Boston Blatte

Facebook and its fan base are flaunting smiling images of happy families on skis up on mountains, sitting in sunshine with drinks. Everyone is smiling and they are all somewhere else. They have taken their families to be active during the Swedish winter holiday week devoted to sports. Outdoor sports. They even call it sport holiday or sportlov in Swedish.

Swedes are incredibly outdoorsy. Activities are always outdoors if they can help it, and they go around chastising any poor soul foolish enough to utter at bad word at the weather with, “There is no such thing as bad weather, only insufficient clothing”. Even in the face of sub-Artic temperatures, blizzard conditions or ice storms. They are taught to identify trees, flowers, plants, mushrooms, birds and anything you might find on a nature walk. That way they can embarrass us city folk when they ask non-chalantly, “What do you call that” under the disguise of small talk with the English speaker.

They giggle politely when I answer, “Tree, flower, mushroom, bug” since I haven’t a clue if it it isn’t respectively, a maple, rose, supermarket variety or spider.

Now back to the guilt of not on a skiing holiday during the sporting vacation (they should rename it ski or you are a loser holiday). We have done some activities around Stockholm to make up for our shortcoming as outdoorsy parents. We played boule on Monday, hunted for monsters at the fort outside of Vaxholm on Tuesday and learned about the Blue Hall, Golden Hall and made our own mosaics at the City Hall on Wednesday (all highly recommended and very affordable will edit in links later).

Thursday I worked (sounds like a line from a modern laborer’s bible) and tomorrow we will discover the secret identities of the skeletons found aboard the Vasa Warship.

Unfortunately, my Instagram, Vine and FB uploads of these events are guilting my other friends who have planned the week around closer to home events. That is not my intention.

So I guess I should stop blocking my skiing friend. They do so look like they are having a good time.

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The reality that work starts again on Thursday (7 Jan) is painfully sinking in.  I’ve done better than some; the ones who went back to work this past Monday (4 Jan) or the poor schleps who had to work the weekdays aka mellandagarna,  the “between days” literally between xmas and  new year’s,  but I am not as fortunate as those who won’t clock in again until next Monday (11 Jan.)

Christmas season isn’t really over in Sweden yet. Tomorrow, Wednesday, is Trettondedag Jul, the day many other European countries call some variety of “Three King’s Day” of the Christian Epiphany persuasion which many orthodox Christian faiths consider true Christmas.

Did you follow all that?  However you slice it,  Trettondedag jul is  a red day –a colorful Swedish way to say it’s a pubic holiday.

Now if there wasn’t already enough  controversy (well, mostly in the US) mixed up with the xmas holiday i.e. what to call it and associated paraphernalia,  why to celebrate it, who stole it from whom and even when it is,  it appears a homegrown controversy has sprung up in Sweden too.

As it were, most of Sweden’s public holidays are religiously based. Of late, there are more voices calling for greater distance between church and state holidays. The Local’s article even describes a proposal to allow each employee to designate his or her own “holidays” (Isn’t that what vacation days are for?)

Now I don’t know if I agree with a proposal to individualize public holidays (kind of takes away the public value) but I can fully sympathize with the sentiment to reduce the religious affiliation to pubic holidays.  Giving Sweden a National Day and cutting out the second day of Pingst, the Pentecost was a great move.

But I think I want to keep Trettondedagn, it stretches Christmas to nearly mid January and I have become pretty fond of this midwinter break. So back to work on Thursday it is.

Good thing I am taking Friday off.

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There’s a great irony involved with Swedish Christmas and Christianity. Swedes use the pagan word –JUL or Yule in English– and yet despite there being very little religion in the daily lives of Swedes, nearly everything about Christmas is more Christian than my Boston Christmases.

Christmas in Stockholm officially started this weekend. The season always kicks off in line with the First Sunday of the  Advent. So many homes had jumped the gun on Saturday with all their lights up and lit.

Lights are nearly always “white” (no multi color bulbs and definitely no blinking lights ) in Sweden and candle “trees” in windows or advent stars are pretty much all you’ll see.  This window is about as stereotypical as you can get.

I have joked for years that one of these Christmases I might just go Griswold on the house. It probably won’t happen, but boy would it be fun to have a spread of the tackiest light displays ever seen this side of Stockholm.

It won’t happen this year. I think we have one star and one functioning candle tree. Must get those up soon.

Only 25 shopping days left to Julafton, Swedish Christmas.

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My flight attendant on the trip back to Stockholm Bromma had on jeans.  I found it odd and interesting simultaneously. The boisterous guy in the seat across the aisle thought so too as he pointed it out to his  buddies. He ended up flirting with her on and off throughout the hour flight.  I think it was part of his boisterousness persona.

I think the jeans were a part of her flight attendant’s uniform. Sweden is ahead of the times on the dress-down trends of the world. Maybe little Kullaflyg (servicing Ängelholm, Visby, Mora and Bromma) is a global trendsetter.

Today was my business travel debut. For most of you that’s old hat, I know. But when you’re your own boss and your customer base is local, the closest you get to business travel is writing off business-related trips on your tax forms. Today was my first free ride.

The grand adventure brought me across Sweden to the northwest corner of Skåne, to Höganäs, home of Sweden’s traditional stoneware pottery (well, birthplace more like, today the pottery is owned by KostaBoda in Småland.)  Skåne is one of my favorite regions of Sweden. It is Sweden’s “breadbasket” with rolling farmland and quaint farmhouses with a very long enveloping coastline. The great tease that this trip was, I didn’t see much of it.

But I did very much enjoy having a flight attendant in jeans. More new trends Kullaflyg.

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Stockholm-technology-wise I’m a little behind the times these days. I just acquired, loaded and used for passage my first SL (Stockholm’s public transit authority) Access card at a terminal.

Where I stood and loaded

Mine is red.

An array of colors

I felt so technologically smooth and clumsy at the same time needing to read the instructions closely.

And this has got to be my fastest post ever. Pulling into Centralen (Stockholm Central Station) now.

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