Not the best pancake ever…but better than my first attempt which I couldn’t bring myself to photograph! Now I am very full and very happy, Pancake Day is a lovely tradition!

As I mentioned, in Sweden they don’t have pancakes, but instead have a special pastry for Shrove Tuesday, the semla. Unfortunately for me semla are mainly made up of cream and, being lactose intolerant, that makes them a no-go area for me. My friend who came to visit last week got to try them out though, so here is what a half-eaten semla looks like (and also what part of Leanne’s face looks like):

They’re basically bread buns filled with almond paste and cream, which sounds just as fattening as pancakes. After reading wikipedia I have a couple of rather exciting semla “facts” (as factual as wiki ever is…):

- Each Swede consumes on average five bakery-produced semlor each year, in addition to all those that are homemade.

- King Adolf Frederick of Sweden died of digestion problems on February 12, 1771 after consuming a meal consisting of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring and champagne, which was topped off by fourteen helpings of hetvägg (a ye olde name for sema), the king’s favorite dessert.

Pancake Day seems like a fitting fatty end to my unexpected 5 day weekend (I found out about my extra days off a week in advance). After a busy few days with Leanne I’ve basically done nothing during my extended weekend. Well, I say nothing, I have managed to watch most of Game of Thrones (by the end of today I expect I will have watched the whole first season). I do love being addicted to a good TV show!

The above photo is a true representation of my weekend. Note, the empty bottle of wine in the background was drunk by myself and Leanne, I am not a wineaholic.

And finally, I would like to share with you a photo I took today after straightening my hair for the first time in ages (it’s surprisingly long!):

Without photographic evidence I can never be sure whether or not I’ve unplugged my straighteners. I am completely crazy.

When I was writing my dissertation last year I used to go and work in Starbucks. I know, I know, Starbucks is an evil corporate machine but there’s really not that many coffee shops in the UK which have soya milk (although the longer I’m in Stockholm the less I feel the need for anything other than pure, strong coffee) and my favourite Starbucks in Edinburgh is on Princes Street and has a wonderful view of the castle. It made writing about parrots and saints and deer and beheading less painful (yes, those really are all topics covered in my dissertation). I enjoyed being in a nice environment while doing my work, having people around me to watch, but also to guilt me into actually writing something for fear that they would notice me checking the football scores, doing a little Facebook stalking or imaginary shopping on Topshop and judge me. And today, for a couple of nice hours in one of my favourite cafés (Café String, if you were wondering) I had that same feeling of purpose (although I didn’t actually have any purpose to speak of) and, probably more importantly, it was rather lovely to be around people rather than cooped up in my room like Rapunzel or a leper, depending on how attractive I’m feeling.

Ah, not that sort of icebreaker. A boat that breaks ice. My friend from home came to visit for a few days and that gave me a good excuse to do some more of touristy-Stockholm. When I first arrived I went on the Stockholm Sightseeing Tour Boat and it was fantastic. The water was blue, the sun was shining and I learnt lots of interesting stuff about Stockholm that I now pass off as my own facts when people come and visit. Basically it looked something like this:

The Winter version of the tour that Leanne and I went on had slightly different scenery:

The water, obviously, freezes during the cold cold winter. But the boats can break the ice and continue running throughout the year. Pretty much one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen: sailing through thick sheets of broken ice. We also had pea soup and glögg, both of which I love. All in all it was lovely to get back that feeling of awe about Stockholm, I know it’s a brilliant place but sometimes the mundaneness of my day-to-day life stops me from seeing how lucky I am to live in such a wonderful city.

Also, I would quite like to use the icebreaker as an icebreaker sometime…just need to get the wording right!

Ok. So it’s been a while. I know, I know, I say I’ll write and then nothing for weeks on end. I’m like a bad boyfriend, and like all bad boyfriends I’m popping back up now it’s (almost) Valentine’s Day and I know you’ll forgive me. Also like a bad boyfriend, I forgot to get you anything. I hope you’re happy enough with a bit of a re-cap about what I’ve been up to.

