...like we all were pretty much just party party time...

OK, sorry for the silence there. I have now been in Göteborg for a couple of weeks, and have been very stressed sorting out endless details - moving into the new apartment, attempting to register my existence as a person living in Sweden (as of yet I still don't exist), enrolling in university, trying to sign up for Swedish classes. And of course, the place where you get your internet sorted out is only open on Wednesday from 5-7pm. But we now have reliable internet, and don't have to scab off some neighbouring wireless, and that means I can finally update this blog! I'll post some stuff about Göteborg soon, but first, seeing as I have it written up already, an account of a party in Stockholm:

There was a girl at the party with only one arm. I was curious as to why, but didn't feel comfortable asking. I imagined being her. You know that every stranger notices, and it would be honest of them to acknowledge the fact, but everyone wants to be cool and pretend that they're not looking. It's kind of like being foreign, everyone asks you the same questions, and you recite the well-practised speech: "Yeah, I'm from Wellington. It's the capital, but not the biggest city. Its a coupl'a hundred thousand; Auckland has 1 million. Auckland was the capital once, but New Zealand's a long thin country like Sweden, and we wanted the capital to be more central... Yeah it gets cold down South, but in the North they grow avocados." [Swedes find this detail particularly fascinating. Axel's father and stepmother grow an olive tree indoors, but it doesn't bear fruit]. It's just a little bit boring that whenever anyone does speak English to me, they ask about New Zealand. I would prefer to get into juicy feminist discussions or talk about Gaza or learn crazy facts about Swedish history, but the language barrier interferes. I did manage to talk about comparative prostituion law and custom with a Dutch guy, but he, coming from Amsterdam, was a little bit uncomfortable with the subject. I guess if Wellington was the sex tourism hub for an entire continent I probably would be uncomfortable too.

Anyway, maybe from now on I'll say I come from the tropical paradise Hawaiiki, only 100m North of Australia, where my parents grow square coconuts and my six brothers hunt drop bears which we make into biltong... No actually, most people here are surprisingly knowledgeable about New Zealand - many have been for a holiday and almost everyone has a brother or a cousin or a friend of a friend who has been there and loved it. Others know someone who has been to Australia and loved it, which is, of course, the same thing. Just like people who upon hearing I was moving to Sweden told me that their mother's friend's son had visited Denmark and had a great time, so obviously I would be very happy in Sweden.

We had a smaller party in Stockholm a couple of days later, where I actually got my exciting feminist discussion with a girl who looked a bit like Hayley Mills but with a deliciously androgenous haircut. She was writing a thesis on the Barabröst ("bara" means both "bare" and "only", and "bröst" means "breast", a double meaning that is deliberately played on) movement, an equal rights movement which argues against a loophole in EU law that allows swimming pools to ban women swimming topless when men are allowed to. So that was interesting.

Innings in Stockholm

For the moment we're living with Axel's mum, Ewa. The wind whistles occasionally through chinks in the door, but in general the house is a sealed unit, bright with candles and red fabric. We've been out a lot, and the one movie night in we had I slept through the whole of 'Octopussy'. Axel's Mum is a Bond fan, but one of her favourite movies is 'Once Were Warriors'. I feel some kind of pressure to explain that while in some ways New Zealand is like that, in many many ways it isn't. In any case, Ewa has made me most welcome in her house and her family, which has been a great comfort.

I've met a couple of times now with Axel's three brothers - Johan, Alfred and Tor - as well as Johan's son Vilgot and Alfred's partner, Cissi, and son, Igor. It is very lively having children running around. Vilgot is four years old and shy, but can be prompted to count to ten in English for me. Igor is an energetic baby of fifteen months that rockets around with gaping grin and bright eyes. Both babies and dogs are extensively wrapped up against the cold here. I wonder what they think about the weather when their parents/owners drag them out? I suspect their noses get cold? It's fun hanging out with the brothers - almost a picture of my own family but with the gender reversed. I like seeing the easiness of the interactions, the stretching comfortable silences and the self-referent jokes that need only be hinted at to send them into gales of laughter. We had the traditional Grimlund Bros meal, pasta carbonara (or "nara" for short), and they all had different ideas about the "proper" recipe. I hope me and my sisters will be so close and easy when we're all grown up.

We took a dinky blue train out to Lidingö, the Stockholm island suburb where Axel grew up, and where the Grimlund clan has grown up for generations. The whole neighbourhood is full of connections and relations and memories, so it felt very important to finally have seen it. Both the experience and the physical place reminded me of my visit to Grosse Pointe in Michigan, exploring my father's childhood haunts while the cold grey winter air evoked the appropriate sense of an abandoned youth preserved in ice. Or perhaps just a hibernating youth. When the seasons change all the children will come out again, running around under the leafy trees in the sunlight.

I went for a walk in Lidingö on my own, past the huge Swedish houses - cubes painted white and red or yellow. I found a forest and went in, hoping for squirrels, but the only sounds among the still trees was the squeak of my cotton stockings rubbing against each other. Exploring in the bare forest I quickly lost any sense of time, and almost of self. The still coldness, the unmoving world, the leaf mud, the sky darkening from grey to dark grey. I honestly don't know how long I was there - I walked past a massive firepit with log seats, a grove of silver birch around a small puddle-lake that reflected the branches like glass, the stone foundations and doorsteps of a family home ruined by fire in the 1930s, and came as though drawn out of the trees onto a stone pier against which the waves of a grey lake slapped harshly. The woods and water are so different from home, evergreen natives and pine and the blue blue Pacific. The nature here is older and colder, and the stones are polished. I felt, not quite "lost, unhappy and at home", but something of that sentiment.

