There and back again squared

There and back again without the excitement of Tolken...

In the past two weeks rather than idle away my time in Lund, I have set out on several different journeys.  I have gone twice to Malmo, the larger city just a short train stop away and learned how to use the bus system there.  In between my trips to Malmo I went to Bergen, Norway, which is only close in the relative sense that all of Europe is closer to me now than it normally is.  Instead of narrate in a linear fashion, I decided to be geographical in my approach.

It should go without saying that most of my time remains focused on work and not travel.  That being said, work at the Pufendorf Institute and the Lund Internet Institute continues.   

Technically we are not working here -- but this is the Pufendorf Staff and Director and the Visiting Scholars.  They took us to lunch

I spent a good deal of my week(s) figuring out how to respond to this comment:  “We would be happy to consider a paper on this subject that makes a sustained intervention in, and contribution to, securitization theory or competing frameworks. We would also be willing to consider a paper that links the substantive discussion to major cognate normative or conceptual work.” 

Since I have very little idea what is meant by the second sentence, I’m going to attempt to revise my paper with the first sentence in mind, which at least seems to have a clear point.   So I’ve been reading everything I can about securitization studies.  At some point I will force myself to try to integrate this theoretical construct into my own paper at which time I will make a “sustained intervention,” or at least attempt to do so.  I’m going with the Copenhagen school variety of securitization studies, not the Paris or Welsh schools, and not just because I am living within a few miles of Copenhagen, though this could have been a good a decision rule for picking a school of thought on securitization studies as any other when you are agnostic about the deeply held beliefs of the various schools.

So along with making sustained interventions and running around in loops instead of out and back runs because I no longer think I will get disoriented and lost and being frustrated by bouldering at the climbing gym, I have also taken the train to Malmo twice.  Malmo is a larger city than Lund and easily accessible by train.  I can even brag that I managed to purchase my train ticket from a kiosk and didn’t have to ask anyone how to do it. 

I cannot say much about Malmo’s culture or history, though I did walk past its castle (and moat)

Looks a lot like the castle at Landskrona

 and an archeologically important rock.  

Clearly it was a neglected archeologically important rock.

I think they painted in the holes so they would be visible.

The information sign about the rock.

I can comment on the window displays to be found in their sex shops because I walked past two sex shops in different parts of the city.  I was sort of shocked by the display windows, since you don’t really see things like this in the U.S., where there is probably some law against it, being a free nation and all.  I would have taken a picture but that would be inappropriate and make me look weird, and not at all cosmopolitan. I’m guessing I was shocked mostly because I’m an American and our attitudes towards sex are convoluted at best, especially when it comes to female sexual pleasure, though I have serious doubts about at least one of those dildos being pleasurable to anyone. 

Anyway, I don’t want anyone to think Malmo was all about sex shops, even though they have at least two.  It seemed like a really great city but as you can tell from my google map, I only saw a few miles of it. 

When I arrived in Malmo and emerged into the city from the train station, I adhered to my general rule of thumb for traveling while disoriented and unsure of where to go – follow someone.   I acquired this particular technique from reading Douglas Adam’s lesser-known work Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency.  Unlike the character in the book, I don’t follow people to their homes.

In this case I was following a goth girl, because aside from the tattooed biker couple, she was the most interesting person going somewhere from the train station.  Her destination, however, was the bus stop outside the train station and I didn’t want to get on a bus because I am afraid of busses since I don’t know where they are going and I could end up lost and disoriented out of walking distance from where I want to be.

At this point, however, I could see buildings so I wandered towards them and crossed a square with a statute.

Then I heard some drums in the distance and figured going to where there was outside music was as good a goal as anything.

This brought me to what I imagine is Malmo’s central shopping district – because it was filled with shops.  Unlike American cities, however, this was a walking street with outdoor cafes and the shops faced a wide walking mall.  No cars here.

I tell you the Swedish like brass bands

The drums turned out to be the percussion accompaniment for some outdoor glittery-bikini clad dancers. 

Random Street Entertainment

I wandered on and found another square with small little political cabins like the ones I had seen in the Lund Square.  I had mostly figured these were permanent fixtures of political outreach and it hadn’t occurred to me that the cabins meant the various parties were trying to generate electoral support. 

