BUS!

Once upon a time there was a little girl who wanted to go to choir practice. She did her research and figured out how to get there on the bus. She discovered that there was a hard way involving a tram, a transfer, and a walk, and an easy way with one direct bus. She chose the easy way.

Twice, she successfully took the easy 30 minute bus ride to choir and back again. But on this particular morning, things would work out otherwise.

On this particular morning, her husband offered her the car so she could drive to choir instead. 'Oh no, thanks anyway, that's too complicated', she said. 'The bus is much simpler'. But this is Sweden and nothing is as easy as it first appears to be.

She missed the bus. Oh well. The monitor listed 3 other #58 busses. She decided to hop on the next one. It would mean arriving a little late to 9 am choir practice, but at least she'd get there. She wondered why all 3 #58 busses were not called the same thing, but this is Sweden etc. She found out why.

At 9am, the bus driver announced that this was the last stop and that everyone should get off. The little girl was not at her stop. She was somewhere along the route but still a ways away. Nothing else to do but start walking. Fortunately the sun was shining. Fortunately she was wearing running shoes. Fortunately it was a pretty neighbourhood to walk through. Fortunately the roads looked familiar.

45 minutes later, she arrived at choir in time for Swedish Christmas carols and really good brownies.

Next week, she's going to make sure she's at her bus stop in loads of time to catch the correct #58 bus.

Find the courage and just go!

My Swedish homework for this past week was to learn 5 sentences by heart. Well, I kinda skimped on my homework, as in, I did the bare minimum for about 10 minutes last night. Didn't listen to the CD, repeating everything 10 times. Didn't re-organize my notes the way I want to. Level 4 procrastination.

The bigger thing was what did I want to be able to say? What is worth knowing by heart? My name is? I'm from? I live in the city centre? My husband works for Volvo? Not terribly useful phrases. I have this ongoing thing with myself that I want to be able to go into a café and order a coffee like a local. Stor kaffe med mjölk isn't quite it. Coffee aside, I needed stamps.

So I google translated my sentence and took it to class this morning. Had it corrected. Practised it all afternoon. Jag skulle vilja ha seks tolvKr frimärken. I would like 6 12krown stamps. Waited my turn at the post window, and away I went: Jag skulle vilja ha etc. He gets the stamps! I pull out my already calculated 72 Kr, and then he says what I think was 'would you like air mail stickers too'? and I blew my cover. Um yes, that would be nice.

GRRR - so close to pulling it off in Swedish and yet so far. Better luck next time...

Stockholm

Most people would not drive across Sweden to spend part of a day in the capital. We are not most people. In keeping with the idea of scheduling Saturday as a day to explore our new homeland, we left Göteborg about 6:15am to start the 5 hour drive to Stockholm.

We took the southern route that led through Jönköping and Nörrköping, as well as Husquvarna, home of the sewing machine and my washer and dryer. The road led beside an enormous lake at one point. Jönköping is the home of Saab, and has models of its jet airplanes at the offramps (abfart). It's very much like driving through northern Ontario. There's one stretch that looks exactly like Hwy 11 outside of Bracebridge, divided highway with rocks and pine trees. We drove through rain most of the way.

The directions I had printed from ViaMichelin were ok until we got to the outskirts of Stockholm at which point the road signs stopped matching the instructions I was following. They were close, but not exact, which led to a lot of u-turns and retracing our steps until finally we found our way to Gamla Stan (old town).

By noon, we were walking across the bridge on the northside of the palace when we heard a marching band. It was the fresh shift of guards, coming to do the Changing of the Guard ceremony at the palace. No police fuss the way there is in London. In London, there are police and barracades. Here, 2 horses led the way, but that was all.

The palace itself is well marked. There are maps about it (you are here) all over the place. We needed food, and quickly found a perfectly nice café just around the corner. We even found a table for 4 tucked in a back corner. Andrew is into quiche these days, so he ate his quiche and I had his accompanying salad. Elizabeth had a blueberry muffin, and Peter had an enormous ham and cheese sandwich. Well sated, we went off to buy tickets and start touring around.

