So, intrigued by an exhibit entitled, “Picasso vs. Duchamp” at the Moderna Museet.  Apparently the Moderna Museet has a very large Duchamp collection.  And Picasso painted enough stuff every major museum in the world has some Picasso.

Apparently they were great rivals.  And very important figures in the history in modern art.  This may well be blasphemy but neither has ever done much for me.  So I had underestimated their importance.  But the museum’s exhibition was clever enough to get its point across… really modern painting or more or less the creation of the idea of conceptual art.  Paint all the time and promote yourself as some kind of art whore who might be better at being famous… or produce so little art infrequently that you might come across as a bit above the whole idea of art as a business…

Personally I was far more intrigued with the WHEEL!  Picasso and Duchamp met for the first time in 1912.  They are definitely two of the most influential forces in modern art in the 20th century.  The museum suggests that the 20th century saw more major changes in both historical events and art history quiz items than any century before.  To help support the point, a giant wheel was created with each year of the last 100 labeled and one art event and one historical event for that year cited.  Visitors are encouraged to carefully turn the wheel to follow the history of art and of mankind in action…  For history geeks like me, wow!  Better than either of the artists’ stuff 😉

http://www.modernamuseet.se/sv/Stockholm/

Apparently when the Moderna Museet opened in 1958 it was one of the world’s most groundbreaking contemporary art venues.  It introduced Swedes to all kinds of crazy art that at the time was being questioned as to whether it was really art or not?  Now it’s modern art collection seems a bit more like a museum piece but the building is great and the collection is well organized and worth checking out.  Probably better though not to go to the Tate Modern first 🙂

And, even if the permanent collection seems a bit tiny compared to the Tate or MOMA, the special exhibition was definitely worth seeing… if only for the wheel of history.  So much more interesting than the Wheel of Fortune.  Spin this one and you might just learn something…  😉

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artsy stuff, social commentary, travel stories

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the modern Swedish metrosexual…

During my mini tour of my Swedish roots and a few centuries of Viking history, I learned that the Sweden of my grandfather and the Sweden of the 21st century are very different places.  He was one of the many who emigrated at that time.  Sweden was poor and ruled by a class structure that favoured the nobility over the peasants so lots of Swedes emigrated to the new world for what they hoped would be a better life.

Somehow my grandfather ended up in small town Manitoba.  How he got there is not very clear.  That he was an adventurer and a maverick is part of the family folklore.  I’m not sure what the Swedish men of the poor late nineteenth century would have to say to the Swedish men of the prosperous early twenty first.

One of the cool new tourist attractions in Stockholm is the Fotografiska.  I am a big fan of photography but have only recently started going to photography museums when I head to cities.  The Fotografiska is popular with both locals and tourists and got me to Södermalm and a more “real” part of Stockholm.  Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to explore the neighborhood but the museum is definitely worth a visit.

http://en.fotografiska.eu/f

There doesn’t seem to be a permanent collection, just a series of rotating exhibitions.  All were worth viewing – and made me feel bad about my tourist shots 🙂  But the one that intrigued me the most was Maria Friberg.

Apparently in 1995 she had met with a businessman in conjunction with selling some of her art work and they got into a philosophical conversation about the role of men in modern Swedish society.  She grew up on a collective in rural Sweden that was a matriarchal haven where the women worked and the men tended to domestic duties.  So the businessman was a novelty to her 🙂

There were two series of paintings – Almost There and The Painting Series.  There was also a video showing how she shot the photos for The Painting Series.  The commentary noted how her photography had been influenced by the working styles of Jackson Pollock and Yves Klein (my Alexander McQueen pumps in Yves Klein blue are one of my most prized possessions 🙂

Both the process used to create the photographs and their conceptual content really impressed me.

per the info at the museum….

