MONDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2012
Foraging: Elderberries
A couple of weeks ago Carl left the apartment with a pair of
scissors and came back in 10 minutes with a giant grocery bag full of
elderberries. Using his grandmother’s
recipe, he boiled the berries down into a strong saft or juice concentrate. Now
we have a ready supply in the fridge and when the fancy strikes us, we pour
about an inch into a glass and then fill the glass with water. Refreshing!
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2012
Sweden is Expensive Part II
Yesterday I paid a little over $10 for 24 safety pins. Enough said.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2012
I Miss Thanksgiving
Not only is Thanksgiving my favorite holiday, but it helps
to fill the gap between autumn, my favorite season, and Christmas, which is
just fun and usually comes with an exciting vacation. October in Stockholm is lovely with the
bursts of yellow leaves everywhere, but by November, the leaves have all
fallen, the days are getting shorter and colder, and the weather is generally gray
and rainy (at least this year). In the
US, Thanksgiving provides a short-term target with its warm colors, delectable
food, and its promise of good company and conversation. But here in Sweden, without Thanksgiving, both
November and the stretch till Christmas are longer. Unless it started snowing…
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2012
Metaphors, Similes, and Idioms
One of the most interesting things to me about learning a
new language has been learning Swedish metaphors, similes, and idioms. I’ve been surprised about how many of them
are almost exactly the same as we have in English, although many of them are
completely new ideas to me. Some of
these new idioms make sense, but others are just bewildering and it’s hard to
figure out what they’re trying to teach.
Nearly literally the
same, word for word, in both Swedish and English:
Han ligger steget fore
– He is one step ahead
Hon behöver klippa
navelsträngen – She needs to cut the umbilical cord
Bakom kulisserna –
Behind the scenes
Jag har första tjing
– I have first dibs
Han grillade henne
– He grilled her (with questions)
Hon smörar för honom
– She butters him up
Ta det med en nypa
salt – Take it with a grain of salt
Får kött på benen –
Puts meat on the bones
Ta tjuren vid hornen
– Take the bull by the horns
Han har manga järn I elden
– He has many irons in the fire
Han plöjer genom boken
– He plows through the book
Hon pratar backom ryggen på honom – She talks behind his back
Bättre en fågel I handen än tio is skogen – Better a bird in hand
than ten in the forest
Man ska aldrig säga aldrig – Never say never
Det är inte guld allt som glimmer – Not all that glimmers is gold
Ingen rök utan eld – No smoke without a fire
Man ska inte gråta efter spilld mjölk – Don’t cry over spilled milk
Man ska inte kasta ut barnet med badvattnet – Don’t throw out the
baby with the bath water
Man ska inte kasta parlor för svin – Don’t throw pearls for swine
Rom byggdes inte på en dag – Rome wasn’t built in a day
Det är bäst att smida medan järnet är varmt – Strike while the iron
is hot
Vig som en apa – Lithe as a monkey
Glad som en lärka – Happy as a lark
Tyst som en mus – Quiet as a mouse
Modig som ett lejon – Brave as a lion
Hal som en ål – Slippery as an eel
Listig som en rav – Cunning as a fox
Hungrig som en varg – Hungry as a wolf
English uses slightly
different words but expresses the same idea:
Kort och gott – literally
“short and good,” corresponds to English “short and sweet”
Inför öppen ridå –
literally “before the open curtain,” corresponds to “in plain sight”
Åker snålskjuts – literally “rides the stingy push,”
corresponds to “gets a free ride”
Kastar in jästen efter
degen – literally “throws in the yeast after the dough,” corresponds to “too
little too late”
Håll grytan kokande
– literally “keep the pot boiling,” corresponds to “keep on keeping on”
Det är inte småpotatis
precis – literally “it’s not exactly small potatoes,” equivalent to “it’s
not exactly peanuts”
Det ligger I luften
– literally “It’s in the air,” equivalent to “the elephant in the room”
Man lär sig så länge man lever – literally “One learns as long as
one lives,” equivalent to “you learn something new every day”
Det var droppen som fick bägaren att rinna över – literally “it was
the drop that make the goblet run over,” equivalent to “it was the straw that
broke the camel’s back”
Borta bra men hemma bäst – literally “away is good but home is best,”
equivalent to “there’s no place like home”
Man ska inte sälja skinnet förrän björnen är skjuten – literally “One
shouldn’t sell the skin before the bear has been shot,” corresponds to “Don’t
count your chickens before they hatch”
Ropa inte hej förrän du är over bäcken – literally “Don’t shout
hello until you’re over the stream,” also corresponds to “Don’t count your
chickens before they hatch”
Man ska inte väcka den björn som sover – literally “One shouldn’t
wake the sleeping bear,” corresponds to “let sleeping dogs lie”
Som man bäddar får man ligga – literally “As one makes the bed, so
one must lie,” corresponds to “make your bed and lie in it”
Bränt barn skyr elden – literally “burned child avoids the fire,” corresponds
to “once bitten twice shy”
Man kan inte lära gamla hundar sitta – literally “One can’t teach
old dogs to sit,” equivalent to “You can’t teach old dogs new tricks”
Tala är silver, tiga är guld – literally “To talk is silver, to
keep silent is gold,” equivalent to “Silence is golden”
Stark som en björn – literally “Strong as a bear,” equivalent to “strong
as an ox”
Snabb som en vessla – literally “quick as a weasel,” equivalent to “quick
as lightning”
Envis som en åsna – literally “stubborn as a donkey,” equivalent to
“stubborn as a mule”
Sayings that we don’t
have in English, but that make some sense to an outsider:
Egen hard är guld värd
– “One’s own hearth is worth gold” (this one loses something in translation
because it rhymes in Swedish)
Plockar russin ur
kakan – “Takes the raisins out of the cake,” means that someone only takes
the good stuff
Stirrar sig blind –
“stares oneself blind,” means that one concentrates so hard on something that
they forget everything else
Den enes död är den andres bröd – “One’s death is another bread,”
means that one person often prospers from the misfortune of another
Lika barn leka bäst – “similar kids play best together”
Man ska inte gå over ån efter vatten – “One shouldn’t cross the
stream to get water,” means don’t make it more complicated than necessary
Många backer små gör
en stor å – “Many small streams create a big river,” means that many small
actions can have a big effect (this one loses something in translation because
it rhymes in Swedish)
Tomma tunnar skramlar
mest – “Empty barrels rattle the worst,” means that those with empty
complaints are often the loudest”
Gammal kärlek rostar
aldrig – “Old love never rusts”
Den som gapar efter
mycket mister ofta hela stycket – literally “he who gapes after a lot often
misses the whole lot,” meaning that he who goes after for too much often loses it
all (this one loses something in translation because it rhymes in Swedish)
Man ska inte köpa
grisen i säcken – literally “One shouldn’t buy the pig in a bag,” means don’t
buy something without knowing what you’re gonna get
Bättre brödless än rådlös
– literally “It’s better to be breadless than senseless,” means that it’s
better to be poor and resourceful than rich and unresourceful
Har man tagit fan I båten,
så får man ro honom I land – literally “If you’ve taken the devil in your
boat, you have to row him to land,” means that you have to finish what you’ve
started
Sayings that are
quite difficult for someone outside the culture to understand:
Det blev pannkaka –
literally “It became a pancake,” means “it was a flop”
Glider in på en
räkmacka – literally “slides in on a shrimp sandwich,” means getting
something with little effort
Får vatten på sin
kvarn – literally “gets water in one’s mill,” means that one gets evidence
that one is correct about something
Går på I ullstrumporna
– literally “walks about in wool socks,” means that someone is doing their
thing without noticing others or showing them respect.
En sol- och vårare
– literally “a sun and spring person,” means “a lonely hearts trickster”
En svala gör ingen sommar – literally “one swallow doesn’t make it
summer,” means that you can’t take a single event as evidence of a larger
pattern
Man ska inte måla fan på väggen – literally “one shouldn’t paint
the devil on the wall,” means that one shouldn’t assume nothing will go wrong, “don’t
count your chickens before they hatch”
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012
All Saints' Day
The US has Halloween and Mexico has The Day of the
Dead. Sweden has All Saints' Day, or Alla helgons dag . Originally, All Saints' Day was a Catholic
celebration for all the minor saints and martyrs that didn’t fit into the
yearly calendar of saints' days. As was
common with just about every holiday in Sweden, early on in Sweden’s Christian
history, this holiday was tied to a pagan holiday to make the Christian celebration more familiar and palatable.
In this case, the pagan holiday was a celebration of one’s dead family members. When summer ended and winter began, it was
believed that the dead souls returned home.
To abet this journey, living family members would burn candles and fires
to light the way home. All Souls' Day
follows directly after All Saints' Day and was the Christian attempt to take
over the pagan holiday celebrating the dead.
Apparently,
the tradition of lighting candles and fires to light
the way home for dead family members was eventually stamped out by the
church, and it was instead celebrated inside the church with masses. However, after World War II, the tradition
returned and it is now common in Sweden to decorate the graves of loved ones
with candles on All Saints' Day. Memory
gardens also are alight on this day.
Carl and I went to Woodlawn Cemetery by Gunnar Asplund and
Sigurd Lewerentz (Skogskyrkogården in
Swedish) on All Saints' evening. (The
cemetery is one of Sweden’s 14 World Heritage Sites and is a truly special
place.) There were so many people getting off the subway at that stop that it
took about 10 minutes just to go down the subway staircase. When we made it to the cemetery, a fairyland
awaited us. Thousands upon thousands of
people were streaming in and out of Sweden’s largest cemetery, and throughout
the cemetery, hundreds of thousands of candles glimmered. Many of the paths were lined with burning
vats of oil, and most graves had several lighted candles. There are over 90,000 graves in Woodlawn
Cemetery, and we calculated that there were probably at least half a million
candles burning that night. Magical.
We don’t have any relatives in Woodlawn Cemetery to
celebrate, but Carl and I lit two candles anyway. We found a lonely, dark grave with no
candles and placed our candles there in celebration of our lost loved ones,
primarily our grandparents. We'd like to think that the person whose grave we used enjoyed the attention.
We
were certainly not the only people in the cemetery taking photos, and
it didn't feel sacrilegious to do so. In fact, the mood in the cemetery
was more of happy remembrance and fun family outing than somber.
With this holiday, Sweden’s long, dark winter has
psychologically begun. Today the sun
rose at 7:20 and set at 3:40, giving Stockholm about 8 hours of daylight, at
least 3 of which were murky at best. The
amount of daylight will only decrease until Christmas, but with the decreasing
daylight, our home's candle consumption is bound to go up.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2012
Foraging: Mountain Ash Berries
Fall is my favorite season with its harvest foods, its
promise of the upcoming cozy winter, and colorful leaves. In this part of Sweden, most of the leaves
turn vibrant yellow; red or orange leaves are definitely the exception. But red berries are abundant, especially in
Mountain Ash trees (rönn in Swedish).
After the first frost, it is
traditional to pick the Mountain Ash berries to create a gelé which accompanies
steaks. You wait until after the first
frost because the berries become considerably sweeter then, but you have to be
careful not to wait too long because after the berries become sweet, the birds
go after them. We picked the berries
after a light freeze in mid-October, but the freeze was so light that we were
doubtful that the berries had sweetened so we put them in the freezer for a day
before cooking them up. Carl and I don’t
usually eat a lot of steak but we’ll have to remedy this winter so that we can use our homemade
Mountain Ash Gelé!
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012
Snow in October!
It
snowed yesterday evening! It was a near-blizzard with soft swirling
dandelion puff-sized flakes that covered the ground and the trees in an
inch of snow within an hour or so. This morning, much of it had already
melted because the ground was warm, but there was still enough for a
photo.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2012
Laundry Part II
A while back, I wrote about the laundry room in the
apartment building where we were renting
for three months last fall. In that
post, I mentioned the Swedish aversion to dryers, and in our current apartment
building, that aversion is even more apparent.
The rental apartment building had two dryers for 32 apartments, but our
current building has only one dryer for 64 apartments!
I find it cute that in just about every apartment building
in Sweden, the laundry room is called the Tvätt
Stuga or “washing cabin.” I suppose
this recalls the days when an estate would have a separate cabin to house the
clothes and linens washing facilities.
Our building has two “washing cabins” in the basement, and you can sign
up for either one.
 |
| One of the washing cabin reservation boards. Every apartment has one little timeslot thingy with a matching key. You move your timeslot reservation thingy around to reserve the date and time you want. A good way to ensure that no one is signed up for more than one timeslot at a time! |
The cabin I never use
has three washing machines and one drying room.
No dryers, no drying cabinets: just a drying room where you hang all
your clothes up on wires. The drying
room has a huge dehumidifier and several blowers, so thin things actually dry
fairly quickly. The things that dry within
an hour are sheets and pillow cases, but anything heavier (like a tee-shirt or
god forbid a pair of jeans) takes hours and hours to dry in the drying
room. Another complication with the
drying room is that it seems to be sized to fit about one washing machine worth
of clothes. I’m not sure how you’re
supposed to wash three loads at a time but dry only one…
 |
| The drying room and dehumidifier. |
The washing cabin that I use is a bit more extensive. It has three washing machines, a gigantic
drying cabinet (great for towels and such), the building’s one dryer, and a
drying room. Timeslots are four hours,
with the drying timeslot starting and ending one hour after the washing timeslot
(thoughtful). I find that the four hours
is enough time for most wash days, but on days that we have more than 9 loads,
like today, I need about six hours to finish everything. On these days I sign up for the 10am-2pm
timeslot in the hopes that no one has signed up for the (crazy) 6am-10am
timeslot so that I can sneak in a few hours early. This usually works well for me.
 |
| Three washers, one dryer, and a huge drying cabinet. |
In addition to the two washing cabins, there is also a
mangle room which has not one, but two mangles.
The whole idea of a mangle scares the heck out of me, so I don’t use
them. Plus, when Carl has mangled tablecloths
for us down there, they end up with near-tears in the fabric. Doesn’t seem like a great machine to me if
they have a tendency to chew up both arms and tablecloths. Anyway, the mangle room has one modern
electric mangle and one truly gigantic (like 12 feet long) manual machine. I can’t imagine that anyone actually uses the
gigantic manual mangle any more, but it’s probably too big to take out of the
building. It must have been dropped into
the basement before the basement ceiling slab was poured!
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2012
Foraging: Apples |
| There were an amazing number of apples on each tree. |
On an autumn weekend walk a walk a few weeks ago, Carl and I
happened to walk through an old orchard adjoining Ulvsunda Slott, a suburban
palace from the 1600’s. In Sweden you’re
not allowed to pick fruit off of trees if they’re on private property, but you
are allowed to gather the fallen fruit off the ground. Usually fallen fruit is mushy with bruises
and riddled with worms, but our walk through the orchard was timed just right—while
the fallen plums, pears, and red apples were already past their prime, the green
apples had just started to fall. In a
very short time, both of our backpacks were stuffed with apples. Our backpacks were so heavy that we had to
cut our walk short and take the bus home!
After a stop at the store to buy lots and lots of sugar, we
washed and chopped most of the 200+ apples.
In no time at all, these apples became more than 10 liters of delicious,
fresh, tart applesauce! That should get
us through the winter, I would think. We
have discovered that the applesauce is an absolutely delicious sweetener for
homemade oatmeal—somehow the tartness of the apples brings out the nutty flavor
of the oats. The remaining 50 or so
apples have now been used in a huge apple crisp and an apple cake as well as for
snacks. A few apples still remain; I
think I see another apple cake coming soon!
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2012
Foraging: Lingonberries |
| Lingonberries taste and look a lot like cranberries, although they grow in dry, shady areas instead of in bogs. Apparently the two species are closely related. |
This fall, Carl and I have picked several liters of
blueberries, about a liter of chanterelle mushrooms, and about half a liter of
lingonberries from the forests nearby our house. These are just a few of the yummy, free foods
that are just waiting to be picked in Sweden’s forests. We haven’t been so methodical about getting into the forest at the best time for a
maximal harvest this year, but now that we’re more familiar with the seasons
and which weekend the various fruits and mushrooms peak, we’ll be foraging
machines next year!
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2012
Fudge
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2012
Student Again
In Sweden,
shampoo may be expensive, but it probably all evens out considering that a
university education is free. That’s
right, free. If you’re a resident of Sweden, you can
go to a Swedish university tuition-free.
Not only that, but the government even gives students a stipend! The stipend isn’t enough to live on, but
still! Free tuition plus a stipend!
