Sometimes it seems as though Sweden is a country that provides everything. The tap water here is of good quality, and many people drink from the taps in the bathrooms on campus. University facilities management is obviously aware of the fact, and so in addition to the soap dispenser, paper towel dispenser and toilet paper dispenser, there is also a paper cup dispenser!
There is always an ecological and/or vegan and/or lactose/gluten/soy free version of evertyhing. Equality is staunchly defended - especially gender equality and equality for people with disabilities. Our neighbour in the apartment is in a wheelchair, and when she moved in the company that owns the apartment redid the entire kitchen so she could reach, at their own expense. There is an ethics council that monitors advertisements and lays charges against ones that involve bikini-clad women.
And yet, I am beginning to realise what it is like to be an immigrant. The word seems a weird fit - "immigrants" are people with different skin colours and different religions and different ways of preparing food. In that sense I am lucky, I don't suffer any social prejudice because I am of Western European descent and I pass very well as a "Swede" until I open my mouth (again, a strange idea given that there are many people born in Sweden that cannot shake the immigrant image due to the colour of their skin). But I do now realise how hard it is to start a life in a new country, just from a legal point of view. Aside from the hassles in getting a personal identity number, a bank account, a doctor, enrolling in university and getting my New Zealand degree accepted, I am finding it very difficult to make a living.
The language situation is serious. Almost everyone speaks English, and most people enjoy a chance to practice, so socially it isn't a problem. But I'm beginning to dread that little eye flicker that happens when someone in a shop or on the street says something to me in Swedish, and I have to explain that I don't understand, and you can see their face change as they adjust to English. And it is practically impossible to get a job without knowing Swedish, especially seeing as anyone that wants to employ someone who speaks English can take their pick of hundreds of Swedes who speak both. I went to a job fair the other day, and went up to every table asking "do you require people who speak English?" to no avail. But I will begin SFI (Swedish for Immigrants) classes on Monday, so hopefully I will learn quickly. The Swedes, like Maori, pronounce the letter "i" as we would pronounce the letter "e". So when I was looking to sign up for SFI classes I typed "sfe" into google, which kept trying to direct me to medical pages about "supercritical fluid extraction".
My other ray of hope for procuring money was the student allowance and loan from an organisation called CSN. I had been told by the migration board and by the Swedish Consulate that my residency permit gave me pretty much all the rights of a Swedish citizen, including the student allowance, but irritatingly CSN have decided that I can't get anything until I become a permanent resident (which will take two years). So much for getting paid to do my Masters (though at least I do still get to do it free). What really makes me angry is that they are willing to waive this rule if I have a baby with Axel, or if Axel was from another EU country. Basically, if I was cohabiting with someone from the EU, but not Sweden, then they will pay me to study here, but if I'm living with a Swede then no dice (unless I give birth). I hate them! I honestly don't know why they're so suspicious of people pretending to be in a relationship with a Swede just so they can move to Sweden for a better life - it would be better to move here with your Estonian husband!
But I suppose it is just because we are lucky in New Zealand too with good living standards. Sometimes I think about what I gave up to live here - scholarships (I have to pay back $6000 dollars because I left New Zealand), a job, a home, family, friends, my language, and a sense of belonging and entitlement: a citizenship. But I guess I have to look at what I gained too - first and foremost, I can live with the person I love, and it means everything to feel his back against mine in the night, and his smile over lunch. And I gain Europe, if I can ever afford to see it, and free education, and opportunities to expand my horizons and myself. But sometimes I just want to belong again.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Animal Collective
1. Reindeer in the supermarket?
2. Swedish pony
3. & 4. Depressed ugly penguins in a tiny enclosure
5. & 6. Fish at Universeum
7. Anemones
8. Lionfish... ooh poisonous!
9. & 10. Shark with saw-nose
11. & 12. doo-doo... doo-doo... doo-doo doodoo doodoodoodoo
13. Exciting bird
14. Me kissing a monkey
15. What the monkey turned into after I kissed it.
16. Something I would never kiss.
17. Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Tastes and Tunes
1. Vegan semlor
2. Vegans and semlor
3. Semlor from 7-Eleven in the sun.
4. Hamburger CU
5. Hamburger picnic
6. Coffee and delicious promotional chocolate thing with gold leaf sprinkles from the university cafe
7. & 8. Cooking kanelbulle on the floor because our kitchen is too small
9.The finished (and unfinished) product!