Maria Friberg’s oeuvre is an investigation of male identity in today’s period of gender transition, as visualized in her signature series Almost There from 2000 and The Painting Series from 2011. In Almost There, we see a group of men, white men in suits, floating in a pool. Their homogeneous appearance is suggestive of the Western patriarchy. A patriarchy is formed when men are at the top of a societal structure. Clustered together, the pack of men appears to be in their mid-thirties, at the peak of their careers. They do not interact, but gaze instead into the distance. The image implies that they are rivals thereby reflecting the competitive nature of business. This is also suggested by the title, Almost There. Yet Friberg manages to disclose their vulnerability, by depicting the men straining to hold their heads above water. Accordingly, theseries coincided with the burst of the dot-com bubble in 2000 – 2001. The male dominated IT industry sustained devastating losses after its stocks were grossly overvalued. In its aftermath countless men were stripped of their financial status. They found themselves in a vulnerable position, much like the men depicted in Almost There.

In both series the figures float within a pool; however, in The Painting Seriesthe liquid is comprised of water mixed with various colored inks. In fact, the method for creating The Painting Series is based on a performance that can be likened to “action painting.” 

A short while later I stopped in a tourist shop and bought some gorgeous glass by Mats Jonasson.  The work was beautiful and as creative as Maria’s photography so it seemed the perfect souvenir for my trip.  And the shop owner told me the story of the glass factory and how Mats had saved it in the 1980’s and kept alive the glass traditions in the town, which had begun when my grandfather was still living in Sweden.  The past and the present perfectly conjoined.

http://www.matsjonasson.com/

We also had a conversation about Maria’s work and role of Swedish men in 21st century Sweden.  I didn’t talk to enough Swedish men in four days to draw any definitive conclusions but my non-scientific sample suggested that Swedish men are very articulate and very cool.  I don’t know much about my grandfather but my father apparently inherited a lot of his genes and my father possessed those same qualities.  So, the clothes and hairstyles may have changed, but the charming Swedish metrosexual seems to have been with us long before the word was coined to describe him 😉

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the original swedish metrosexual?

Both my dad and my grandmother are dead now.  They were the reticent type unwilling to part with morsels of personal information easily.  So, even if I had spent more time attempting to extract the facts, it’s highly uncertain I would have learned anything more about my Swedish grandfather.

I didn’t even know what he looked like until I was in my teens.  My grandmother considered family the most important thing in the entire world so her tiny house was crammed with collages of photos of miscellaneous people only some of whom I’d actually met.  Martha Stewart would have been horrified 🙂

Normally the collages were updated for new grandchildren or more recent school pics of the ones already featured.  But one day when I was inspecting the walls for new updates (my grandmother kind of invented the concept of facebook photos before Mark Zuckerberg was even born 🙂 I was intrigued by one of the new photos.

As they would say on Sesame Street, this one was not like the others.  The photo had been taken in an entirely different era.  When having your photo taken was a ceremonial occasion, not a drunken iphone click.  The gentleman in the photo looked like a gentleman!

He is dressed to the nines.  He is holding a cigar and about to take a sip of some manly intoxicant.  He looks like a movie star.  Or some dude promoting a celebrity fragrance.

In small town Canada this was the most fascinating photo I had ever seen.  I asked my grandmother “who is that?”  To which she casually replied, “oh, that’s your grandfather.”  Hot damn!  That is NOT what grandfathers looked like where I lived…

I now regret I didn’t ask more.  But my grandmother didn’t drink and back in those days people actually thought it was polite to not blab personal details – even to family, let alone post them on facebook.

So I came to Sweden to at least see where he came from.  And maybe get some essence of what he might have been like.  And looking around at the gorgeous, perfectly groomed, fashionably dressed men in Stockholm, I did feel I was channeling him.

I think style normally flows through the maternal lineage.  But in my family, it’s the dudes who seem to have those genes in spades.  I like to think I have a little bit of style.  And a long time ago I became my mother’s stylist because apparently my father really liked everything I made her buy 🙂

My dad spent his entire life in small towns.  But he had real style.  He understood fabric.  He cared about cut.  He had expensive taste.  Maybe it’s in the genes… He looked a lot like his dad.

And his dad…  Check him out 😉  He doesn’t look much like a grandfather.  But the original metrosexual?  Your call…

It looks to me that Swedish men have been pretty boys for over a century now.  If the sketchy facts I have been told are correct, my grandfather was born in 1886…

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life philosophy, social commentary, travel stories

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fifty shades of boring…

We are going to get back to interesting things like world culture, I promise 🙂   But I am really jet-lagged so I am taking a bit of latitude…

And cause, honestly people, I am BORED!  I have been doing my best to ignore “Fifty Shades of Grey.”  Cause it sounds dumb.

