Protected: Thursday the 7th
Protected: Thanksgiving
Swedish Pancakes
When Swedish pancakes were described to me, they were compared to their neighbor France’s crepes. However, I found them more similar to omelettes. Yummy, but with a definitely eggy constitution.
Daphne and I started working out together. That felt really good and lasted a week. I’ve put on my exchange-20 and then some, not to mention what feels like an irrecoverable breakout. I have spent dozens of hours at Rotary preparation weekends but they never mentioned this part of exchange.
I’m sitting in the sun right now and it is quite lovely. It is funny that other students on exchange are complaining about how hot it is Thailand and Spain. I currently find it impossible to identify anything negative in these beautiful UV rays.
I ate really good Thai food last night. Yellow curry tofu cashew noodles. Super cute, tiny little restaurant on Hornsgatan outside Slussen station. One of the cleaner and cuter Thai places I’ve been to, and for Stockholm the prices weren’t unreasonable. Carolyn and Fallon, two other exchange students, live in Stockholm and I visit them quite often. Yesterday afternoon it was a fika, walk in the park under fall leaves and thrift shopping. I really adore the thrift stores here; since Swedes have such good fashion sense it leads to a really great selection even in their discarded clothing.
Wednesday night, Mirka, Daphne and I saw a “very, very, very, very modern” ballet at the Royal Opera House. The Opera House is gorgeous, with gold inlay everywhere and white marble charmed with red carpets. I want to make an effort to go there at least a few more times, it made me feel sophisticated. The ballet was good; there were two pieces, De l’Origine and Half Life. Since they were some of the more abstract, it was interesting also to see the patrons of such “modern” ballets; cheetah print jackets, bold, primary blues, glittery velvet pants, and other inspiring wardrobe choices. Quite an evening!
The sun just went behind the clouds…it is too cold. My school peers asked me in the first few weeks why I came to Sweden when I could have gone somewhere warm like Spain. I told them it was because I was stupid. I had to get new foundation since I have lost my tan, and it needed to be some two shades darker. When I whine about the cold, the Swedes around me laugh and ominously intone “Winter is coming”.
Everything is really good though, besides the cold. I sound like a sap, but despite the cold I am glad I came to Sweden because it has aligned me with so many wonderful people. Never have I identified so quickly and so well with people like I have here. It is likely a good portion of these connections snapped due to my own improved social webbing, but another definite aspect is how they feel like my people. I have felt so aggressively welcomed by my classmates; I have so aggressively meshed together with my other exchange students; my teachers have so aggressively worked to help my learning experience the best it could be. All the forces at work have been in my favor to have my best year.
Tack för att ni läste,
Alexa
No Guns, Still Glory
“Most Europeans will never see a gun in their lifetime,” Mirka told me. Is there any kind of kickback? I ask. A political push? Protesting the violation of their rights? “No. There’s no need for guns. It’s strange to us how Americans have them.” Established hunting clubs can get permits with guns if they have existed long enough, have enough training, and a clean criminal history. Otherwise, the most vicious weapon a Swede will be handling is likely a pocket knife.
I am very grateful for this cultural difference when I am walking in Stockholm. Cars don’t have a lot of rights compared to pedestrians; they are overwhelmed by sheer numbers and a complete irreverence for the car’s end goal. As such, car drivers are generally very angry. Just the other day, as I strided with with my fellow pedestrians across a street that most definitely had a red light for pedestrians, I experienced genuine terror as a car revved its engine and shot daggers from its owner eyes. Yet, I did not have to fear the driver would roll down the window, pull a .22mm M4 rifle off their passenger seat and go to town on us. If I were to die, I would be run over or beaten to death by hand.
I have been to Stockholm four or five times in the past five weeks and two days. It is an eighteen minute walk from my house to the pendaltåg, 36 minutes on the train, and budget another four minutes to make it out of the station on a chain of escalators. My first trip was with purely tourist intentions; a mad dash to the Drottningholm Palace, the Chinese Pavilion, pictures with every old looking building to sustain my Instagram feed for weeks. I put the very diverse company we kept on these days down to being surrounded by other tourists. On the pendeltag home I realized the city would probably be around for more than just that day and the diversity was not limited to tourists.
My next visit was much more relaxed; I did yoga in Kungstradgarden, led by a happy Indian man looking to spread peace around the world. We walked from there to the Modern Museum of Art, enjoyed the culture festival taking place, dallyed by the water with strawberries and chocolate croissants from an outdoor cafe, and didn’t do much else. By my third day going in, I knew for a fact the city wouldn’t be pulled out like a rug underneath me, and we didn’t do much at all. Content to just be in the city, we chatted and wandered and lazed at more outdoor cafes.
Stockholm is a beautiful world capitol to live so near to. It has all the opportunities and services of a megadiverse metropolitan with all the safety of small town Corvallis. An eighth the size of New York, people don’t tell the same tales of men in suits bulldozing the sidewalk or of how their purse got stolen. You’re allowed to pull out a map and look like a “goddamn tourist” without looking like mugging bait. There are a lot of articles and statistics coming out about increased rape due to Middle Eastern immigrants, and there is some truth to the numbers*, but it’s still incomparable to other capitals; I’m not looking over my shoulder with my trigger finger on the mace when I go down alleyways after 8 pm.
I love the people. Foremostly I simply enjoy them as individuals. Peering out Wayne’s Coffee’s windows to watch them go by; crossing the bridge to Sodermalm and being part of a current; standing in a “queue” at Zara; eyeing their outfits at the Modern Art Museum. Cities are a beautiful thing.
I am also a huge fan of the material results of almost a million megadiverse people congregating in one space. Just a few days ago, I enjoyed the yummiest curry at Indian Street Food Co–it was cheap too! About a week ago, I shot a show at S
tockholm Fashion Week, and it was life changing. Green juices, while not as abundant as I expected, are creamy with the optimum ratio of spinach and avocado; much needed between heavy Swedish meals of meat and potatoes. Their clothing stores have out-of-this-world good taste to make a girl go broke. Miniscule huts serve as cafes with delicious chocolate croissants.
I live in quaint Södertälje, with a population count between 78,000-120,000 depending on how you define its boundaries. It only has two Espresso Houses and the shopping isn’t incredible, but I’ve had nice encounters with old people and I’ve discovered a couple cute bakeries. With it’s proximity to Stockholm and the public transit system of Sweden, I also get to enjoy the city life, and for that I’m very grateful.
It’s been a good and awful past few weeks. I’m ready to go home; I keep a count of how many months I have left to get through. I also know this time will never be enough, and cherish every moment with all of my new friends. “Only 52 weekends,” I remember Sof telling me, and we have to make them all count. Because we are in Europe, we are too close to too many cultures to have an
y excuses for not seeing them all; I have Iceland, Norway, Denmark, and a Euro tour in my future, and that keeps me going.
Here’s to the good memories I’ve already made, and to all of the ones in my near future.
Thank you.
Alexa
*Sweden has 63.5 reported rape incidents per 100,000 citizens compared to 27.3 in America and 27.9 in Belgium. However, police count every instance as an individual happening. thelocal.se gives the example that if a wife told the police her husband had been abusing her for a fortnight they would tally 14 incidents. Sweden also has a much broader definition of rape than other countries, including what is often counted as assault or bodily harm. Another factor: “ in Sweden, where women’s rights are in sharp focus, women are and have increasingly been encouraged to report sexual assaults or rapes, compared to other countries where there may still be a greater social stigma.”
(https://www.thelocal.se/20170221/why-sweden-is-not-the-rape-capital-of-the-world)
part-time swede 