National Dag

Last Sunday was Swedens national day. The nearest I can compare it to is the fourth of july with lots of swedish flags and patriotism.

We went in till stan, into Ystad to see the celebration, such as it was. We started by österportstorget and followed the brass band (in which Rolf plays in) and the old fire department (in shiny metal helmets and everything) and the people dressed in swedish folkdräkt, folk-clothing. We all ended up at stortorget where there was a long speech about the greatness of Sweden and Ystad followed by the national anthem Du Gamla, Du Fria, (Ye Old, Ye Free).

After that there was was something of a carnival near the old church. They had lots of vendors selling things like candy, souvenirs and ice cream. There was a stage set up where they had some music going. They had an oriental dance demonstration and a giant bag of balloons which they turned up and released all of them up into the air. There was even a dog obedience competition.

Avskedsfest

Last Saturday was Mr. Chad Balls going-away party. Chad was first introduced to me as "the other Rotary Exchange Student in Ystad". Today he is not only my fellow exchange student, he's one of my close friends. The theme of the party was "Dress Like A European".

I decided to go as a Frenchman. I think Chad was expecting me to be a Russian because I study Russian all the time. Unfortunately, Russians are really more a fur-coat wearing kind of people, which doesn't really go with the summer weather. I threw a costume together earlier that day: a striped shirt, a vest and a pair of black pants which I rolled up at the bottoms like I've seen Valou do. Lena dug out a berrete that Kristine got while she was in Paris and suggested a scarf. I found my old red hankerchief and tied it into a kind of bow. The final touch was a fake mustasch that Chad got earlier. All together, it looked a little something like this:



I went in on the bus. It was really strange when I got on in Glemminge because there was another Frenchman on board. I assumed that he was also going to the party, rightly as it turned out.



The party was supposed to start when I arrived at six o' clock, but it was mostly only his adult guests to got there then. It was his last host-family and some friends of his current host-parents. Chad's host dad was dressed as a German with leather shorts and high stockings.

Everyone was assembled at around seven. The Australians finally came after getting a little lost in Ystad and Filip and Marcus, the Swedes in attendance, were there a little after that.

I, of course, was a Frenchman, but what about everyone else? Well, Chad was dressed as a Swede with tight jeans and flattened hair. Sarah and Teagan had togas and Emily had a vaguely spanish dress. Filip was also a Frenchman and Marcus was... well, I'm not sure what he was. He just had a really nice suit on. We decided that he looked like Barney Stinson from "How I Met Your Mother".





We started with dinner; bread with cheese and butter, salad, potato salad, turkey sliced up like lunch meat but intended to be eaten alone and a whole rullebär, wheelbarrow, of drinks.





After dinner we sat around and talked. Filip had a baguette with him as part of his costume. I think it was really only intended to be a prop, but Chad must still have been hungry because he had a few bites. Then Marcus had a bite. Then Filip said that it was a year old. No more bites were taken.

We had a kings dessert of pies and cakes and muffins and ice cream, but I was far too full to put away any more food. There was also a lot of candy sitting out.

After a while it was time for the Australians to go, so I went with them to the station. When I got back it was quite dark and I found everyone playing poker betting the candies they hadn't eaten. I joined in as a spectator for a while. Finally we decided to watch a movie. It was quite late then, Lena picked me up at eleven thirty while the movie was only about a half hour in.

A Slice In Time

At this very moment I am sitting on my bed, covers askew, with a laptop on my lap. There is an old, beat-up nylon string guitar resting it's neck beside me. The bedside table is littered with papers. Amongst this rör, disarray, lie the essential things that I need every day. My bus card, my phone and my keys which are guarded by a red fish skeleton from Bo-Thomas. The trashcan is overflowing, I am a messy person. Iz is singing over the rainbow on the tv in the next room. I'm relaxing in my mjuka byxor, sweatpants. My brain is leaking algebra. It's like drinking from a fire hose. I've started messing with my hair to alieve my consternation so now I have Dragon Ball hair.

There are two weeks left of school, and we are halfway through one of them. On Thursday, Emily is going to ta studenten, graduate from gymnasiet. We're all going to go to Eslöv to see it. I can't stay too long for the after-party because I have Swedish tomorrow at eight o' clock in the morning. I am not a fan of mornings.

Today I only had one class, as per usual. Valentin and Caienna came in the afternoon and I showed them around Ystad and our school. They were duly impressed by the abundance of plant life in the halls. I showed them the ferries that go to Poland and talked about Wallander for a while. We went to Språkvärlden, my favorite place in the school as well. Then we all went to Gabe's house and played Mario Kart.

Afterwards I came home on the bus and watched Scrubs. I had a dinner of reheated köttbullar och potatismos, meatballs and mashed potatoes. I tried to learn some math but my attention was quickly taken by German and Russian. Every day, transparent.com does a "Word-Of-The Day" in several languages, including Arabic, Irish and English for Portugese speakers.