While I am not exactly a university student, I am benefiting
from the generous education system. Not
only are my language classes free, but when I finished the third level, the
government gave me a $2000 bonus to congratulate me (every immigrant gets this
bonus as long as they’ve completed the first three levels of Swedish classes
within a year of beginning them). And
now that I’m in the fourth level of Swedish class and am a three-quarter time
student, I receive a monthly stipend of about $375. This doesn’t exactly pay my half of the rent
and bills, but it is enough to buy groceries for Carl and myself.
In addition to my language classes, I am now enrolled in two
Swedish-language classes at Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, or KTH, The Royal
Institute of Technology. Taking these
classes is the coolest part of my language program—not only does the program
teach you the language in general, but you get to take university classes that
teach you the lingo that you’ll need in the working world.
Sitting in a university classroom again is a bit
strange. First of all, I’m 10-12 years
older than most of the other students and am in a very different (and better)
stage of life than they. But perhaps the
strangest thing is experiencing a totally different culture of university life
than what we have in the States.
I find the general lack of information the strangest part of Sweden’s
university culture. For instance, you
sign up for fall classes the preceding spring, but when you’re signing up for
classes, you have no idea when they will meet.
Meeting times and locations are not released until a week or two before
the semester begins. I can only imagine
the headache this must cause both the administration and the students since it
seems inevitable that class times are bound to clash.
Clashing class schedules is even more likely because it
seems that while the semester starts in late August and ends in mid-December,
classes don’t necessarily start and end at the same time. For instance, my Intro to City and Traffic
Planning class began in late August and ends in early October while my History
of Scandinavian Architecture class starts in late September and ends in early
December.
The likelihood of clashing class schedules is even more likely considering that classes
don’t meet on a regular schedule. My
planning class meets for six hours on a Tuesday, then eight hours on a Friday,
then two hours on a Thursday… The
schedule for this class is entirely random over the entire seven weeks, and the
history class schedule seems just as bewildering.
Yes, you read that correctly: my planning class sometimes
meets for six or eight hour-long lectures.
This isn’t quite as daunting as it sounds because of the numerous coffee
breaks. Every 90 minutes or so, the
lecturer pauses and all the students plus the professors pour out of the
lecture room and into the adjoining kitchen/break room. In the kitchen, you can help yourself to free
coffee, tea, sugar cubes, fresh milk, cookies, and even occasionally finger
sandwiches. At the end of the break,
someone usually brews a huge pot of coffee to take into the classroom. The coffeepot then gets passed around the
lecture hall as needed until the next break about an hour or so later. While pausing in the middle of the lectures
is normal here, I’m guessing that having an adjoining break room with free
coffee and snacks isn’t exactly the norm for university classes here. Or maybe it is?
My planning class is going really well. Of course there are words that come up in the
lectures and readings that I am not familiar with, but because I understand the
context around the new words, it’s easy for me to understand what the new word
means. I write down the new word, look
up the exact definition when I get home, and then memorize it. Already, my city and site planning vocabulary
feels much enriched.
Between KTH classes, language classes, and tons of homework, I’m feeling a bit
overwhelmed with my studies. And, I will be taking the next test to
move up to the fifth level of Swedish classes next week, so I’m trying to fit
in some extra studying and preparing.
Once I start the next level, however, I think my schedule will feel a
little more manageable. My language
class load will drop from 16 hours/week to 8 hours/week, so I’ll have a lot
more time to focus on my university classes.
I’m not sure how this new class schedule will affect my monthly student
stipend, but I’m sure to find out soon enough.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 30, 2012
Sweden is ExpensiveSo I know I’ve mentioned a million times that Sweden is expensive, but every now and then I get re-reminded all over again how expensive living here can be. I’ve become accustomed to the fact that a tiny, 1 bedroom apartment at about 550 square feet costs more than half a million dollars in the city. I’ve gotten used to the fact that when you buy wrapping paper, the roll is big enough to wrap two small presents and costs nine dollars. I’m over the sticker shock of shampoo, which comes in bottles that are half or one-third the size of a US shampoo bottle, but the small Swedish bottle costs twice as much. Everything in the grocery store comes in packages that are half of a US-sized package, but the package in Sweden costs about the same or a little bit more than the twice-as-big package in the US. Today I was reminded yet again that just about every item costs more here.
Our wedding anniversary is coming up, and Carl got us a
subscription to Ute Magazine to
celebrate. Ute Magasinet, or “The Outside Magazine,” is the Swedish magazine that roughly corresponds to America’s Outside Magazine (not to be confused
with the Swedish-translated version of Outside
Magazine). He decided to get the
subscription because the magazine is a good way to find out about all the cool
outdoor activities that are just waiting for us around Stockholm and throughout the country. Anyway, to get back to the expensive
point… A few years ago I bought a
three-year subscription to Outside
Magazine in the US
for $48 (I have read just about every word in Outside since 1996). I paid $1.33
per issue. Our six-issue subscription to
Ute here in Sweden costs
325 kronor or $49. Ute is $8.17 per issue.
I understand why the magazine is so much more expensive here
in Sweden. With only 10 million Swedish speakers in the
world, each subscriber to Ute has to
pay a larger share of the magazine’s administration, design, research, writing,
and publication costs than a subscriber to America’s Outside. This reasoning
makes sense for a magazine, but doesn’t really extend to shampoo where the
brands are world-wide. Expensive shampoo
is caused by other things than a small market—things like a high sales tax and a livable
minimum wage, topics I keep meaning to get to.
Some day.
Thank you to Carl for the thoughtful gift! Here’s to lots of fun outdoor adventures in Sweden!
TUESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2012
Tacos or Herring?
In San Antonio, you go to the Taco Truck for a cheap and quick lunch. In Stockholm, you go to the Fresh Fried Herring Cart.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 2012
1343 Particle Verbs
You know how in English, adding a preposition after a verb
changes the meaning of the verb? Take
the verb pull: pull is different from pull up, pull from, pull in, pull off,
pull onto, pull under, pull out, pull around, pull behind, pull beside, pull
down, pull over, and pull up. Each of
these “pull” phrases have slight variations of meaning. These variations are naturally implicit to a
native English speaker. But can you
imagine learning, from scratch, as an adult, all of those little differences?
That’s exactly what I’m doing in Swedish. Swedish has at least 1343 of these particle
verbs. Sometimes, the meaning is just as
I’d expect if you translate the phrase into English. But a lot of the time, English doesn’t
construct the verb in the same way.
Another complication is that Swedish has a lot of reflexive
verbs. For instance, you can say “I wash
the clothes” or “I wash myself” (the reflexive version). To say “myself,” you add “mig” to the verb. So ”I wash the clothes” is ”Jag tvättar kladderna” and ”I wash
myself” is “Jag tvättar mig.” Reflexive particle verbs are especially
confusing because sometimes, the mig
goes before the preposition, but at other times, it goes after the
preposition. Naturally, there doesn’t
seem to be a pattern to this. “Dra in mig” means to withdraw myself,
and “dra mig in” means to withdraw
myself into. Just changing the order of mig and in changes the meaning of the whole phrase. And without the reflexive part of the phrase,
the verb means something completely different altogether: “dra in” is to cut down or to reduce.
Yet another complication is that often, Swedish has a particle
verb AND a non-particle verb (or several) to express the same action. For example, the verb “publish” can be said
using the particle verb “ger ut”
(literally translated as give out) as well as with “förlägger” or "publicerar." Tricky tricky.
Here’s a list of particle verbs constructed from just one
verb, ta, which means to take:
ta av – to dip into or to take off
ta bort – to remove
ta fram – to access or to produce
ta för sig – to take for yourself (a piece of cake)
ta hem – to get in (an electrician to fix something)
ta i – to feel
ta in – to admit, to get in, or to take in
ta med – to take (something somewhere)
ta ner – to take down
ta på – to touch
ta på sig – to take on, to undertake
ta sig – to come along
ta sig an – to attend, to take care of
ta sig för – to do, to set about
ta sig före – to
get there
ta sig igenom –
to negotiate
ta sig in – to attend, to take care of
ta sig ner – to stoop
ta sig till – to do, to do with
ta sig upp – to get up
ta sig ur
– to get out
ta sig ut – to escape, to come out
ta sig över – to negotiate
ta till – to take to
ta till sig – to assimilate
ta upp – to bring up (a subject in a conversation) or to
collect
ta ut – to extract, to withdraw
ta ut sig – to spend oneself
ta åt sig – to take to heart
SATURDAY, JUNE 2, 2012
Today's High Temperature: 41 Degrees F
FRIDAY, JUNE 1, 2012
The Economy of Swedish
I
am now in the fourth (of six) level of Swedish class! I started the
new course two weeks ago and I
am thrilled about the class. My new
teacher is excellent and the pace of the class is stimulating but not
too overwhelming. Another perk is that instead of an 8:00 a.m.
start, my new class goes from one till five every afternoon. While I
love not having to leave the house at
7:20 a.m. every day, I’m having a bit of trouble getting used to
studying in
the mornings. For some reason, it’s
easier for me to be productive in the afternoon than in the morning.
But I’m adjusting.
Like any language, I’m finding that Swedish has certain
efficiencies and certain inefficiencies.
Some ideas take four or five words to say in Swedish when it can be
expressed with one word in English. But
Swedish does have quite a few economical verbs that express a complex idea with
only one word. Some of these economical
verbs include:
Orka – to feel energetic enough to (do something),
or to have the energy to (do something)
[I don’t have the energy to exercise = Jag orkar inte träna]
Kvitta – it makes no difference (to me)
This one is interesting to me because the negative is
already built into the verb:
[It makes no difference = Det kvittar]
Strunta – to not bother about (something)
Again, another verb where the negative is automatic:
[She doesn’t bother about the details = Hon struntar i
detaljerna]
Hinna – to have time to (do something)
[I don’t have time to study = Jag hinner inte plugga]
Vallfärda – to make a pilgrimage
[The saint made a pilgrimage to Santiago
= Helgonet vallfärdade till Santiago]
Häkta – to remain in police custody
[He will remain in police custody for a week = Han häktar i
en vecka]
Valla – to put animals out to pasture
[The farmer put the cows out to pasture = Bonden vallade
korna]
THURSDAY, MAY 31, 2012
Summer has Arrived
Stockholm’s
short spring has come and gone in a flurry of activity. In Sweden, seasons are not defined by
the sun’s location in the sky, but by temperature. Here, Spring has officially come when the
average daily temperature is above freezing for a week straight. Usually, this occurs sometime in late April,
and even though we had a mild winter, I think that spring officially didn’t
start until around its usual time. While
temperatures officially define spring, the season’s commencement is culturally
defined by Valborgmässoafton.
On April 30th every year, Sweden
celebrates Valborgmässoafton. This
pre-Christian rite of spring (called Beltane in Scotland
and Ireland) was later
turned into the celebration of the Christian saint Valborg, but in Sweden, the
pagan rites continue to this day with huge bonfires, the singing of spring
songs, and lots of drinking.
The bonfires have always been practical in addition to their
celebratory nature. Late April is the
time to clear fields and roads of all the sticks and debris that the melting
snow left behind. Something has to be
done with all that debris—why not gather it and burn it?!? Additionally, livestock were freed from the
barns they had been living in throughout the long winter and turned out to
graze in the newly green fields. The
fires were a way of keeping predators (wolves) at bay while the newly born
lambs and calves found their footing.
In Stockholm,
this holiday is celebrated with a gigantic bonfire festival in every
neighborhood. Carl and I attended our
local festival which was conveniently located in the park right outside our
front door. We took a picnic up on our
local sledding hill and watched the festivities and the bonfire below us. Needless to say, the neighborhood’s entire fire
department with several fire engines were on hand in case the fire burned out
of control.
 |
| the seven-foot-tall pile of wood |
 |
| the smoke signal and the bonfire |
In the countryside, Valborgmässoafton is celebrated on a
family-by-family basis with lots of smaller bonfires. And in the university cities, this holiday is
the event of the season with epic
bouts of drinking, boat races, and parades.
Maybe next year we’ll go to Uppsala
to witness the madness.
Swedes are serious about their celebration of spring. Not only does everyone celebrate the holiday, but the day after, May 1st or May Day, is a national holiday (which, considering the amount of drinking
that goes on around the bonfire, may be a necessity).
Shortly after Valborgmassafton, the cherry trees at
Kungsträdgården in the city center burst into bloom. I went with a friend from school to walk
through the blossom-arched and petal-covered lanes. Sadly, when I went back a few days later with
Carl, the blooms had faded into foliage.
 |
| chess under the cherry trees |
At
about the same time that the cherry trees were in bloom,
the forest floors were covered in vitslippa. Carl and I enjoyed several
hikes in nearby nature reserves where the vitslppa was magically
abundant. Unfortunately, these flowers don't photograph as well as they
are in reality.
Unlike Texas
where foliage pops onto trees overnight and the entire landscape goes from
winter brown to spring green within a week, foliage takes about a month to
develop here. First the leaf buds
appear, tempting you to think that spring is finally coming. But those buds stay resolutely unfurled for
several weeks until they finally cover the trees in fresh green. The trees do not all get their foliage at
once; instead, it seems like trees leaf out one by one by one, until finally, a
month after the process began, the entire city is transformed into a leafy
park.
Although
Carl missed the cherry blossom in Kungsträdgården,
he did witness the tulips in full bloom when we met at the park for a
picnic
lunch last week. I had been seeing small
patches of tulips all around the city, but those small patches were
nothing in
comparison to these stunning beds of tulips and complimentary flowers!
Seeing these made me want to go to Holland next spring to see
the fields of tulips that they’re so famous for.
 |
| I never knew there were so many types of tulips. Some look like roses or carnations! |
 |
| this was my favorite variety |
Last week we had summer temperatures with highs at about 73
degrees and lows in the 50’s. It’s a
little cooler this week but that’s not stopping the entire city from sunbathing
in the parks during lunch and after work.
Because grills are generally not permitted on apartment balconies (I
think for insurance reasons), families lug small, portable Webber grills out to
the park and do their grilling there.
It’s really fun to see the parks so filled with people out enjoying the
sunshine.
In addition to some picnicking, we have also hosted our
first dinner party in our new and improved apartment! The guests were two of my language classmates
and their partners. Carl and I cooked up
a delicious southern feast including BBQ ribs, a sweet potato pecan soufflé,
homemade angel biscuits (which turned out well despite Sweden’s lack of Crisco
and buttermilk), stewed tomatoes, deviled eggs, a bourbon pecan pie, and of
course, mint juleps.
 |
| mint julep fixings |
Another sign that summer is here is the sheer number of
daylit hours. Right now, it starts
getting light a little before 2 am and it’s not fully dark until after 11
pm. That means that there’s less than 3
hours of darkness these days!
THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2012
April Showers...
 |
| our April 14th "shower" |
Snow drifts are long gone in Stockholm, but we have had a few snowy days
this month. Usually the snow has lightly
covered the ground and then melted within a few hours. But one Saturday, we woke up to about six
inches of snow, enough to go sledding for the season’s last time on our
neighborhood sledding hill. Our sledding
hill is impressive, probably 80 vertical feet of pure sledding glee, and you
gather a scary amount of speed by the time you’re near the bottom. The hill is even an “official” sledding hill
as it gets cleared every year to guarantee smooth sledding conditions.
It seems that Swedish adults aren’t really into sledding and
only sit on a sled when accompanied by a toddler. When Carl and I are on the sledding hill, we
are the only people over the age of ten actually riding on a sled for fun. All of the other adults are standing around,
drinking lattes, and watching their kids have fun in the snow. Where’s the fun in that?
 |
| sledding fun and sledding casualties |
Even with the cold snaps, spring flowers are out in
beautiful abundance, and leaves are starting to come out on the trees. Spring is also taking its revenge on the
winter darkness. Already, we have more
daylight than our old home of San
Antonio has at the summer solstice: it’s only April
and it’s daylight by 5am and it’s not dark until 9pm.
 |
| April flowers. After living in Texas for 7 years, I would think that the photo on the top right is of Texas bluebonnets if it weren't for the patch of snow in the foreground. But no, they are most definitely not Texas bluebonnets! |
SUNDAY, APRIL 15, 2012
Renovation Day 60
We haven’t been working so much on our renovation over the
past few weeks, but we have accomplished a few key tasks that make our
apartment look more finished and make it much easier to live in.
