Hejsan, y'all.
Last update came to you from the beginning of summer and this one comes to you from the (let's be realistic) end. Gothenburg has a very brief "summer" and then we slip back into rain rain rain, darkness and cold. It could be worse! We could be waaaaay up north and get excited when it gets over 10*C. (Did you know it's a further 16 hours by car to the Arctic Circle from where I live? Sweden is huge.)
Those three glorious weeks we had in June... that was pretty much summer. It's been ok here, off and on - a day here and there where it's really pleasant out. But mostly it's been raining a lot and not all that warm. We've got our collected fingers crossed that we'll get some more good weather here in August (when we visited last year it was really warm) but for me, summer is over starting tomorrow anyway.
Yes, I start this bootcamp that will hopefully be a move into a new career tomorrow. I'm excited and a little nervous, but mostly ready to get to work. I like working and I love learning things. And I like the idea of being a coder. Starting tomorrow it's code all day every day until I know the ropes, so my days of lounging by the sea have come to an end for this year. But with summers like this, it doesn't seem like that big a sacrifice.
Obviously these images come from the Pride Parade back in June. Clearly I'm just a spectator but Gothenburg's Pride seems much more subdued than DCs. There are also way more boobs and less dick about. We saw lots of women just full-on naked in the street (some of them painted). I felt mad creepy taking pictures of them, so I didn't. But the festival itself came with all kinds of great activities, including free pap smears with bonus candies!
Actually, we found ourselves at the stage at one point and they were doing choreographed dancing and we were having *so much fun* until we realized we were inadvertently participating in an exercise class. Whoops!
Jobb = job. This is the employment agency marching. Honestly, the parade was pretty lame - it was a lot of government agencies and companies with a bunch of employees just walking down the street with rainbow things happening. I was like "where are the QUEENS?" But maybe if you have a more equal and accepting society, your parade gets really tame. It's not a bad trade-off.
All over town, these women (and a few men) sit outside the grocery stores and ask for money. They don't really do much except sit there and say "hej" to everyone that walks in or out. It's very non-aggressive. Mostly they just seem really bored. I enjoyed seeing this lady dancing and having a good time - sometimes we forget that people who have to beg on the street are *people* and they like doing fun things like dancing just like the rest of us.
I talked about this a bit on
Instagram too, but one difference between Sweden and the states is that everyone is more ok with bodies here. Naked bodies on the street, pregnant ladies with their bellies way out, communal saunas and there's no such thing as a "nude" beach because it's ok to get naked at any beach. Swedes are just more comfortable in their own skin and ok with seeing other peoples' skin.
And then it was Midsommar! Lacking some kind of traditional, organized, countryside Midsommar affair, we hit up the official city celebration at a park downtown. They had make-your-own flower crowns, a giant "maypole", traditional dancers and lots of people looking cheerful and having fun. We had amazing weather that day.
The first climax of Midsommar is dancing around the pole. There's a ton of songs with choreographed dancing. Everyone forms concentric rings around the pole, then you dance left and right and do hand motions and kick a bit. It's great fun!
The second climax is going home, eating a ton, and getting shitfaced. George and I cooked a metric asston of food for a bunch of assorted friends and colleagues. I got properly wasted but it seems no one else did (or so I was told). As I understood (understand) it, Midsommar is the one time you're mandated to get properly drunk, so I did.
I had a really great time, anyway.
Finally made it to Röda Sten before we moved. They had a really cool exhibit about climate change and things. This is giant plastic sheet suspended from the ceiling by a million pieces of yarn.
George did a lot of traveling in August, so one Saturday I made it out to Marstrand for a sailing competition. I honestly didn't understand the sailing at all - they moved back and forth and it honestly seemed like they were going kind of slow and the "track" was really small. But in the end someone won and people seemed excited. It was completely, ridiculously, windy so I didn't stick around near the sailing bit that much.
I ate crazy-delicious seafood soup in this little place.
Gothenburg has an event going on this year called "Green World." They've set up a bunch of different art installations dealing with nature. There are a bunch of "pocket parks" on the main strip downtown, a huge bamboo installation near the state theater and a number of really cool arty things in the botanical gardens. There's all kinds of crap like this in town - Gbg has a lot going on.
And then, we went to Stockholm! We had *the best* weather in Stockholm (it was 10 degrees colder in Gbg the whole time we were there). We saw tons of stuff and also managed to spend a couple hours every day just chilling drinking beers and such on patios.
City Hall:
Patio #1 was on a rooftop and it was sooooooo nice. We spent an hour or so just listening to music and completely chilling out.
Moderna Museet: meh. I've seen too many freakin' "world class" museums at this point to get excited about something with no big names or things I recognize. (Other takeaways from visiting a thousand modern museums: Picasso was damn *prolific*. Literally every modern art museum I've been in has a bunch of his stuff.)
Some kind of band concert in the Old Town's main square.
Museum Island.
Ok, Stockholm was kinda great - lots of stuff to do, pleasant to look at, lots of good patios to drink on. But the *best* part was Bunny Park. For some reason the park we walked through between our hotel and downtown had a whole family of bunnies living in it. Urban bunnies! They were out almost every time we went through, day or night, and they weren't very scared of people. They were damn adorable.
