Snuggling With the Enemy

The daylight and the colors and shapes in the sky are continuing to fascinate me (as is the dark, blurry line in my camera’s lens). These images are from late Thursday night/Friday morning around 1:00 AM. Fresh!

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Let’s take a look at a selection of photos from last Saturday which was Sweden’s National Day. How does that sound? Would you like that? Hmm?

I’ve heard a lot of talk about how Swedes are so modest and not especially proud or nationalistic. That’s mostly true. Granted, there were no fireworks or any boisterousness equivalents to the familiar “U-S-A!” chants. I think there certainly is a lot of national pride here, but like everything else, it’s a little more reserved and quiet. Either way, there were thousands of people out celebrating everywhere last weekend. The weather was nice, so that helped bring out the crowds. The outdoor bars and restaurants were jam-packed and the parks were full of picnickers.

The Royal Palace was open to the public free of charge, so I stopped by there to have a look early in the day. The castle was swarmed by the people when I arrived (whoa, I said swarmed not stormed).

This was a already several hours after Princess Madeleine had done the ceremonial honors of opening the dump for the day. I would have liked to have made the scene a little earlier to catch a glimpse of my favorite princess, but since I had been up late the night before and because she has never called me – not once – I slept later and missed her.

I can only imagine that she was scanning the crowd relentlessly, looking past every face in hopes of seeing mine. “He simply must be here somewhere,” she thought desperately, all the while maintaining a coy yet official state-sponsored smile.

This isn’t your typical medieval castle with towers and a drawbridge. Because Stockholm is a city built on about a dozen islands, a moat and drawbridge would be kind of pointless. The Swedish Royal Palace is actually based on the French castle at Versailles – kind of a theme since, as we’ve learned, the Swedish Royal Family also came from France.

Completed in 1754, after fifty-seven years of construction (bo-o-o-o-oring!), it is the world’s largest royal palace that is still in regular use by its head of state. Of course, the heads of state in Sweden are ceremonial, but they still use the old shack. And why wouldn’t they? This little cabin home on the hill has a paltry 608 rooms. The photo above is from the center courtyard. You may notice several people in the photo who do not have blonde hair and are not dressed entirely in black. Rest assured, those people are tourists.

I recently met the woman who designed the directional markers and signage around the palace. Naturally, we talked about her font choices and the color combinations she used. While I don’t have any photos of those signs, I can share with you something she said that I’m not sure I will ever forget:

“The worst thing about America is the coffee… except for the racism and poverty.”

Yeah. I’d say those two things are probably worse than the coffee. Adding sugar or milk to a racist doesn’t really make it any more tolerable.

As I walked out of the royal compound to leave the oldest part of town (so old they call it “Old Town”), I passed some of the official guards in fancy hats. I guess a lot of countries have these guys who stand there all day dressed like they’re in a marching band and walk around like robots when it’s time to clock out. They’re not gonna stop anybody from doing anything and it seems that in modern times the true nature of their duties involves keeping a straight face while odd and assorted shenanigans and jack-assery are acted out in front of them.

The Swedish guards aren’t so strict. They actually smile and will speak with tourists who want to have their photos made alongside the guards. I guess there is even a bit of lagom in ceremonial guardposts.

Everyone knows that Americans are crazy about their flag, especially around July 4th, but the Swedes are really giving theirs a pretty good showing for June 6th. I guess I’d have to say that it’s not really limited to Nationaldagen, the Swedish flag seems just about as omnipresent in Sweden as the American flag does in the United States.

In the photo above and the one right below, I counted 16 flags in each. There are probably more in the distance, but Old Timey Tower can’t see so well out of these old peepers. Suffice it to say that business is still booming at the local blue and yellow ink factory.

The image above is the Grand Hotel. When this photo was taken, Bruce Springsteen was probably inside this building. He played three concerts in the soccer stadium in Stockholm over the weekend and stayed at the Grand, as most illustrious visitors seem to. Since this was taken Saturday morning, I would presume he wasn’t out raging.

