Sweden: I like it here… you don’t have to hug people.

Sweden:  I like it here… you don’t have to hug people.

So this is Aloha from Sweden! 

So I have now been in Lund a week, my office and living situation are mostly settled, I have an ID card that lets me in and out of the building, 

My ID card -- to get into the building

My cool office with a desk that raises and lowers to suit my interests -- one of the other visiting scholars showed me how it works.

I’ve found the grocery store, the climbing gym, 

This means climbing club in Swedish I think

and the system bologet (where Swedish people buy alcohol because it is state controlled and expensive).  I have not yet gone to it.  I’ve gotten lost wandering around town.  But, besides wearing clothing that is entirely out of fashion, I look like many of the locals, at least in hair and eye color.

I’ve also taken my first train ride – to Stockholm – and wandered around the city there for the weekend.  

I now sit writing this from the kitchen of my home for the next 2 months drinking Te (Swedish for Tea) with strösocker sucker taloussokeri (which is sugar but with a lot of other words on the package too and I don’t know what they mean) and cream (grädde, which is 15% Fetthalt, whatever that means – I had been going for milk but this is much heavier so I assume it is cream. Still, it tastes good and is generally what I anticipated getting when I purchased it).

From the tea description, you can tell that going to the grocery store was an educational experience and full of adventure.  I really wish the Swedish characters in my on-line Swedish lessons had made it out of their house and to the store before I got here!  The other vocabulary books I purchased seemed to think I needed to learn the Swedish words for watermelon and ducks, not milk and sugar.  Nevertheless, I can say thank you in Swedish, even if I don’t know what I am buying or, really, how much it costs.  Also, everyone here has a code for the credit card.  I do not have a code for mine, which causes a hassle every time and immediately singles me out as a foreigner.

As with any new cultural experience, seeing what people buy and eat is enlightening.  There appears to be a brand here with what I imagine is a reindeer on the package (though it looks like a moose).  After wandering around the store, I determined the moose/reindeer did not indicate that the food inside was made out of reindeer and/or moose as I had originally thought.  However, I will investigate further in the future on this branding issue. 

If I can generalize about Swedish food from one grocery store in Lund, it seems that there are lots of cheeses in large quantities, what appears to be caviar in giant tubes, many types of deli meats (I got rökt skinka pepparkubb, which turned out to be ham with pepper), meatballs, lots of canned fish, lots of other things in giant tubes, but otherwise the same kinds of stuff you find in an American store but in much smaller portions, not so many sugary cereals, and a lot less packaging, except for the giant tubes. 

What I got at the store on my first trip -- I don't eat this much deli meat normally but it is easy to get here.

Since I am on foot, I have to moderate what I purchase based on what I can carry. However, since the store is about a 10-minute walk from my house along cobblestone streets with virtually no cars, it isn’t super horrible having to go there.  It sits fronting a large main square with restaurants and shops but mostly people seem to walk and bike.  Cars are not central to the city it would seem.   

Rush hour -- 5:30 PM -- no cars but cherry blossoms everywhere!

There are cars – they seem to circle to city center like sharks along the small roads, roads lined with bike and walking paths.  I can borrow a bike from the institute and will attempt to do so on the weekend to see how far I can get.  It is nice to be in a walkable town, though it is also a European town without any concept of a grid, meaning it is impossible to walk in a straight line anywhere and it is easy to become instantly disoriented and end up heading in the wrong direction.

Back to the beginning.

Upon arrival at the Copenhagen airport after what seemed like 30 hours of travel time, there was indeed a taxi driver and a taxi waiting for me at the airport.  I always doubt such arrangements and am happy when they turn out mostly because it means I don’t have to try to use a phone. I am afraid of using phones in the United States and absolutely hate using them anywhere else.   Also, I’m not entirely sure my “international” phone works here – I haven’t tried it out yet.

The driver took me to the Pufendorf Institute, where I am a guest scholor for the next two months.  It is housed in an elegant brick building built in the 19^th century and, evidently, the former home to the classics department.   

Side View of Pufendorf Institute from my house

The driver couldn’t tell where exactly I was to go, so the he kindly used his phone to call Eva, who is the person who has been organizing my travel. She came out to meet me and show me where I was to be living – a house across the driveway from the Institute -- the janitor’s house.  