There are various parts to tour at Kunga Slottet. The best bet is to purchase a combination ticket, which can be used all on one day the way we intended, or over a consecutive 3 day period. The Changing of the Guard was just ending, and, remember what I said about no barracade? Well in our hurry to get from A to B, we just tucked right in behind the last of the guards like we were part of the parade, and headed off to find the Treasury.

The Treasury Vault is part museum, but mostly a store room for crowns when they aren't being worn. There is a 45minute tour in English at 1pm. It was interesting, but a lot of standing around in a small space. The Swedish Monarch stopped being coronated 3 generations ago. Apparently, the Germans stopped wearing their crowns and the Swedes followed suit. When you see King Carl XVI Gustav on state occasions, his crown is nearby, but not on his head. When Crown Princess Victoria was married in June, she wore a crown, and the royal family gave one to her husband, Prince Daniel. Princess Sofia Albertina's crown contains 600 diamonds. She picked several of them off in the late 1700s and hocked them in Germany to fund an underground movement to overthrow the government, but had to buy them back again once it was discovered what she had done. Today all 600 are back in place. The silver throne which dates from 1650 was copied for the "Batman Forever" movie. Tommy Lee Jones as Two Face sits in it.

Next stop - Royal apartments. Before the English tour at 2pm, we had a few minutes to wander through the Bernadotte apartments. Today's palace 'opened' in 1754 at which time Queen Lovisa and King Adolf Frederik used the Bernadotte space as their residence. Lots of pretty rooms, great chandeliers, and paintings. Our tour of the State apartments was crowded. Life at Kungliga Slottet closely mirrored the style of Versaille and the rooms reflect that. One magnificent chandelier weighs over 600 lbs. After that tour, we quickly walked through the Guest apartments, which are still used today. The rest of the palace is only used as offices and for state occasions like welcoming new ambassadors, dinner parties, and wedding dances. The royal family lives outside Stockholm at Drottningholm.

The palace is only open from 12 - 3, so by now, it's not only 3, but pouring. Peter volunteered to journey back to the car to collect our rainstuff, while the 3 of us prowled the gift shop. I bought a book about the palace so I would have some photos of what we had seen.

Next stop: Storkyrken, the Cathedrale. Fortunately, it's right next door, so even in our rain stuff we didn't have far to go. The main religion in Sweden is Lutheran. Special features of this church include an altar made of silver and ebony, a statue of St George slaying the dragon, and a 6 ft, 7 candle, candelabra that has been in the church for 600 years.

Just down the lane from the Cathedrale is the Nobel Museum. By now, we're all exhausted, in good spirits, but enough of touring already, so we got some pictures of the front to say we'd been there, and went to find somewhere to eat.

In the cold and the wet, one looks for comfort food. In Sweden, typical fare for such a purpose would include meatballs with mashed potato, gravy and lingonberries, and pittypanna, which is essentially hamburg & potato hash with a fried egg on top. Add in hot chocolate with whipped cream and a couple of pints, and Bob's your uncle. Next time you're in Stockholm looking for a basic, warm, welcoming, reasonably priced place to eat, stop in at Kaffé Gillet directly across the lane from the entrance to the Cathedrale. They are wired for the tourist trade, but not in an off-putting way. It was exactly what we needed - warm and cozy, good food, good atmostphere, a great end to our day.

The drive out of town was much easier than the drive in had been. For one thing, this time I had a map and could see which street led into what. We found the highway, and had an uneventful trip back. Great clouds. Sky full of stars at one point, 3/4 moon at another, more rain too.

We road trip a lot because we're good at it. We can do 13 hours in a car without complaining. It's often my favourite place to be, because as long as we're together, and have a credit card and a cell phone, we can handle anything.