Had he been, he could have joined me at the Smaka På Stockholm Festival (“Taste of Stockholm”). In years past, I have seen this festival on television in America, so it was pretty cool to be living here and to just walk through it. Smaka is a typical street-food fair with quite a variety of cuisines from around the world, sponsored by Stockholm area restauranteurs.

One tent that caught my eye was called Latino-Cajun. I thought, “Oh nice, a little something from the Bayou or the Deep South.” Well, sort of.

Their menu board had jambalaya but also a little shout-out to my homeland: Kentuckyfriterad kyckling (you guessed it, “Kentucky fried chicken”). Kentucky isn’t anything close to being Cajun or Latino. What is considered Southern-fried or Kentucky-style fried chicken (even outside of the restaurant by that name) isn’t really the kind of fried chicken they had here.

It’s still really cool to see “Kentucky” on a sign so far from home. Most people in Kentucky don’t even know the difference between Sweden and Switzerland, so I’m not gonna get all upset because somebody here isn’t schooled in the minute details of American menu items, geography or “culture.” However, this may be the only place in the world that sells “Kentucky fried chicken” and also has a wine list.

Without fail, every single time someone asks me where exactly I’m from in the United States, and I say “Kentucky,” the next words out of their mouths are, “Oh, Kentucky Fried Chicken!” I smile and laugh, “That’s right!”

While there are a lot better things Kentucky could be first known for (Muhammad Ali, bourbon, Johnny Depp, George Clooney), there are really a lot worse things also. I don’t eat animals, but all things considered, being known for a type of food isn’t so bad. My German teacher in high school, Klaus Mittelsten, said the thing he always heard was that “Kentucky is famous for its beautiful horses and fast women.”

Wait a minute. Did I just say “shout-out” a few paragraphs back? I’m sorry about that. I try to keep my writing a little more gentlemanly and proper than that (and not “proper” in the MC Hammer sense).

Other than being a national holiday, it was also a big weekend for sports in Sweden. The Volvo Ocean Race was rolling through Stockholm. This race is nicknamed “The Mount Everest of Sailing.” I’m sure you can see the similarities: these multi-millionaires on their boats know exactly what its like to freeze or starve to death alone in the cold. Riding on a sailboat followed by a television crew is just the same as breathing thin air at the top of the atmosphere with ice all over your face, then arriving home to have your frostbitten toes amputated.

Maybe it’s a clue that your sport sucks if one of its highest pinnacles is nicknamed after a high pinnacle from another sport. Can you imagine one of the climbers turning to Sir Edmund Hillary following their brutal ascent to the top of Mount Everest and saying, “Sir, that historic climb was more punishing than a sail boat race. I mean, they should call Mount Everest ‘the sail boat race of mountain climbing.’”

Also happening in the big weekend of real sports, Sweden’s own Robin Söderling surprised tennis spectators by meeting Roger Federer in the final of the French Open, and the Swedish national soccer team was hosting neighboring rival Denmark in Stockholm.

As I made my way out of the Kungsträdgården park, where the food fest was, I was quite accustomed to the sea of blue and yellow flags. When I turned the corner and reached one of the city’s main plazas at Sergels Torg, I gasped in horror as my breath was taken away.

What laid before me was a hideous mess of Danish football fans, cloaked in their foul red and white, singing drunken soccer anthems, and surrounded by piles of garbage in a mess of Tuborg and Carlsberg cans. They had posted their flags around the square like red blood stains splattered on a beautiful blue-and-yellow day.

The whole disgusting display turned my stomach. Like an obscene parasite on the city, these filthy Danes had all the aristocratic etiquette of a bunch of Yankees fans parading through Boston.

(Note: I actually love Denmark and I thought it was really pretty hilarious that all these guys were making a ruckus in the middle of Stockholm, I’m just trying to assimilate in Sweden by acting offended.)

Some countries have rowdy soccer hooligans who flip over police cars, trample other fans, or get in fights, but perhaps you’ll enjoy this take on some more respectable fans in Sweden. This is from a Swedish sketch comedy show called “Hipp Hipp” from a few years ago. It’s all in Swedish, but I think you can get the idea.