I had been told I would be staying in the janitor’s house and wondered what it would be like.  I’d imagined a sort of basement apartment with limited lighting and an antiquated coal furnace.  However, it is an actual house and at least twice as large as my Honolulu apartment.  

Janitor's House -- from the point of the long commute

It has a kitchen, dining room, living room, 2 bedrooms upstairs, a sitting room upstairs, and a basement.  It even has a dishwasher.   

Dining Room

Living Room

Spiral Staircase -- inside the house

Kitchen -- it has the exact same cabinets as my apartment in Hawaii!  But more of them.

In other words, the janitor lived well.  But Sweden is a democratic socialist country so I will take the quality of the janitor’s former home as evidence of yet another evil of socialism.  Of course, the janitor doesn’t live here anymore and probably has some small apartment of his/her own.  The house is now the guest quarters for the institute and I am its happy temporary beneficiary.   

The institute itself is also very nice.  As the former classics department, it remains filled with plaster casts of important classic sculptures, themselves now deemed worthy of display and somewhat precious.   

Would be hard to move and not break off more parts (this one is minus a penis already)

View from the top of the spiral staircase heading to my office

The main room of the Pufendorf Center

More sculptures and a different view of the main room

They remain in the building because they are essentially too heavy to move anywhere else.  The building has been re-made in modern designs, including a wonderful spiral staircase I can take to my glass-walled office on the top floor.   

The Swedish seem to like spiral staircases.   

There are lots of them everywhere.

More spiral stair cases to prove my point

The fire escape is also a spiral staircase

Aside from preparing for a talk (I will skip the details but the title was Friendly Fascism and Sociable Surveillance) I was to give to the group working on issues of digital trust, I am really not sure what all I am supposed to do while visiting here.  However, given I have lots of papers to write, I will not be at a loss for work.  With a commute time of one minute, I also have more time in the day to do stuff in.  Also, it stays light until 9:00 am here at the moment!  

One such paper that I am working on required that I travel to Stockholm for the weekend to meet a colleague.  As fate would have it, my co-author lives in Texas, but he just happened to be in Stockholm for a conference and had Friday evening to discuss our paper.  This mostly meant we got drunk, but we did talk about the paper outline and I took notes about what we were talking about in between drinks so we wouldn't forget later. 

It also meant I got to spend the weekend walking around Stockholm, which is a really beautiful city.  

 There is an ABBA museum there. 

Of course.

Doesn't really need a caption

There were also other museums and the city is a beautiful water-linked and easily walkable place.  Evidently it is known as the Venice of Scandinavia.  I should have taken one of the boats...

This is a much more serious museum but the weather was just too nice to go in. 

A view of one of the many channels in the city

Just because I like streetlamps in their infinite variety

I don't typically take food pictures but since the menu was in Swedish and I thought I was ordering mussels I thought I would.  One of the adventures in eating out -- not being exactly sure of what you are going to get.

 

Anyway, aside from the weekend in Stockholm, I have spent the bulk of my time so far preparing for the talk I gave to the group that works on Mondays on issues of digital trust.  The rest of the week the digital trust people do other things in other places.  One such place is a castle somewhere – which I am hoping to get to visit during my stay here.  Only in Europe do you get to spend part of your workweek in a castle.  For me, however, I will get to work with this group on Mondays but since I have no other place to go after, except the Janitor's house, I will go back to my very nice office where nobody bothers me.

So, my life in Lund should be uneventful and hopefully productive, which is good because I have a lot of projects to complete.  

As a cultural experience, so far it has been quite enjoyable.  I’ve learned:

1.     The thing about the Swedish and spiral staircases.

2.     That if you order a hamburger in a fancy restaurant you should eat it with a knife and fork.  If, however, you are biking and eating a hamburger, you can eat it with your hands (I saw this happening so can assume it is ok unless the person on the bike wasn’t Swedish).

3.     There seems to be only one window that can open on a train and if you are sitting by it people will ask you to open it and then other people will ask the people who asked you to open it to agree to close it for reasons that are not clear because they are explained in Swedish.  The window is then closed.  Your participation in the process is not required, but it is very collaborative.

4.     The Swedish do not find “the war on xxx” to be a compelling metaphor for public policy – it does not motivate them rhetorically. 

5.     This is not a culture where hugging is the way you say hello and goodbye – and since I hate hugging to say hello and goodbye I now feel right at home.  Nobody has tried to hug me yet!