Delsjön tipspromenad

Last weekend was BBQ weekend.

Saturday, the PTA at Andrew's school hosted a bbq / potluck in the field behind the Lower school. It was grey and threatened to drizzle, but fortunately did not. I was asked to bring a salad, which I dutifully did - basic tossed St Lucia style which means grated cabbage and carrot. Mine was really boring compared to what everyone else brought. Dessert-wise, there must have been 35 choices, and Andrew tried at least 30 of them.

We all found people to talk to. I don't like working a crowd - I find it intimidating, but I made a point of stopping to chat with my classmates and the ladies I had met at the walk at Slottskrogen 2 weeks ago. Peter's classmate, Toshio, was there with his wife and children. They have come directly from Japan, and are having a tough time. If you have English here, you can survive. His family doesn't yet have English. They will learn English before attempting Swedish.

Sunday we were at Delsjön with the Relocation group. Delsjön is a lake / conservation area just outside of the city. To get from the parking lot to the picnic site, we had a tipspromenad. Trivia questions had been staggered along the path and you work your way from question to question, from start to destination. We now know what IKEA stands for and the names of the singers in Abba. The park itself looks a lot like Haliburton. We had fall weather too - sweaters and grey, but the leaves here haven't started to turn yet. Andrew had a great time sharpening sticks for the hotdogs with his jacknife and playing in the water with the other kids. Peter and I had some great conversations with other newcomers. We made some new friends, from Brisbane Australia, who had just arrived the week before. They have 2 children - a 6 year old and a 5 month old. Can you imagine this move with a baby? Boggles the mind. Their poor kitty is still in Australia. She's being shipped over in November I think. I guess they didn't have the lead time on the move we had, and that's why they weren't able to complete the required paperwork in time to bring the cat with them. They are currently in a flat awaiting the arrival of their furniture (in October) before moving into their house. Most of our friends are in the suburbs in real houses. We like our flat in the city, although Elizabeth is starting to complain that none of her friends live nearby so she can only see them during school.

The menu was hotdogs and marshmallows. My French friends had never toasted marshmallows before. Michele said it was a 'very American' thing to do. Swedish hotdogs (korv) leave something to be desired as far as I'm concerned, but they are definitely better cooked on a stick over an open flame. Ketchup and mustard are standard, as are onion bits. Looks like bacon bits, but they're bits of fried onion. Oddly, no one brought a cooler of beer or the makings for smores - definitely not a Canadian cook out! Next time we'll show them how it's really done....

Swedish class

I'm writing from the trailer that is the home of Volvo's language classes. On Wednesdays, Peter and I both have class. His is at 8; mine is at 9 or so. I've tried driving him out, dropping him off, going back home, and returning, but it's a lot of rush hour traffic nevermind having to park away from our own street because of Wednesday morning street cleaning, so today I came out with him at 7:30 and here I sit in the kitchen.

I've only had 3 lessons so far, and I haven't reviewed or practised the way I should, but I'm starting to recognize things. On Saturday, I bought something for femte fyra and I knew how much that was (54kr ~ $7.50). We bring in questions and pictures of things we've seen, and Margereta explains them. Yesterday, Michele brought more parking questions. Today, I've brought the pictures of the washing machine and dryer and we're going to talk about that. Woohoo! I may actually learn how to use more than one setting on the machine!

I really like my French classmates BUT they're pronouncing all the swedish with a french accent and that makes it hard for me to capture the intonations of the swedish.

Yesterday, Margereta brought muffins. Good ones too - she's an excellent baker if those muffins were any indication. In good teacher form, they were props. There are 5 muffins. Det finns fem stycken (pieces). Det är tria med mandel (3 have almonds) etc.

I have to go - 15 minutes until class and I haven't finished my homework yet.

Ha en bra dag (have a good day!)

Lost in Translation

So, I met up with Andrew and friends after school yesterday.