Syntest = vision test
Pengar kommer så småningom = Money will come eventually
Slut på kontot = End of account
Sopa = Sweep
Vem får inte följa med in = Who may not follow me in?
Hunden, katten, glassen = dogs, cats, ice cream

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In keeping with the theme of public transit, on a recent Saturday, Erik and I paid a visit to the Stockholm Spårvägsmuseet. The name literally means track-way-museum, but you can call it the Transit Museum.

Anyone who knows me also knows that one of my general interests is old timey shit. Boy oh boy did they have some reeeeaaallly old timey shit at this place.

Naturally, they have all kinds of super cool old trains, buses, uniforms, maps, clippings, and pictures, but they also have old ticket booths, turnstiles, snack kiosks, and totally reconstructed historic bus shelters and Tunnelbana environments. Museums are always advertising “you can walk back in time” and it was kind of like that. The whole experience was a sweet deal for only 30 kronors (less than $4) and a great way to kill several hours on a Saturday afternoon.

Oddly enough, the transit museum is not located near any of the subway stations. I was as amazed by that as some of the actual exhibits because I kept wondering how they got all those trains to the building and put them inside. Trains are kind of big and heavy, you know?

Since you have read every single story on this website, you know that one of my favorite things about the Stockholm transit system – other than the fact that it eliminates the need to own a car – is that all of the Tunnelbana stations have been designed by different artists.

Several stations have features that aren’t really art but are nonetheless creative, for example directional compasses carved or embedded into the platforms. This photo shows one of those as well as part of an extensive prism of illuminated walls in the station at Bagarmossen.

“The world’s longest art exhibition” is what Stockholm’s subway system is sometimes called. Because of this, one entire section of the transit museum is dedicated to art in the underground and surface stations. There is so much art and information crammed into this single room that I could have spent a couple hours there and still not have seen it all. I think the art area could be expanded into an entirely separate museum and it would still be worth the price of admission. I suppose this isn’t necessary since “the world’s longest art exhibition” is just outside.

I took advantage of the opportunity to make a 360° view of the art room in the Stockholm Transit Museum.

Click to view full size

Some of the highlights you’ll see in the panorama are: actual ticket booths and electronic entry points, a bench shaped and painted to look like trees, some old street cars, Erik enjoying the exhibits, a station-by-station guide to every installation, a re-creation of one of the arched tunnels from the Kungsträdgården station, a section of the gigantic tape measure that snakes all the way through the Bandhagen station, a bus from the 1970’s, and some little kids riding in a miniature train that winds through the museum.

This miniature train is presumably safer than the one at the Louisville Zoo which crashed this week, sending 20 people to the hospital. One of the reader comments on The Courier-Journal newspaper’s website said, “more proof that light rail won’t work in Louisville.” Brilliant!

Not to be outdone by all the visual art in Stockholm’s subways, the national broadcasting company has commandeered some of the trains in the system and outfitted them as rolling museums.

When you take a Tunnelbana train anywhere in Stockholm, you may randomly happen upon a Sveriges Radio train, like the one pictured here. It will take you where you want to go just like a regular train, but it is packed with a variety of audio documentary stations.

The outside of the SR train has been colorfully decorated with graphics which are a distinct difference from the typical solid blue and silver color scheme. The doors are emblazoned with Sveriges Radio logos and the greeting “Welcome inside Stockholm’s fastest subway wagon” (…presumably because your trip will seem faster if you’re hearing something interesting. I’m sure if the train actually was traveling faster than other trains that could turn out to be a problem.)

When you step inside the train, all the usual advertisements have been replaced with red information panels and, upon sitting down, attached to the handle below each window, you’ll find a small red box with audio jacks. Just unhook your headphones from your iPod and plug into a documentary.

Each set of seats has a different story so if the train is not too crowded you can pick a seat that has a story you’ll find interesting. The day I was lucky enough to have a chance meeting with the documentary train, I was unlucky enough that it was packed with commuters coming home from work. Suckers!

One of the few open seats was next to a box with a documentary about kidnappings in Kashmir. The little bit of Swedish I am able to understand is easiest when it’s on the radio and people are speaking slowly and clearly, but you don’t have to understand much to grasp how depressing this story was.

