Akta/äkta Svenska...

The posts have been few and far between, I know. I've been busy over the last couple of months. I'm now working on the final assignment for my Scandinavian Studies course at university, which turned out to be not all that interesting, for all that I did learn about some Swedish history and culture. I've been having a lot more fun with my SFI Swedish language classes, which I attend 4 days a week. My Swedish is progressing quite well - I know my vänlig (friendly) from my vanlig (ordinary), and my äkta (real) from my akta (watch out!). The importance of such differences become clear when one reads a headline such as "Kackerlackor har blivit vanlig-are i Sverige" (Cockroaches have become more ordinary in Sweden) or when travelling around town one sees many korv (sausage) kiosks with signs stating "äkta mos!" (real mashed potatoes!). I've been using Swedish more and more in conversations with friends and people in shops. My pronounciation is relatively good, and my appearance doesn't mark me out in any way, so often I am accepted by strangers as the real deal.

However, having strangers assume that you're Swedish does have its downsides. I've run in to trouble often because I know how to ask for directions, but not what people are saying when they give them. It's too complicated to say, oh even though I asked in Swedish, can you repeat in English, please? Usually I just nod and pay very close attention to where they're pointing.

These kind of challenges have become especially manifest now that I've started a språkpraktik (language apprenticeship) at a hardware store. They subscribe to the IKEA model - epic-sized store stocking everything from kitchen utensils to motor oil, with a hot-dog stand and 5kr ($1)-per-use public toilet. The idea is, I work there for free 12 hours a week, and thereby get to practice using Swedish in a working environment. It sucks working for free, especially in a place to which I am so clearly unsuited, but I'm actually really lucky to have got the opportunity. The Swedish job market is so crappy at the moment that nobody's keen to take on even free labour! I don't understand it, but there you go. So far I've been stacking shelves, or in one memorable case, un-stacking them. I put about 800 individual lightbulbs into boxes that day, and that was just a small dent in the sea of light-bulbs that needed to be re-packed. I don't know what place the lightbulbs were going on to, but I hope it was a happier, less dusty one. This kind of work isn't inherently difficult, except for the 20 long minutes I spent with one tiny shelf area filled with plastic flasks that were almost exactly the shape of upside-down bowling pins... If the one you're moving so much as brushes another, they're all down. I wish I was as good at knocking real bowling pins over.

What really makes the work challenging is the incessant stream of customers that want you to help them. You've just bent over to deal to the stupid inverse bowling pin flasks, hoping that the painful posture will hide you, when you hear an ever so polite (Swedes are always polite) "Ursäkta, kan jag fråga dig?" (Excuse me, can I ask you something?). The customers have variations on two questions, 1) Where can I find x?; 2) How do I use y? I can almost never answer either. For Q1), I most often don't understand what they're looking for, having not yet memorised hard-ware related vocabulary, or if I do understand I'm not sure where we keep it in the Nevada Desert sized store. For Q2), I don't think I could answer even in English, as I don't know anything about boat-chrome or what kind of primer to use on your tractor. So I spend most of my time on the job in an endless cycle of explaining to customers that I can't help them, and running desperately through the maze of aisles trying to find the one or two personnel that are actually employed to talk to the hundreds of customers that pour through every day. And because my Swedish sounds right and I don't look like an immigrant (read: I don't look like I come from outside Western Europe), the customers just think I'm a magnificently unhelpful idiot.

Oh well, at least I'm getting a lot of practice at saying - "sorry I can't help you, talk to him instead" in Swedish. I try to vary the mantra, which means I occasionally end up referring to the bicycle expert as a small boy instead of a young man, which raises eyebrows.

I'm in love with a fairytale...

So far my resolution to be thoroughly involved in every Swedish celebration has failed. I burned myself on Fat Tuesday, and so was in pain the whole time I munched my semla. I had the worst diarrhoea of my life over Easter (no candy filled paper-eggs for me!). Axel's brother Alfred and his partner Cissi (and their adorable baby Igor) were down for Walpurgis Eve and May Day, and we decided it would be more fun to hang out together than stand around a bonfire on the other side of town with drunk students.

Last night, all that changed. I sat around the TV with eight other people, home-made scoresheet in one hand and a delicious daquiri-ish drink in the other, and witnessed my first... Eurovision Song Contest. I spent almost the entire show with my mouth hanging agape in wonder. I just cannot believe that with a whole year in which to plan, that those performances are the best a country can come up with to represent themselves musically. My fingers quiver on the keys as I type out the 'music', as music is the last thing Eurovision is about.

For those who don't know, Eurovision is a song competition for Active Members of the European Broadcasters Union, which includes countries outside Europe such as Israel and Azerbaijan. Due to time constraints, only 25 countries can compete in the final, so the pool is weeded down in two semi-finals. The 25 finalists sing one song live on television, and the winners are decided half by tele-voting and half by a jury from each country. No one is allowed to vote for their own country, but it is common for countries to vote for their neighbours regardless of song quality.

I quickly learned that my taste in music is not shared by any of the people that voted last night. I did think the Norwegians deserved to win - they took a Zac Efron look-alike, gave him a violin and some camp back-up dancers in Norwegian lederhosen, and had him sing about love and fairytales. How could this combination fail? My favourites were France - the sole country to opt for class over pop with their throaty-voiced (and relatively modestly clad) soloist; Armenia - exotic purple women, weirdly synchopated beats and traditional instruments; Portugal - folky riffs with flute and accordion, and a charismatic singer; and Russia - a catchy chorus and morbid visuals. The Swedish entry wasn't too bad, even if the performer did look more like a mermaid in a wedding dress than Ariel did at then end of the Disney film.

What horrified me was that all the songs I hated came so far up the rankings! Iceland came second with an entry of pure insipid dross, and with visuals featuring a dolphin diving through cloud formations. Why? The song is more interesting if you think about it in terms of Iceland's current economic and environmental crisis: "falling out of a perfect dream, coming out of the blue... Is it true, is it over? Did I throw it all away?" As for England (5th place), SHAME ON YOU Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Though Iceland and the UK went for the sweet and virginal, some of the acts were hilariously raunchy. The Greek entry had us drooling (with laughter) over their bare-chested hunk and narcissistic antics (best bit is at 1:30-1:40 in linked video-clip). The Germans were a little bit disturbing, and thorougly under-used Dita Von Teese.

But really, the whole thing was so tacky and soulless it made me long for ABBA to smash down the door in a blaze of white flares. They would have kicked ass. What happened to songs that you actually want to hear? France Gall won in 1965. It is especially disturbing to me that they got a couple of guys up in space to give viewers the order to "VOTE". The presenters chanted to millions of viewers, "vote vote vote". Why does no one put that kind of effort into getting people to vote for elections that actually matter? Maybe if there was an Asian guy in space telling American people to vote we wouldn't have had two terms of George Bush. But I guess that kind of voting doesn't make millions of dollars for broadcasters. Go figure.