This shipping container was the pirate party -- the bull horn guy was on the far right.

So, it turns out that in the run up to the EU elections, political parties campaign by setting up these little cabins in town squares where they can leaflet passerby and give them candy.   Unlike Hawaii where everyone stands on corners and waves signs at drivers, here you just stand by your little house and presumably wait for people to ask you questions.

A very nice man in a light blue vest with the light blue party offered me a button and candy.  When I told him I wasn’t able to vote in the election he encouraged me to take the candy anyway.

It would appear that much like artificial sweeteners in the United States, all parties in Sweden get a color.  I already knew the Pirate Party color because they are ostensibly one of my research projects – their color is purple with black.  Then there was the feminist party, which was light pink, a color I don’t typically associate with feminism. However, it was a nice pastel and soothing color and since at least in the U.S. everyone is afraid of feminists as just a slippery slope to Nazism, maybe using the color light pink was an intentional ploy.  I’m sure lots of market research went into the impact of light pink on the potential voter. 

The light blue party was there with what looked like the most prosperous little house and the most volunteers, all wearing light blue.  I was told later they were a more mainstream/conservative Swedish party. 

Then there was the guy standing by his car with a bull-horn giving a passionate speech that nobody was listening to.  Clearly, he represented one extreme or the other, given everyone else was standing by their cabins and not yelling at people. 

Since this was Sweden, if he was a conservative, even if he wanted less government regulation he was still for universal health care, because even the conservatives here believe this is a public good.  Getting rid of health care is not on the political table.

If he was a leftist radical, he probably wanted more socialism, though given that all the basics are already covered including free health care and college education after free K-12 education (or the equivalent) plus ample vacation time for everyone and maternity and paternity leave, I’m not sure what else he could have been arguing for.  The state system here seems to be functioning pretty well all things considered. 

Anyway, given the EU elections were the next day, everyone was staffing their little cabins in full force. The true heartbreak was that the Swedish Pirate Party didn’t do very well and of course they were the party I was hoping would win the most seats.  Maybe purple isn’t the best color choice.  At least in Lund they had done the most leafleting outside of the little house.  Here, you leaflet bikes, not cars. 

Politics behind me, I kept walking and found the American Store.  That is what it is called, “The American Store.”  There is one in Lund too. 

I went to look in the window and the following items were for sale and thus summarize American culture from a Swedish perspective:  Pop tarts, BBQ sauce, Hawaiian kitsch, American flags, Betty Crocker cake mixes, and other junk food like cheese whiz and candy.  Evidently our primary contribution to the world (besides as Neal Stephenson has already pointed out, movies, software, pizza delivery services and one other thing I’ve forgotten) is heavily processed food products.

I continued to wander, got an ice cream, but not what I thought I had ordered, but that is ok because it happens all the time when I attempt to order things in foreign countries even when we are both speaking English.  I wandered through a cemetery accidently while eating my ice cream and felt sort of bad about it because it seemed too celebratory and not morose enough. 

Then I walked through a park, saw a windmill, wandered by a castle, found the important rock that was seemingly of little interest to anyone. 

I took this because there were SUPers in the water, which seemed crazy to me.

Not sure what the story is but this exists in Sweden too....

Then I went back to Lund to work and prepare for my trip to Norway.  You can read all about going Norway in the next installment.

For continuities sake, I decided to just talk about the second visit to Malmo I took this past Sunday.  Stephan, who is my colleague that organized this trip, and his wife Anna invited me to lunch.  To get to their condo (they call them apartments but they are privately owned) I had to take the train again, which I now feel I have figured out, and then a bus, which I am afraid of.  Stephan gave me the bus number and then the address of their house.  I figured all sorts of navigational issues could emerge that would make me late for lunch but I tried not to let that bother me, even though I don’t like being late to things.

The train part went much like planned – I have this train thing down.  However, in Sweden you get this multiple purpose card that you put money on that gets you on the train and the bus and I knew busses didn’t take cash but I didn’t know how much it costs to ride, so I was sort of nervous about my card being too low to get on the bus or perhaps not having enough to return to the train station.