They also have a few blogs. The subject of the German blog was Lena's victory in the Eurovision Song Contest with "Satelite". She sings about the similarities between a satelite and her love of that ambiguous "you" who stars in every love song ever written. I thought it was a good song but Lena has kind of a whiney voice and seems unable to decisively choose which accent to sing in. From the blogpost I learned such words as "entdecken", "erreichen" and "Stimmung". They mean "discover", "achieve" and "mood", respectively.

Which leaves us at the present. I have now moved to the living room table, in the hopes that a chair will instill me with some kind of work ethic. My hair is still Goku-style. And I still cannot divide polynomials.

Kivik och Stenshuvud

The weekend after Växjö we went east, to Stenshuvud. This was the second time I've been there, the first time was with familjen Broberg in the summer.









There were even some Highland cows there!!



From Stenshuvud we went to Knäbäckshusen, where the Sankt Nikolai church is.

We happened to be there while there was a wedding going on:









Loppa went swimming.



On the way home.

Växjö

This week I was in Växjö in Småland, where Lena and myself on did a little släktforskning, family research, and touristed about the countryside for three days. I went to bed on Tuesday night with my bags packed and my camera batteries charging silently in a nook*.

*I think that we should preserve obscure words like nook and cranny and dactyloid** and tintintabulation*** to add interest to our language. And to confuse Swedish people.

**adjective: “Like a finger”

***noun: “a tinkling, jingling sound”, invented my Edgar Allen Poe

- - Wednsday - -
We got up early to catch the 7.30 bus from Glemminge to Ystad. We were at the station about 20 minutes later along with all the other kids who were going to school. In Sweden, there are no school buses; they just take the regular bus. All students get a JoJo card so they can travel on the train and bus for free. Lena was shocked when I told her that we have no real public bus or train system and that almost everyone has a driver’s license.

I took out money for the trip at the atm and then we waited at the station for our train. I noticed that they are rebuilding the platform, it seems to be some kind of project Skånetrafiken is doing. They also fixed up the one in Svarte a month or two ago. On the train to Malmö there were lots of noisy preenagers, as I call them. I think they were going on a class trip to Gothenburg. I tried to sleep for the hour-long ride. From there we got on the Växjö train. I kept myself amused by reading Danish newspapers, Danish is very similar to Swedish if you read it, but it is very hard for Swedes to understand when spoken.



We passed by lots of fields on the way. There are these flowers called “raps” that bloom this time of year. They are bright yellow, and all over the Skånska countryside. They harvest them for their oil, which is commonly used as a substitute for olive oil. My host family prefers it because it doesn’t taste as strongly as the latter.





As the train continued north, I could see the fields giving way to lakes and forest.





We met up with Börje at Växjö station and he took us to the apartment that we would be staying. Börje is a friend of Lena's who works in Växjö during the week and was our tour guide for the three days. They’ve known each other a long time. They did Scout Camps together and she used to babysit their kids and whatnot****. One more thing about Börje: to see him, you would probably assume that he's in his forties, but he's actually 62. It’s mainly due to the fact that he has extremely stubborn hair pigment. Blew my mind all over the proverbial wall.

(****Every time I think or say “and whatnot” I cringe a little and scream “HOORRRMMMAAANN” to myself (not out loud of course). This is because my driver’s education teacher, the venerable Mr. Horman, says this phrase (n’ whanno’) all the time. A friend of mine once documented the number of times he said it in a driving session and stopped counting after one hundred. Or so he claims.)

He took us to an apartment that his company owns and we put away our stuff and got settled in. Then we went for lunch at Spice n' Rice. It was a small restaurant, packed to the roof with people. The only thing separating the kitchen from the tables was the counter so you could see them making everything being made. While we were there, we looked at my rather complicated family tree. After we had eaten, I was conscripted as the post-lunch coffee fetcher. Swedes are constantly consuming kaffe, coffee, even when it’s sweltering outside. According to statistics, Sweden is the world’s second biggest consumer of coffee, Finland being number one. I have to say that I think statistics did a bang-up job on that one.

These are some photos of downtown Växjö:









After lunch we went driving through the småländskt, landskap, Smålands countryside. We visited a lot, (once more for emphasis), a lot of old churches. At Kalsvik, we found a grave marked "Lundin", one of my distant relatives! We searched the rest of the graveyard but they were the only ones we could find. The church itself was beautiful, both inside and out. I imagine that my ancestors must have gone to that church on Sundays. It’s a strange feeling, walking the same ground and breathing the same air as a forefather or foremother.