Another box in the train had a story about Raoul Wallenberg, a famous Swede from the World War II era. Wallenberg worked as a diplomat in Hungary and saved thousands of people from the Nazis by issuing them fake Swedish passports.

Renting dozens of buildings in Budapest, he helped house more than 35,000 people in an impromptu compound of buildings disguised with fake signs of offices and research institutes.

What an awesome dude. I mean, he saved tens of thousands of lives and here I am just typing on the internet about other people’s art. Oh well, maybe I’ll do something cool tomorrow.

Three cheers for Raoul Wallenberg on Sweden’s National Day! … oh, right, I forgot. June 6th is not only my parents’ anniversary (45 years!) it is also Nationaldagen in Sweden.

Nearly half a dozen significant events in Swedish history have transpired on the sixth of June, including Swedish independence from the Kalmar Union, various transfers of power, and some royal weddings (though the one next year of Princess Victoria and Daniel Westling is oddly scheduled for June 10th).

Although the importance of June 6th in Sweden goes back nearly 500 years, it was not declared an official national holiday until 2005. It’s like the Swedish 4th of July and it’s practically brand new! The date was traditionally celebrated as Flag Day but recently the Swedes finally decided it’s not too nationalistic to celebrate your country. I celebrate their country every day, so I’m glad this weekend everyone else is joining me. There are outdoor festivities and music going on everywhere.

These National Day celebrations are being augmented with the endless racket of thousands of high school graduates in their traditional, white, sailor-style graduation hats, riding around on the backs of giant trucks, pumping loud music, screaming, drinking beer, and otherwise generally shattering everything I’ve said about Sweden being a reasonable, quiet place.

Such a truck is called a studentflak (student flatbed truck). They have huge sound systems and are covered in homemade banners, flowers, and sometimes trees. Yes, there are trees on the trucks with the kids who are partying. Maybe you should just see for yourself.

I didn’t take that picture and I didn’t make this video of trucks riding through Stureplan, I found them on the website of a company that rents the vehicles, but I think they capture the idea. (Click the HQ button to see it in higher quality) There are companies who specialize in renting out these trucks, just as they would any other party supplies.

Here is a link to a television commercial for a studentflak rental service, and here is a flak with trees on it leaving a school with the parents proudly watching.

It’s a big deal. A big loud, annoying, whooohooo-hip-hop-party deal. I mean, it would probably be fun if I was 18, but I ain’t, buddy. I was once, but that was a loooonnnngg time ago.

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I think there’s an old saying, “Pictures are sometimes more valuable than descriptions involving many words.” I think that’s how it goes.

This picture was taken from the balcony the other night at 12:30 in the morning – that’s after midnight. This daylight shit in Sweden is weird!

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Last Thursday, I posted a story about the upcoming reconstruction of Stockholm’s central Slussen interchange. In detailing the project, I discussed how it reminded me of a gargantuan project in Louisville. I took the opportunity to compare the different approaches the two cities are following.

Louisville’s undertaking involves the expansion of Kennedy Interchange, including Interstates 64 and 65, and the construction of two new spans across the mighty Ohio River. This project, which includes placing 23 lanes of traffic between the city and its waterfront, is absurd in scale and cost. That has not gone unnoticed.

In March, the American transportation site The Infrastructurist proclaimed it Number One in their ranking of the “Most Ridiculous New Roads Being Built In America.”

All this came up in my discussion of life in Sweden because Stockholm is faced with a similar situation at Slussen. The difference is, in my humble opinion, that Stockholm is continuing to do everything right and Louisville is digging itself deeper into obsolescence. These divergent paths go all the way back to the 1940’s – public transit, airport expansion, streetscapes, you name it.

As I said last week, when you think about what has happened to oil prices, driving trends, and auto manufacturing, just in the past couple years (Louisville’s traffic congestion declined by 39% in 2008 alone), a fifteen-year project like this truly deserves to be Number One on that list.

It brings me a lot of pain to say things like this, but I think the people in charge in Louisville simply aren’t seeing the big picture. (Really, Scott? Why don’t you do something about it like run for office?) What’s more, they’re not listening to what the informed public wants.