10. Intimate Italian dinner date
11. Italian meatball CU
13. Coffee at the Tintin Cafe
14. Axel demonstrates the traditional way to eat semlor.
TASTES AND TUNES!!!
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Truly Scrumptious
It's been a pleasant week.
It was a grey day today, but I'm writing here sitting on the thin mattress with my laptop perched on a box in front of me (best ergonomic solution) and our pink lamp and candles glowing and flickering in the dim light. Our main light wasn't properly fixed to the wall, and came out, and is too high up the wall for us to reach, even standing on the one chair we have. We've asked to borrow a ladder from the janitor, but no luck so far. But that's okay, because we have candles. I noticed as soon as I came here that there were candles everywhere, in every house, on every table in every restaurant (including the university cafetaria, which incidentally is also run by Eurest - but with much much much better food than at Vic! Swedes always have a hot lunch, so they offer an all you can eat salad buffet along with the hot meal of the day. However, it does cost about $15). I now know the reason behind the candles - to beat out the gloom, both meterological and emotional.
On Friday the sun was out and spring was in the air. People were thronging the streets and even sitting outdoors to sip their coffees. Axel took the afternoon off his intensive study schedule and we made kanelbullar (cinnamon buns) and listened to pop music while the sun streamed in our windows. The buns were quite simply divine. A bit like cinnamon pinwheels, but the cardamom-flavoured dough makes them a bit differrent. I'll put the recipe at the end of this post. Swedish baking is amazing. I developed an addiction to Araksbollar, truffles flavoured with cognac with a crispy chocolatey coating rolled in chocolate hail. But as I'm too poor I had to kick the habit and only buy the occasional one from the supermarket (where the cognac is just flavouring).
Also rating highly in the baking scene at the moment are semlor (or Fat Tuesday buns), in preparation for Fat Tuesday (fettisdagen) on the 24th of this month. Semlor are cardamom flavoured buns with the tops cut off and hollowed out and stuffed with mandelmass (a paste made from sugar and almonds) and festooned with whipped cream. Finally the top of the bun is perched jauntily back on top. Smaskens! (Swedish word for "yummy"). We had a very convivial afternoon a couple of weeks ago making vegan semlor as Oscar, one of our new friends, is a keen vegan. The supermarkets here cater amazingly for people with a conscience - almost everything is available in "ecological" variety (which means some kind of combinaiton of fair-trade and environmentally friendly), and you can even get a vegan version of the kind of whipped cream that comes in a spray-bottle!
(Side note - Oscar had heard about the vegan scene in NZ from internet forums, but had been led to believe that there was an unproportional number of vegansexuals in NZ. He'd also heard that the major social problems in New Zealand was drug abuse and incest. He'd met a girl who had been a door-to-door salesperson in New Zealand, who had reported that incest was not only very common in New Zealand, but that everyone was quite open about it and took it as just another fact of life. I don't know where this girl was working?!)
I've been paying the odd visit to cafes - attempting to make friends, or meeting with my study group from university (tutorials here don't involve a tutor. Instead you meet with your group in a cafe and discuss things). Thankfully Göteborg has a cafe culture similar to Wellington, and I've been having fun trying out new ones - some sunken below the footpath, identifiable only by the twinkling of candles and fairy-lights; one done up like a doll's house inside, with immaculate china, French pastries, wrought iron and boiled sweets; one vividly orange with geometric prints and vibrantly coloured couches and barstools; there's even one (on Esperanto street) which has a different language/languages for each day of the week so people can come and practice. And I found a supermarket which stocks Dilmah tea, so I think I can survive this country now.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kanelbullar Recipe
DOUGH
75g butter
1 cup milk
25g yeast (here they have yeast in a kind of cake, rather than dried. Not sure what to do with the dried stuff, but welcome any suggestions).