This meant that once I arrived in Malmo I spent some time engaged in a convoluted effort to re-charge my Jojo card – that is what they are called.  I don’t know how you pronounce it in Swedish.

One tip for Americans traveling to Europe – get a credit card with a code!  Everyone here uses codes for the credit cards, which actually makes a ton of sense from a security perspective. They also don’t really have the interest and in some cases the facilities to deal with signature credit cards.  This means I am literally shut out of using kiosks with a credit card.  I fear the day I may have to try to pay for gas.  If you deal with a human they can make it a signature transaction but then they hate you for it.  Hence, I’ve been buying all my groceries with cash.  My bankcard, even though it has a code, won’t work in the kiosks, so to put money on the jojo card I had to find a cash machine, get cash then go to the ticket machine and use the cash.

Fortunately, I’d factored in time for such transactions.

Given I had done reconnaissance the weekend before, I knew exactly where the bus stop was and got there just as the bus I needed was pulling up. 

It turned out to be a brand new bus – put into operation that day.  The card reader wasn’t working yet so the ride was free.  All that stress for nothing.

I managed to find their apartment, which was this very airy and light feeling space on the fourth or fifth floor of a walk up building.  It was build before elevators evidently and so when they moved in, which was only a few months earlier they had to haul all their stuff up the stairs.  That is an incentive to never move again if you ask me.

Lots of people live in apartments like this.  Here you rent or buy things based upon the number of rooms, not the number of bedrooms, so they talk about living spaces differently.  There was also this really nice enclosed community garden and play area that everyone could access and where we had lunch.  Stephan and Anna said that often all the neighbors will have impromptu potlucks which seems like a nice way to interact with your neighbors.  I only know two of mine in Hawaii if you count my landlady, three if you count the woman with the amazingly awesome dogs named Pepsi and Cola that live on my way to work.  But then I’m an introvert and my immediate neighbors to the side are mean and frown all the time.

Lunch was really nice and because public transportation is amazingly efficient in this country, it was not only easy to get back to the train station but fast.

On the way to the bus I had noticed a bookstore with English language books in it and since I figured I wanted to hedge my bets against running out of things to read, so I stopped inside the store.  The clerk came over to help me, mostly I think because he was bored, and I asked what Swedish authors he would recommend that had books written in English that I could read.

As he was pointing out a book to me, this older man wearing a suit and tie came up and started talking to him in Swedish and then they both started looking at me and then the clerk was introducing me to the old guy.  I didn’t really understand what was going on, but figured maybe this was normal for Swedish people so I just kept smiling.  We had a strange and awkward conversation translated by the bookstore guy about where I was from.  Then as the older man asked me in English if I spoke Spanish, which I don’t, but it would seem he did speak English.

As I was leaving the bookstore the old man was standing outside and waved me over.  Being a nice person and not really having any train to catch and figuring he was mostly harmless, I walked over.  He then proceeded to tell me about the geography of Hawaii and where the islands were located in English. Then he asked where I was born and when he found out I was from Washington, he told me that Seattle was named after Chief Seattle who didn’t embrace the idea of private property in the same way as the settlers did so they killed him. 

I didn’t remember this from my limited Washington State history back in the 9^th grade.  All I remember from that class, to be honest, is making up a journal of a settler that documented their journey to Washington and which I wrote in calligraphy and bound between wood planks because I figured that would make it look more authentic.  However, Wikipedia doesn’t confirm the Swedish version either, but who am I to argue with an old guy explaining Washington State history to me in the Malmo train station?

As we were talking the old guy waived a friend over and I was then introduced to his friend and the entire conversation happened again, but this time he spoke to his friend in Swedish and his friend told me about Chief Seattle in English.  His friend seemed to be aware of how strange and awkward the conversation was getting when the old guy asked if he could come visit me in Hawaii.  At this point, he kindly said goodbye and steered the old gentleman away, which was good because I was running out of pleasantly noncommittal things to say. 

I went back to my usual introverted don’t talk to strangers self and read one of my new books all the way back to Lund, which technically only takes about 10 minutes. 

With the trip to Malmo under my belt, I believe I will try to go further afield this weekend.  I hear there is an asparagus festival and that sounds like a fun thing to experience, if it isn’t raining that is.