Today, more than 11,000 Louisvillians are registered members of 8664, an organization that has proposed an alternative plan to send thru-traffic around the city, restore a sense of reason to the project, and reconnect the city with its riverfront. And a recent poll showed Louisvillians favored routing traffic around the city by a margin of 2 to 1.

Last week I tried to sell the case that making tough choices and doing the right thing is sometimes not popular. The more I think about it, though, making the tough choice in this case would be popular!

With the governments of Kentucky, Indiana, Louisville, and the United States facing such revenue issues, it seems to me like giving the public what they want and stopping an obscene, multi-billion-dollar construction project is a no-brainer.

Louisville’s light rail project that was shelved in May 2004 had a pricetag of $1 billion, if I recall correctly. 8664 and light rail could both be built for the cost of the currently planned monstrosity, and at a savings of nearly a billion dollars.

For readers in Sweden: Yes, it’s true, Louisville is a metropolitan area of over a million people and has no rapid transit system. Further, despite its central US location, within several hours from a dozen major cities, Louisville is not even served by any passenger trains to other cities.

The reason I’m bringing all this up again so soon is because I wanted to mention that my comparison of the Ohio River and Slussen projects was cited Saturday on The Urbanophile, a Chicago-based site that deals with Midwestern urban and transportation issues.

Then on Monday, to my surprise, the 8664 website itself referenced both my discourse and The Urbanophile’s analysis. Fantastic! When I received the 8664 update newsletter in my email today, it also included a mention of the two.

I started this blog (shudder) as a way to provide updates and my thoughts to friends and family about my adventures in Sweden. I’m pleased and surprised that it is serving a purpose for people who may not know me. Kanske ska jag glöm inte att det är på Internet och alla kan läsa det. Kanske också att jag kan inte ännu pratar svenska. Eller…

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Back in March, my friend Johanna interviewed me about my move. She is a student at Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (The Swedish Royal Institute of Technolgy) where she is studying, well, it seems she is studying just about everything.

I’ve heard her talk about the Media Technology program she’s in and it includes everything from graphic page design to voice synthesis. One of the projects she showed me was a software application she made that can announce the time of day in her voice. Awesome, creepy, scary – I don’t really want any machines talking in the house, especially not in my voice. My sarcastic inner monologue and constant attempts to translate everything are plenty.

Another project of the program she’s in involves the periodical publication of a magazine. The program is supported by companies in the printing, paper, and graphics businesses, so the end result of their work – called Uttryck – is quite beautiful. It’s a full-color, perfect-bound magazine on matte paper, assembled by Swedish design students. Let’s just say it’s not your typical college newspaper. The colors are rich, the printing is sharp, and it smells of fresh ink. Mmmmm ink.

The name Uttryck is another one of those Swedish words like tjänst that means about billion different things: expression, display, statement, utterance, phrase, manifest, et cetera. Ut means “out” and tryck means “print” – so there’s probably some connection or play on those parts. I don’t know. I’m having one of those I’m-never-going-to-be-able-to-speak-Swedish days. You’d think it would be easy to learn a language that only has 37 words.

Although the magazine is all in Swedish, I was interviewed in English. This was just a few weeks after I arrived and my Swedish was even worse then than it is now. You can read some of what I said in my March 27th post. That post also includes some charts I made that weren’t used in the published article and the English version of my lists about Sweden and the United States.

The story covers all the bases including why I decided to move to Sweden, what I miss about America, and what I don’t exactly love about both places. We also talked about the process of learning Swedish, food, my then-locked iPhone, and my band, Metroschifter.

If you want to use this as an opportunity to start learning Swedish, thereby doing it faster than me and making me feel even dimmer, here is a link to the article on the Uttryck website. The title means “The American Dream – in Swedish.”

On the flip side of the coin, I was also interviewed last week for Velocity Weekly, an entertainment newspaper in Louisville. The subject matter was similar, though it was more focused on the new Metroschifter album which is coming out June 30th. Joseph Lord did that interview, which also touched on Kentucky politics and my Senate campaign last year. I’ll provide an update and a link when that comes out… I know you must be desperately hungry to read even more of my chatter.

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