It took an entire day of measuring, cutting, drilling,
nailing, and gluing, but I am happy to report that the floor trim in the
hallway, bedroom, and kitchen is now finished!
I have to say that that was probably my least favorite aspect of the
renovation.
We also finished putting in the new thresholds. Unfortunately, the thresholds created a new
problem—the door to our apartment, the bathroom door, and the bedroom door now
couldn’t close. So we had to take the
doors off the hinges and do a little trimming.
Carl is now super-skilled with the circular saw and was able to do
angled cuts so that the door bottoms now mirror the angle of the
thresholds. This avoided a big gap
between the outside edge of the door and the floor. Doing the cutting on our junk-crowded balcony
was a bit challenging but we managed.
As I mentioned before, the new flooring required a quarter
inch gap at every edge. We were able to
cover most of the gaps with the floor trim, but this was not possible around
door jambs. We used a color-matched
putty to fill in those gaps. Up close,
the putty looks a little strange but when you’re standing full height you
really don’t notice it at all.
 |
| the putty at about two feet away |
Another evening was spent touch-up painting. There were a few marks on the walls from us
moving the huge ladder around and from the electrician’s work. We also covered all the floor trim nails in
white paint and touched up the trim where needed. We also painted over the exposed electrical
lines in the living room where the electrician did his work after we had
already painted the walls and ceiling.
The most exciting part about completing the touch up paint was that we
were then able to take the six or seven buckets and all the related equipment
out of our small bathroom and down to the storage unit. This cleared up some space for . . .
Some bathroom renovation work! We really didn’t do toooo much in the
bathroom since the tile had been changed out in the last few years and the sink
and toilet were in ok condition, if not awesome. But, we did take out the huge ugly fake wood
medicine cabinet with cracked mirror. I
mean, this thing was a monstrosity. It
was twice as wide as the sink, which in a roomy bathroom may be fine, but in
our small bathroom, it was not ok. The
medicine cabinet was so wide that it jutted into the shower. And the dark fake wood color sucked all the
light out of the bathroom. We replaced
it with a simple mirror/glass shelf combo that cost an amazing $10. Thank you IKEA. Just making that one alteration completely
changed the nature of our bathroom from dark and gloomy to light and sparkly.
Another very exciting (to us) renovation in the bathroom was
to take out the old yellowed plastic towel heater rack. Towel racks are very common in Sweden, and
it’s a little sad to let it go, but this one was just too yellow and gross to
keep. Not to mention the fact that it
was an electric towel heater, which in an apartment where electricity is
expensive but hot water is free, is just ridiculous and inefficient. It was directly wired into the wall so while
the electrician was here, we had him take it out and wire and outlet for us
instead. Having an outlet in a bathroom
in Stockholm is
like having gold in the bathroom. It’s
very uncommon here, I’m not exactly sure why.
I have to say that it’s very nice to blow dry my hair in the bathroom
and not out in the hallway.
We put two small IKEA wall cabinets where the towel heater
rack used to be. Now we have a place to
store extra shampoo, toilet paper rolls, extra contact lenses, cosmetics, and
all the various little things that add up to make a bathroom cluttered. We like having all those things easily
accessible without having them in the way.
Finding a cabinet that would work in our bathroom was actually a surprisingly
difficult task. Most of the steam-safe
cabinets we found in various stores were either ridiculously expensive (over
$1000!) and/or too deep for our small bathroom.
Even most of IKEA’s bathroom cabinets were too deep, but they did have
one cabinet tucked away that we eventually found after asking several employees
about the issue. IKEA intended the
horizontal cabinet to go above a medicine cabinet for storage you don’t need to
access very often, but they actually work really well the way we’re using them.
 |
| Strangely, we don't have a photo of the towel heater rack in its original location. Here it is, adding to the mess of our balcony. And yes, the plug is located inside the cabinet. We did this on purpose, not realizing that the blow dryer didn't fit in the narrow cabinet. |
We were glad that with both the mirror and the bathroom
cabinets, we were able to cover the holes in the tile that were left from the
medicine cabinet and the towel warmer.
They weren’t so pretty.
The bathroom came with a drying rack that folds down into
the shower space. It, too, is yellowed
plastic, but it’s too handy to remove.
It’s the perfect place to hang dripping coats, snow pants, and gloves after
a Saturday morning of sledding.
Our kitchen counters are now beautifully lit with
under-cabinet lighting. Installing them
wasn’t too difficult despite the awkward position but one of them did fall down
a few days after Carl installed them. It
turns out that the lip that the screw is supposed to hold onto is too tiny—if
you jiggle the light at all, the light fixture slips past the screw. Carl had to add some washers to the system to
make it more secure. All of the lights
are connected by one wire so you only have to flip one switch to turn them all on
and off. I’m impressed by how well Carl
was able to hide all the wires!
We do still have a few items left on our renovation to-do
list, but they are relatively small. Lately we’ve been focusing more on getting
all our stuff organized and put away in the apartment. We’ve also been enjoying our new couch and
have spent a good bit of time on it reading and watching movies (we now are
members of Sweden’s
version of Netflix, LoveFilm). It’s
amazingly wonderful not to be sawing, drilling, or painting every evening!
SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 2012
The American Section
 |
| don't you just love that Crunch n Munch is in the "ethnic" section of the grocery store? |
Most of the larger grocery stores in Sweden have an American Section, much like most
stores in the US
have a Thai section or an Indian section.
However, Thai and Indian sections in the US tend to be geared for Americans
who want to cook the yummy dishes they eat in Thai and Indian restaurants. (I’m guessing that most Thais and Indians
living in America
don’t use the ready-mixed sauces and just-add-water noodle boxes that Americans
associate with those cuisines.) But in Sweden, I’m pretty
sure that only Americans buy food from the American Section. I have never even seen a Swede enter the
American Section of a grocery store, and the selection seems to be geared
toward Americans who are homesick and desire familiar comfort foods instead of
being geared toward Swedes who wish to have a culinary adventure.
The selection of foods in a typical American Section is
quite odd. For instance, there is Aunt
Jemima syrup, but it costs twice the amount as a jar of pure, grade A Canadian
maple syrup in the honey section of the store.
I can’t imagine why you’d pay twice the price for nasty synthetic syrup
when you can more cheaply have the real thing.
There are usually several types of pancake mixes next to the Aunt Jemima
syrup. I find this amusing because
pancake mix is just about the easiest American thing you can replicate at
home. Another strange choice for the
American Section is Hershey’s chocolate syrup.
I cannot imagine preferring faux chocolate sauce to the real thing. You can also find jet puffed marshmallows as
well as marshmallow fluff, a thing I just might buy at Christmastime to make
fudge. Another marshmallow product is
Swiss Miss hot chocolate packets with marshmallows. Seeing that three out of 15 products in the
American Section are marshmallows, Swedes must conclude that we’re addicted!
Many stores carry natural peanut butter in the jam/Nutella
section, but Peter Pan (which in my opinion is rather gross) is in the American
Section. Hellmann’s mayonnaise may be
located in the American Section, or it may be found with the salad dressings. My favorite American Section find is Kraft
macaroni and cheese, but it costs about $8 per box, so I’ll only be enjoying
that during my most homesick moments (especially since I prefer Annie’s anyway).
Ironically, Fruit Loops are found in the
regular cereal aisle but imitation Fruit Loops with a name I’ve never heard of
before is found in the American Section.
I am also amused by the microwave popcorn, which can generally be found
in the snack section of the grocery store in addition to the American
Section. The brands in the American
Section are unrecognizable, and the most suspicious is “American’s Best.”
Each American Section contains different things, but they
are usually about two feet wide and several shelves high. However, I have heard of a huge American
Section in the south part of town that has everything you can imagine. I have yet to visit it, but it’s on my list
to do someday soon.
Interestingly, I have yet to see Toll House (or any brand) chocolate
chips in any American Section. However, that
need has been satiated (for the next few months, anyway) by my dear friend
Melinda who sent me an amazing and unexpected package filled with the goodies I
mentioned a while back that I hadn’t found here including three pounds of
chocolate chips, two packages of Sharpie markers and candied ginger, not to
mention a beautifully drawn calendar.
What a treat!
 |
| The goodies and the resulting cookies |
TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 2012
Safety and Elevators
In general, I would say that Swedes are a cautious
people. That’s what the welfare state is
all about, right? Taking precautions
against joblessness, homelessness, and hunger.
(Well, that and their belief in equality and that all people have the
right to a decent life.) Even preschool
kids wear reflective construction worker vests when they’re on fieldtrips and
dog collars and leashes tend to have reflective bands. (I suppose this makes good sense when it’s
dark 18 hours a day in the winter.)
 |
| usually the vests tend to be neon yellow but these are blue with reflective silver stars |
But there are two major departments where Swedes are not so
cautious: elevators and fire stairs. I’m
going to have to write about fire stairs another time because it’s a huge topic
with major design implications that I find fascinating (I’m sure you will
too!). So for now, I’ll stick to
elevators. First, every elevator seems
to come with this warning sticker:
Klämrisk means
“risk of crushing.” Most elevators do
not have inner doors and elevator cabs have only three walls. That means that as you move up or down in the
elevator, one of the walls is “moving” past you, creating a klämrisk if you or your goods get nabbed
by the passing floors. Can you imagine
the field day that lawyers in the US would have with these kinds of
elevators? Elevators here are just one
indication of how much more lawsuit happy the US
is than Sweden.
Another note about the elevator: its size. This is the only elevator in my 11 story apartment
building, and it serves 38 households. The
elevator cab is 31 inches by 31 inches. Supposedly, according to the max weight/people
sign, you can fit four people in it, but I would claim that squeezing four
people into an elevator of this size without an inner door would pose a klämrisk. And another thought: how on earth does a wheelchair bound person press the elevator call button?
MONDAY, MARCH 12, 2012
Breaking Ice
Spring has sprung unusually early this year as we’ve had a
week or two of above freezing temperatures during the days. I never even had the chance to take and post
beautiful photos of Gamla Stan (the old town) sitting beyond a sheet of white,
snow-covered ice! Between studying,
working, and our apartment renovation, we didn’t get much of a chance to “do”
winter this year except for our Christmas trip to Lofsdalen. Carl and I are excited to have a winter
filled with skiing, ice skating, and walking through the snow-covered city next
year, and we’re planning to buy cross country skis this week (sale time!). But in the mean time, we’re sure to enjoy the
beautiful spring that is just now beginning—I saw my first leaf buds on a tree
today!
 |
| jumbled ice chunks and smooth ice plates on either side of the same bridge |
THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2012
Renovation Day 56
We are getting closer and closer to being finished with our
apartment renovation!
Two trim details we have finished in the kitchen include the
toe kicks (relatively easy) and the under-upper-cabinet trim to hide the
lighting and the outlets (not so easy).
Ikea’s system makes the toe kicks easy to install as it directly
attaches to the cabinet legs, but they haven’t figured out a good system for
installing the under-cabinet trim. It’s
very time intensive, difficult to install, and nearly impossible to get it to
look good. From a distance, our trim
looks ok, but once you’re standing a the counter, you can see that our cuts
aren’t entirely smooth and exact. Unless
you had a digital laser CNC router, you’d never be able to get these cuts to
look much better. We don’t quite know
how to fix the problem but the solution will probably involve some white wood
glue or something like that. We’ll have
to dismount the trim in order to fill the little gaps, though. Ugh.
 |
| the toe kick and the not-so-great under-cabinet trim |
Another detail development was that we put in a second row
of hanging in two of the four hallway closets.
The closets aren’t tall enough for Carl’s clothes to be on two levels,
but my clothes have just enough space to be doubled. The third hallway closet now houses our long
coats and my dresses, and the fourth closet is designed for cleaning
supplies. It will house the broom, mop,
vacuum, various bottles of cleaning agents, rags, etc.
 |
| the new new row of hanging, and the newly painted closets |
The biggest development is that we have nearly completed
work in the hallway! We spent four days
last week painting the hallway walls, ceiling, and trim, and it is now
wonderfully bright and clean looking. We
also painted the trim and the ceiling in the bathroom. The bathroom ceiling had been a yellow-rust
color, but now it is gleaming white.
It’s amazing what a difference the new coat of paint makes!
Last weekend, we laid the flooring in the hallway. The process was quite exacting because the
hallway has five doors with complex jambs, the closets, and a column
protuberance. All of these obstacles
required complex cuts so it took quite a while to exactly measure everything,
translate it backwards on the back side of a floor board, and cut the pattern
with a jig saw. Luckily, our
measurements and cuts turned out really well and we didn’t have to re-cut any
boards.
 |
| leveling the floor and making sure the joints between boards are tight |
Between the paint job and the
new floor, our hallway is gorgeous and bright, looks twice as big, and looks
like an entirely different apartment!
 |
| the finished floor! |
We also measured, cut, and placed two of our six
thresholds. They look really good
too! I was a little worried about the
transition between our relatively yellow original wood floor in the living room
and the very neutral colored new flooring, but the threshold does a good job of
mediating the two colors. I’m very
pleased with the result, and with our exacting cuts in the threshold pieces!
 |
| before and after we put in the threshold |
 |
| threshold detail |
As you can see in the threshold photos, there is a ¼ inch
gap between the flooring and the walls and the door jambs. This gap is necessary for the expansion and
contraction of the wood floor. Most of
this gap will be covered by floor trim, but around the door jambs, we’ll have
to fill the gap with a color-matched, flexible wood putty. This is apparently how you do it when you are
putting a new floor into an existing building, but I’m a little nervous that
the wood putty won’t visually blend in and disappear. We’ll see soon.
Because we don’t have any more un-renovated spaces in the
apartment, we had to cut the wood flooring and thresholds out on our
balcony. Thank goodness the snow has
melted and we had a lovely dry weekend!
Although it was dry, it sure was chilly!
There’s nothing like handling power tools in below freezing shade.
So now that the hallway is finished, we have painted and laid
flooring in the entire apartment! The
great majority of our work is behind us.
Still remaining is to finish the kitchen backsplash, some touch up
painting, quite a lot of floor trim, four more thresholds, and some detail work
in the kitchen.
FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012
Blog Update
I have finally started to post on the Contemporary Projects
page of my blog. And soon, when our apartment renovation is finally
finished, I will continue to write the main Neighborhoods and Epochs
page.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2012
Picture Window
Our apartment building is on Sweden’s national historic register
because of its unusual and well-preserved façade. I believe that most of the register’s
interest in the building lies with its huge windows. Our living room window is six feet tall and
eight feet wide, and it is all one piece of glass without any mullions. The kitchen and bedroom windows are slightly
smaller, but they are still huge for the size of the rooms. Even today this size of window would be
unusual and expensive, especially in an apartment building. You can tell that our windows stretched the
glass-making capabilities of the 1950’s because the edges are wobbly like old
fashioned glass.
You would think that such a large window would be
inoperable, but it’s not! The entire
window pivots, making available almost 100% of the window’s surface area for
ventilation. The pivot also makes it
easy to clean the exterior of the windows, even on the 9th floor.
Our windows all face slightly south but mostly east. This means that we get a tiny bit of direct
morning light and some reflected afternoon light in the winter, but hopefully
we’ll get far more direct daylight in the summer, as long as all the trees
don’t block our sunshine. Our windows
face out onto a wooded hill, so during the summer, we’ll see a whole wall of
green. During the winter, of course, we
can see through the trees to the school behind our building, but the bare
branches provide perches for freshly fallen snow to rest upon. We were treated to such a gorgeous sight
during our first weekend in our apartment.
We
even have several large rabbits that live in the small
patch of forest behind our building.
They are so large that they almost look like baby kangaroos! (I am not
exaggerating on this.) I enjoyed watching them hop about one
afternoon while I was studying.
When we were looking for an apartment to purchase, it was
interesting to note that living higher up in the building is more
expensive. Of course the penthouse is
always the most expensive, but even living on the fourth floor is slightly more
expensive than living on the third floor.
I think this is mainly due to light.
The higher up you live, more light penetrates into your apartment. In a place where light is so limited (in the
winter at least) and therefore so beloved, it makes sense that apartments with
more light would be more expensive.
Likewise, south-facing apartments are also noticeably more expensive
than a north-facing apartment. And an
apartment with a south-facing balcony is the most prized of all. The only thing that trumps a south-facing
balcony in Stockholm
is a balcony with a water view. There is
a lot of water in Stockholm
so there are many water-view balconies, but even so, they were definitely not
in our price range.
Not only are cost and availability big factors in choosing
how high up to live, but so is connectivity.
