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Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Stockholm
Hello People,
Reminder, past letters, essays and better photos
are on on the website. Also there is a calender which
tells you who is visiting us when, weather in Stockholm,
and maps.
http://he3.dartmouth.edu/Sweden
username: Sweden
password: Stockholm
(capital letter required)
There is an essay at the end: Before you arrive in Sweden ..
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The big news of last week is that Will is busy with
Jujitsu (Monday & Wednesday) and guitar (Thursday) and Robin
is Mister Fotboll. He made the NSK team (NSK = "Norrtull
Sports Klub" - Norrtull mean "north gate or toll" and is the
name of our neighborhood). They have "training" Tuesday
and Thursday, and games normally on Friday (this last week
it was on Thursday - and they lost). So there is a new
"dogi" for Jujitsu and yellow and black uniform for
fotboll in our apartment.
On Friday we took the bus across town and meet a
loud group of gymnasium (high school) seniors girls wearing
their new hats and shouting out about the superiority of
their school. The hats are white cloth caps with a black
band and brim and look like captain's hats. They have the
name of the school embroidered into them with gold.
We were headed to Södermalm. Söder mean south, like
Norr is north for our area. Here a school friend of Will's
had recommended the "Pelikan". Just say it phonetically
and you'll know it mean "Pelican" - and you'll be reading
Swedish! This restaurant specializes in traditional
Swedish food, like meatballs and salmon. Robin had "pig's
knuckles" and lots of mustards. I think the place was
overwhelmed by all the graduation/long weekend/beginning
of spring celebrations - which made things
... very ... slow....
This was a four day weekend. Kristina is not quite
certain how anybody gets anything done around here with all
the holidays, it has been only half a month since Easter
week. Monday was "Walpurgis" and Tuesday was May Day.
One of the things I like about these holidays is that all
the buses have little Swedish flags on them. Also one
of the families in our apartment complex raises a huge
blue and yellow Swedish flag in the inner circle of the
apartments.
Saturday and Sunday were just normal weekend days.
On Saturday Robin, Kristina and I went to the
greenhouses in the botanical gardens near here. The
garden is about 3 kilometers from here so we biked. We
only have two bikes, so Robin sat on the black bike's
back rack. At the garden there are two greenhouses. The
old Victorian greenhouse has a tropical lily pool on
the inside. Apparently we are too early in the year to
see the giant lily pads which will grow. The new and
much large greenhouse is really nice, with a
"Mediterranean" collection. It also include spiral
staircase, a cafe and a balcony where we ate.
On Sunday Kristina and I took the bis to Gamale Stan
where we went to one of the museums which is under the
Slott (Palace). Then we meet Robin in the Karl XII park
and had lunch. Meanwhile Will had meet some school friends
in Djurgårdens, at Waldenmarsudde. This is the same place
where we had a picnic by the harbor two weeks ago and Will
played the guitar. He took the guitar with him again this
time. If reasonable, Will will take the guitar with him.
It often goes to school.
Monday was "Walpurgis", or bonfire night. The
bonfire is suppose to ward off witches, and as Will has
pointed out, after the bonfire there are absolutely no
witches in Stockholm. It also marks the beginning of Spring
and gymnasium graduation, even though seniors still have
a few weeks of classes. In any case there are bonfire and
spring choral singing all over the city, including one on
Robin's practice soccer field 200 meters from here. But
going to that would be too easy. So we took a series of
buses, past other bonfires, to Skansen. Skansen is an
"open air museum", much like Sturbridge Village in
Massachusetts. We arrived just as the fire was being lite.
Will and Robin think it was actually smaller then the
rally bonfire at Dartmouth. The wood was stacked up
"tepee" style, about a dozen feet (3-4 meters) tall.
Once the fire was roaring a choral group sang a lot of
traditional Spring songs on a near by stage. The song,
of course, were in Swedish which we did not understand.
Next a folk music group called "Ranarim" came on. They
were a lot of fun - even though we still have no idea what
they said.
Tuesday was May Day. I searched the web to find out
where there were rallies in town, but couldn't I came
up with a lot of photos of last year's, with lots of red
flag and marching workers of the world, but didn't find
anything about this year.