50mL sugar (1/5 cup)
1 tsp cardemom
1/4 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups flour (or more)
Heat butter on the stove until soft. Add milk, cardemom, and salt. Heat till it feels warm when you stick a finger in, but not hot. Put yeast and sugar in a mixing bowl, then add butter mixture. Stir until yeast and sugar are dissolved. Add flour slowly until dough has the right consistency, and knead a little with your hands or a wooden spoon (dough shouldn't be too dry, but should lift cleanly off the bottom of the bowl once kneaded). Leave to rise for 30 mins.
FILLING
50g butter (room temperature)
50mL sugar (1/5 cup)
1 tsp (or more) cinnamon
1 egg
Roll out the dough very thin and spread with the butter. Evenly sprinkle over the sugar and cinnamon. Roll into a log and slice width-wise into small buns. Put the buns spiral side up (and down) on a baking paper lined oven tray. Glaze with the egg and bake for 8-10 mins (or until browned) at 225 degrees in the middle of the oven.
It was a grey day today, but I'm writing here sitting on the thin mattress with my laptop perched on a box in front of me (best ergonomic solution) and our pink lamp and candles glowing and flickering in the dim light. Our main light wasn't properly fixed to the wall, and came out, and is too high up the wall for us to reach, even standing on the one chair we have. We've asked to borrow a ladder from the janitor, but no luck so far. But that's okay, because we have candles. I noticed as soon as I came here that there were candles everywhere, in every house, on every table in every restaurant (including the university cafetaria, which incidentally is also run by Eurest - but with much much much better food than at Vic! Swedes always have a hot lunch, so they offer an all you can eat salad buffet along with the hot meal of the day. However, it does cost about $15). I now know the reason behind the candles - to beat out the gloom, both meterological and emotional.
On Friday the sun was out and spring was in the air. People were thronging the streets and even sitting outdoors to sip their coffees. Axel took the afternoon off his intensive study schedule and we made kanelbullar (cinnamon buns) and listened to pop music while the sun streamed in our windows. The buns were quite simply divine. A bit like cinnamon pinwheels, but the cardamom-flavoured dough makes them a bit differrent. I'll put the recipe at the end of this post. Swedish baking is amazing. I developed an addiction to Araksbollar, truffles flavoured with cognac with a crispy chocolatey coating rolled in chocolate hail. But as I'm too poor I had to kick the habit and only buy the occasional one from the supermarket (where the cognac is just flavouring).
Also rating highly in the baking scene at the moment are semlor (or Fat Tuesday buns), in preparation for Fat Tuesday (fettisdagen) on the 24th of this month. Semlor are cardamom flavoured buns with the tops cut off and hollowed out and stuffed with mandelmass (a paste made from sugar and almonds) and festooned with whipped cream. Finally the top of the bun is perched jauntily back on top. Smaskens! (Swedish word for "yummy"). We had a very convivial afternoon a couple of weeks ago making vegan semlor as Oscar, one of our new friends, is a keen vegan. The supermarkets here cater amazingly for people with a conscience - almost everything is available in "ecological" variety (which means some kind of combinaiton of fair-trade and environmentally friendly), and you can even get a vegan version of the kind of whipped cream that comes in a spray-bottle!
(Side note - Oscar had heard about the vegan scene in NZ from internet forums, but had been led to believe that there was an unproportional number of vegansexuals in NZ. He'd also heard that the major social problems in New Zealand was drug abuse and incest. He'd met a girl who had been a door-to-door salesperson in New Zealand, who had reported that incest was not only very common in New Zealand, but that everyone was quite open about it and took it as just another fact of life. I don't know where this girl was working?!)