Grilled them about what they were doing and how they were getting home.

They were going to Nordstan, the mall at the bottom of the Avenue. Fine.

André (from Portugal) was going to take the tram from Central Station at 6 to get home. Fine.

Santiago (from Mexico) was going to meet his mother at the library at 6 to get home.

The library on the Avenue, I ask. Yes, he says.

Fine - Andrew can meet me there too. And we all go our respective ways....

About 5:45, Elizabeth and I walk over to the library.

6:00 - no Andrew. Fine. Probably didn't leave until 6.

And we wait. And busses come and go.

And yesterday's winner of the Fashion Faux Pas goes by:

man in bike shorts and a leopard print rain jacket. Not kidding!

And we wait.

Then Andrew walks up the stairs from the street, not the bus stop.

At 6, when the boys were leaving, Santiago goes into the book store.

Andrew says, where are you going? I'm going to meet my mom.

He was meeting her at the librairie = book store not library = bibliotheque.

I didn't know Spanish (Mexican?) differentiated the way French does.

Interesting.

This also explains why my internet was cut.

I called it internet instead of broadband.

Lesson: In the world of the United Nations where we now live,

make sure you're using the local lingo.

Perspective

You know that saying, "do something each day that scares you"? If you do, what's it supposed to do for you? Is it supposed to ensure your life isn't boring? Is it supposed to improve your confidence? I've been living that way for a while now - trust me, not much in my life is boring at the moment and my confidence isn't making any great strides.

Everyone's heard me say (several times) 'oh well - makes for a good story'. Here are the stories I'm living right now. And for the record, I am sharing, not venting or complaining. Neither venting or complaining gets you any farther along the road.

E.g. small mercies (my heart goes out here). I'm writing on the balcony again - I'll get to why in a moment - and I just heard english. There's 2 small children with a late 20s woman walking along the path. The boy has just fallen down, and I think the woman must be their nanny. She told him to be a big boy and come along to school. And he did, and they're gone. I remember having to do that. Did that with my own this morning and he's 13. Worried about how big or small his towel is for when he has his mandatory shower after gym class. Wanting Mom to go with him on the tram after all, just to the top of the road, the stop he'd get on from if he were going between schools during the day, then he'd carry on to gym class alone. So I went. Today after school, he wants to go off with his friends. Never done that before. Never been invited before. He came home with the plan all written out a couple of days ago so he could salespitch me, then yesterday, the other boys changed the plan. Mother (me) decided that rather than just saying ok, head off someplace I have no idea where in a city you don't know that functions in a language you don't speak, she'd head the 3 of them off when they got out of school at the end of the day, grill them on where they were going and how they were going to get Andrew back home in one piece. Let's hope this works out. Let's hope Mother can make it happen for him. Let's hope these boys can be trusted.

Back to this week's 'makes for a good story' and small blessings. I'm internet-less again. Even the portable broadband stick is out of juice. I'm on the balcony, thank you linksys, and it's starting to rain, but there's a bit of an overhang, so I can keep typing. Why am I internet-less again you ask? Well, the electrician for the building cut the phone wire. Everything filters in through the phone wire - broadband, phone, tv. Yup. He mentioned in his broken English that he would be changing the wire. I thought he meant another time. I didn't think he meant he was going to cut it and then go home. Guess what. He meant he was going to cut it and then go home. Telia, the main phone company, may be able to send someone out Tuesday (today is Friday and this happened last night). Evidently an urgent matter. Would this happen in Canada? I don't know. My dealings with Cogeco cable have been less than impressive. They've taken their sweet time fixing things too.

We live above 2 cafés. One is changing ownership it looks like because they've gutted it and are remodelling. At 3am. I don't hear noises during the day, but we hear the workmen at night. Across the courtyard, somebody is having a flat fixed up. Those workmen (maybe the same guys but I don't think so) seem to prefer sitting in their window having a smoke (snuffing out the butts on the wall underneath) to working. They seem to stop for a smoke a lot. Glad I'm not paying them.