Let’s start with the reasons I haven’t been writing. Mainly there are 2:

1. I’m lazy

2. It’s been so cold I haven’t really done much

2.b) Not doing much mainly consists of drinking coffee and staring at handsome Swedish men with moustaches while sighing quietly to myself, I wasn’t sure if writing about this would make a good blog post. We’ll have to see how it goes…

Before Christmas it never really got that cold, all the Swedes told me how it wasn’t a proper winter and there should have been more snow and I should have felt the need to wear as many jumpers as possible at all times. Now the weather has become Swedish. It’s been down to -18 degrees and I for one am rather enjoying it. Yes, the cold has been giving me migraines and yes, I need to constantly reapply lipbalm so my lips don’t entirely dry out and yes, it is painful when I leave my mittens at home and my hands turn a not-so-fetching shade of pink but this is what I signed up for when I decided to come to Sweden! And it could have been so much worse, there are many places further north of Stockholm where the cold would even get through my fur hat and freeze me to the bones. Plus I rather like the snow, I like how crunchy it constantly is underfoot and I like how it hasn’t melted and turned into slush or refrozen, turning the pavements into icy-death-traps. I’ve just about stopped feeling like it’s perpetually Christmas and I no longer squeal when I see fresh flakes falling from the sky. I’m just enjoying the day to day business of snowyness.

This photo was taken from the bridge between Liljeholmen where I work and Hornstull where I go to the gym (a prime spot for people-watching, especially since the people in question are often young men with hilarious tattoos). Do not be fooled into thinking that it shows a quite narrow frozen river, no, no ,no. As far as the eye can see that used to be water, said water has now frozen and been covered in a couple of fresh layers of snow.

Hopefully this photo makes the ice and snow situation a bit more obvious. It’s it gorgeous? Walking over that bridge everyday makes me very happy. And very cold.

The only niggle I have concerning the weather is that I am now unable to spend much time outside and in Sweden outside is the only place to find free things to do. Due to being poor, I can’t go to museums all that much and the cinema prices are extortionate (also it seems less socially acceptable to go to the cinema alone here, I didn’t feel like a massive loser catching a film solo in Edinburgh and I definitely miss that) so I have to hide from the cold in the only places cheap enough for me: cafes!  Here in Stockholm many cafes even offer free coffee refills so for just 25kr (ish) I can overdose on caffeine. (I have also learnt how to time it perfectly at school to always get a fresh cup of coffee, I quite often reach that point where my hands start to quiver and my head feels fuzzy, but I can’t not pour myself a cup when it’s fresh!!)

I can now order my coffee in Swedish (although I have recently found out that I’m not eligible for the free Swedish lessons, which is rather annoying to say the least) and am learning how to recognise a joke simply by tone of voice so I don’t give myself away as an ignorant foreigner (I’m pretty sure my accent gives me away as a foreigner, but the speaking-Swedish aspect hopefully gives me the air of not being ignorant). The cafes here are lovely. They make me feel at home, they give me plenty of prime targets for people-watching and I can sit for hours catching up on my reading (this was one of my aims for this year, I think I’m currently averaging 2.5 books a week, depending on the book and how much time I spend on public transport). Although sitting in a cafe means I’m not exploring Stockholm to the max, I think I am experiencing real Stockholm. Sweden has a wonderful cafe culture and I am trying my best to make the most of it. Sure, I fika on my own more often than I’d like, but when I leave Stockholm I certainly will miss the cafes. I think I may now be a reformed Starbucks addict!

I think that’s enough for today, it’s late and I don’t want to start talking complete nonsense. I have a lovely friend coming to visit me for a platonic Valentine’s Day (again, like a bad boyfriend, I’m not actually free for a date on the most romantic day of the year) and hopefully exciting things will happen (that I may even photograph so as to make my blog more attractive to the skim-readers amongst you) and I will be able to regale you with stories and stop being such a bad boyfriend! To try and make amends I shall leave you with a photo of a beautiful snowy scene, enjoy!

…about 4pm at the latest!! It’s so dark here these days. It’s dark when I go to work and dark when I leave the gym (sometimes it’s even dark when I get to the gym)

Here’s a couple more look-how-dark-it-is photos:

Sadly darkness also means blurriness, but you get the idea! Personally I rather like the dark, I find it quite exciting and (for the time-being at least) Christmassy. I’ve been running in the dark each evening and it’s a lot more enjoyable than you might think. Living in a big city means there’s always plenty of lights shining in the darkness and I’m told that when it snows it’ll brighten up the nights. Should be awesome!

