Arriving in a new city at night can be very disorienting, and can also skew your first impressions of the place. Traveling by bus this evening from the Helsinki airport to my hotel, my first impression of the city was that it was all highways and malls, because that’s all I could see–everything else was [...]
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I’m leaving Stockholm tomorrow for the next stop on my tour. The rest of my trip through Scandinavia will be much more accelerated, and I won’t have nearly as much time to get to know the next few cities as I feel I’ve (even just a little bit) gotten to know this one. I’m going [...]
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I’m not really a huge shopper, but there’s something about Scandinavian design that makes me want to absolutely empty my bank account. There seem to be an inordinate number of interior design-y type stores here in Stockholm, selling furniture, lighting, rugs, etc. The aesthetic here is very appealing to me: simple, clean, colorful but uncluttered. [...]
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If I thought I could avoid Halloween shenanigans by escaping New York, I thought wrong. I’ve seen way more fake-blood-covered hipster zombies this weekend than I ever needed to. (Below: an ad from the metro.)
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On the railing of Västerbron, the bridge that crosses between Södermalm, Långholmen, and Marieberg, there is a huge cluster of padlocks with names on them. A friend told me that this is a tradition here (and elsewhere in Europe…I suppose it could be in the US, too, but I haven’t seen it), for couples to [...]
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Fans of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium series will remember that the trilogy’s heroine, hacker-investigator Lisbeth Salander is always drinking black coffee and eating “Billy’s Pan Pizzas.” When I saw a freezer full of them in the grocery store today, I knew that, in the name of science literature, I had to try one. I picked up an [...]
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Why is no one else freaked out by these horrible-sounding birds that flock and gather every night in the trees overhead on the island of Södermalm? I find them terrifying; they sound like the winged monkeys in Oz. Take a listen to this short recording I made and see if you agree. I don’t know [...]
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In the past week or so I’ve been meeting with a lot of different producers and directors at SVT (which is like our PBS, but much more extensive), and Sveriges Radio (which is like our NPR) in Stockholm. Hearing them talk about the media scene here, and seeing their quizzical faces while they listen to [...]
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Here’s a short and kind of wobbly video of the permanent sculpture installation “The Fantastic Paradise” outside the Moderna Museet (Modern Art Museum) in Stockholm. Finished in 1967, it was a collaboration between French artist Niki de Saint Phalle, who was known for large, brightly-colored ceramic or paper-mache figures, and Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely, who [...]
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Here’s just a little postscript to my post from a while ago, about outgoing kids and their non-outgoing parents in Sweden. I just had the following exchange with a little blond kid, probably about four or five years old, and his mom, when I was coming down the stairs in my apartment building and they [...]
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I could not possibly be a reporter abroad without: 1. Gmail 2. Google Voice 3. Google Translate 4. The entire Strangers With Candy series, available for free (international) online viewing on the Comedy Central website.
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On my way to an interview at SVT today (Sweden’s PBS), walking to the office building on Oxenstiernsgatan, I saw a bunch of people sitting in a tree in the middle of the median strip. The group was protesting the city’s planned removal of the gigantic oak; apparently the city says the tree is rotten [...]
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I went to a great house party last weekend. The party was so great that I ended up getting in a sort-of argument with the hostess’s boyfriend. (Always a good idea!) He, like other Swedes I talked to that night, was curious about my impressions of the country as a first-timer here, and about the [...]
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Some Swedish street signs, and what I can only assume they mean.
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I like the bathrooms in Sweden quite a bit. In many public places like train stations, libraries, and even little kiosks on the street, you have to pay to use them (usually 10 kr, or about $1.50) – but that means that they’re staffed, and big enough so that there’s not usually a line, and [...]
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(I wrote this piece today for the Columbia Journalism Review website, double-posted here.) Trial Begins Tomorrow for Journalists Imprisoned in Ethiopia Their Swedish colleagues demand justice October 19, 2011 Two Swedish journalists who have been imprisoned in Ethiopia for almost four months will face terrorism charges in Addis Ababa tomorrow. Freelance photojournalist Johan Persson and [...]
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So, I am a big fan of Marc Maron‘s podcast series, and while traveling I’ve been catching up on a bunch of them. In the beginning of the Jimmy Shubert episode (number 202), Maron talks about how he’s recently gotten involved in a lot of creative and professional projects at once, and how all the new opportunities [...]
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Sweden loves August Strindberg. The Stockholm-born playwright, essayist, novelist, and painter was quite a prolific guy. Probably best known for the play “Miss Julie,” Strindberg wrote sixty more plays besides that one, and thirty books. Some of his manuscripts, diaries, and oil paintings are on display at the Nordiska Museet, a museum of Swedish cultural [...]
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When I first arrived in my sublet in Stockholm, I met the teenage daughter of the woman I’m renting a room from, and the daughter’s boyfriend. They were very sweet and friendly and curious, and without wasting any time, they hit me up with two burning questions about America: 1) Is it true that less [...]