See - nothing earth shattering. Just makes for a good story. Is having the internet back going to improve my life? No - it will just make it more convenient. Mostly it's that we've been waiting for all this technology for so long, to finally get it connected, and then to lose it again for an indeterminant period of time...

On the upside,

*the personnumers finally arrived. Check that off the list.

*There's a national election looming. They have more political parties than you would believe and all of them have booths in public places to chat up their issues. I haven't yet figured out what the platform issues are for the Pirate party (I'm not kidding - there's a Pirate party).

*The 3 of us got to go out to pick up Peter twice this week because I kept the car. We got to climb all over the rocks at the harbour. It was sunny and beautiful both times.

*My circle of people is expanding. I went to choir yesterday and met more successful, confident, friendly women. They have a craft group on Mondays, play tennis on Tuesdays, have choir on Wednesdays, and get together for other things on a less rigid schedule. I'm thinking about craft group, have Swedish lessons Tues and Wed, and will go back for choir next Thursday.

Yesterday's prize for best swedish outfit. Picture this if you will - on a man. Kelly green polo shirt. Button down over the polo. Button down is purple. Topped off with a popsicle pink cardigan. Yup. Men here don't fear colour, though most of them aren't that daring.

Just keep swimming...

Swedish class

Let's start with an update:

1. I am inept. The girl at the Telia shop showed me how to access stored numbers when dialing or texting. It's opposite to the way I'm used to. There's a surprise.

2. We did buy the Venus Flytrap and he's earning his keep.

This morning I started Swedish class and it was wonderful! There will be 4 of us - today there were 3: me and 2 French women, Michelle and Florence. Laurence will join us tomorrow.

Our teacher is an older woman named Margareta and I really like her way of working with us. She's a farmer in her off hours, blueberries and vegetables. We started with long vowels and trying to perfect the pronunciation of them. I thought it was very linguistically based, her method, because she ties it all back to the placement of the tongue in relation to the mouth and the teeth, which is exactly how one works in Linguistics. I haven't internalized anything yet but I'll work on memorizing my numbers 1 - 10 (ett till tio). My homework is to bring in a sign or phrase I see around town that I don't understand, so this afternoon I will go for a prowl with my camera and my notebook. This morning, she helped decipher the mysteries of Swedish parking rules. Hopefully, armed with this new knowledge, Peter and I will be able to save some money on parking tickets.

It's an interesting study, examining the styles of our various teachers for other language acquisition. (What do you call it when you already speak a second language so it can't be called swedish as a second language because most of us are working on at least #3?) Peter's teacher started with the usual assortment of phrases: My name is, I'm this old. etc. Elizabeth started with the names of the letters of the alphabet. Andrew is mum on the subject and no help whatsoever. I started with the 9 long vowels, #s 1-10, basic question: How many ___ have we? (Har månge ___ har vi?) As someone who teaches other language acquisition, I've been thinking about how I could modify my program to make it more useful. A lot would depend on purpose: travel, interest, survival? Instead of pleasantries, we should start with necessities of daily life. Don't ask me what those might be - I'm drawing a blank. Banking terms? Internet set- up terms? Binding clauses for phone contracts? It would be useful to know how to say "I'd like this suit cleaned please" or "Can I make a reservation for 4 at 19:00" in Swedish. I can't wait 'til the day I can confidently order my large coffee with skim milk. stor kaffe is about as far as I get at the moment. The non-fat milk part is baffling.

Hej - I'm having fun. I'm so glad to finally have this part started.

My new Swedish cell phone

... was very expensive, and is totally useless as far as I'm concerned. It's a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro and I picked it for its keyboard. We were in a hurry. Peter had to get back to the office. He was leaving for Latvia a couple of days later, and that would have left us phoneless. When the young guy at the shop asked me what I wanted on my new phone, well, I wanted the basics - I wanted to call people and do texting and have a real keyboard as opposed to the touch kind.