Now, to make up for lost time, here is a lovely list of exciting things that I have done in the past few weeks:

- I went to work at a Grundskola for a week (well, 3 days of a week). The students were between 12 and 15 years old and totally adorable! It was so much fun working there, the students were all really interested in why I was there and asked me loads of questions about the UK and about me personally. They also taught me some stuff about Sweden and were generally super nice. And one evening while I was there the teachers had a wine evening which I joined in on. It was lovely! The journey to work in the mornings was about 45mins which was less fun, but I got a lot of time to read and it was worth it once I got to school because they made me feel so welcome. Hopefully I’ll be able to go back to that school again next semester – they’ve invited me to go skiing with them!

- Last weekend I took myself to Moderna Museet to see the Monet, Turner and Twombly exhibition. I bloody love Monet – his paintings remind me of living in France – and it turns out I rather like Turner and Twombly too. I think it’s my favourite gallery in Stockholm so I will have to go back, even if it did cost 100kr!

- I’ve finally been able to apply for an identity number! It’s been a lot of stress and confusion and annoyance and I’m still not actually eligible for the Personnummer but I have applied for some sort of ID number and will be able to get paid and open a bank account and start my Swedish lesssons! Thank God! This is what I’ve been looking forward to, especially since Stockholm can be a rather lonely place and I hopefully will meet some new people at Swedish lessons. Fingers crossed. At the very least I will learn a new skill to put on my CV.

- I was at Systembolaget just before closing time on a Saturday (it closes at 3pm and then isn’t open again until Monday morning) and there was a queue outside the door of at least thirty people. It was mental. Luckily I’d got there just before the crazy queues!

- The Christmas markets are open and they have tombola stalls!

- I learnt a new sentence: jag jobbar som en lärare

Darn it, I’m having a mental blank…that’ll have to do as a list and I will attempt to update more regularly in the future!

Last Thursday and Friday I attended an induction meeting for Comenius assistant across Sweden. There were 40ish of us – 3 English assistants and a lot of other nationalities including Polish, Austrian, Finnish and lots of Germans. It was pretty cool, we all complained about how laid-back Swedish teenagers are and compared notes on how to get teenagers to turn up to class on time.

Annoyingly nobody else is working in Stockholm so, although I live in the capital city, I still feel a bit alone. I felt silly empathising with other assistants who are living in middle-of-nowhere towns and feeling lonely because obviously my situation is a bit better – I have plenty of things to do even if I don’t have plenty of people to do them with – but I do think that the downside of being a Comenius assistant is obviously the large amount of time spent in your own company.

On Thursday afternoon we were taken on a tour of Stadshuset; the Stockholm City Hall. Being the massive geek that I quite obviously am, I was excited. I hadn’t got round to visiting the City Hall on any of my tourist days so it was another thing to tick off my list, but even better our tour was free! “Free” isn’t something you hear much of in Stockholm so my excitement levels were pretty high.

Since we were in a big group my photos are a bit rubbish. I know that sounds like a stupid excuse, but somehow I take better photographs when I’m on my own and don’t feel self-conscious about trying to find a good angle. Anyway, excuses out of the way, I’d like to share my photos of my new favourite building in the world. Seriously, it’s that cool.

This is where the city council sort out how to run Stockholm, they have a female majority and a female chair. Stockholm is a true feminist city! Also, I really like how it looks like there’s a four-poster bed in the room, very fancy!

The ceiling is meant to resemble a Viking longboat. And the very top of the ceiling is painted to look like the sky, which makes it an indoor-outdoor sort of deal. I like this a lot, no need to go out into the cold to see a nice blue sky!

The guy on the horse is meant to be Saint George – the princess Saint George rescues from the dragon represents Sweden and the dragon represents Denmark, the opposing army. I didn’t want to sound like a self-righteous Brit and tell them that Saint George actually belongs to the English…not that I’m all that fussed about him, I prefer Saint Patrick and the snakes or Saint David and wearing daffodils.

My photos of the next few rooms are rubbish. I refuse to share poor work with you so please feel free to imagine lots of mirrors and a full wall mural of the exact scene outside the window opposite. Exciting stuff. There was also a wonderful room that I didn’t take any photos of because I didn’t think I’d be able to catch the superness. It was a room designed to house a few lovely French tapestries – the room was the perfect shape for the tapestries and imagery from the tapestries was mirrored in the room – the same colours and shapes and loveliness. It’s the room where they perform marriage ceremonies; 38 weddings every Saturday from 2pm to 6pm (if my memory is correct). You can have a 30 second service or push the boat out and spend a whole 3 minutes professing your love for each other – anyone is welcome, gay or straight, so long as you don’t mind the 6 month waiting list. I’m almost tempted…all I need is a nice man to marry…

Another room that would be pretty cool for a wedding (although you can’t actually get married in it) is the gold hall; a massive hall that is literally papered in gold. Super ostentatious. I loved it!

