Life in Stockholm

Icicle of Doom

hjonasson — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:34:07 +0000

My son thought he heard Santa Claus this morning up on our roof. I didn’t think about it very much until I went outside and realized that there were several men on our roof. They were pushing off all of the snow, which is something that’s done quite often around the city, as people are occasionally badly injured or killed from heavy snow and icicles falling from high roofs. I’m glad they finally got around to our building today because we’ve had a monster icicle hanging right over our door for the past week. I managed to find the shattered remains on the ground this afternoon. The picture I took is only a piece of the icicle. Nice to be able to walk in the door now without cheating death every day.

Butternut squash

hjonasson — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:50:23 +0000

I was at the grocery store this morning when I noticed a new display with butternut squash. After years of seeing so many American recipes using butternut squash, it was amazing to find it for the first time in Sweden. Butternut squash is such a rare thing here that there isn’t even a translation for it. I immediately grabbed some and took it up to the counter. I don’t know why I expected things to go smoothly. My first clue should have been that I found the butternut squash display in the beer and soda section. The check-out woman had no idea what it was or how much it cost. She kept asking me what it was and I kept saying, “Butternut squash! Butternut squash! That’s what your sign says. There is no translation!” She had to ask another employee walking by who also had no idea what it was. Luckily this all worked to my advantage because he said, “oh just charge her 10 kr for it (about a dollar),” and I’m pretty sure it should have been 30 kr or more.

But this made me think about how many things I can get now in Sweden that I wasn’t able to get when I moved here ten years ago.

- Dr. Pepper - Although I’m told they tried to market it earlier, it was not succesful and didn’t show up again until 2001 and it was hard to find. Now it’s in every store, though I have never seen one piece of advertising for it.

- Pumpkins - My first couple of Halloweens, I remember it being almost impossible to find a pumpkin. I think there was one place in Stockholm where you could find a few but no one else carried them. Now all of the grocery stores carry them in October.

- Ben & Jerry’s ice cream - I think that only showed up about 5 years ago in the grocery stores and a scoop shop just opened last year. We’re spoiled now.

At the moment we’re all waiting to get our first Starbucks. They plan on opening it sometime soon at the airport. Now the airport is a bit too far to travel without a car, but hopefully this will lead to other Starbucks closer to town.

Now if they could just get some beef jerkey, rotel and velveeta, I would be all set.

These boots are made for snow plows

hjonasson — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:40:51 +0000

I have no boots. There’s 2 feet of snow out there and I have no boots. I used to have boots. Two pair! But now they are gone. Boot pair number one got a broken zipper. Boot pair number two was made of suede. Suede + Snow = No boots. So I’ve been searching for boots for the past two weeks and nothing fits. It’s very strange. Were my old boots very old models? Who fits into the new boots? They go over my feet, but they don’t zip up. (These are knee high boots we’re talking about.) Sure, they might zip up if I weren’t wearing 3 socks and two pairs of pants, but the old boots managed somehow! Have people suddenly developed tiny stick legs? Am I the only one in this artic madness that needs to wear several layers of clothing to survive?

Let’s Go Crazy!

hjonasson — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:31:34 +0000

So there I am, sitting in a crowded subway surrounded by surly teenagers, when suddenly out of my pocket a little man from Minneapolis says, “Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life….”

Those touch pads on the iphone don’t seem to work quite fast enough when you are desperately trying to stop your 1984 “Purple Rain” album from rockin’ the whole subway car.

I have no idea why that music started up. Normally I always have my headphones on even if there is no music playing. It’s the best way to avoid having to talk to crazy people and drunks. Unfortunately it doesn’t always work, but it stops about 20 percent of them which is an improvement.

At least it was Prince and not something more embarassing blaring out of my phone, because believe me, I’ve got a lot of strange stuff on there.

Worst dinosaur movie ever..

hjonasson — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:37:42 +0000

I accidently started a horrible dinosaur movie for the kids. It’s poorness complete with a poorness soundtrack. Every dinosaur in the movie talks like a 5 year old girl. Why would dinosaurs sound like little girls? Dinosaurs should sound like scary screaming monsters and all they should be doing is eating each other. They can’t even use proper dinosaur names, – “Longnecks, Little Foot.” What’s wrong with Brontosaurus, or Velociraptor? Is that too hard for children? Does Hollywood really think kids are this stupid?

I’m about to pull the plug and tell the kids, “Oh no! The t.v. broke!”

News of the Weird

hjonasson — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 08:46:28 +0000

I picked up the Swedish paper this morning and had to ask myself, why is there a train full of virgins going to Moscow? After careful reading I finally realized that the report was about a train’s virgin voyage to Moscow. News is more interesting when I mis-translate.

Earlier in the week I was confused by the news report about problems with Christmas wolves. First of all I didn’t know we had Christmas wolves here and second, what is the problem? Are they stealing pies? Knocking over snowmen? What is the difference between regular wolves and Christmas wolves? After all of this thought, I was informed that the word was not wolves (vargar) but roads (vägar).

Watch your language

hjonasson — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 08:22:04 +0000

I am usually very careful about the expressions I use around people who don’t have English as a first language, but I slipped up earlier this week. A woman was asking me about our new apartment building and I told her it was nice, but it’s so new that they haven’t worked out all the bugs.

“Bugs??!! Oh no, it’s a terrible problem with insects. I can’t believe a new building like that has bugs!”

I tried to explain that I meant to say problems, but she seems set on the idea that our apartment is crawling with insects. I guess she won’t be interested in coming over for tea.

Keep them coming!

hjonasson — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 09:05:20 +0000

We sure are enjoying these public service announcements from the U.S. radio stations we listen to. Yesterday’s was the funniest yet. A boy, who sounds about 8 years old, says, “A, B, C,….uh…uh… I can’t remember.” Then the announcer comes on and says that if you don’t feed your kid good food, they might be stupid like this one. We were laughing so hard. So now in the states, they have to remind everyone to talk to their children and feed them.

It was all quite funny until I turned to my son to talk about his day (thanks public service announcement!) and I said, “Ok, now today is Wednesday…..” And it turns out it was Thursday. If only I had eaten something healthier than a pop tart!

You can fly!

hjonasson — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 08:38:30 +0000

In the Peter Pan movie, do you think they had to add in the part about the pixie dust after the first screening went wrong? First Peter Pan says, “All you need to fly is faith and trust…… oh, and a little bit of pixie dust!” Always feels like that part was added in later. Must have been some bad incidents with kids jumping out windows.

You can talk to kids as well as adults! Imagine that!

hjonasson — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:08:54 +0000

Once again, I’ve heard the worst commercial ever (aside from the one that says if you join the Marines, you get to fight dragons). This commercial only runs in the U.S. You hear a woman saying, “Isn’t the beach nice? Look at all those waves…”

And then another voice comes on and says, “You may think this woman is insane, but what she is actually doing is talking to her 2-year old. You know, it’s important to talk to your children even if they are very small….”

It turns out that it’s a commercial telling parents to talk to their young children instead of ignoring them. Have things gotten that bad in the U.S. that we need commercials reminding us to speak to our children? This isn’t common sense? People can’t figure it out unless the radio tells them to do it? What a strange world we live in.