I've been paying the odd visit to cafes - attempting to make friends, or meeting with my study group from university (tutorials here don't involve a tutor. Instead you meet with your group in a cafe and discuss things). Thankfully Göteborg has a cafe culture similar to Wellington, and I've been having fun trying out new ones - some sunken below the footpath, identifiable only by the twinkling of candles and fairy-lights; one done up like a doll's house inside, with immaculate china, French pastries, wrought iron and boiled sweets; one vividly orange with geometric prints and vibrantly coloured couches and barstools; there's even one (on Esperanto street) which has a different language/languages for each day of the week so people can come and practice. And I found a supermarket which stocks Dilmah tea, so I think I can survive this country now.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kanelbullar Recipe
DOUGH
75g butter
1 cup milk
25g yeast (here they have yeast in a kind of cake, rather than dried. Not sure what to do with the dried stuff, but welcome any suggestions).
50mL sugar (1/5 cup)
1 tsp cardemom
1/4 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups flour (or more)
Heat butter on the stove until soft. Add milk, cardemom, and salt. Heat till it feels warm when you stick a finger in, but not hot. Put yeast and sugar in a mixing bowl, then add butter mixture. Stir until yeast and sugar are dissolved. Add flour slowly until dough has the right consistency, and knead a little with your hands or a wooden spoon (dough shouldn't be too dry, but should lift cleanly off the bottom of the bowl once kneaded). Leave to rise for 30 mins.
FILLING
50g butter (room temperature)
50mL sugar (1/5 cup)
1 tsp (or more) cinnamon
1 egg
Roll out the dough very thin and spread with the butter. Evenly sprinkle over the sugar and cinnamon. Roll into a log and slice width-wise into small buns. Put the buns spiral side up (and down) on a baking paper lined oven tray. Glaze with the egg and bake for 8-10 mins (or until browned) at 225 degrees in the middle of the oven.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Slings and arrows of outrageous Vikings
I’ve been in Göteborg for a couple of weeks now, and though it has mostly been fun and exciting, I think that my first month in Sweden will go on record as one of the most frustrating, bewildering, and stressful ones of my entire life. Let me count the ways:
Bureaucracy
The thing about Sweden is everything remotely official – from university academics and administrators to the tax department to our landlord company – is only open for a certain two hours on a certain weekday, and different branches of the same organisation will be open at different times, and if those hours don’t work for you then that’s the way the kanelbulle crumbles. So, where in New Zealand I’d set aside a Monday to do administrative chores, here you have to set aside little bits of days over the course of a month in order to achieve everything. This has been exacerbated by the fact that in order to fulfil almost all of the bureaucratic activities required of me in order for me to become a recognised student/resident/person I need to have a personnummer (Swedish identity number), which I applied for my first Monday in Sweden and was promised to arrive within 10-14 days. It has been over three weeks now, and I have spent at least NZ$50 in phone credit waiting in telephone queues where some canned woman’s voice comes on and says in a professional and reassuring manner “you are now… sixty-ninth… in the queue. Please continue to hold, and we will be with you as soon as we can.”
Apartment
When we first arrived in Göteborg it was a Sunday, and the accommodation office isn’t open on Sunday (not much is really – Axel told me it’s out of respect for church-goers, but I reckon it’s because the unions in Sweden secured double pay for those who work on weekends), so even though we’d already paid rent on our apartment, we couldn’t pick up the keys until noon the next day. We slept over at a friend-of-a-friend’s that night, but the following day was a total saga. They couldn’t find the keys… probably the last tenant still had them… here’s the spare in the meantime… we’ll send a locksmith over to change the locks… please be at the apartment at 2 o’clock to pick up the new keys from the locksmith… And I couldn’t even help Axel move all our stuff to the apartment at 2 o’clock because it turned out...