The guide pointed out a few mistakes in the decor, including a headless Saint George (the artist insisted in was on purpose; the artist sounds like my kind of guy!)

I’m not sure whether I like this woman or find her disturbing (terrible framing in this photo, apologies):

And finally, I just can’t escape from France! :

]]> http://artificialswedender.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/a-free-trip-to-stadshuset-yes-free/feed/ 0 ciarafrances City hall 1 Viking ceiling George Gold george head scary woman tower http://artificialswedender.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/a-lovely-lake/ http://artificialswedender.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/a-lovely-lake/#comments Wed, 26 Oct 2011 19:22:45 +0000 Ciara http://artificialswedender.wordpress.com/?p=208 ]]> Tomorrow and Friday I am going to an induction meeting thingy for Comenius Assistants. This means two days off work (woop!) and spending time with other people experiencing the madness of being a Comenius Assistant (double woop!). Then I am going home for ten days (triple woop).

In case I forget/can’t be bothered to post for a while, here are a few photos of a lake and foresty park to tide you over with Swedish goodness:

The match in question was Djurgården vs Gefle; Djurgården being the home side. I did a bit of Wikipedia-based research before the match and discovered that I had never heard of any of their players. And that only the goalkeeper (who was playing his last ever match for them) played internationally. My hopes were not particularly high that the Allsvenskan league would match up to the Premiership (or the Championship for that matter…)

Djurgården play at Stockholms Stadion (and no, I haven’t forgotten the apostrophe, that’s how the Swedish spell it) which was built for the 1912 Olympic Games. I’ve never seen a football stadium like it – it reminded me of a castle, or maybe a brick version of the Colosseum (I visited Rome over the summer, it evidently had more of an effect on me that I realised!).

None of the photos I took show the stadium off to it’s full glory so I’ve Google-imaged a Colosseumy picture to illustrate my point:

Of course, it is still a football stadium so there was still a nice long queue for hot dogs and beer (which you can drink on the stands instead of being instructed by your dad to drink a whole pint as fast as possible so that you don’t miss any of the game)

The match itself was OK, not a very good standard of football if I’m perfectly honest. I reckon Huddersfield could beat either team easily. The end score was 1-1, which seemed pretty fair to me. The main difference between these top division Swedish teams and my usual third-tier English football appeared to be that the Swedish players were more attractive!

I love the steward’s face in that second photo – proving that all over the world being a steward at a football match is not a fun job!

The most interesting thing about the match for me, rather than the football itself, was the fans. We were in a standing section of the stadium (although it seemed to me that most areas were standing, and the standing area did have wooden benches…I found this quite perplexing) and the fans were so rowdy! I mean that in a nice way, they were signing and chanting and having a great time – far happier than English fans who like to grumble and moan about So-and-so missing a sitter or what’s-his-face looking like he went on a bender last night. From what I could understand (which was quite a lot to be honest, Swedish football fans have very good enunciation) the chants weren’t particularly insulting; they were all quite positive towards the home team rather than accusing the away team of being interbred or overweight as our football fans are want to do.

I don’t usually sit in the rowdy section when I go to football matches. Chanting tends to be reserved to away matches when the Towns fans are all in higher spirits and the boys need your support (this is where the whole fans-being-the-12th-man malarkey comes into play I think, when you have 3 sides of a stadium chanting against you then you need your own fans to be a bit rowdier) and I felt like a bit of an intruder being with “proper” fans. I do think it’s nice for football fans to chant but I sometimes feel that you miss some of the actual football if you’re jumping up and down singing about how much you love the team.