Sometime during my architecture studies I read that visual and emotional
connections to the ground—that is to say: to the street, to the trees, to the
grass—ceases on the fourth floor above the sidewalk. If you live on the fourth floor or higher,
you might enjoy a good view, but you subconsciously lose your bond to your
surroundings. I wonder, though: if you
have a view out over your neighborhood and your city, would you then form a
subconscious connection to the city-at-large in place of your connection to
your plot of land?
While the rest of Europe is suffering through an unusually
cold and snowy winter, Stockholm
is coming to the end of an unusually short, warm, and snow-stingy winter. We only had continuous snow on the ground for
about 5 weeks, and this week is so warm that it is quickly melting away. I’m quite saddened by this because we are
unlikely to have more beautiful snowy landscape paintings just outside our
window. Also, snow on the ground
brightens everything. Light reflects off
the snow so that even on a relatively gray and dingy day, everything seems
bright and white. But without the snow,
we are going to have a gray couple of months before the trees start to bud.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2012
Renovation Day 48
We’ve officially moved into our new apartment!
 |
| our inaugural dinner in our new apartment! |
The electrician came last week and hooked up all of our
appliances and outlets in the kitchen. We can now cook!
 |
| several of the kitchen outlets for the micro, toaster, etc are hidden inside cabinets |
As I had mentioned a
while back, it’s common here for updated wiring to be on the face of the walls.
This means that while original outlets can be inset into the wall as they are
in the US,
new outlet boxes sit entirely on the face of the wall, jutting out about two
inches.
 |
| an original outlet on the left and a new outlet on the right |
Most of the visible wiring lies on top of the baseboards, so if we
decided to be really industrious, we could spackle the wire to be a smooth
curve over the baseboard. I don’t know if we’ll be that industrious, but we
will definitely paint the wires where they run vertically on the wall and where
the run across the ceiling so that they'll blend in a little better.
 |
| The electrician was able to hide the new wires where conduits through the walls and ceiling already existed, but some of the wires are exposed on the exterior face of the wall where conduits through the concrete don't exist. |
 |
| the original ancient fuse box and our new modern one |
Not only do we have electricity in the kitchen, but we also
have running water! Carl managed to morph himself into a plumber, and after
spending not all that long curled up under the sink, he figured out how to
connect the pieces so that our faucet runs, the sink drains into the sewer, the
dishwasher gets water, and the dishwasher can drain into the sewer. I’m so
impressed!
 |
| the plumber at work and running water! |
Getting the dishwasher into its little cubby wasn’t so easy
and it took several tries. First of all, you’re supposed to put the dishwasher
on top of a plastic mat so that if it leaks, the water will run forward so that
you will see it sooner. However, this plastic mat is fairly flimsy so it kept
bunching up when we tried to move the dishwasher. Secondly, all of the
protruding screws from our home-built cubby and ghetto-fused countertop made it
tricky to get the dishwasher all the way in.
 |
| the final steps to a usable kitchen |
We have also spent quite a bit of time building and
installing drawers. For some reason, the drawers take longer to build than the
cabinets! Carl has spent quite a lot of
time in the past week installing cabinet doors and shelves. Some of these were tricky where the new
wiring runs through the cabinets, so Carl had to jigsaw out portions of the
shelves to allow for the wiring. He’s
now working on putting the handles onto all the doors and drawers.
Last week our first priority was to “cook-proof” the
kitchen. We put two layers of oil on the
butcher block counters to seal out moisture and stains. The oil is having its desired effect because
water now forms droplets on the surface of the counter instead of immediately
soaking in like it had been doing. The
oil stained the counters a slightly darker shade which we really like because
the counters and the floors had been the exact same color. Now there’s a nice difference between them,
and the darker color will mean that stains are less likely to show on the
counters.
 |
| the "cook-proofed" kitchen |
We also installed most of the clear acrylic backsplash. We saw this backsplash method in a couple of
apartments and really liked it for several reasons. First, it is cheap. It is relatively easy and mess-less to
install, unlike tile. It is also easy to
change in the future: if a prospective buyer doesn’t like our cheery yellow,
they can easily repaint it another color.
Changing the tile color would have been much more daunting.
Unfortunately, we messed up one piece of the acrylic while
cutting it, and the store won’t have any more in stock until next week, so ¼ of
our backsplash remains to be installed.
The backsplash has already served its purpose as it is now splattered
with the bacon grease of our inaugural weekend brunch.
Although we now have a beautiful and functional kitchen, we
still have a good bit of work to do before it is completely finished such as
installing the toe kick, mounting all the handles, and painting and installing
the little bits of visible floor trim.
Hopefully we will get all of this accomplished soon so that we can move
our efforts into the hallway. Until we
get the hallway painted, our clothes will remain littered over the bedroom
floor because most of our closet space is in the hallway.
 |
| 3 of 23 handles |
We have also put together our new couch, and now that all
the kitchen boxes have been emptied and recycled, our living room is starting
to sorta kinda take shape. This same
sofa is in just about every apartment that we have seen in Stockholm.
It is cheap, comfortable, and incredibly convenient with an unusually
comfortable sofabed stashed underneath.
The chaise lounge portion makes it easy for two people to lay and read,
and there is even storage under the chaise lounge! This couch is truly a mark of Ikea’s
genius. If only the fabric were
nicer! Unfortunately, Ikea only offers
this couch in two colors, both not ideal.
Our renovation efforts have slowed recently because I am now
studying extra, about 6 to 8 hours daily on top of our 24 hours of class each
week. (This is also why I haven’t been
posting much recently!) I moved up from the
“intro” Swedish class to the “C” class.
Students typically stay in the C class for 8 to 15 weeks, but several of
us from the intro class are so far ahead that the C teacher encouraged us to
take the national exam after only three weeks in the C course. I thought about just staying in the C class
until the next monthly exam, but there is such a discrepancy between the more
advanced and the less advanced students that the teacher is having to keep a painfully slow pace. I have no
real doubt that I will pass the test, but it is a little nerve-racking because
if I don’t pass it, I will be kicked out of the Swedish for Architects and
Engineers program. So just in case, I’m
studying extra hard and trying to teach myself all of the grammar that we
haven’t learned in class yet but that I will need to know for the test. After the exam, we’ll be full steam ahead on
the renovation to get the hallway completed as soon as possible.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2012
Valentine's Special: One Hitch in my Love Affair with Kindle
So before moving to Sweden, I gave in and bought a
Kindle. I resisted the relationship for
years, but now I love it way more than I every thought I would. I do miss physical books, but the Kindle has
several major perks:
1) It
is superb for travel. Instead of hauling
three to four heavy books along on a two week trip, I now only have to take the
one lightweight small Kindle. You can
even download Lonely Planet to your Kindle, so soon, I won’t even be carrying a
separate guidebook along.
2) It
is even better for backpacking. The
Kindle weighs less than a book, so instead of carrying two or three books with
me on a five day hiking trip, my pack is now several pounds lighter.
3) It
is expensive to buy English language books here, and while the libraries have
an impressive collection, they don’t have everything
I look for. Buying books on Amazon
is about half or third the cost of buying the physical book here in Sweden.
4) And
now that I’ve moved to the frozen north, I have discovered that one of the most
beautiful things about the Kindle is that you can easily read it without taking
your gloves off. Not only are your hands
toasty and warm while reading the Kindle, but you don’t defile your hands by
touching anything on the bus or subway. Not that the busses and trains are
particularly dirty here, but still, I don’t really want to hold the same pole
that 700,000 other Stockholmers have touched that day. (That’s the official figure: 700,000 of the
approximately 1.5 million people in greater Stockholm ride the bus, subway, tram, and/or
commuter train every day.)
The one
major upset in my love affair with my Kindle is that
it abandons me in the cold. It doesn’t
mind freezing temperatures, but there is some point, probably around 15
degrees
Fahrenheit, where the Kindle just doesn’t turn on. Standing at a bus
stop in the 15 degree cold
without being able to distract myself with a book is a real
disappointment. Once I’m on the warm bus, however, my Kindle rekindles
its flame again without a whimper.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2012
Avocados
Avocados are on sale right now, 4 for 10 kronor or about
$1.33. This is a good bargain even in Texas. It seems that grocery stores here have some idea of what you’re supposed to do
with avocados because there are always (pale) tomatoes in the bin right next to
the avocados and the lemons are nearby.
Apparently, however, guacamole isn’t usually served on tortilla chips in
Sweden,
because most grocery stores don’t sell them.
Stores have an entire isle of potato chips, pretzels, and cheesy puffs,
but tortilla chips of any kind are sadly lacking except for in the biggest,
most international stores.
I find sales generally interesting here. In the US, when the sale is 4 for a
dollar, you only have to buy one and it will cost 25 cents. The only time you actually have to buy the
advertised number is if the sale is buy-one-get-one-free. But here, if avocados are 4 for 10 kronor,
you actually have to buy all 4 to get the deal.
Otherwise, you’ll end up paying the normal price of 8 kronor per
avocado.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2012
Renovation Day 40
It only took us two days to lay the kitchen flooring, and
we’re excited about how nice it looks.
The process was the same as in the bedroom: lay noise-dampening felt,
lay first flooring section, cut next section to size, interlock two flooring
sections together, and continue. We
definitely have our system down for this flooring product.
 |
| laying felt and making sure the floor is level enough |
 |
| kitchen floor after 1 day and after 2 days |
Unfortunately, the rest of the kitchen has been taking
FOREVER. It’s a little disheartening to
have such little visible progress after the hugely productive cabinet-mounting
and floor-laying weekends. Even so, the
kitchen is coming together piece by piece.
After we finished the floor, we assembled and installed the
“island.” Our kitchen is not big enough
to have an actual island, but we desperately needed more counter space. We
originally designed a peninsula of counter and lower cabinets that would jut
out into the kitchen in front of the big window. This peninsula would have had an extra-wide
countertop so that we could put two barstools at the far side and use it as a
breakfast bar. (An eat-in kitchen seems
to be a real estate necessity here in Stockholm
for all but the tiniest of kitchens.) The peninsula wasn’t absolutely ideal for
work-flow because it somewhat cut off the stove from the fridge and sink areas,
but it would have been ok.
Eventually, we decided to turn the peninsula 90 degrees so
that the counter is parallel to the window.
The counter is still extra-wide, and the cabinets are pushed back toward
the wall, leaving enough of an overhang so that we can sit on barstools and
look out the window while we’re eating breakfast. When we’re cooking and need the extra counter
space, all we’ll have to do is push the stools under the counter to gain about
four more feet of workspace. This is
going to be an ideal baking kitchen!
Two of the cabinets that support the extra wide counter and
bar face out toward the kitchen. These
won’t be super convenient to access because they’re under the bar counter, so
they’ll provide storage for items we don’t use so often like wrapping paper or
tools. The end cabinet faces toward the
fridge and will provide some much-needed drawer storage.
Installing
the cabinets that support the bar counter took a
bit of jerry-rigging because there is a radiator under the window. It
is the only source of heat in the kitchen
and 1/3 of the heating in the entire apartment.
We needed to leave enough space so that air can circulate around the
radiator and waft upward and into the room.
For this reason, we will not install a toekick at these cabinets. To
support these cabinets, we used brackets
to hold a 1x6 out from the wall behind the radiator. The cabinets are
then bolted to the 1x6. Hopefully our unscientific calculations will
prove true that we’ve given the radiator enough space to effectively
heat the
kitchen.
Screwing in the butcher block oak countertops has proven to
be extremely difficult. Even drilling a
pilot hole doesn’t really ease the process because you have to get inside the
cabinet and screw upward against gravity.
My job has been to lounge atop the counter providing weight against
which Carl can more effectively screw.
This may be our most unfair division of labor so far.
On top of the extra wide bar counter we have installed two
additional cabinets. The lower one will
act as our “appliance garage” where the tea and French press and toaster and
cereal will live, getting it all out off the countertops and out of sight. This is one kitchen designing tip that I
learned and loved from my previous architecture firm in San Antonio.
The upper cabinet isn’t really necessary and will only provide storage
for items we very rarely use, but the kitchen looked pretty lopsided with such
a short wall cabinet when all the other cabinets go nearly to the ceiling. For these two upper cabinets, we did not use
Ikea’s usual wall cabinets; we used base cabinets instead. Unlike our supporting cabinets, the appliance
garage is bolted directly to the wall, so the extra depth makes the garage more
accessible when you’re standing at the counter’s edge.
Part of what took so long with the appliance garage
installation is that in order for them to look good and be durable, the Ikea
cabinets require an additional finished side.
Usually, this finished side is already precut to the size of your
cabinets and is easy to apply, but because we used two cabinets together, we
had to cut our own finish sides from Ikea stock. Additionally, we had to cut finish pieces to
put under each cabinet (so that the doors will never interfere with each other)
and to apply to the top of the top cabinet (the lower cabinets don’t usually
need a top because you’d usually put a counter over them). The appliance garage looks fairly simple, but
it is actually seven different parts cut exactly to size and bolted
together. We’re pretty proud of
ourselves for getting all the measurements and cuts right!
This last weekend we spent a lot of time installing the
stove and the oven so that the electrician could come back and complete his work
in our apartment. I’m not sure exactly
what the background behind this is, but in Sweden, your homeowner’s insurance
is not valid unless a certified electrician connects your stove. For this reason, most stoves do not come with
a plug; instead, the electrician must hard-wire the stove to the electrical
supply.
We chose an induction stovetop. I have been fascinated with induction
cooktops since my graduate school days when I helped to design and build a
solar-powered house that had an induction stove. These “new-fangled” stoves work through
magneticism, so unless you have iron in your hands, you will not feel heat when
you put your hands on the hot stove.
Only metals in your pots and pans can feel this heat, making induction
stoves great for kids (and adults, too!).
Additionally, because they are only using energy to heat the pot/pan and
are not expending energy heating up the surrounding environment, induction
stovetops are extremely energy efficient and they boil water in less than half
the amount of time than an electric stove.
I haven’t really cooked on an induction stovetop before, so it should be
a fun experiment!
We had to cut a hole in the butcher block countertop for the
stove to sit in. It was pretty scary to
cut into such an expensive thing, but we checked the measurements about five
times before starting in with the drill and jigsaw. Once we got the stove into place, we were
extremely relieved to find that our hole was perfect.
Installing the oven shouldn’t have taken so long, but it
took nearly a whole evening. We put the
stove in the first time and realized that we had built the cabinet incorrectly
and that one of the shelves needed to be higher. This is probably the most annoying piece of
Ikea furniture or cabinetry that I have ever built. Ikea usually provides clear step-by-step
instructions, but the instructions with this tall cabinet were extremely vague. So we had to take the oven out, move the
shelf, build the drawers that will be inserted below the oven to make sure that
we finally had the cabinet built correctly, and re-install the stove. On the second try, it looked much better.
Our dishwasher will sit directly adjacent to our
fridge. Because of this, the countertop
over the dishwasher has nothing to sit on at the fridge-side of the
dishwasher. We had to construct a
cabinet using more Ikea finish side pieces to house the dishwasher and to
support the counter above the dishwasher.
This wouldn’t have been quite so bad if we hadn’t cut the counter above
the dishwasher to the wrong size.
UGGGGH! Fixing this problem would
have either required spending another few hundred dollars to buy a new countertop
or required us to fuse an inch-and-a-half left-over counter piece to the
larger, too-small counter. We went with
the slightly ghetto method, but we did take the left-over piece back to Bauhaus
(Stockholm’s
Home Depot equivalent) for them to give the piece a perfect edge. With the perfect edges together, we were able
to fuse the two pieces relatively well, although it will never be a perfect
seam. We have sanded the seam and hope
that after we apply a few layers of oil to the countertops, the visible edge
will be minimized. Perhaps this is the perfect
location for an elongated fruit bowl?
This was our first major screw-up in the entire apartment renovation
process, and we hope that it is the last.
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| the ghetto counter wouldn't have looked quite so ghetto if the two counters had the same pattern |
After we built the dishwasher housing, we could finally
install the sink. Unfortunately, when we
first lifted the sink in, it didn’t sit exactly how the instruction manual said
it should. Carl will have to call Ikea
to make sure that this discrepancy isn’t too important.
 |
| sink and dishwasher cubby |
We have bought a faucet, but the water connection doesn’t
directly fit onto our pipes. It looks
like we’ll have to go back to Bauhaus yet again to get some sort of
intermediate connector piece. We’re
really hoping to be able to connect the faucet, sink, and dishwasher ourselves
without having to hire a plumber. This
will be this week’s big challenge!