In the evening Will, Kristina and I went to Jazz club
in downtown. The group had three women who rotated the
role of lead guitar and singer. They were from Canada, so
we could actually follow the words. They were good and
a lot of fun to listen to.
Back to school and work today.
Tim
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Old Greenhouse
Old Greenhouse Top
New Greenhouse
Robin on the Lion
at Karl XII park
Stockholm at Night from Skansen
Robin at the Bonfire
Will at the Bonfire
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Before you arrive in Sweden ...
So if you are coming to Sweden what are the things you
should know? Well, I guess maybe we should start with money.
The basic unit is call the "Kronor" - which means "Crown".
Sweden is one of the few countries which didn't adopt the
Euro, but I think there is now some fixed exchange rate
between them. The kronor is worth 15 cents, or one dollar
is worth 6.68 kronor. This is what you want to bear in
mind. That 100 kronor bill is worth 15 dollars. You
can figure out everything based on that. Prices are a
bit more then Hanover, but less then New York City,
maybe like Boston.
The kronor is subdivided into a in 100 öre. But do
not worry about these too much. I have only seen a 50 öre
coin, and that was at the grocery store when buying
something by weight. They will weigh something calculate
the price to the last öre, and then round it down to
the nearest 50 öre.
Speaking of weight - everything is in metric here.
This is good, and please stick to it, because something
as simple as a "mile" can cause problems. In the past in
Sweden there was a unit of distance called a "mil", "mile",
"land mile" or "long mile", which was the distance you can
walk between taking a break for a rest. Now I suppose that
you could try to subvert the word and say that since you
took four rest stops between Gamala Stan and Odenplan
(coffee twice, an ice cream and a Wienerbröd) that maybe
you have traveled four or five "miles", even if the signs
tell you 1,5 km, but we will see through that. An ancient
"mil" use to be about six and a half miles, but when metric
was adopted it was redefined as 10 kilometers. So, the long
and the short is, if you want to know how far it is, ask
how many "kilometers" it is - and convert yourself, because
a mile may not be a mile. (The above land mile is mentioned
in "Journey to the Center of the Earth", when they are
trekking across Iceland. I remembered this and looked it up
when writing my chapter on measurement units).
Two useful metric units which I had not seen before
are the hectogram (hg) which is the unit bakeries will
sell cookies in. They weigh out the cookies and then a
hundred grams, or about 3.5 ounces, is an hectogram.
Also at a restaurant you might buy your wine by the
deciliter. 1 wineglass = 1 deciliter. Here
you have been drinking metric all the time and didn't even
know it! (By the way there are 3x1024 molecules - or 3 yocto
molecules in a glass of wine - why have I calculated that
recently?)
What about the language? First I find that we get
by just fine in English. Of all the people I have encountered
only two didn't understand my English. But it is useful
to be able to say the pleasantries. Here is my
short list, (I am the last person you should ask. Will
and Robin know more Swedish then they admit).
hello hej (or) hej hej "hey" (or) "hey hey"
thanks tack "tuck"
thanks you very much tack sa mycket "tuck saw mewcket"
yes ja "yaa"
no nej "ney"
Finally, about that funny alphabet. In Swedish (Svenska)
there are twenty nine letters;
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÅÄÖ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzåäö
Note that Å, Ä and Ö come at the end of the alphabet, that
is where you will find them in an English-Svenska dictionary.
Those of you who have studied German will recognize the umlaut
on the "A" and "O", but that other letter, the "o" on the
"A" is called a "ring" (I just learned this today). For
years I thought that the Å was called an "angstrom", because
in physics we use that symbol for 10-10 meters. But
really it is a unit named after a Swedish scientist,
Anders Ångström (he managed to get two of those letters into
his name).
They are very few words where dropping the ring or
umlaut will get you into trouble. But one of them is cheese.
Cheese is "ost", where as "öst" is east, as in the
neighborhood called Östermalms. Where these two very different
words could complicated things is that if you ask for a
ticket to Austria (Österrike = Eastern kingdom) but forget
the umlauts (Osterrike = cheesy kingdom) you could end
up in Wisconsin.
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