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The other day I happened to walk by a store in Stockholm called “The English Shop,” promising “solace for homesick expats.” I love British candy, so I went in to check it out. There was all the stuff you’d expect: Vegemite, PG Tips tea, Heinz salad cream, HP Sauce, etc. But there was also an American [...]
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While in Kiruna, the northernmost city in Sweden, I had the excellent luck of getting to go on a tour of the underground iron mine there, which happens to be the world’s largest. I say “luck” because I went up there in the off-season (much too late for the midnight-sun summer festivals, but too early [...]
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I mentioned in my last post that I was up north in Kiruna, above the Arctic Circle, for a few days, but that I was coming back on Saturday and hoped to catch the Occupy Stockholm demonstration here. Unfortunately, I came back too late in the day to catch it; but for the curious, here are accounts [...]
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I’ve just arrived in Kiruna, the northernmost city in Sweden, well above the Arctic Circle. The airport here has a big time-and-temperature screen, and when I got off the plane it was flashing “0 degrees” (Celsius). Also, if I interpreted the sign I saw in the parking lot correctly, there’s a designated section for parking [...]
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If I accomplish nothing else today, it will still have been a productive, adventure-filled day, because I braved a Swedish laundry room and came out alive (and with clean clothes). Behold!
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I took a visit to Stockholm’s Historiska Museet, a museum about the history of Sweden. At the end of an amazing exhibit about the Viking era (Wooden ships! Big scary Christian/Celtic combo crosses! Gold!), there was a little display about the different ways the myth of the Viking life has been used and altered by [...]
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The bike culture here in Stockholm here is wonderful. There are bike lanes everywhere–bike lanes that are usually part of the sidewalk, so that riders are protected from car traffic. But it does mean that pedestrians have to pay attention to where they’re walking. This one bike-share* program is sponsored by a big daily newspaper [...]
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Bestsellers in any language: The memoir shelf, also appealing: Every bookstore I’ve seen so far in Stockholm also has a wide selection of English-language books, so I’m glad that I don’t have to worry that I’ll run out of the books I brought on my trip. On the other hand, I’m going to try not [...]
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Earlier today, two Polish men were arrested for planting homemade bombs in several European IKEA stores since May, the AP reports. No one was seriously hurt in any of the attacks, but the pair had promised that the bombings would continue until the company sent a wire transfer of 6 million euros ($8 million). The [...]
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There’s an interesting way of saying “yes” in Sweden. If you’re telling a story, or explaining something, or making an argument, the person you’re talking to may make a “yoh” sound while breathing air quickly into their lungs. This particular type of “ja” (“yes”) is a way of saying “I agree” or “yes, go on.” [...]
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Every evening when I come home to my Stockholm sublet, I pass by an underground bocce club. Not “underground” as in on-the-down-low, wink-wink, secret password and so on. “Underground,” as in, right smack in the middle of a dark, cave-like tunnel of this subway station, there is a bocce club. Observe:
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Well, Ladbrokes almost got it right. The winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature, announced today, is Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer. It was very exciting to be in the room for the announcement, especially since the prize went to a son of Stockholm. (The last time a Swede won the prize was 1974.) When Peter Englund, [...]
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American chains I’m not surprised to see in Stockholm: McDonald’s Starbucks Levi’s American chains I am surprised to see: T.G.I. Friday’s Urban Outfitters Mailboxes, Etc.
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Me: How do you pronounce the street “Bergsgatan”? Roommate: It means “Mountain Street.” Say it like Buh-dees-gah-tan. Me: Bees-gah-tan. Roommate: You’ve just said “Poo Street.”
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Some views from the Katarina bridge today:
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Continuing from my last post on Scandinavian manners…. Last week I met a grad student in Stockholm from Vietnam named Duk (I am probably not spelling that correctly), who has a baby boy, Nam, who is just under a year old. Nam is the friendliest, smiley-est baby you’ve ever seen. If Duk lets him go [...]
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I had been told before coming to Stockholm that people here would be polite but slightly cold. If someone makes eye contact with you on the street and gives a friendly smile, then they’re probably from somewhere else. People don’t say “excuse me” if they bump into you on the train, or if they need [...]
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I was in a cafe yesterday, trying to decipher my street map while eating an excellent salami-brie-cucumber sandwich, when I heard two little girls shouting “Mummy GLASS, Mummy GLASS, Mummy GLAAAAASSSS!” It took me a second to figure out what was going on. Then I looked it up: “glass” means ice cream. Ah, yes.
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So, I didn’t know this until recently, but betting on the Nobel prizes is apparently a thing. The Nobel Prizes in Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Peace, and Economics will all be announced in the next two weeks or so, but the announcement for the Literature prize is still a secret. A number of betting sites in [...]
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Last night I was surprised to find myself in an Irish pub in Stockholm that sold three types of beer from Brooklyn Brewery. But I shouldn’t be surprised. The night before last, I was in a Czech bar in Sodermalm (a neighborhood-slash-island that is kind of like the Brooklyn of Stockholm) talking to a Swedish [...]
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