English Exam
... I had to take a five-hour exam to prove I was competent in written English, and the only chance to take the exam was at 1 o’clock that afternoon. I arrived breathless at the exam hall hoping to find someone I could explain to that English was my mother tongue, and actually I had already finished an entire degree written in English, and did I really have to do this test? But no such luck, just a vast exam room full of people sitting various tests, and a couple of elderly people who were there to make sure nobody cheated and knew little else. I didn’t even have a chance to ask how to register for the exam before I was ushered to a seat. It was like one of those surreal dreams where you find yourself sitting an exam, and you’re not sure why or what you’re doing there. All the instructions were read out in Swedish, so I had to put up my hand to figure out if we were allowed to start yet, and which answer booklets to fill in. There were 210 questions on vocabulary and grammar, all multiple-choice. There was an additional translation section, where you were given a sentence in Swedish and asked to translate to English. This just confirmed the bizarreness of the situation – I was unable to prove my command of English in the English exam because I didn’t understand Swedish! Translation section aside, I finished in two hours, and spent another hour checking I’d coloured in the right corresponding boxes. It took me four trams to get home, once because I rode the right number tram in the wrong direction, and twice more because I couldn’t figure out how to purchase a ticket (instructions in Swedish) and had to get off the tram every time an inspector got on (or else face a four hundred dollar fine).
Apartment
When we moved in there was also lots wrong with the apartment itself, but these have eventually been sorted out, and we have a lovely shower. The only truly disappointing thing is that the kitchen is in the hallway, and the oven is the size of a toy oven, with only two elements. But it is relatively big (45 square metres), and in a good area. The view of the canal is beautiful, and it’s only a 25 minute walk to university. We have christened the apartment “Staffan”, which is pronounced kind of like “stuff-un”, so it is a fun little Swenglish word pun lame thing there. Next to the random pillar which is seriously in the way, we have a weird little room a bit like a walk-in wardrobe which we have christened “Gubbängen”, “gubbe” is Swedish for cute old man, or generic character, and ängen means “the meadow” (put it together and you get “the cute-old-man-meadow). It is the name of a Metro stop in Stockholm. The stops on the Stockholm meadow feature at least six different dialect words for meadow, and you can also find Fruängen (the wife-meadow). The way the station-names make it sound, it seems like taking the Metro in Stockholm will be a magical rainbow journey to all kinds of wacky meadows where you will encounter numerous cute old men and wives. Oh, and the Aga factory. For a picture from the real Gubbängen, see this (the title translates as "Exciting Sunday in Gubbängen").
We’re going a bit crazy in our apartment in that we have almost no furniture. We’re lucky in that we’re going to get virtually an entire apartment worth of stuff from Axel’s Mum. Her job moved to Gotland, an island off the east coast of Sweden, because that’s what government departments do in order to inject economy into dying towns – they move government departments there. She set up a second apartment there with all new things, but only went there on two occasions before deciding it wasn’t for her. She’s even found one of her friends to drive the stuff from this island on the east coast all the way to Göteborg on the west coast. But we don’t get it until late February. So in the mean time, we have some plates and knives and plastic cups, but little else. We have two single mattresses, of significantly different thicknesses, and one single duvet. I have been sleeping on the thicker, more comfortable mattress, but Axel gets the duvet. I sleep under three empty duvet covers, which is almost exactly like sleeping under three sheets. We are having picnics on the floor everyday – Axel lights candles and lays out the checked teal towel on the floor to make it a real picnic. He’s great like that.
Initially our Spartan existence was somewhat alleviated by the recycling room, where people dump furniture they don’t want in a corner next to the skips for cardboard and glass and tins. Thanks to this source, we now have a pink lamp that glows like the sunset and really changes the mood of the whole apartment; two coffee tables; one chair; one Oriental cushion; some wall-mounted shelves; three Gothic paintings of English scenery; two mosaic garden pots; one oddly-shaped mirror; one light fitting; one silver fruit bowl; one large plastic flower decoration which looks very elegant tucked into the pipes that run up one wall; and a really ugly 2004 trophy for (land) hockey. We also have a beautiful mug and bowl set with images from Tintin in Shanghai, which we got for $7.50 at the Salvation army. So now we have a mug. And we found a toaster and jug set selling for about $36 because they were the demo ones in the store. Axel's grandmother also gifted us the money to buy a nice blender, which we love. So we were sort of happy for a while, until...