MONDAY, JANUARY 30, 2012
Foreigner
THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2012
8 Weeks and 3000 Words
Tomorrow marks the end of my introductory Swedish course,
and on Monday, I will begin “Swedish C” (Swedish A and B are prep courses for
immigrants who can’t read the Latin alphabet).
In addition to lots and lots of grammar, I estimate that I have learned
at least 3000 words. I know that I make
at least 75 flashcards with new words every day, but most days, I make many
more, perhaps up to 125. I don’t learn
every single new word every day, but I usually know almost all of the week’s
new words by the end of the week. Usually
there are a few flashcards that I haven’t mastered, so I carry them over to the
next week and continue to drill through them.
Every few weeks I go back and make sure that I still know all of the
previous weeks’ words, and if I’ve forgotten any, I add them to my “need to
learn” pile of flashcards and re-learn them. There are a few tricky words that I have
re-learnt several times, but mostly, I am glad to say, the 3000+ Swedish words
are sticking with me.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 2012
Renovation Day 32
We made a lot of progress on our kitchen last weekend. We assembled and mounted nearly all the
kitchen cabinets! It is exciting to see
our kitchen finally starting to take shape.
We’ll install the shelves, drawers, and cabinet doors later; our first
priority is to have working appliances so that we can finally move into our
apartment. But in order to have working
appliances, we need electricity supplied to the kitchen. But before the electrician can come back to
finish his work, we need to mount the remaining cabinets and install the oven
and stovetop. But before we can mount
the remaining cabinets, we must lay the new kitchen flooring. And before we can install the stovetop, we
must place the counter . . .
But
first, our beautiful paint job in the kitchen. We didn't bother
painting where the cabinets would be covering the wall. The walls are
generally the same light cream color that we painted the living room,
but the backsplash is a bright sunny yellow.
Step 1: Assembly
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| from boxes to pieces to cabinets |
Step 2: Mounting the upper cabinets.
This is a heavy, exhausting process. First you have to mark the wall
where you will drill the holes, so one person must hold up the cabinet
in the exact right place, and they must hold it exactly level. The
second person is on a ladder marking the holes. You then set the
cabinet back on the ground, drill the holes, and screw in the screws.
You then lift the cabinet back up, hang them on the screws, and adjust
them so that they are level in all directions before you tighten the
bolts. The corner cabinet goes in first and then you go outward from
there. You bolt neighboring cabinets together so that they remain
flush. You use clamps (2nd photo) during this bolting process to make
sure that the cabinets don't slip relative to each other.
We
had to use short cabinets at the corner of the kitchen because there is
a concrete mechanical chase at the ceiling that we couldn't remove
without a jackhammer. We will still use the taller doors on these
cabinets, so unless the cabinet door is open, you won't be able to tell
that these are squatty compared to all the other cabinets.
 |
| 1 cabinet 2 cabinets 3 cabinets! The third cabinet is a dish rack that is directly over the sink so that we don't have to have drying dishes laying out on the counter. |
 |
| 4 cabinets 5 cabinets 6 cabinets! The 5th cabinet will house the microwave and the fan and air filter is in the 6th cabinet over the stovetop. |
 |
| 7 cabinets! The narrow cabinet to the left will be a bookcase with our cookbooks. It is nearly flush with the door to the hallway. |
 |
| 2 of our kitchen walls are solid concrete. Luckily, we were able to borrow a hammering drill; otherwise, this would have been an extremely time consuming process. |
Step 3: Mounting the lower cabinets. Several
of the lower cabinets were tricky due to plumbing and such. Other than
the hammering drill, the tool of the day was a jig saw.
The
process for the lower cabinets was much the same as the uppers. Place
cabinet, mark holes, remove cabinet, drill holes, screw in screws, place
cabinet, tighten bolts. Although they are bolted to the wall for
stability, the bottom cabinets sit on adjustable feet. This was is
actually quite handy for our kitchen because the kitchen floor is not
terribly level, but we were able to adjust the cabinet feet so that the
counter will end up being level regardless of the floor. Adjusting the
back feet of the corner cabinet was a challenge, however...
 |
| 8 cabinets! 9 cabinets! 10 cabinets! 11 cabinets! The stovetop will sit above the 11th cabinet |
Step 4: Mounting the tall cabinet.
This one was a challenge. It must weigh at least 150 pounds so it is
nearly impossible to maneuver. Of the Ikea cabinets, I'd say that this
one is the most disappointing. The smaller cabinets are quite sturdy,
but this one doesn't have enough bracing, so it is a bit wobbly. It
doesn't help that this huge cabinet only mounts to the wall in two
places, both on the same wall. It also doesn't help that our walls
aren't exactly at 90 degree angles, so getting this wobbly cabinet to
fit tightly against two slightly angled walls is a challenge. We are
going to have to jerry rig a few extra bolts to attach it firmly to the
adjacent concrete wall.
The only cabinets remaining are the cabinets that will support our "island" and house our "appliance garage." Stay tuned for these additions. But before we install the remaining cabinets, we will lay the new kitchen flooring this weekend.
 |
| This cabinet will house the oven |
The only cabinets remaining are the cabinets that will support our "island" and house our "appliance garage." Stay tuned for these additions. But before we install the remaining cabinets, we will lay the new kitchen flooring this weekend.
MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 2012
Herring Vocabulary
You know that saying that Eskimos have 18 different words
for snow? I suppose that whatever thing
is important and common in a culture will assume various names depending on the
exact circumstances surrounding the object.
The same holds true for Swedes and herring. The word for herring in Swedish is sill, but smoked herring is not called
“smoked” sill; instead, this type of
herring has an entirely independent name: böckling. And then there’s the fermented herring, or surströming (sound tasty?). Pickled herring is actually called “food” sill, or matjessill. Of course, there
are many different types of pickled herring including onion-stewed, mustard, and
sweet lingonberry.
One of the best parts of Swedish culture is that the herring
is typically accompanied by shots of aquavit, or flavored vodka. You don’t sip your aquavit independently;
instead, you sip as a group after singing a drinking song. I just love that relatively sober adults sit
around the table with their glasses raised, singing silly songs, smiling and
nodding to each other, and then sipping in unison. During Christmas, I was
pleased to notice that I am beginning to understand the words to the silly
drinking songs. Soon, I hope to be
singing along.
We have finally learned some food words in our Swedish
class, which is why all the different herring dishes have come up. Additionally, I can now use the definite form
of plural nouns, the rules of which are so complicated that I consider myself
to be a grammatical genius because I actually comprehend them (the girls = en + flicka
+ or + na = flickorna; the boys = en + pojke
+ ar + na = pojkarna). I can also use
the appropriate gender adjective to describe an en, ett, or plural nouns
(a pretty girl = en vacker flicka, a pretty table = ett vackert
bord, the pretty children = vackra barnen). And even better, I can now use adjectives to
compare nouns (I am more beautiful than you = Jag är vackrare än dig,
I am the prettiest woman = Jag är vackraste kvinnan). Of course, possessive pronouns also depend on
if the word is en, ett, or plural (my chair = min
stol, my table = mitt bord, my chairs = mina
stolar).
In addition to being able to better describe things, we have
also covered the present perfect tense.
So not only can I say that “I drink tasty aquavit” and “I drank tasty
aquavit,” I can say that “I have drunk
tasty aquavit.” Good thing that we have
not learned the word(s) for “too much” quite yet!
FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2012
Renovation Day 29: A Ton of Stuff
Last weekend, we literally bought a ton of stuff at the
WORLD’S LARGEST IKEA. Actually, it was
over a ton: 1048.9 kg (2,312 pounds)! The 2,312 pounds consisted of 89 boxes, about
30 small baggies of hinges and such, a bed, a sofa, a refrigerator, a
dishwasher, a microwave, an oven, a stove top, and a sink. The flooring/paint/countertop day has moved
down the hierarchy to third place; our Ikea Kitchen shopping day is now the
second most expensive day in our history, second only to the purchase of our
apartment.
I
have very mixed feelings about Ikea. I appreciate that most of their
designs are
sleeker and more modern than a place like Rooms-To-Go. And I certainly
appreciate the cheap cost! But I have concerns about every household in
the world having the exact same furniture.
If man makes buildings and then buildings in turn make men as Winston
Churchill so famously observed, what power Ikea wields! I also have
lingering concerns about the
quality of Ikea products. The easy-to-assemble
joints are flimsy, making the furniture impossible to move well, and for
this
reason, the furniture has no resale value or lifetime longevity. It
feels very college-kid to choose price
over quality, but the temptation to pay half as much for the “same”
product is
just too great. (October 3rd's The New Yorker had an excellent essay on Ikea that raised some of these same questions and more.)
When it comes to kitchen building in Sweden,
however, there are very few alternatives to Ikea. Yes, there are high-end kitchen boutiques
like Bulthaup, and there are several middle-of-the road alternatives as well,
but Ikea’s system is so vast and so efficient that they can deliver the exact
same quality level of cabinet at 1/3 the price of any competitor. Having spent several years in the world of
high-end home design, I recognize that the Ikea cabinets are not ever going to
be high-end quality, but they aren’t half bad, either. Not to mention that you don’t have to wait
6-12 weeks for delivery. It turns out
that in Sweden
at least, there doesn’t seem to be a real alternative to Ikea when price and
timing are of concern.
Ikea certainly has their kitchen system figured out. The kitchen catalog comes with a grid and
punch-out cabinets and appliances that are to the scale of the grid. You draw the outline of your kitchen on the
grid and then play with the punch-outs to design your kitchen.
Once you have a rough idea of how your
kitchen will work, Ikea’s website provides 3-D software where you model your
kitchen very easily and then input all of the pieces—cabinets, appliances,
trim, countertops, door handles, toekicks, faucet—so that you can see
three-dimensionally how the kitchen is working.
The software isn’t totally bug-free, but it does make it easy to try
different alternatives (pink cabinets! retro appliances!) quickly.
Once you’ve gotten your kitchen decisions pretty well made,
you go into the store and talk with a kitchen guru. The kitchen guru walks you through your
kitchen, makes alternate suggestions, and makes sure that you’re not about to
buy a kitchen that won’t work out. After
the kitchen guru and the customer are satisfied, the kitchen guru prints out a
list of every single item that you will need in order to build your
kitchen. The list comes in two
formats—an easy shopping list organized by aisle and shelf number for each
product you need to find so that you aren’t running back and forth all over the
store, and an easy assembly list so that once you’re home, you know which six
boxes you need to locate in order to assemble the one cabinet.
 |
| Our first cart at the Ikea warehouse... |
Then, it’s warehouse time.
We completely filled four carts to overflowing with all the boxes and
miscellaneous parts we’ll need in order to build our kitchen. Gathering all the items we needed in the
warehouse actually didn’t take all that long—about an hour or an hour and a
half. After gathering everything, we
went to the check out line. With four
overflowing carts, no one dared to get behind us in line, so we didn’t feel too
harried about getting through the checkout quickly. The cashier was very helpful, and they
definitely get a good workout lifting all those boxes around to scan all the
barcodes. We bought so many different
items that they the receipt is 49 inches long!
While we were at the cash register, we also paid for all the
large items that aren’t in the warehouse such as the appliances, the bed, and
the sofa. When we paid for these items,
an order went through to Ikea’s off-site warehouse to bring them to the store’s
pick-up counter for us. After taking an
hour or so to go through our receipt to make sure that the cashier didn’t
double scan anything and to make sure that we didn’t forget to buy anything,
our big items were already packaged and waiting for us. It’s a good thing that we did go through the
receipt, because we realized that there were two boxes that we didn’t pick
up.
The appliances, our bed, and our couch came on two gigantic
palates and an additional cart. So after
picking up those things, we approached the home delivery counter with five
carts and two palates! I don’t think
that we were a welcome sight at the home delivery counter, especially
considering that they only charge a flat rate.
For about $150, Ikea loaded our 2,312 pounds of merchandise onto a
truck, drove it about 15 or 20 miles to our apartment, unloaded the truck, and
helped us carry it all up the stairs.
I’d certainly say it was worth the $150!
Exhausted, we went to our apartment to clear the way for the
delivery, and the truck arrived the next morning on time. It took about two hours to unload everything
into our living room. Now, our living
room is absolutely filled with the 89 boxes, the boxed-up sofa, the five
appliances, and the sink. Carl is joking
that we should start an Ikea affiliate store, but I don’t think that’s a very
good idea because I’m not interested in carrying all of that stuff up and down
the stairs again!
 |
| Our living room after the delivery |
Since
the Ikea delivery, we have spent four evenings painting the kitchen,
and it is now finished! I'll have to post photos of the kitchen paint
job another time since we were too exhausted last night to take any.
This
weekend will be an exciting time for us as we assemble and mount our new
cabinets!
FRIDAY, JANUARY 6, 2012
Renovation Day 23
Despite a lovely week’s vacation over Christmas (see latest
Travels post) we’ve made a lot of progress on our apartment in the last couple
of weeks:
We put in our new wood floor in our bedroom, and we think
it’s beautiful! Especially in comparison
to the 50-year-old dingy gray linoleum floor that was in there previously!
We went with a semi-engineered flooring
system with planks that lock together very easily. The bottom of the floor with the locking
system is a not-so-nice wood, but the top layer is actual oak that is thick
enough to be sanded a couple of times.
Even though the floor isn’t completely hardwood all the way through, it
should have a 50 year lifespan. And it’s
made in Sweden,
which is cool. We even passed the
factory on the train on our way home from our Christmas vacation. It took us three evenings to get the floor completely
installed. I’d guess that the other two
rooms will only take two evenings each now that we have the system down.
 |
| Before putting in the flooring, we put in a layer of thick felted paper to dampen any noise if there's any movement between the new wood floor and the old linoleum |
 |
| We are particularly proud of our handiwork cutting the flooring around the radiator pipes. We will add a wooden ring trim piece later. |
After putting in the floor, we painted new floor trim for
the bedroom. We’ve put in about half of
it, but we still need to do the rest.
Because half of the walls in our apartment are solid concrete, we have
to glue the trim on to those walls instead of nailing it in. However, I have to say, that nailing it in is
far, far easier than messing with a glue gun and having to sit there holding
the trim in place for several minutes.
We have also completely painted the living room!
 |
| If only smart phones had wide angle lenses! And if only we had more daylight in which to photograph our newly brightened living room! |
The walls required two coats of primer but
only one top coat with the real paint, which was a relief after the bedroom
required two top coats. The trim
required two coats but it is now looking sparklingly white instead of a dingy
yellow color. And the ceiling is now
white instead of a tobacco-stained yellow/orange. The room is SO much brighter than when it was
covered in the old grimy swirly peach wallpaper. In the living room we finally mastered the
art of masking tape and our ceiling/wall and wall/trim transitions look much
better than in the bedroom. It almost,
but not quite, makes me want to touch up the bedroom transitions.
The electrician spent a day in our apartment this week
updating our system and starting to put in the new outlets. He has another day or two of work before the
job is completed.
 |
| We are pleased that the electrician was able to use the original electrical conduits through our concrete walls, so only about half of the new wiring will be exposed on the surface of the walls. |
We have also almost
finished spackling the kitchen. It has
required an enormous amount of spackle to cover up all the uneven places after
we tore out the old cabinetry and the old backsplash tile So far, we’ve gone through over a gallon of
spackle! We have probably one more layer
of spackle, one more sanding, and then we’ll be about ready to paint in there,
too!
Tomorrow is going to be our BIG IKEA SHOPPING DAY when we
will purchase an entire kitchen, a bed, and probably a couch. Yikes!
THURSDAY, JANUARY 5, 2012
The 13th Day of Christmas
Tomorrow
is the 13th Day of Christmas in Sweden. It is a national holiday, and
people with
office jobs get the day off. It will be
a perfect day to get a lot of painting done in our apartment… Anyway, I
find the 13th Day of
Christmas amusing because it seems that most of the world has 12 Days of
Christmas. There’s even the song,
right? But in Sweden, because Christmas is actually
celebrated on Christmas Eve, there are 13 Days of Christmas. I wonder
what my true love will give to me on the 13th Day of Christmas?
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2011
Christmastime in Stockholm
 |
| Gamla Stan decorations |
Christmas, or Jul
(pronounced Yule) is the bright spot in Stockholm’s
long, dark, gray winters. Though most
subway advertisements are for Christmas presents, the season here is not nearly
as commercialized as it is in the States.