Women should be aspiring to be CEOs.  To be rich.  To dominate men.  Not the bullshit that supposedly this book is promoting.  I will never know because I am the crazy woman of principle raised by a number of generations of kick-ass women – who would just kick the ass of the idiot dude in this book as soon as he brought out the handcuffs – if I have the sort of plot correct…

Girls, seriously, WHAT THE HELL???  What is wrong with you?  I only know the commentary I have read on what I gather is a blight on the literary landscape of the 21st century… and a step backward for womankind.  I am never gonna buy  it… but I have been in a lot of airports since it got famous… and I can’t ignore it.

And having had a couple of experiences with the douche bags of the male genetic line, all I can say is, ladies, get real.  Get confident.  Find a cool, geeky, cute guy.  Or someone like my father – James Dean raised by a strong woman who would have broken his kneecaps if he didn’t treat women right.

Trust me… a lot of men out there love a strong woman.  And strong women are our future.  I have no idea the gender of god.  But on the whole women make better decisions for the planet.  And smart men get that.  Do you want to be part of some regressive past where women were the play objects of men?  Or do you want to play with all the history imposed on women and dress up in great lingerie, a pencil skirt and some great heels and sip a glass of champagne you bought with your own cash – so you can just sit there and play with all the dudes who come up wondering who the hell you are… and try to get your attention…

It really works… and girls, it is Fifty Shades of Awesome.  Please don’t sell yourselves short.  Men want to make us happy.  A little confidence.  A lot of charm.  I know my father was a man of his generation and it disturbed him that men liked me enough I didn’t have to just go for the very first one… but he was the dude who gave me the confidence and the understanding that there would be good guys out there.  Compromise was not necessary.  But good judgment would be key.  And, personally, I think that means the first dude who tries to handcuff you, cuff him first and get the hell out of there 😉

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life philosophy, shining examples, social commentary

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building a national identity

The Nordic people are noted for being a bit frosty.  Especially by their southern neighbours.  They are my people.  Apparently in high school I intimidated people.  It wasn’t intentional.  I just didn’t have much sense of play.  So I am grateful to my country’s celebrated multiculturalism that I met people from other ethnic backgrounds who taught me how to lighten up 😉  For any of you reading this regularly, you will already know my love for the Dutch who somehow seem to manage to combine warmth, efficiency and dry wit.  And, while I still love Paris and New York, I have the most fun in Amsterdam so it may have beat them out as my favourite city.

But today we are talking about the Swedes.  Since my grandfather died when my dad was ten, the first Swedish man I met was some random Björn or Mattias.  He was cute and blond, sure, but that is not why he was memorable.  At the time I was about 20 and back in those days, people didn’t talk about sex in public in North America.  They didn’t have ads for tampons on TV.  We were repressed and uptight about all that stuff.  And lots of young women were very conservative in their social mores.

But we were also brought up well so people could say whatever and we just smiled politely and didn’t express any shock outwardly.  Hey, we started as a British colony 😉  So I was chatting with random Swedish guy and another girl in the lounge at the university residence where we were staying during our summer jobs.  And random Swedish guy casually mentioned how his grandmother had been cool with him bringing his girlfriend to her house and having sleepovers with the girlfriend when he was 15.  And not just sleeping 🙂

(According to my guidebook, at 15 you become byxmyndig, loosely translated as “in charge of your pants” – the things you learn from travel :))

Random Swedish guy seemed very comfortable with the concept of sex.  Apparently in Sweden it wasn’t the big deal it was in North America (and in many quarters, still is).  It was likely the first time I heard anyone talk about sex without twittering.  Talking about it as though it was the same as talking about the weather.  It was definitely a revelation.  And obviously random Swedish guy had an impact on my perceptions of the world.