Painters
... the painters came. After finally getting some stuff and making a home, we were informed that our apartment was going to be painted this week Monday to Friday, and we were required to move all our stuff into the middle of the room so that it could be covered in brown paper. We were expected to find somewhere else to sleep for the week. We struck a compromise with the painters, who have agreed to let us sleep in Gubbängen, which is big enough to fit one and a half of our mattresses. So Axel has been sleeping on the little mattress all mushed into a corner. All our clothes and furniture is under the brown paper, so we have to go foraging around trying not to disturb anything. And the foraging is done in the dark, as we have no light-switches or electrical sockets while they are painting, and we are required to leave the house at 8am (while it is still dark) and cannot return until 4pm (by which point it is dark). It is shit.
NB: Just got my results from the English exam! 119 out of 120 for vocabulary, 85 oout of 90 for grammar! The woman who told me the results said, "I've never seen anything like it!" They summarise your marks into points, so I got 20 out of 20. Easiest (if strangest) exam ever.
Bureaucracy
The thing about Sweden is everything remotely official – from university academics and administrators to the tax department to our landlord company – is only open for a certain two hours on a certain weekday, and different branches of the same organisation will be open at different times, and if those hours don’t work for you then that’s the way the kanelbulle crumbles. So, where in New Zealand I’d set aside a Monday to do administrative chores, here you have to set aside little bits of days over the course of a month in order to achieve everything. This has been exacerbated by the fact that in order to fulfil almost all of the bureaucratic activities required of me in order for me to become a recognised student/resident/person I need to have a personnummer (Swedish identity number), which I applied for my first Monday in Sweden and was promised to arrive within 10-14 days. It has been over three weeks now, and I have spent at least NZ$50 in phone credit waiting in telephone queues where some canned woman’s voice comes on and says in a professional and reassuring manner “you are now… sixty-ninth… in the queue. Please continue to hold, and we will be with you as soon as we can.”
Apartment
When we first arrived in Göteborg it was a Sunday, and the accommodation office isn’t open on Sunday (not much is really – Axel told me it’s out of respect for church-goers, but I reckon it’s because the unions in Sweden secured double pay for those who work on weekends), so even though we’d already paid rent on our apartment, we couldn’t pick up the keys until noon the next day. We slept over at a friend-of-a-friend’s that night, but the following day was a total saga. They couldn’t find the keys… probably the last tenant still had them… here’s the spare in the meantime… we’ll send a locksmith over to change the locks… please be at the apartment at 2 o’clock to pick up the new keys from the locksmith… And I couldn’t even help Axel move all our stuff to the apartment at 2 o’clock because it turned out...
English Exam
... I had to take a five-hour exam to prove I was competent in written English, and the only chance to take the exam was at 1 o’clock that afternoon. I arrived breathless at the exam hall hoping to find someone I could explain to that English was my mother tongue, and actually I had already finished an entire degree written in English, and did I really have to do this test? But no such luck, just a vast exam room full of people sitting various tests, and a couple of elderly people who were there to make sure nobody cheated and knew little else. I didn’t even have a chance to ask how to register for the exam before I was ushered to a seat. It was like one of those surreal dreams where you find yourself sitting an exam, and you’re not sure why or what you’re doing there. All the instructions were read out in Swedish, so I had to put up my hand to figure out if we were allowed to start yet, and which answer booklets to fill in. There were 210 questions on vocabulary and grammar, all multiple-choice. There was an additional translation section, where you were given a sentence in Swedish and asked to translate to English. This just confirmed the bizarreness of the situation – I was unable to prove my command of English in the English exam because I didn’t understand Swedish! Translation section aside, I finished in two hours, and spent another hour checking I’d coloured in the right corresponding boxes. It took me four trams to get home, once because I rode the right number tram in the wrong direction, and twice more because I couldn’t figure out how to purchase a ticket (instructions in Swedish) and had to get off the tram every time an inspector got on (or else face a four hundred dollar fine).