It's basically impossible to take a good picture of the Vasa, but here's a crap one. This was worth the $14 entry fee or whatever. They pulled an *entire* ship out of the harbor and built a museum for it. Crazy!
A sign maker who took his job too literally?
We did a whole bunch of stuff in Stockholm but mostly it was just a pleasant time, walking around and eating. George hates outdoor museums, apparently. He did not dig Skansen, but I liked it.
One of the coolest things we did in Stockholm was a tour of the metro art. We managed to completely screw up the meeting place the first day but they had another tour that fit right in with our train time. We got to see really neat art grottos and the like. Highly recommend and it's free!
I just haven't been taking that many "regular" photos, though I always have my camera on me. I guess I'm letting that slide for a while. So I don't have very many day-in-the-life stuff to show. Sorry! Here's some other things that happened:
- George is doing good. He's in Edinburgh right now experiencing the Fringe Festival, again. He was supposed to bring me but then I signed up for this coding camp that starts tomorrow. So I suck but hopefully it will be way worth it.
See all those "waves"? They weren't there a few weeks ago when we visited - the ice was completely solid and very thick. Temperatures have been consistently above freezing! So the ice is melting. All the same, I was surprised to find it was still frozen over. I guess once a lake freezes like this it doesn't want to let go.
Puddles on the ice.
So then, Stockholm. Thursday night I bundled myself from work into a train into a little hostel in Stockholm's Gamla Stan (old town). It was really nice to be in the old town - at night it's very quiet and in the morning none of the shops are open so none of the tourists are about and it's quite lovely to walk around.
For whatever reason I took a ton of verticals so my apologies for all the scrolling you must now do.
One thing that struck me on this trip was a number of Swedish things I now take for granted. For instance, every toilet paper roll in Sweden is covered by this little metal hinged contraption that holds the roll in place and provides a convenient lever for ripping off the paper. In the hostel, every time I went into a bathroom, that cover had been flipped up - the other hostel residents apparently uninterested or ignorant of how it works. I also noticed several people standing around waiting for a bathroom that was not locked. I could tell it was not locked because the little lock bit was white (instead of red). I've been here long enough that much of this stuff is really self-evident to me and it's weird to notice other people having trouble with it.
As in most of my travels, the majority of my time was spent just literally wandering around. I did a couple of walking tours, a tiny bit of shopping, saw a movie (I, Tonya). But mostly just walking around.
Traveling hasn't made me as excited in recent years as in the past. Maybe because I've been able to do it so much more frequently. Or maybe I'm just going through a weird life phase. Or maybe none of the above and I'm just a mopey person.
I went to Skogskyrkogården because it's a UNESCO listed site. Honestly, I didn't think all that much of the place and I don't really know how it's of uncomparable benefit to humanity. I had had in mind the idea that George and I might try to see all of the UNESCO sites, but after this latest lackluster one, I think I'll just put that aside. Anyway, it was a nice cemetery and all...
I also have been reading the Stevie Nicks (unsanctioned) biography and been getting really into Fleetwood Mac. This is relevant because I was listening to Fleetwood Mac as I was strolling around this cemetery and just getting really down. I maybe need more uplifting media.
There's a thing in Sweden where people don't leave flowers on the graves themselves but in these other central locations. At the cemetery by our house, for instance, there's a designated place to leave flowers and things for dead loved ones. That way the groundskeepers don't have to go around and pick up all the dead flowers - they can just maintain one little spot. It's eminently practical (and very Swedish).
I don't know why, but there were dozens of tombstones in this back area of the cemetery.
I don't mean to be such a bummer, guys. I'm fine, I think. Just being a little honest here instead of all sunshine and roses.
Anyway, the Stockholm subway has tons of really cool art. I had bought a 24-hour pass so I used it to tromp around and see some of the stations downtown.
Fotografiska was pretty cool. I liked one of the exhibitions a lot: Christian Tagliavini. He makes these elaborate setups and then photographs them. He carves things, 3D prints stuff, sews, does intricate paper work, then makes it look like Renaissance paintings. Really cool.
They also had an exhibition of Ellen von Unwerth's work. It was a huge collection of extremely beautiful women doing sexy things. And it made me feel like a prude because... and maybe I'm just getting old ... but I'm finding all of that really boring. How hard is it to make a beautiful, thin woman visually appealing to people? It's extremely easy, let me tell you. Are beautiful women more interesting? I just don't think so. And I feel like we see the same kind of woman all the time - young, extremely thin, usually white. It's just the same thing over and over and over again. And this was a warehouse-size exhibition of that repetition. I kept looking for some kind of feminist message or for just... something to be said - about women, about femininity, about gender. But there was nothing - just a lot of half-naked women looking beautiful. Maybe I'm just a prude, I don't know.
That was pretty much it! Next trip is back to the states in six weeks. I'll get to see David's house and eat all the things (Tex Mex!) and generally be back immersed in the English language. People who live in DC, make some plans with me. It will be warm (by God!) so hopefully I'll be chipper again.