Department stores don’t begin to decorate for Christmas in October,
instead, they wait respectably till the beginning of December. And while Christmas is in the air everywhere
here, it isn’t stuffed down your throat in the same pushy way that it is in the
US. This is most demonstrable with Christmas
decorations in Stockholm. The city is decorated and festive, but in a
restrained, simple, and elegant manner.
I kind of miss the ridiculous but wonderful displays of Christmas lights
in certain neighborhoods in the States, but I do appreciate the understated
simplicity of the decorations here.
Since most people don’t have yards to light up, they light up their
windows instead. Most windows in the
city display either a stair-stepping electric candelabra in the windowsill or a
glowing star hanging in front of the window.
Most of these stars are white, but some daring people hang red
stars.
In Sweden, red is the only Christmas
color; green is nowhere to be found, except in the large Christmas trees that stand
in every neighborhood’s main square.
These trees are only decorated with lights, not with any trinkets or
balls or candy canes or bows. (There was a cute story in the newspaper
yesterday about a contest for Sweden’s
ugliest public Christmas tree. Surprisingly,
there were several good contestants!)
 |
| the slightly sad Christmas tree in the center of our neighborhood |
Today I went to Gamla Stan’s Christmas market. Most tourists have abandoned the city to the
cold, so the markets aren’t as touristy as you’d think, and at least 75% of the
people there today were locals buying last minute Julklappar (gifts) and additions to their Julbord (Christmas dinner).
The most popular booths were the candy booths where gangs of small children were agonizing over how to spend their pocket money.
I didn’t buy anything except for a delicious steaming bag of roasted
candied almonds. So, so tasty! And holding the bag kept my hands warm, which
was delightful considering that today it was colder than it has been all
winter.
 |
| some festive decorations in Gamla Stan |
 |
| Straw goats are also popular Christmas decorations in Sweden. I'll explain the straw goats below, but I'm not sure about the straw pigs. A Christmas ham is traditional here (along with Christmas lutfisk, or fermented herring), so maybe the straw pigs with cute curly tails are celebrating the Christmas ham? |
The history of the Christmas goat goes back
to pagan times as Thor drove a chariot pulled by goats. He would kill and cook the goats every
evening, but then he would resurrect them with his hammer so that they could
pull his chariot again the next day. During the Germanic pagan celebration of Yule, a goat was sacrificed and
eaten. Eventually, the Jul celebration became Christianized,
and the Jul goat became the bearer of
gifts in Scandinavia. The Jul
goat eventually was replaced with a Santa Claus-like figure called the
Christmas Gnome, or Jultomte.
 |
| In a transition from Christmas Goat to Christmas Gnome, the gnome is riding the goat. |
It’s a bit dicey if Stockholm
will have a white Christmas this year.
It snowed several inches a few days ago, but it has been slowly melting
throughout the week. There is snow on
the ground today, but it might not stick until Saturday. In Sweden, the main Christmas
celebration is on Christmas Eve, so the 24th is the day that counts
if it’s going to be white or not.
 |
| Snowy view from our temporary apartment. This was just the beginning of last week's snow, though the snow has now receded to look about the same. |
I’ve written about the long winter nights before, but since
this is the longest night of the year, I think it warrants another
mention. Today, sunrise was not until
8:45, and sunset was at 2:46. At high
noon, the sun was only 7 degrees above the horizon. Thank goodness for the warm glow of
candles! Starting tomorrow, each day
will be a little longer, the sun will be a little higher, and then eventually,
in June, the sun will barely set! Right
now, in the depths of winter’s darkness, it’s hard to imagine a time when it
will be daylight ‘round the clock. But
for now, I’m contented with beautiful candles and the Christmas goodies we
baked earlier this week.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2011
Renovation Day 14--and More Baking--and Class Jul Party
We have finally
finished painting the bedroom! The
painting ended up taking us 5 days. On
the first painting day, we did a first coat of primer on the walls. The next day we did a second coat of primer
and painted the ceiling. Then last
Saturday, we applied the first coat of “real” paint, but the paint didn’t
completely cover the white primer. So
while I was studying that evening, Carl applied the second coat of “real”
paint. Sunday we painted all the trim
including the exterior and interior of the closets, but the trim had been so
yellowed that one coat didn’t completely cover the old trim color. So then on Monday evening we finished the
bedroom with a final coat of paint on the trim.
In the other rooms we’ll know to cover the trim with primer when we’re
priming the walls so that it won’t take up two evenings just to paint the
trim.
 |
| Don't be fooled by the real estate photo on the left. The bedroom was dark and grimy with terrible blue-green swirly flowery wallpaper. I think they took liberties with photoshop! |
 |
| Before, the closets were ancient smelly stained MDF. They look much better painted white, and hopefully the paint will keep the musty/old cigarette smell from getting into our clothes. |
In addition to the painting, Carl has finished prepping the
living room for painting. We just need
to wash all the surfaces in the room and then it’ll be ready to paint! He has also put the first 2twocoats of spackle
where we chiseled out the backsplash tile.
Those surfaces were extremely bumpy after the tile removal, so we’ll
need another coat or two of spackle before we can paint. In other exciting news, we sold the stove for
about $100. No takers for the fridge
yet…we’ll have to update the ad after the new year.
 |
| after the first coat of spackle |
We are so very excited to have finished a constructive
project in our apartment! We're really liking the
cool gray and blue tones that we chose for the bedroom. Even more exciting: We’ll be starting to put
in our new bedroom floor this evening!
Goodbye linoleum, hello wood!
Last night Carl and I washed about 35 kilos of laundry (the
washers in our building weigh the laundry before they wash so that you know
exactly how much detergent to add in) and had a baking frenzy. I baked two batches of chocolate sliver
cookies, two batches of my ginger cookies (I used up the last of the homemade
candied ginger), and two batches of peanut butter cookies. Carl baked a double batch of Lucia saffron
buns and several gigantic loaves of Christmas raisin beer bread. In addition to starting to lay our bedroom
floors this evening, we also plan to take bags of cookies to our neighbors in
an effort to meet them and to apologize for all of the renovation noise.
 |
| 6 batches of cookies and a Lucia saffron bun |
I also took a bunch of the cookies to the little Jul (Christmas) party my classmates and
I threw together after class today.
Everyone brought something to share; some of the dishes were traditional
from various homelands, and some dishes were more internationally
recognized. I found it amusingly ironic
that the Afghani in our group contributed several large orders of French fries
from McDonald’s to the potluck!
Apparently he had forgotten the Afghani rice dish he had prepared at
home so he went to McDonald’s as a last-ditch effort. Funny.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2011
Flashcards
My language class is really heating up, and the pace is
getting faster and faster and more and more intense. By the end of next week, our fifth week of
classes, we will have completed an entire university semester’s worth of
material. To memorize the new words that
I don’t yet remember, I make flashcards.
I only make flashcards of the words I don’t know; for the words that I
am absolutely sure I am already comfortable with I don’t bother with the
flashcards. I can tell that the pace of
my language course is really heating up because the stack of flashcards that
I’ll need to learn this weekend from this week’s classes is almost as tall as
the stack of flashcards I learned for the past three weeks combined!
On top of hundreds of vocabulary words, I can now talk about
things I will do in the future, things that happened in the past, issue
imperative commands, use helper verbs like should and want to, describe nouns
with adjectives (this is trickier than English because you have to change the
adjectives depending on if the noun is an en,
ett, or plural word), and pluralize
nouns (this is also tricky, see below).
I’m still very awkward when it comes to pronunciation, but I’m slowly getting
a feel for the patterns.
Pluralizing words in Swedish is absolutely crazy. There are 5 different ways to pluralize a
noun, and each of the 5 categories has subcategories and of course there are
infinite exceptions. Like the en and ett words, you generally just have to know. To show off my Swedish knowledge and to show
you how crazy the pluralization rules are, I’ll rattle them off:
1) en words that end in “a” get “or” added
to them (en gurka, 2 gurkor)
2) en words that are of Swedish origin and
are short get “ar” added to them (en lök,
2 lökar)
3) en and ett words that are borrowed from other languages and that have the
emphasis on the last syllable get “er” added to them (en telefon, 2 telefoner)
4) Ett words that end in a vowel get “n”
added to them (ett bi, 2 bin)
5) Ett words that end in a consonant don’t
change (ett hus, 2 hus)
6) En words that end in “ing” get “ar”
added to them, even if the word is long (en
tidning, 2 tidningar)
7) En words that end with “are” don’t
change (en lärare, 2 lärare).
Needless to say all this doesn’t come naturally to me yet,
but at least I have the rules memorized.
I hope that eventually I just know what the plural of a noun is without
having to think about it.
Emphasis is another complicated thing in Swedish. Spanish has a clear rule that governs the placement
of emphasis within words, and if a word breaks the rule, Spanish is very nice
and warns you with an accent mark.
Swedish, however, uses no accent marks, so emphasis is something that
you just have to pick up. Some words
have one emphasized syllable, some words have two emphasized syllables, and
some words have no emphasized syllables at all.
There are some vague rules about this (verbs ending in “er” have one
emphasis on the first syllable and verbs ending in “ar” have two syllables
emphasized), but I still sound like an automaton with nothing emphasized at
all!
At
least Swedish has a few simple things going for it: verb
tenses. Unlike English or Spanish,
Swedish has no progressive present tense.
Saying “I am running” and “I run” in Swedish is exactly the same.
Likewise, there is no progressive past tense. You say “I was running”
and “I ran” in the
same way. So while I’m having to learn
crazy pluralization rules, at least I’m not having to learn a million
different
verb tenses, too!
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2011
Renovation Day 9
The
close of Renovation Day 9 was a turning point for us as
we are now ready to paint the bedroom!
By the end of the evening yesterday, we had completely demolished the
existing kitchen; stored all the splintered kitchen remnants in our
basement
storage unit for disposal this spring; removed kitchen tile and mortar;
scraped
and sanded the living, hall, and bedroom walls; removed floor trim from
the bedroom, hall, and kitchen; completely spackled the bedroom
walls; finished about half of the hallway and living room spackling;
great-stuffed the gaps in our exterior walls; cleaned the floor, walls,
and
ceiling of the bedroom; and vacuumed the entire apartment. About 95% of
the dirty prep work is behind
us, and we are excited to start “building up” after tearing apart the
apartment. This evening, we will begin
painting the bedroom. We have a crazy
goal of completing the painting and laying the new floor in the bedroom
by the
end of this weekend.
 |
| since this photo was taken, we have also removed the backsplash tile and mortar |
So far, the hardest part has been removing the kitchen
backsplash tile. It was noisy, time
consuming, dusty, extremely strenuous, and a bit dangerous as specks of tile
and mortar fly at you every time you hammer the chisel into the mortar. I’m pretty sure our neighbors hate us by now;
driving a steel chisel between tile and concrete walls is a noisy business that
reverberates through the whole building.
I think we’ll have to bake some Christmas cookies to distribute to our
neighbors in an attempt at apology!
 |
| more noise: to remove the upper cabinets, we had to use a jigsaw to cut them to pieces before we could hack them apart with a crowbar |
Carl met with two electricians last week, and we have gotten
one quote back. It’s not staggeringly
high and is in the range of what we expected.
Considering that this is Sweden
and everything is more expensive
here, we were pleasantly surprised that the electrical quote wasn’t
unreasonable. Or maybe we’re just
getting used to prices here! After we
get the second quote back, we’ll choose which electrician to go with and if we
want to pay on a lump sum or hourly basis.
It’s a gamble either way—the electrician has probably built a good bit
of padding into the lump sum amount, but if something unexpected comes up, the
hourly contract could get really expensive.
Either way, though, I was pleased to learn that the electrician has a
big incentive to finish the job in a timely manner because he doesn’t get paid anything
until the job is completed. With this
system, it’s unlikely that we’ll have electrical wires dangling from the
ceiling as we wait and wait and wait for the electrician to come back and
finish up.
After we sign a contract, the electrician can’t start work
for two or three weeks until we get approval from the electrical company to
upgrade our system. It sounds like this
is a formality, but it has turned our renovation schedule upside-down because it
is going to be at least three or four weeks before we have a working
kitchen. So instead of concentrating on
the kitchen, we are now concentrating on the bedroom, mostly because we are
going to have a lot of exposed wiring in there.
With concrete walls, it’s hard to conceal new electrical wiring, which
explains why so many of the apartments we looked at have exposed wiring. Soon, our apartment will have some exposed
wiring, too, although most of it will be run through the original electrical
conduits in the concrete ceiling and in the concrete walls. We will try to integrate the exposed wiring
as seamlessly as possible with the floor trim, which means that we need to
install the floor trim before the wiring goes in. But before we install the trim, we need to
install the floor, and before we install the floor, we need to paint… Completely finishing the bedroom first will
also give us a room to store the entire boxed IKEA kitchen we plan to purchase in
early January as well as various pieces of furniture as we work on the other
rooms.
 |
| the old floor trim that Carl removed with a crowbar |
Small as it is, this project is giving me a good taste of the
architecture and construction process in Sweden. Everything is different here—the construction
methods, the structural systems, the mechanical systems, the electrical
systems, contracts, design priorities… I
certainly am not learning everything I’ll need to know about the system as we
work on the renovation, but I am glad to get a glimpse into the design and
construction world while I study Swedish.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 08, 2011
Darkness Report
We’re getting close to the winter solstice now, and it’s
getting darker and darker. These days in
Stockholm, absolute
darkness ends around 8am and begins at 4pm now, but the twilight hours are very
prolonged. “Dawn” lasts from 8am
till about 11am, and “dusk” starts at around 2pm and lasts until 4pm. It’s dark when I start my Swedish classes at
8am and it’s nearly dark when we finish at 3pm. It’s definitely a good time of year for
candles and Christmas lights!
It is only full daylight from about 11am until about 2pm. However, at high noon, the sun is only 10 or
11 degrees above the horizon, so nearly everything is always in shadow these
days, even on sunny days. Catching a direct ray of sunshine
is very rare, and whenever I walk into sunlight, it’s such an event that I
notice the difference right away. This is such a
drastic change from San Antonio
where you feel pelted by sun almost year round! I’m still struggling with being productive
during the long, dark evenings, but these days, with all my studying and our renovating,
I have no choice but to be
productive.
MONDAY, DECEMBER 05, 2011
Det Snöar nu!
Det snöar nu!!! This
is the first time it has snowed in Stockholm
all winter. Apparently this is the
latest that Stockholm
has ever gone without snow, but it looks like we may have a white Christmas
after all!
How fortunate that I recently learned how to say “it is
snowing now” in Swedish. In addition to
speaking about current weather conditions, I am now fairly confident with
hello/how-are-you/goodbye pleasantries, a very simple self introduction of
name/marital-status/where-I-live/birthday, a limited selection of
what-I-do-every-day verbs, telling the time, numbers 0-1000, days-of-the-week
and months-of-the-year, how to say a date, and a limited number of
occupations. This is all well and good
but we haven’t yet learned any food, colors, personal descriptions (tall,
blond, fat), how to order coffee, or names of family members. It is interesting to see what they’re
teaching us first. Some of the
selections are very odd—for instance, we’ve covered the word “pipe” several
times in the first 11 days of class but we haven’t yet covered “chicken!”
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 04, 2011
VERY Expensive Paint
Our van rental and spending spree was a success. While we did have some rain, there was
thankfully no snow or ice. The only
hiccup was that Bauhaus, the local Home Depot, was sold out of the type of
countertop we had chosen on a previous visit.
We ended up having to drive to the Barkaby location, which is
wwwaaaayyyy out of town, and of course we hit tons of construction traffic and
ended up getting to know one small stretch of highway very, very well. Once we finally got there, we found our
desired countertop and had them cut it to size.
When we returned the van we learned that this hiccup in our plans ended
up being fairly costly since we went over our free kilometerage, but it was
still cheaper than another van rental or having Bauhaus deliver the counters at
a later date.
Home-Depot-Land in Sweden
is very similar to Home-Depot-Land in the US.
The only real difference is that due to the weather, about half of the
building is drive-in! It is a gigantic,
slightly heated home improvement warehouse where the aisles are about 20 feet
wide. When you approach the warehouse,
the clerk opens a gigantic garage door. You
literally drive in, throw whatever you need into your trunk, and drive to the
check-out lane. The clerk scans
everything in your car, you pay, and then you leave through another gigantic
garage door that opens and closes for each customer. Of course, being an architect, I had to check
out the ventilation system in this drive-in warehouse, and wowzers, the fans
were at least 15 or 20 feet in diameter and the mechanical ducts must have been
at least 8 feet in diameter. That is a
serious ventilation system.