Apartment
When we moved in there was also lots wrong with the apartment itself, but these have eventually been sorted out, and we have a lovely shower. The only truly disappointing thing is that the kitchen is in the hallway, and the oven is the size of a toy oven, with only two elements. But it is relatively big (45 square metres), and in a good area. The view of the canal is beautiful, and it’s only a 25 minute walk to university. We have christened the apartment “Staffan”, which is pronounced kind of like “stuff-un”, so it is a fun little Swenglish word pun lame thing there. Next to the random pillar which is seriously in the way, we have a weird little room a bit like a walk-in wardrobe which we have christened “Gubbängen”, “gubbe” is Swedish for cute old man, or generic character, and ängen means “the meadow” (put it together and you get “the cute-old-man-meadow). It is the name of a Metro stop in Stockholm. The stops on the Stockholm meadow feature at least six different dialect words for meadow, and you can also find Fruängen (the wife-meadow). The way the station-names make it sound, it seems like taking the Metro in Stockholm will be a magical rainbow journey to all kinds of wacky meadows where you will encounter numerous cute old men and wives. Oh, and the Aga factory. For a picture from the real Gubbängen, see this (the title translates as "Exciting Sunday in Gubbängen").
We’re going a bit crazy in our apartment in that we have almost no furniture. We’re lucky in that we’re going to get virtually an entire apartment worth of stuff from Axel’s Mum. Her job moved to Gotland, an island off the east coast of Sweden, because that’s what government departments do in order to inject economy into dying towns – they move government departments there. She set up a second apartment there with all new things, but only went there on two occasions before deciding it wasn’t for her. She’s even found one of her friends to drive the stuff from this island on the east coast all the way to Göteborg on the west coast. But we don’t get it until late February. So in the mean time, we have some plates and knives and plastic cups, but little else. We have two single mattresses, of significantly different thicknesses, and one single duvet. I have been sleeping on the thicker, more comfortable mattress, but Axel gets the duvet. I sleep under three empty duvet covers, which is almost exactly like sleeping under three sheets. We are having picnics on the floor everyday – Axel lights candles and lays out the checked teal towel on the floor to make it a real picnic. He’s great like that.
Initially our Spartan existence was somewhat alleviated by the recycling room, where people dump furniture they don’t want in a corner next to the skips for cardboard and glass and tins. Thanks to this source, we now have a pink lamp that glows like the sunset and really changes the mood of the whole apartment; two coffee tables; one chair; one Oriental cushion; some wall-mounted shelves; three Gothic paintings of English scenery; two mosaic garden pots; one oddly-shaped mirror; one light fitting; one silver fruit bowl; one large plastic flower decoration which looks very elegant tucked into the pipes that run up one wall; and a really ugly 2004 trophy for (land) hockey. We also have a beautiful mug and bowl set with images from Tintin in Shanghai, which we got for $7.50 at the Salvation army. So now we have a mug. And we found a toaster and jug set selling for about $36 because they were the demo ones in the store. Axel's grandmother also gifted us the money to buy a nice blender, which we love. So we were sort of happy for a while, until...
Painters
... the painters came. After finally getting some stuff and making a home, we were informed that our apartment was going to be painted this week Monday to Friday, and we were required to move all our stuff into the middle of the room so that it could be covered in brown paper. We were expected to find somewhere else to sleep for the week. We struck a compromise with the painters, who have agreed to let us sleep in Gubbängen, which is big enough to fit one and a half of our mattresses. So Axel has been sleeping on the little mattress all mushed into a corner. All our clothes and furniture is under the brown paper, so we have to go foraging around trying not to disturb anything. And the foraging is done in the dark, as we have no light-switches or electrical sockets while they are painting, and we are required to leave the house at 8am (while it is still dark) and cannot return until 4pm (by which point it is dark). It is shit.
NB: Just got my results from the English exam! 119 out of 120 for vocabulary, 85 oout of 90 for grammar! The woman who told me the results said, "I've never seen anything like it!" They summarise your marks into points, so I got 20 out of 20. Easiest (if strangest) exam ever.
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