It's funny how when you start to talk about people you end up talking about geography. A girl asked me, "I know Australia and New Zealand are geographically quite different, but are they culturally quite similar?" I said yes, we are quite similar, and yet the impact of geography on the respective cultures cannot be ignored. One could debate this point at length, but it is a roundabout way of saying that I also visited people in Lidingö. I met Axel's "farmor" (in English "fathermother" or paternal grandmother), Inger, a woman of strong character and enthusiasm and a famous name in Swedish journalism and cuisine. Among her many curious possessions was a cabinet full of phallic representations - the penis cupboard. She told me very seriously that each one was attached to a very special memory. Axel and I had dinner with Axel's father Bosse, and his wife Anna-Karin and her two granddaughters, in the house where Axel lived since he was eight (which is next door to Axel's first house). We ate tacos - another traditional Swedish dish.

It's been interesting, being part of a family of total strangers. But they're strangers I've had much pleasure in meeting.

Outings in Stockholm

The last day in Wellington, we packed up the bags and headed for Lyall Bay. We swam in pristine blue water, the bite of the Antarctic currents pleasant under the blazing sun. We could see the airport from the water, and a Swedish flag waving from the roof of a nearby house in the gentle breeze. A good omen, I hope.

Here it is cold and dark. Actually, not so cold. It's been above zero since we got here, and today all of the previous week's snow had finally melted away, and the flakes of ice the size of surf-boards in the channels are gone. But it is dark. Even the light is dark. Dawn comes around 8am, and the sun has set by 4pm. (No wonder my internal clock is buggered). The daylight is grey and fades to purple in the early dusk. The trees are bare leaving groping branches and long-empty bird's nests exposed to the air and the eye.

We went to Mosebacke - a beer-garden popular in summer but in the winter it is abandoned, the green umbrellas folded above the tables like sleeping flowers or caged birds. The houses and stones are not grey, but the pinks and yellows and reds and whites look as though in an old speia photo leeched and bleached by the sun. Leaves scuttle and stick to the infrequent patches of remaning ice. The winding cobbled streets with the old square houses seem as though after a holocaust, except for the candles in every window, a sign of cheer and life and beating out the dark and light that is dark. We look out over the city, and the muddy colours are beautiful. The houses are painted their greying candy colours, the churches are rusty brick with copper rooves turned completely green. The river is purple and covered in brightly lit boats, and birds - white swans, ducks and some remaining geese that like Oscar Wilde's swallow are leaving it a bit long to migrate. I wonder if they have a happy prince, crying for the frostbitten accordion-players in Central Station.

On our way home we stopped into a bakery staffed by a bright-cheeked woman with soft brown hair and breathed in the scent of hot bread and cardomon. I bought a delicious Araksboll, kind of like those chocolate rum balls at home but flavoured with some kind of aniseedy liquer and rolled in chocolate hail.

It was a nice walk.

The other day we went to Gamla Stan (Old Town), an island in the Stockholm archipelago (as they call it in English). We went in the late afternoon, it was dark, lit Christmas trees were in the windows of all the shops. We wandered the tiny cobbled alleys, looking at the tacky tourist shops and coveting Moomintroll and Pippi Longstocking merchandise. We got cold and went into the cellar of a centuries-old building for coffee. Delicious coffee with cardomom and cinnamon on top. Only pity is that espress coffee is around $7 here. In fact, filter coffee is more expensive than a latte back home. One can hardly afford to eat or drink, but at least it encourages you to look. In fact the sensation of being a cash-strapped waif kind of adds to the wintry beauty of the streets - you can window shop, but you know that none of it will be for you.

We also visited the Max Ernst exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. It was really good, but we were so jet-lagged it was a bit over-whelming. It was the last day of the exhibition, and the crowds were jarring. There was a documentary on the artist, but I kept falling asleep. Every time I woke up he had a new wife. But the exhibition was really great. I especially appreciate modern art where both the technical and ideological side are really impressive. I like to think both "I could never have made that with my own hands" and "I could never have thought of that", followed by "I wish I could/had though". To me, that is true art.

Wake up little sparrow, spread your wings and learn to fly

Firstly, I must admit I never quite appreciated enough what Axel went through twice already to be with me in New Zealand. The journey across the Pacific, and then across America, and then across the UK, is pure hell. I thought I was au fait with globe-trotting, but when I come to think of it, I've always travelled to Europe via stop-overs in Australia and Europe. Airports and aeroplanes are a special kind of hell where one becomes some kind of reanimated human raisin with bloodshot eyes.

I thank Cara for Ursula Le Guin's Changing Planes, which provided not only for some excellent entertainment but also an expression of my inner thought: "On the airplane, everyone is locked into a seat with a belt and can move only during very short periods when they are allowed to stand in line waiting to empty their bladders until, just before they reach the toilet cubicle, a nagging loudspeaker harries them back to belted immobility. In the airport, luggage-laden people rush hither and yon through endless corridors, like souls to each of whom the devil has furnished a different, inaccurate map of the escape route from hell... So far, then, the airport and the airplane are equal, in the way that the bottom of one septic tank is equal, all in all, to the bottom of the next septic tank."

We spent 47 hours in travel total, and it was 59 hours between when we woke up in Wellington and when we finally got into bed in Stockholm. We had about six hours of sleep total in between. The Samuel L. Jackson film would have been much scarier if it had been Babies on a Plane. Hideous hideous experiences, with even more hideous plane breakfasts and overpriced airport sandwiches, but at least I had an excuse to watch endless chick-flicks and light comedies- Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2 (I actually cried), How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

I now know the true meaning of jet-lag, proof positive that if God had meant people to fly he'd have given us wings.