This drive-in setup was especially handy for us with our brand-new
countertops since it happened to be raining for most of the afternoon and
evening. We were able to load the
counters (and backsplash materials and floor trim) into the van without getting
everything wet. Unfortunately, it was
still raining when we were unloading at our apartment, but nothing got toooo
wet and we were able to wipe it all dry.
All in all, Friday and Saturday were the most expensive days
in our history. On Friday, we bought an
apartment. And then on Saturday, we
bought enough wood flooring to cover our bedroom, hallway, and kitchen, five
meters of wood countertops for the kitchen, and enough paint for the entire
apartment. We were pretty well aware of
what the flooring and countertops were going to cost us, but we weren’t
prepared for the cost of paint here in Sweden. In the US, painting is the cheapest way to
freshen a room. It might be the cheapest way to freshen up a room here, too,
but it is still far from cheap. We just about had a heart attack when all the
paint was rung up and the total came to $1000!
And we even had a 20% off coupon from our realtor! And we probably don’t even have enough finish
paint (the clerk wasn’t sure if we’d need 1 or 2 coats, so we only bought enough
for one coat to start with)! And it’s
not even a very big apartment! Wow. At least our ceiling and walls are going to look
pretty darn spiffy when we’ve finished doing all that painting!
Today, Sunday, we started our kitchen demolition. We removed about half of the cabinets.
Today’s most popular tool was the crowbar,
followed by the screwdriver. (Thank
goodness we’re not having to buy all the tools we’ll need for the
renovation! Carl’s parents brought over
four or five bags filled with hand tools, power drills, sanders, various power
saws, etc. Thank you!!!) We were able to pry apart several of the
cabinets with the crowbar and a chisel/hammer combination, but the upper
cabinets above the sink are proving to be crowbar-proof. It looks like we’re going to have to use the
jigsaw to hack them apart enough to destroy their structural integrity. Then we should be able to go at the remaining
pieces with the crow bar.
 |
| the robust upper cabinets |
We’re planning on selling the relatively new fridge and
range on Blocket, Sweden’s equivalent of Craig’s
List. Unfortunately, Blocket charges a
fee to post an add, so hopefully they’ll sell quickly!
Getting rid of the demolition debris is a bit tricky. The entire apartment building (36 apartments)
subsists for a week on six United States-sized curbside garbage bins. If we started dumping our debris into the
garbage bins, we’d fill them up in one day!
The apartment association does rent a dumpster twice a year, once in the
spring and once in the fall. Yard debris
gets first dibs on the dumpster space, and if there’s any room left, residents
can dispose of their large trash.
Luckily, we have a small storage unit in the second basement (two
stories below ground, frost level must be very deep here), so we’ll be able to
store our demo debris down there. If the
dumpster is too full, we’ll have to rent a van and take it to the dump.
It seems a little anticlimactic to end my first renovation
report talking about trash and the garbage dump. I don’t have much more to report on the
weekend’s activities except to say that after so much planning over the last
two months, my husband and I very excited to start doing. I think it’s going to
be a lot of fun to create a beautiful little nest for ourselves.
If you have any idea how to remove tile that seems very well
adhered to the wall, please let me know…
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 04, 2011
Advent
Although the majority of Swedes aren’t particularly
religious, the first Sunday of Advent really kicks off the Christmas season
here. Carl’s parents gave us tickets to
an Advent Concert in the Blue Hall at the Stockholm Stadshuset or City Hall. This building is well loved by architects the
world over, so having the opportunity to dwell in this space for a couple of
hours was wonderful. Knowing that the
Nobel Prize dinner is going to be held in the same room in just a couple of
weeks made me feel even more like a celebrity!
Some of the carols were in English, but the majority of the
carols were in Swedish. It was great fun to hear the traditional carols of my new country. It was
especially nice to hear some carols since my usual Christmas carol standby,
Pandora.com, doesn’t operate in Sweden.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 02, 2011
MORTgage
Carl and I closed on our apartment today! We now officially own real estate! This is a crazy turn of events, one that we
didn’t see coming for at least another few years. But alas, we have now joined the ranks of
those that must pay their mortgage every month.
Real estate is crazy expensive here—a 330 square foot studio
apartment within a few stops of the central subway station downtown costs at
least 2 million kroner or $333,000-$400,000!
And at that price, the apartment probably needs a little work. That apartment is also unlikely to have a
full kitchen, and the showerhead is likely to be above the toilet, and there
are likely to be no closets whatsoever…
Needless to say, because my husband and I wanted an apartment that would
be big enough that we could have our bed in a separate room and because a full
kitchen is very important to us, our apartment is a few more subway stops out
from the center.
Here in Sweden,
it really is a MORTgage. Because real
estate is so crazy expensive, the only way that most people can afford to buy anything is to have a 50 or 60 year
loan. If we stuck with our minimum
payment plan, we wouldn’t finish paying off our loan until 2061! With such a long term loan, you pay very
little on the principal of your loan and thus you are basically renting your
apartment from the bank. It’s certainly
an interesting system.
The lack of paperwork throughout the apartment buying
process was also interesting. I’ve never
bought real estate in the US,
but from what I’ve heard, the process involves reams of paperwork and hundreds
of signatures. Here, we only had to sign
a few things, and the whole process took amazingly little time. The only big effort was finding the best
mortgage.
Buying and selling real estate here is less expensive than
in the US. This is slightly ironic considering that
owning a home is the iconic American dream; yet, it is very expensive to do
so. Here, the real estate agent fees are
much lower and there are no closing costs.
There are no mortgage brokers, you do all the researching and calling
and bargaining yourself, which results in no fees for that service. Also, in buying an apartment instead of a
whole house, you don’t have any inspection fees. The low cost of buying and selling real
estate is one of the reasons that it is so hard to find a rental apartment
here.
Now that we officially own the apartment and are in
possession of three sets of keys, Carl and I are eager to get in there and get
to work. Tomorrow, we will rent a van to
pick up our new flooring, haul all the paint we’ll need to cover the dreadful
wallpaper, cart home our new countertops and backsplash, and transport some
furniture that Carl’s parents so nicely set aside for us. For this reason, we are grateful that it
hasn’t started snowing here yet—the lack of snow will make all this driving
around much, much easier.
We’ll start by demolishing the current kitchen. After that, our plan of action depends a bit
on when the electrical work will be finished, but the plan goes something like
this: paint everything, lay the new floors, build the new kitchen, install our
new appliances, choose and install lighting fixtures…. It’s going to be a lot of work for such a
small apartment, but it should be worth it in the end!
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 01, 2011
En or Ett
For the last two weeks, I have been attending “fancy”
Swedish classes instead of the “normal” Swedish classes I had been taking. These fancy classes are the beginning of a
year-long intensive program specifically geared for architects and engineers. More than 90 people applied for this program,
but only 30 were admitted. Right now,
the 26 hours of classes are in an adult education center, but the year will
culminate for me with several architecture classes in Swedish at Sweden’s
equivalent of Georgia Tech, Cal Tech, or MIT, the Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan
which translates to the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this
program is that it is free to immigrants with the appropriate educational
background. And even more amazing is
that students in this program actually get paid a small stipend!
I have a loooonnnngggg way to go before I’m ready to take
university courses in Swedish, but I can tell that I am making progress.
Slowly. My
pronunciation is still extremely stilted, but I am improving a bit. And I can understand quite a lot of what is
said to me, even if I can’t yet find the words to respond. This week’s struggle is with Swedish
nouns. Like Spanish, Swedish has two
types of nouns. Where Spanish has el and la nouns, Swedish as en
and ett nouns. However, it is generally very easy to know
which Spanish word is a masculine word and which words are feminine with the –o
and –a endings for most Spanish nouns.
This is not the case in Swedish.
There are no clues in the nouns themselves to tell you if it’s an en or an ett word. You just have to
know.
You just have to remember the appropriate gender, and it’s very
important that you get it right. Whether
the word is an en or ett word determines how you make the
word plural, how you refer to it with pronouns, and how adjectives describe the
noun.
Between the 23 vowels, the changing pronunciation of
consonants due to the vowels, and the en
and ett words, Swedish is proving to
be a very difficult language for me to learn.
It seems to be difficult for my classmates, too. Like my “normal” class, this “fancy” class
for architects and engineers consists of people from all over the world. There are only 3 native English speakers in
the class, but all of the students are required to be fluent in English due to
admissions requirements at KTH. So far,
everyone that I’ve talked to agrees that Swedish is harder to start learning
than English. I would have guessed that
English’s irregular verbs and irrational spelling would be very difficult to
learn, but it seems that the tricky Swedish pronunciation is winning the most
challenging language award.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2011
One Week 'Till Closing: An Electrical Disaster
We close on our apartment in a week, and Carl and I are very
excited! We’re anxious to get in there
and start renovating so that we’ll have a nice, cozy place of our own to live
in when our current temporary lease runs out December 31st. It was going to be a tight squeeze, but we
thought we’d be able to have a working kitchen before we moved in.
Unfortunately, those dreams are no match for reality. We have finally figured out what kind and how
much electricity is currently being supplied to the apartment. As we suspected but didn’t want to believe,
the electrical system in our apartment hasn’t been updated since the building
was constructed in the 1950’s. That’s
the bad news. The good news is that it
is possible to upgrade the electrical system.
For a price, of course! The other
good news is that if we’re caught without a working kitchen at the beginning of
January, we can move into Carl’s parents’ apartment for a few weeks, so we won’t
have to cook on our camping stove out on our balcony. In January.
In Stockholm. The other other good news is that our
apartment is next door to the building’s electrical closet, so it will be
relatively easy for the electrician to upgrade our connection to the building’s
system.
We considered leaving the electricity as is, but this would
severely restrict our kitchen renovation.
A modern stove uses the maximum amount electricity that can currently be
delivered to the apartment! And if we
ever wanted to run the dishwasher and
the microwave at the same time, we’d probably blow a fuse. It seems that the only realistic thing to do
is to upgrade the electrical system.
In addition to making the kitchen renovation feasible,
upgrading our apartment’s electricity will give us the opportunity to make the
other rooms a little more manageable.
Currently, there are only 2 outlets in the entire living/dining
room. It will definitely be nice to have
more outlets sprinkled throughout the apartment so that we don’t have hundreds
of feet of extension cords running around.
The apartment building association has given us a very rough
idea of what the electrical upgrade will cost us. We’ll be sending out bid requests to a few
electricians this week and hope that the bids don’t come back too much higher
than the association’s estimate. It’ll
be interesting to see how Christmas and New Year’s plays into the schedule. Keep your fingers crossed that this won’t end
up costing tens of thousands of dollars and that the project won’t last into
February!
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2011
Impulse Buys for the Dead
So today I was in Clas Olsen, a Swedish cross between Target
and your local Ace Hardware. I was
standing in line for the checkout and was amused by the wares in the impulse
buy bins. Instead of cheap candy,
packets of gum, or shelter and gossip magazines, Clahs Olsen was peddling grave
candles. Two for 15 kroner, or about
$2.50. I found this highly amusing. I mean, is that something you impulse buy? And make no mistake, these candles couldn’t
possibly be confused with outdoor candles.
Both the packaging and the low-price advertisement clearly stated that
these were grave candles.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2011
Laundry
Our first short-term apartment in Stockholm was a surprisingly light-filled
basement apartment of a row house out in the suburbs. We had a washer in our bathroom, but no
dryers. Dryers are not exactly uncommon here, but it seems that they
are not frequently used. While air
drying clothes is certainly the most environmental method, I greatly prefer
using a dryer for several reasons: my clothes fit better after being in a
dryer, my clothes are not wrinkly after coming out of the dryer, I do not like
the look of having clothing strewn all around the apartment while they are
drying, and the dryer is far less time consuming than hanging laundry to
dry. Using the provided drying rack in
this apartment worked, but my clothes were all loose and wrinkly. I was very grateful to find that our current
apartment building is equipped with a dryer.
Our current apartment doesn’t have laundry facilities inside
the actual apartment, but there is a laundry room on the ground floor of the
building. There is even an elevator to
assist with hauling laundry up and down the two flights of stairs! This laundry room is free for residents to
use, and you sign up for a four hour shift on a calendar hanging at the laundry
room door. Since some of the 32
apartments in the building do have their own washers, getting a time slot when
we need one hasn’t been too much of an issue.
The laundry room consists of two large front-loading washing
machines and one large dryer (again, using a dryer doesn’t seem to be all that
common, in the States you’d need more dryers than washers since drying takes
longer). There is also a huge cabinet
dryer. I hadn’t seen anything like this
before moving to Stockholm,
but it’s pretty cool. It’s a
closet-sized steel box with hanging racks inside. You can choose what temperature you’d like,
ranging from 40 degrees Celsius to 90 (almost boiling!). The machine pumps huge quantities of heated,
super dry air into the cabinet and dries things very quickly. The downside to this machine is that it doesn’t
de-wrinkle clothes, but it’s super handy for quickly drying things like towels
that don’t need to be de-wrinkled.
 |
| 2 washers, only 1 dryer |
While the tumble dryer de-wrinkling method doesn’t seem to
be super popular here, mangles are.
Again, I had never actually seen an electric mangle before moving to Sweden, but
every building has at least one. I’m
scared to use the machine, because I’m scared I’ll get mangled, but I’m sure it
comes in super handy for de-wrinkling things like tablecloths and curtains,
huge things that are a pain to iron.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2011
A gift or a poison?
My marriage is a gift.
Unfortunately, not everyone feels that way, but I do. It seems that Swedes may have mixed feelings
about marriage. The adjective for
married is gift. However, gift
as a noun means poison! And avgift is a fee! So apparently, marriage can be costly,
deadly, or a blessing, depending on your point of view. Funny.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2011
Baking in Sweden
In the kitchen, my husband and I generally make a good
team. He enjoys day-to-day cooking and I
enjoy special-occasion cooking and I absolutely love to bake. Just about everything Carl makes is on the
stovetop, just about everything I make is in the oven. Most of our dinner recipes have been easy to
prepare here, but baking in Sweden
is taking some getting used to.
Conversions between metric and imperial units for ingredient
measuring and oven temperatures is the first but easiest trial. A simple, typical oven in Sweden is
slightly more sophisticated than a typical oven in the States. Here, you can choose between bottom heat, top
heat, or combined bottom and top heat while in the States you generally only
get bottom heat. To get a Swedish oven
started, you first turn the knob to “S,” which blasts the oven with heat for a
very quick pre-heating process. However,
you have to remember to turn the knob from S to a regular cooking mode; if you
don’t, you’ll get very crispy cookies.
Another difference is the baking sheets. Here, baking sheets are huge, thick and black
in color. The baking sheets are so wide
that they slide into the baking rack slots—you don’t even need a wire rack in
your oven! Not only are they hard to
wash due to their size, but the thickness and black color seem to retain more
heat and cook food more quickly. I’m
having to reduce my baking times by a about 15 or 20%.
Finding
equivalent ingredients has been my biggest
challenge. First of all, there are no
chocolate chips here! Luckily, grocery
stores sell blocks of baking chocolate of all sweetnesses and
darknesses, so
it’s easy to chop a block into little slivers.
So instead of chocolate chip cookies, I’ve been making chocolate sliver
cookies. It works. Another challenge is the butter: For the life
of me, I cannot find sweat cream (no salt) butter. I’ve been reducing
the amount of salt in my
baking recipes drastically, but my cookies are still turning out saltier
than I
like. And perhaps the hardest to get
used to is the absence of vanilla extract.
Now, I wasn’t exactly expecting my favorite Mexican vanilla extract to
be on the grocery store shelves, but I had thought that something
not-so-great
but tolerable like McCormick’s vanilla extract would be available. A
big, resounding NO! Instead, Swedes use vanilla sugar, which is
essentially powdered sugar with flecks of vanilla bean in it. Vanilla
sugar works really well in Swedish
baking recipes, but in my recipes, it leaves an odd aftertaste that I’m
not
sure how to mask. And finally, it only
comes up occasionally in my recipes, but there is definitely no Crisco
here and
I can’t find any other shortening. I
can’t even find lard in the grocery store!
I’m thinking I could probably find lard at a meat market, but still,
maybe this is part of the reason why Swedes are so svelte!