But what I remember most was talking to the other girl later when random Swedish guy wasn’t around.  She had been shocked!  I hadn’t even realized because we had been taught to not act shocked so you would never know from the way the person acted in the situation.  I believe that’s called “good manners.”  It was fun to giggle about it since we didn’t have to act cool in front of the Swedish dude right then.  But I was less shocked.  And thought the Swedes might be on to something.  WHY WERE North Americans SO uptight about sex – but so casual about violence…

I met a couple more Swedish guys over the years.  That was part of the reason for my trip to Stockholm.  To see if they were representative.  My conclusion…  I think so…  It was only a short visit so not exactly a scientific study…

I went to at least one historical or cultural spot every day to learn more about the Swedes.  I had only had a few minutes to leaf through my guidebook before I arrived but I had read enough to be intrigued.  Another reason for the choice of Stockholm was a conversation I had recently at a networking event with a banker who had worked in Stockholm for a number of years.  He was the one that alerted me to the impressive nature of Sweden.

And it is an impressive place.  It’s clean.  It’s green.  It’s pretty equal by world standards.  There is a strong social safety net.  There is very little crime.  People are articulate.  For a small country, they really make their mark on the world via business, sport, design…

There are flags everywhere.  And people seem to have a strong sense of identity.  As a Canadian, I was fascinated.  We are famous – at least within our own borders – for being on an eternal quest for our sense of identity.  Something a little more than, “we are not Americans.” 🙂

My father was one of the few Canadians I’ve known who really believed in the country and had the kind of patriotic attitude I saw in Sweden.  Could it have come from his Swedish father?

Now that I know a little Swedish history, I would think likely not.  But maybe…  There is no question the Swedes have an identity.  But the museums and my conversations with Swedes suggested that it is a fairly new thing.

And – like everything in history, especially in Europe – it’s complicated.  Apparently Sweden was pretty poor and agrarian until the Second World War.  Most Swedes didn’t seem to want to acknowledge the role Germany – and their “neutral” position during the war – played in their prosperity.  But without the Nazis, there might not have been IKEA…

I was more interested in the sociology of Sweden than in ancient politics.  What was fascinating is that there were some famous Swedes who decided they needed a national identity and strove to define and promote it.  Part of this was establishing the Nordiska Museet – a place to showcase Swedish culture and identity.  For tourists.  But, more interestingly, for locals.

Apparently part of its mandate was to provide people with information about what it meant to be Swedish – to build a national identity.  Because, as I learned in the fabulous 1,000 years of Swedish history in under an hour at the Historiska Museet, the Sweden of today is a really recent invention.  There were the Vikings, some evil (and more benevolent) kings, a pampered nobility, alliances with the other Nordic countries (why Nordiska, not Swedish), invasions and bloody fights with neighboring countries, an interesting positioning during the Second World War…

What I loved the most about the Swedish museums is that they didn’t just toss random facts at you.  They clearly stated that culture and history are complicated and perspective is key.  They actually asked questions in the exhibits and encouraged you to think about any “facts” presented.

That was the thing that I liked the most about Sweden.  The culture encouraged thinking and planning (very Nordic of them ;).  Once the dust settled and prosperity kicked in, they decided to define who they were – and wanted to be.  And communicate that message to the nation.  I think all the recent immigration has made that message more complicated to reconcile but what impressed me the most about my visit to Sweden was the sense that intelligent thought and debate was encouraged – and part of the national identity.

I think that’s why Sweden has likely been so successful in the complicated modern world.  So, save your pennies and go check it out.  And chat up some Swedes.  They like to talk about ice hockey.  Vikings.  Or sex 😉

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shining examples, social commentary, travel stories

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waiting for godot…

We’ll finish the adventures in the land of ice and snow and then we will come back to London… my actual travel route…

The first time I saw Waiting for Godot I was bored and wondering what all the fuss was about.  The second time I saw it I was older and the cast was much better so I enjoyed it more.  But the concept is more or less alien to my nature.

I am a girl who lives in the moment, does a lot of research and, while that may sound contradictory, generally aligning the two means that I am rarely bored.   And frequently enchanted by serendipity or surprises… I do the homework to make sure the moments happen as I live them 😉

But right now I am bored 🙂  It’s rare.  It’s cold outside.  Tonight it’s also raining.  And I made the dumb mistake of thinking I could get by in Stockholm in late September without a coat.  And the Berns Hotel is supposed to be hip and happening.  And it’s not completely empty.  Just more an overpriced pan-Asian restaurant than a hip nightclub at the moment.

