Continuing stories from my time living in Sweden.
The Swedish Life
Stockholm, Sweden
The day after we found our apartment, we moved in. It’s a great little furnished one bedroom that looks like a page right out of the IKEA catalog. It has creaky parquet patterned wood floors and high ceilings, so it feels much bigger than its 65 sq meters. It’s on the inside of a 5 storey building so it overlooks the courtyard and some big trees. It’s also on the top floor, so it’s really quiet. Sometimes in the evenings when it’s dark I’ll look out the window and see the apartments across the courtyard through the lit living room or kitchen windows at the people going about their daily lives, cooking, entertaining, reading a book, watching TV, etc. We keep our living room curtains open as well, thinking that they too may like to look in and see what we’re up to.
Our building is on Kungsholmen, one of the neighborhoods of Stockholm. It’s an island to the west of central Stockholm, and we are one block away from the water (the lake). So on nice days we take long walks along the lake and look at the beautiful views and the bridges that run to and from the different islands that Stockholm is on. We’ve only had a handful of sunny days in the past few weeks - today being one of them. Jan and I went for a 4 hour walk through the city. We stopped at a few places along the way: a church in the Old Town that was built in the 1600’s, a small cozy cafe for hot chocolate and sandwiches, and an embankment on an island south of the center of town, called Södermalm, to take in the beautiful views.
Jan and I seem to be able to fill our days here just fine. I currently have Swedish classes that meet every morning for 2.5 hours. After that we usually try to head to the gym, as we have to work off all of the pastries, the rich food, and the wine that we’ve been consuming for the past couple of months trying out different cafes and restaurants. When we were researching gyms we came upon one that we considered joining, because the price seemed reasonable for our temporary stay. It was called Friskis & Svettis, which is basically frisky and sweaty. It’s a legitimate establishment, but apparently it doesn’t have the same connotation here in Sweden as it probably would in the U.S. Nevertheless, we decided that we would go elsewhere. So we pay more, but our gym’s name is S.A.T.S. which doesn’t mean anything in particular.
After the gym, we sometimes go around the city and see what can be seen or we visit with friends. I’m trying to get a real feel for Swedes and Stockholm city life, and so far I think I’ve soaked up a good bit of culture. I’ve observed some interesting things.
Swedes as a group seem to be very organized. As individuals, it varies, but order in society here seems very important. For instance, when you go into an establishment where you need help at a counter, like a deli, or a bank or something, you always take a number. There’s no confusion as to who is next and no trying to figure out where the end of the line is in busy periods.
Sometimes the Swedes are so orderly that they even keep their indulgences organized. To buy any type of hard alcohol or wine, you have to go to the government-run shops called the System Bolaget. Now, some states in the US also have government-run liquor stores, like Washington. But the difference here is that the alcohol is all on display behind glass, so you don’t just pick up what you want and then go pay for it. You make note of the ID of the alcohol that you want, make your request at the counter (once your number is called of course), and then your order is brought to you and you pay.
One day we went to the immigration office here to see if I could get an extension on my stay here. With no appointment, I was expecting to wait outside the building in a long line and not have any idea how long it would take before I saw someone. This is the experience Jan and I had at Seattle immigration. But here you walk in, you take a number, you fill out your paper work (with directions posted as to how and what you need to fill out) and you have a place to sit and wait for your number to be called. It was a beautiful thing.
Stockholmers’ schedules are made by their laundry. Most people living in the city don’t have washers and dryers in their apartments. When I was a kid, I lived in an apartment that didn’t have a washer and dryer in it either. You had to go into the basement. Usually there were 3 or 4 of each machine and you’d just go and hope that the facility or at least one machine was free for you to use, when it was convenient for you. In Stockholm, you make an appointment to do your laundry. So in our basement there is a special calendar on which you have a special lock that only you can unlock, and you use it to block off a certain 3 or 4 hour period on a certain day. At your designated time, only you can use the facilities, and of course the peak hours are after work or at decent times on weekends. Those times fill up early. And if it’s the only chance you’ll get to do laundry that week, you’re not scheduling anything else during that time. So if a friend calls up and invites you to a party, and it happens to be during your crucial laundry time (i.e. you have no clean underwear), then you tell your friend you can’t make it.
On a few occasions we’ve been to Gotland where Jan’s parents and brother live. Gotland is a large island off the east coast of mainland Sweden in the Baltic Sea. Jan grew up on a 300 acre sheep farm that has been in his family for about 400 years. His brother, Hasse, runs it, and he still has plenty of sheep and some beef cattle. The farm has old cottages on it from the 1700s and 1800s. It also has ruins, like old stones that Vikings once sharpened their swords on. Jan’s parents, Leni and Pelle, live in one of the old cottages about 6 months of the year.
Something I found out on a particular trip is that Jan’s father, Pelle, is considered one of the “old masters” of sheep breeding on Gotland, and he’s even mentioned in a book about the sheep farms of Gotland.
The farm is a great place to be if you want to unwind and just be out in the country, take walks, eat good food and play with the sheep dogs and relax. As a farmer running the farm I’m sure it’s quite different. But visiting is truly a wonderful experience.
Jan’s brother Hasse had his 40th birthday party on one of our visits. It was a fairly big party with about 70 people. I had no idea what to expect, because I’d never been to a Swedish party before, let alone one where there would be a lot of Swedish farmers. I was a little nervous, because, although my Swedish is much improved, I’m still not fluent and I certainly can’t converse at a party with all of the background noise that you get. It totally reminded me of the time in college when I volunteered at the UM Language Center and helped foreign students practice their English. I had invited one or two to a party, and they were a little apprehensive, mentioning that their English wasn’t good enough. “Pish posh!” I would say (not really). I didn’t fully understand why they were so nervous until this particular night.
I helped with preparations before the party, and then waited for the guests. Now, I’m not sure if this is what only the older generation Swedes do at parties (Jan says so), but as people came in the door, they went around the room and introduced themselves to everyone else in the room saying, “Hi my name is so-and-so” (in Swedish of course) to those they didn’t know. That was a little new for me, but fun. During the first part of the party, people were fairly subdued having conversation and eating. By late night, people were pretty happy. Those who had greeted me quietly and said a few words earlier in the evening were now laughing with me boisterously, telling me their life stories, funny jokes, and where they’d been to in the US. One guy came up to me and said, “I don’t speak English. America! I love America!” and that was all, before he left. By 3 AM, I was tired, but what a night.