A
couple of days ago, I came down with a craving for my
favorite ginger cookies (thanks to Rebecca for the recipe!). In a place
where the national cookie just
might be ginger cookies, I didn’t think that finding the ingredients I
needed
would be an issue. Oh, but it was. First of all, the molasses: There
doesn’t
seem to be molasses in Sweden. Instead, Swedes bake with a syrup that
looks
like molasses and is also a by-product of sugar production, but the
Swedish
syrup tastes more like caramel than molasses.
Not a huge detriment, but my cookies do lack a bit of depth. The
biggest issue was the ginger itself. My favorite ginger cookies
call for
candied or crystallized ginger. This
ingredient was nowhere to be found in the store, and the shop assistant
had
zero idea what my husband was talking about when he asked her. I was
so, so bummed. I had SO been looking forward to making and
eating my ginger cookies, but no, the most important ingredient was
nowhere to
be found. Dejectedly, I put back the
syrup, the ground ginger, and the ground cloves.
That evening, my husband suggested that it might be possible
to make our own crystallized ginger. I
looked it up online, and he was right!
Even Alton Brown had a recipe with a total prep and cook time of 75
minutes. The next day, we went back to
the grocery store and bought 2 pounds of ginger. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to peel 2
pounds of ginger, but it takes a very, very long time. And the ginger took more like 3 hours to cook
and crystallize, not 75 minutes! But in
the end, my crystallized ginger was very tasty, very spicy, and very
sweet. Perfect for the recipe! My ginger cookie dough is chilling in the
fridge, later this evening I’ll bake them and see if they taste as good as I
remember.
There have been a few other things that we haven’t been able
to find in Sweden,
although we have hardly exhausted all the possibilities quite yet. Ziplock (or other brand) bags and Sharpie
permanent markers are both eluding us.
We’re getting by without the Ziplock bags, but I’ve been surprised how often
I’ve needed a Sharpie in the past few months!
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2011
Herbs
One thing I love about grocery shopping in Sweden are the herbs. Unlike in the US, you don’t buy a pre-cut bunch
of herbs. Instead, you buy an entire
herb plant in a small (4”) container of soil.
This is great for recipes that only call for a tablespoon of whichever
fresh herb. Instead of buying an entire
bunch and most of that bunch getting soggy in the bottom drawer of your
refrigerator, you put the herb on a windowsill, water it every so often, and
the extra leaves will last for months until you need that same herb again. It’s a great system.
The only downside to this great system is that instead of a
99-cent bunch of cilantro, a pot of cilantro costs about 5 or 6 dollars!
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2011
23 Vowels
I started my Swedish language classes last Monday! It took a little while for them to start,
partly for beaurocratic reasons, and partly because there’s a long queue of
people wanting to start their Swedish classes, too.
My language classes are free, one of the perks you get when
you immigrate to Sweden. Before I could sign up for the classes, I had
to get a personbevis, which is the
equivalent to a social security number in the US.
I was lucky—standing in line to register for my person number only took
about 5 minutes, and the number arrived in the mail within a week! I had heard horror stories of waiting for
hours and hours at the social security office, and then waiting for more than a
month for the number to arrive. I was
very grateful to get the number so quickly, because nothing in Sweden can
happen without it. You have to have your
person number before you can open a bank account, before you can get a cell
phone, before you sign up for the health system, and before you can sign up for
language classes.
As soon as I got my person number, I went to the language
school to sign up for classes (mid August).
I knew I might have to wait a few weeks, but I didn’t know I’d have to
wait almost 3 months! At my initial
meeting, I was told that there was a month-long wait for a language school
placement interview (end of September).
And after the interview, it would be another month before a space opened
up in a beginner class (end of October).
My language school placement interview was a complete waste
of time. At the initial meeting, I had
filled in a simple form with my name, address, etc, and at the second meeting,
they typed my form into the computer while I sat there. Then they asked me if I would prefer morning,
afternoon, or evening classes. And then
the interview was finished. Ummmm?
But
finally, my wait is over, and I am now enrolled in a
beginner Swedish class. My fellow
classmates are from all over the world—Spain,
Korea, Vietnam, China,
Tunisia, Ethiopia, Iran,
Pakistan. I seem to be the only native English speaker
in the class, yet everyone else in the class speaks decent English,
too. Puts us Americans to shame. Even though everyone in the class
speaks
English, our teacher just about never says a word of English.
Everything is in Swedish, but our teacher
does an excellent job of pantomiming everything she says so that you
understand
what she’s talking about without knowing the exact words, yet.
So far, the hardest thing for me about learning Swedish is
the pronunciation. According to our
teacher, there are 21 vowel sounds in Swedish (wikipedia claims that Swedish
has 23 vowel sounds, so I’ll go with that since it sounds slightly more
impressive)! These 23 vowel sounds are
very subtly different, sometimes so subtle that I have trouble even hearing the
difference, much less making the subtle sounds myself. My husband has been very, very patient with
me as I try to repeat the sounds after him.
I am so lucky to have a native Swedish speaker at home! The others in the class will likely have a
much more difficult time learning the language without a tutor living in their
house.
I’m also having a difficult time knowing what vowel sounds
each word contains. Because there are 23
vowel sounds but only 9 vowel letters (a, e, i, o, u, y, å, ä, ö), the exact
pronunciation depends on the letters surrounding the vowel. There is a pattern to this, but the rules are
fairly complicated to me, and I have not yet been able to sort out when the “ä”
sounds like “hat” and when it sounds sound like “help.” I know I’ll get the hang of it eventually,
but it’s fairly overwhelming just starting out.
Right now, my classes are 8 hours a week, but there’s quite
a bit of self-study and homework, too.
I’d say that at the moment, my Swedish lessons are the equivalent effort
of a half-time job. But in a few weeks,
the pace will bump up to 30 hours of classes a week plus homework! That will be quite a change of pace from my
current leisurely existence!
My first Swedish test is on Tuesday. Wish me luck!
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2011
Daylight Savings Time: SO Not a Fan
Now that daylight savings time
has begun, (or ended, who can keep track?), it now gets almost
completely dark by 4:30 in the afternoon. 4:30! And we still have two
more months of increasing darkness before Christmas! At the winter
solstice, I'll report back about how early darkness falls. At 59
degrees north, Stockholm is almost as far north as San Antonio is
south--in other words, Stockholm is as close to the North Pole as San
Antonio is to the Equator!
It's
not surprising that IKEA sells different packages of candles in Texas
and in Stockholm. At the Austin, Texas IKEA, they sell white candles
(not tea candles, but long candles) in 20-packs. In Stockholm, at the
WORLD'S LARGEST IKEA, the smallest box of candles is a 50-pack! Even
though both my husband and I love candles, and try to dine by
candlelight as often as possible, it would take us years to get
through a 50-pack of candles in San Antonio! Because we had window unit
air conditioners blowing 8 months of the year and almost constantly had
ceiling fans going, the air in our San Antonio apartment was rarely
still enough to burn candles. Not to mention that the additional heat
of candles was unwanted in our already stifling apartment. But in
Stockholm, with still, radiator-heated air and 6-7 hours of darkness in
the evenings before bedtime, I don't think it will take us more than a
month or two to go through the 50-pack.
Candles
are a way of life in Sweden. During the long, dark, winter months,
candles offer a warm and cozy alternative to the gray bleakness
outside. I've already had several people tell me to trust them,
"candles are they only way to survive the winter!"
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2011
My Husband Would Agree
 |
| Yes, my husband would agree: outlet stores are always a nightmare. |
MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2011
Libraries: Not Always Free
Whatever else they denote, be
it democracy or literacy or accessibility of knowledge, to me, libraries
also denote "free." Not freedom, but free, gratis, no charge! This is
not always the case in Stockholm. While it is always free to borrow
books from the libraries of Stockholm, other library materials and
services are not necessarily free, and the rules depend on the
individual communities. For example, in the Sundbyberg libraries, it
costs 20 kroner (about 3 dollars) to borrow a movie for a week. And
while movies are free to borrow in Stockholm, to reserve a book, you
have to pay 10 kroner. Because in Sweden you can sign up for as many
library systems as you want, I now find myself juggling three different
library cards: one for the system where it is free to reserve books, one
for the system where it is free to borrow movies, and another for the
system nearest to my apartment. Ay yi yi! I only hope that in my
attempt to avoid paying the library for movies and book reservations, I
don't rack up huge late fees due to the profusion of library systems I
now frequent!
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 06, 2011
We Bought an Apartment!
Yesterday, my husband and I signed a contract to buy an
apartment in Solna, an incorporated town within the boundaries of Stockholm city. Initially, we had planned to rent an
apartment as we always had in Austin and San Antonio. So why did we buy an apartment in an
extremely expensive and foreign real estate market? Good question!
Disclaimer: I know that the I do not understand all of the
intricacies of real estate development and law in Stockholm, and my information may not be 100%
accurate. However, these are the general impressions that I’ve gathered from
talking with Swedes and from looking into the inner-workings of rental market a
bit.
The rental apartment market in Stockholm is very, very different from the US. In Stockholm,
a good rental apartment is worth gold, and you certainly can’t drive around
neighborhoods writing down numerous phone numbers for the numerous available
rental apartments. Nor are there
numerous listings on Blocket,
Sweden’s
version of Craig’s List. The rental
apartments that get posted on Blocket are so rare that the apartment owners get
flooded with interest calls and emails within a few hours, and they have the
luxury of choosing the perfect candidate and getting the rental contract signed
within 24 hours of posting the apartment online. My husband and I must have contacted 60 or 80
or 100 people about their apartment listings, and we only received a 3 or 4
return messages. None of the long-term
apartment rentals worked out for us, which is why we are now living in our second
short-term rental since moving to Stockholm.
The apartment problem seems to stem from the government
trying to be helpful. Stockholm
has been in a perpetual state of housing shortage since at least 1850.
They've been building like crazy ever since, but not enough to keep pace with
the need. Because of the continual housing shortage, rents were of course
very very high, and conditions were very very cramped and unsanitary (at least
until indoor plumbing became common in 1920 or so). So the government
tried to counteract the crazy rents and crazy crowding in two ways: public
housing and rent control.
Much of the housing built in the last 80 years has been
built and managed by public entities. In Sweden,
living in public housing doesn't have the stigma that it does in the US; here,
public housing is just another way to find an apartment.
Ironically, the only problem with the public housing is that it is extremely
cheap. Rent in public housing is about 50-75% of market rate, so once you
get a public housing contract, you never give it up. Thus, queues
for public housing in convenient locations are 6-10 years, and there is a very
sketchy black market for public housing.
The second thing that the city has done to try to alleviate
the situation is rent control. Legally, you cannot rent an apartment for more than the going rate for a similar apartment in the same area. The "going rate" is
defined by the public housing in the area, which I already mentioned is about 25-50%
lower than market rate. So legally, you cannot rent your apartment
for a rate that would cover your mortgage. Which, of course, deters
people from renting their apartments out. There is also a lot of
legislation that is meant to protect the tenant (apparently there were problems
with tenants getting thrown out on the street), so basically, once you have
rented an apartment for more than 6 or 9 months, the apartment is yours to lease for life and the owner can never
kick you out. This also deters people from renting out their apartments.
When you couple rent control with the fact that it is much
cheaper to buy and sell real estate in Sweden than in the US (mortgage, real
estate agent, taxes, and other fees are much much lower in Sweden), selling an apartment is an obvious choice over renting it out. In
addition, the real estate market is so hot here that apartments almost always
sell within a few days of their half-hour weekend viewing, so you don't have to
worry about your apartment not selling for months and
months. So...finding a rental apartment is all but
impossible, but there are hundreds of purchase apartments to choose from every
week!
After visiting 51 apartments over the last two months and
much gut-wrenching decision making, we decided to bid on a fixer-upper. Two other parties bid on the apartment, and
we were the last party willing to raise the bid, so we won it. The final price ended up being 8% higher than
the “accept price” that the seller was willing to take. Nearly all apartments in Stockholm sell for considerably more than the
asking price, so an 8% hike is not unusual.
Carl and I are in a state of shell-shock because the apartment-buying process happens SO quickly here. We saw the apartment for the first time on Monday evening, weighed pros and cons Tuesday evening, placed a bid on Wednesday morning, continued bidding through Wednesday afternoon, and signed the contract Wednesday evening!
I mentioned above that the apartment is a fixer-upper. It has horrible wallpaper on most of the
walls, so we plan to take it down and paint the apartment in lighter, more
neutral tones. The kitchen is basically
from 1958 when the apartment building was constructed, and it needs a lot of
help. We may keep pieces of the kitchen,
but we’re thinking that it may be easier to gut the whole thing and start over
with a new IKEA kitchen. The living room
floor’s ok except for a large stain, but the bedroom, hallway, and kitchen
floors are a nasty sheet linoleum and have to go.
However, the apartment has many “pros” in addition to the
renovation “cons.” In comparison to the
other apartments we’ve seen, it is extremely affordable and presents an
investment opportunity with the renovation.
It has a large balcony looking out into trees. The kitchen is not completely isolated from
the living area like many Stockholm
apartments. It is a 5 minute walk to
grocery stores and to the subway station, and it only takes about 12 minutes on
the subway to get to the central station downtown. At 581 square feet, the apartment is much larger
than many of the other apartments we’ve looked at, so once we get it renovated,
it will be spacious and lovely.
Not only is this our first “house,” but it is our first
renovation project. We’ve talked about
renovating a house, so practicing on 600 square feet will let us know if we
enjoy the process or if we’d rather not bother with renovating again. While this project is not quite as daunting
as renovating an entire house, it is going to require a lot of planning and the
execution will still be a lot of work!
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 04, 2011
An Ode to the Trash Chute
I realize that Trash Chutes are not unique to Sweden. However, never having lived in a high-rise
apartment building before, I have never before had the pleasure of using
one. And oh, what a pleasure it is. And I can only imagine the pleasure of using
a trash chute in Stockholm
in January!
This week we moved into our next temporary apartment in Stockholm. We are still pretty far out in the suburbs,
but this apartment is much more convenient to the subway. AND, it has a Trash Chute!
You see, taking out the trash has never been my favorite
activity. I’m sure that trash duty is
not high on anyone’s list, but it has always been supremely low on mine. Growing up, taking the trash to the street
was a HUGE deal. I grew up in Atlanta, and if you’ve ever spent much time there, you’ve
realized that Atlanta
can be very hilly. And our driveway was
150, maybe 200 meters long. From the
house, the driveway first gently sloped downward until it crossed a creek. After the creek, the driveway inclined so
steeply that neither my mom or I could push the full trash can up the
hill. Trash day was, by necessity, a family
bonding experience. My mother would push
the trash can, and I would push my mother up the hill. Somehow, between the two of us, we managed to
get the trash can and all the detritus it contained up that hill. As a teenager, it’s probably needless to say,
this particular family bonding experience was one I that could have done
without.
After
leaving that house in Atlanta, taking out the trash has never been
such an endeavor, but it has always been an annoying effort. Take my
last apartment in San Antonio, for example. In order to take out the
trash, I had to put
on shoes, remember to grab the clicker, leave the house, lock the front
door,
use the clicker to open the driveway gate, wait for the gate to
s-l-o-w-l-y
open, walk behind the house where there were no lights at night, and
deposit
the trash.
Now, in our new high-rise apartment in Stockholm, I don’t even have to put on
shoes! Or lock my front door! I just step outside the apartment, walk 3 or
4 steps, open the chute, and send the trash bag on its way!
Perhaps I am a trash wuss.
But I do love that Trash Chute!
And anyway, it’s the small things in life that make life interesting.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2011
Translations
What
living-in-a-foreign-country blog would be complete without mentioning
translations-gone-wrong? Generally, google translate has made my
transition to Swedish life much, much easier. This morning, I couldn’t
even do laundry without typing in the detergent box directions into the
computer to figure out how much soap I’m supposed to use. But
sometimes, the translate function doesn’t seem to go so well...
So
my husband and I are probably going to buy an apartment. Why we’re
buying an apartment, I’ll have to cover later, but so far we’ve seen 44
apartments. Exhausting!
In
general, Swedish real estate ads tend to be more honest than ads in the
States. A tiny apartment in the US would be described as “cozy;” here,
tiny apartments are bluntly described as “mini.” But sometimes, google
translate may cause the real estate ads to be TOO honest:
 |
| “Living at the top of the house without any transparency” |
 |
| “Kitchen completely opaque” |
 |
| “Balcony in the high and free mode” Woooo! |
 |
| “Cargo cover living room with exit to the balcony” |
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