Stockholm is gorgeous – the landscape, the light, the architecture, the people.  As a day tourist I have no complaints.  But I was expecting more of the nightlife.  And I haven’t given up hope yet 😉

This is one of the most expensive places I have ever been.  It really encourages you to nurse a drink.  In my reading it suggests people stay at home and only show up in public venues really late.

You have to learn the local culture.  I’ve got to know the bartender in Amsterdam because I was the only fool willing to show up at the dance club at midnight.  I told him I didn’t care 🙂  And drinking Heineken – extra cold or not – is cheap and by 12:30am the place was almost full.

I don’t know the norms yet in Stockholm.  So I came fairly early to try the well-regarded Pan-Asian restaurant.  I’ve had better food in Vancouver.  Especially for the price.  But it was pretty good.  The salmon was cooked really well (almost rare) and eating salmon and watching people with umbrellas scurry around in the rain made me feel at home.

The bar is getting a tiny bit more lively as I write this.  Maybe Godot will show up in the end?  If not, I’ll have to brave the chill and find a new venue for tomorrow night 😉

Apparently 10pm is the magic hour.  It’s SO expensive to drink in Sweden you can’t blame the Swedes for staying home til they can get their kronors worth of fun.  In the end, it was an entertaining – if somewhat strange – night.

I managed to snap some photos of the Berns Salonger before I left so I will get them into this post so you can see it for yourself.  It’s a heritage building so they couldn’t change a lot of stuff, which means you feel more like you are in the early 20th century instead of a modern nightclub.  The place is huge.  There are several bars, a sushi station and a couple of different eating areas.

As noted above, the night starts kind of slow.  It’s really just a packed restaurant.  So there is a buzz.  But solo it’s pretty dull.  But as the night wears on, the music starts to rise in volume and people start to fill the bar areas.  Eventually you can barely move and it’s become a very sophisticated looking nightclub.

Once it got a bit more crowded, I went upstairs (a crazy winding staircase that you should be descending from in a ball gown, not trying to navigate both ways with an increasing drunken mob.  But no one fell!)  I just figured I could watch the crowd from above and it would supply some entertainment while I waited for Godot…

But Erik wanted to find out more about me.  So I got into a conversation with him and his friend about ice hockey, European football and what it meant to be a Viking… and if there is a “Swedish look”.  The consensus seemed to be “more or less, but not just the blond, blue-eyed stereotype.  Those Vikings got around 😉

For those of you who have not spent time in Sweden, Swedish men are almost uniformly gorgeous!  And well-groomed.  I expect they are mostly metrosexual but when a couple of the men I met seemed more concerned about their male friends than me, I wondered if they were too cute to be straight 🙂

Andreas did get me down to the basement club, which completed my Berns cultural experience.  I wasn’t really sure about the music though and – like Erik, he seemed more interested in the male friend he came with than me so I eventually just wandered off…

Part of the problem was that the friends spoke Swedish and I did not.  Swedes are wildly impressive on many fronts and almost everyone speaks some English but not everyone is super fluent so in a noisy bar setting communication can seem like a lot of work.  So I was happy the third guy to talk to me was a Kiwi!

I did enjoy talking to the locals and learning more about Sweden but by then I was getting a bit exhausted and being able to just speak normal English was a treat.  Dennis did live in Sweden and had had a Swedish wife so he knew something about the place – but we mostly talked about the similarities between New Zealand and Canada.

So… no Godot… but lots of miscellaneous others.  Some of whom had been drinking at home I think… it’s the first time I have had enough drinks spilled on me that I ended up with alcohol stinging in both eyes before the night was through.

But it was fun.  I was back again the next night.  Later this time.  And had more conversations about Swedes and Swedish history with a young Swede whose father had arrived in Sweden from the Sudan to study.  He was very articulate and it was one of my most memorable conversations in Sweden.

I think the highlight of the night though was the colorful half Swedish-half Norwegian lady who caused a stir in the bathroom knocking on doors and trying to get girls to hurry up.  I am not sure what was going on but 2 woman came out of each stall… Travel is always interesting…

The Swedish men had confirmed Swedish women were very self-confident.  It’s likely the place with the most equal rights between the sexes I’ve ever encountered.  Lots of beautiful women… but no pushovers apparently… just as it should be 😉

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eating & drinking - well, social commentary, travel stories

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