Here's my issue (and yes, I've downloaded and read the instructions IN ENGLISH to no avail):

- I want to be able to call up my contact numbers when texting. You know, write the message, then find the contact number in the 'address book' and away she goes. Only she doesn't go because it won't recall the number.

- The numbers aren't even stored in the address book - just the names. If I have to memorize all the numbers, what's the point of having the address book function on the phone?

It does a lot of tricks this phone. Syncs to Google and Facebook among other things. I don't care. I just want to be able to text or phone without having to key in the number each time.

Aren't these things supposed to make your life simpler, not more complicated? The ad goes on and on about managing your life with the phone in one hand and a coffee in the other. I'd have spilled the coffee trying to figure out the phone.

Maybe it's because I'm using a prepaid phonecard instead of the monthly contract. Maybe there are restrictions nobody bothered to tell me about (I'm encountering a fair amount of that here - don't ask, don't tell). I didn't think I was technologically inept.

Stay tuned...

Normalement

For those of you not familiar with ‘normalement’, it’s a French term that means “well, it should happen on that day at that time, but it probably won’t”. For example, if you’ve made an appointment to have something repaired or installed, your appointment time could be Tuesday. Normalement. The guy’ll show up unless he finds something better to do. It’s a bit like the way Italian trains run. They’re on schedule, unless they’re on strike. If it’s sunny and a Thursday, they might be on strike. Then again, they might not. This is the source of my prefacing many things with ‘all things being equal’. In my case, it isn’t a refusal to make a commitment, it’s a supersticious disclaimer: I’ll be there unless some in my universe explodes. In other words, you can count on me if nothing unforeseen happens.

Very few things have gone according to my schedule along the path of this Swedish adventure. I naively thought that if I approached everything systematically, then it would go according to plan. Normalement. My schedule never matched the great ‘they’’s and seeing as ‘they’ make the master schedule, well, you get the picture. Has it all worked out in the wash? ya. Has it been a pain in the neck. ya. The pain continues because I’ve discovered that Sweden, like France, has a version of normalement - their administrative processes move at glacial speed.

The ticket to success as a resident rather than a visitor is a Swedish Personal Number. Without it, you can’t do much. It’s your ticket to health care, getting a bank account, getting a phone. It’s supposed to take 2 weeks to arrive in the mail. Normalement. There’s a backlog right now so A,E, &I are still waiting. Peter already has his, so we were able to arrange hook up here at the flat for phone, tv, and internet through him. Apparently, once the tv line is hooked up, you still have to wait (2 months?) for cable. Nothing will work until then. The modem for the internet arrives in the mail sometime after the man’s been there to connect things. He was here on Tuesday. No modem so far but hope springs eternal....

Then there’s parking. It’s all street parking. Once Peter gets his ‘official’ company car (more waiting without an end date), we’ll have a pass and won’t have to feed the meter anymore. Streets are cleaned once a week. On our street, it’s Onsdag (Wednesday) between 8 & 10. So yesterday, I dutifully moved the car before 8, moved it back after 10, and fed the meter enough to last until noon today. Then I got a parking ticket. Apparently it’s a bit of an ex-pat right of passage, getting parking tickets. I think it’s a scam. At 2 in the afternoon, I was parked where I was supposed to be, and I got a ticket? 400Kr later...

All this waiting is killing me. I’m a very patient person when I know how long I have to wait for, but when there aren’t any timelines? Or when nobody sticks to them? It’s making me crazy. Are there bigger problems in the universe than pokey administrative processing? Yes. Someday this will all make for a good story. But at the moment, when life’s been up in the air for going on 9 months, you can appreciate the desire to be settled. As settled as we are, we aren’t. I was told it will take a year to feel settled and ‘at home’. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait that long.