As we drove through the countryside, Börje and Lena pointed out typical smålandska things. First of all, there are lots of trees and lakes there. "Mycket skog", they said over and over again. Småland is also known for älgar, moose, although we didn’t see a single one. They showed me a typical house in Småland with red walls and white window frames. There is a type of fence called gärdsgård that is made by stacking thin logs diagonally that is often found in Småland. There was also lots of blå och gul, blue and yellow, the national colors of Sweden hanging from the windows and flying from flagpoles. In Skåne, they hang Swedish flags too, but Skånska flags are more common. It’s a Nordic cross, with combination of colors from the Danish and Swedish flags. This is probably because Skåne was a part of Denmark until 1658. They are really neither Swedish nor Danish and are kind of proud of it.







Småland is also known as "Glasriket", or "The Kingom of Crystal". There are lots of glassworks; one of the biggest is Kosta Boda. But I’ll come to that later. As for Växjö itself, Börje called it "Rundellens Stad", "The City of Round-abouts". There were certainly many of those. There was a rundell that had a pattern like a soccer ball. Lena noticed that, they had built a small railing inside the round-about since she had been there last. She noticed this because last time she drove straight over the thing without thinking. Växjö is a very beautiful city, with lots of trees and water, giving it a less urban look. There are about 60,000 inhabitants, which makes it roughly four times bigger than Ystad, about nine times bigger than St. Johns and over 171 times bigger than Glemmingebro.

Artwork on a building:





We came back a few hours later. Lena and I went back to the apartment and watched a bit of TV for an hour before we all went to a pub called Harry's for dinner. They had American and English food there. They had about three different kinds of ribs amongst other things. I had a burger. Then we went on a walk around the park, which was really beautiful. There is a lake right by the path and a fountain that is built into the water. We passed by Utvandrarnas Hus, the Emigrants Museum, a couple of sculptures and came through a garden before we arrived back at the apartment.

- - Thursday - -

We woke up fairly early at nine and had breakfast at McDonalds. My apologies to my mother the dietitian. Our next stop was Utvandrarnas Hus, The Emigrant Museum. They had a lot of really interesting exhibits. There was one all about the cost of immigration (often more than 10 years savings, at the least), where they immigrated from (mostly Småland, like the Lundins), where they immigrated to (the majority to New York, Minnesota and Chicago) and what it was like looking for work in America (with limited knowledge of English and little to no education, especially for the women). There was an exhibit about famous and successful Swedish emigrants such as Swan Turnblad the founder of Svenska-Amerikanska Tidningen, The Swedish-American Times and founder of the Swedish-American Institute that still stands today and which my family is a member of. There was a separate room devoted entirely to Vilhelm Moberg, who wrote a number of successful books about Swedes in America and immigration.











Vilhelm Moberg:



What I almost think was the most interesting was the sheer number of Swedes who emigrated, something like 1.3 million who left their homeland or one fourth of the whole country’s population. It has been calculated that if they hadn’t gone, the current population of Sweden would be 13 million instead of 9 million.
Unfortunately, the museum is being closed down this August due to a lack of funds. Hopefully they will be able to keep it running for many years to come. I’d like to show my family around some time.

Nearby Utvandrarnas Hus is the Glass Museum. We spent a good hour in there looking at various exhibits. There was one by a Danish artist called Vildsvin and Roboter, Wild Pigs and Robots. Or something. It was glass molded into horse heads, human heads, human torsos and computer components carefully arranged into a state of disarray. There was an exhibit with old brand names and household products, many of which Lena recognized from her childhood. There was even an old Swedish cavalry uniform. Outside the Museum there were some traditional Småland houses with turf roofs and even a windmill. It was strange to see all these old houses with a backdrop of the train station and the modern Växjö with its neon “Open” signs.









We ate lunch at a weird little place called Café de Luxe. It had an interesting vibe to it with battered old school benches as seats and black and white photos of people with mustasches. The food was good; fish, hummus, vegetables. It’s what’s called Huskarlskost, housemansfood or traditional Swedish food, plus with a bit of a foreign twist.

After lunch we drove out from Växjö to Kosta Boda, a glassworks. We went onto the working floor and watched as they took molten glass out from the furnaces and rolled, blew and shaped it into wineglasses and bottles. The glassmaking school was just across from the main building where we saw students shaping glass as well. There was a little exhibition with a lot of interesting pieces by some of their more famous artists too.









After that we went into the Kosta Boda store where they have countless plates, candle holders, pitchers, jugs, glasses and bowls. We had a little bit of fika but then it started to rain. We moved to the shelter of the overhang. they retracted it for some reason, so we had to retreat for a second time into the safety of the café. With fika done, we piled into the car with our shopping bags. Börje tried to find another, smaller glassworks, but it was closed. On the way back Börje showed us Linné University, named after Carl von Linneus who came from Växjö. It’s right outside Växjö in its own little area.

We had mediocre Chinese food for dinner and tog det lugnt, took it easy for the rest of the evening.

- - Friday - -

Friday was relatively uneventful, we woke up later than usual, ate at a café and went window shopping before we got back into the car and drove back to Glemminge. Loppa was very happy to see Lena again.