Here’s a photo of some fans, they were pretty much all blokes:

Now, onto the thing I really wasn’t expecting. Let’s start with a photo and move onto what the hell was actually happening:

Scary, right?! Just before the second half started the fans stood at the front of my stand all lit flares (or whatever they’re called). It just looked so dangerous – the benches in the stand were wooden! There weren’t that many exits! We could have all burned to death (or been crushed in an attempt to flee the flames)! Seriously though, when the flares lit up I was very shocked. How can such a “sensible” nation think that fire in a football crowd (a probably slightly drunk football crowd) is a good idea? A bit of Googling on the subject has proved me right, there have been injuries at matches. Yet they still practice this dangerous “celebration” technique. Mental. Plus the smoke impaired vision of the match for about 5mins:

And finally, it was the last ever match for the goalie and another player was receiving his Player of the Year award. These players were both presented with large bouquets of flowers. Yes, flowers. They gave beautiful flowers to macho footballers!

Hopefully you can see in this photo a big, manly footballer holding a lovely bouquet and giving another man a friendly hug. I do love the Swedes, even if they are pyromaniacs.

]]> http://artificialswedender.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/insert-fire-related-football-pun-here/feed/ 0 ciarafrances 001 Stadion 002 004 003 010 007 008 016 http://artificialswedender.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/bits-and-bobs-that-dont-warrant-a-post-of-their-own/ http://artificialswedender.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/bits-and-bobs-that-dont-warrant-a-post-of-their-own/#comments Sat, 22 Oct 2011 16:40:28 +0000 Ciara http://artificialswedender.wordpress.com/?p=191 ]]>

I like to have photos on my posts so, since I didn’t have any to go with this “bits and bobs” post, I decided to take a couple of autumnal photos to add a bit of colour. Weirdly the photos aren’t exactly what I was expecting (I took them on a digital camera, I should have checked them when I took them) as the sky has decided not to be blue like it actually was but instead is freakily white. I still think photos make posts more exciting though so please enjoy the freaky white sky.

Note, in this photo the sky manages to be both blue and white. It did not look this odd in real life, honest. Sweden is not another planet.

Moving on to the “bits and bobs” I thought would be nice to talk about but probably don’t warrant proper posts of their own:

- according to the French teacher at my school (the teacher that I spend the most time with since I am mainly a French assistant) the Swedes really love to queue and are very good at it. Her and her class would not believe me that it is in fact the British who are the best queuers in the world, if queuing was an Olympic sport we would win it etc. I tried to explain that in the UK if you see a queue you must join it and then, once firmly ensconced in said queue, complain about it with your fellow queuers. As far as I can tell Swedes do not complain when they are in a queue, they don’t necessarily look happy but they don’t verbalise their annoyance either. This takes a lot of the fun out of queuing and therefore proves that they aren’t as good at queuing at we Brits: they have not evolved the act of queuing any further than simply standing in a line. But I do like that queue-jumping is just as frowned on here as back home; when I lived in France little old ladies would reguarly push in front of me, usually while I was buying an inordinate amount of bread just for myself (and I wondered why France made me chubby!)

- today I took myself on a hunt to check out if I had a good local cafe. I pass one that looked pretty nice when I walk to and from work so I figured I would give it a go. I got there at quarter to four in the afternoon (I hadn’t just woken up, I had already done plenty with my day including going to the gym and baking gingerbread to negate all the good work done at the gym) which I thought was a usual sort of time to go for coffee but it turned out the cafe would only be open for another fifteen minutes. Obviously I still had a coffee – I love a good soya latte! – and it was a nice place with a lovely owner but surely she’s missing out on trade by closing so early. Plus the cafe is closed on Sundays! (and Mondays but I don’t think there’s quite as much missed trade there.)

- before I arrived in Sweden I had complete faith in the Swedes as a whole being a very organised bunch of people. And the important stuff like the Tax Office and Immigration and all that boring stuff being really, really organised. About a month and a half after applying for my identity number (which is meant to arrive about a fortnight after you apply) and I am still waiting…this means I can’t start my Swedish for Immigrants lessons…this means I can’t really speak much Swedish yet (although I do understand a lot more than people think I can, after 3 months here there are still certain people who like to inform me that “tack” means “thanks”) and I REALLY want to be able to speak Swedish. I have Monday and Tuesday off work (and Thursday and Friday for that matter…but for a different reason that I might go into at a later date… intrigue…it’s really not that exciting actually!) and while I was planning some Ciara-relaxing-time I think I might have to head to the Tax Office or Immigration Office or whatever the hell it’s called and ask them where my Identity Number is. Should be super fun…

That’s all the bits and bobs I have for you right now, apologies for my last point turning into a mini-rant.