God Jul!

4:30pm, Uppsala, Sweden, 25 December 2009

It has been suggested to me on several occasions that perhaps if my blog posts were just a tiny bit less, well, masters-thesis length, that perhaps I could finish and thus post them a bit more regularly. Although I have only 18 full days left in Sweden (eeep! So much to do!!) I am going to have a shot a short post anyway – think of it as part writing exercise, part Christmas bonus-post, part test-run to see if I could keep something like this on a more regular basis. Assuming I could think of something interesting to write about, of course...

And so, it being that time of year, I will share with you some of my thoughts and experiences of Uppsala in December: the onset of winter, the winding up of the year, and the Swedish wintertime celebrations of Advent, Lucia and Jul.


December was rung in noisily with a spectacular fireworks display over the Botanical Gardens. This being Sweden in December, the show was conducted in the deep darkness of 4.30pm. Lucy and I watched from the foot of Slottsbacken – the castle hill – Uppsala Slott rising pink and ponderous behind us as the sky was filled with sparkling, shimmering, bursting colour and light and noise. A low fog had rolled in over the city, but rather than detracting from the show, it rather added to it, the colours from the fireworks lighting up the low-lying cloud from the inside with white, red, green, yellow and purple. The show seemed to go on for hours as we watched, excited as small children by the sheer splendour of a brightness we hadn't seen for months, and concluded with an explosion of white light which lit the whole sky around like a summer's day for perhaps thirty seconds or more. To see brightness in the sky after such a long dreariness was cheering to a degree I hadn't anticipated, and left me both buzzing with excitement and suddenly longing to feel the heat and brightness of an Australian sun on my skin.


The darkness has only got longer and darker in the month since those fireworks – the winter solstice just four nights ago saw sunset at about 2.30pm and no real sun until around 9am – but the Swedes have been doing this for some time, and know a little something about the value of light, warmth and good cheer at this end of the year. For cheer and warmth, it is hard to go past warm spicy Glögg (the Swedish version of mulled wine) from the riverside Julmarket, or indeed from any nation-related event, where it becomes a staple at this time of the year. Uppsala's Julmarket was unfortunately rather lacking (although a few little things may have been purchased there...) but those we saw in Helsinki and Tallinn* were much improved. Not enough to impress the Germans, of course, but no-one does a Xmas market like Germans. And when the freezing cobblestones became too much and even watching the lamplighters setting their candles in the niches along Fyrisån proved inadequate for cheer, good old reliable Kalmar Nation provided an Advent Fika fit for not one, but three Kings. Or one Icky Matt. Those eat more.

The first days of December disappeared in the frantic whirl of travel preparations*, rehearsing for Jul concert with the ManChoir, and exams and assessment in Politics and Swedish, but a heavy frost on the 2nd prompted a spontaneous trip to Gamla (Old) Uppsala, a crucial site for Swedish history and identity. From prehistory until the Middle ages, this was the seat of the court/parliament/assembly called the 'Thing of all Swedes', the location of the foundation royal estates and the great pagan Temple at Uppsala. With the Christianization of northern Europe in the 12th century it became the seat of the Archbishopric of Sweden, and the choir and central tower of the old cathedral remain. The site is dominated by three huge grave mounds, containing the remains of Swedish kings and queens from the 5th century AD. The whole site, coated in thick white frost and sparkling in the unusually strong midday sunlight, was eerie and beautiful and serene in equal measure, at least until Lucy got sick of me hanging around taking photos and shoved ice down the back of my shirt.


We returned from our Baltic adventures* on the 10th of December, just in time to celebrate the quintessential Swedish holiday – Lucia, on December 13th. Ostensibly the feast day for Saint Lucia, a 3rd century Sicilian martyr, this (officially) Lutheran country is in fact celebrating a far more ancient pagan tradition. Back into prehistory the pagan peoples of Scandinavia had celebrated the longest, darkest night of the year with variations on the theme of a woman in white bearing light into the darkness. When the church arrived, they initially tried to stamp out this practice, but it proved rather too tenacious (understandably, given the depressing darkness) and so they took advantage of the similar imagery of the Sicilian Saint Lucia, and the timing of her feast day (13th December) to co-opt the old tradition into a new, more respectable Christian format.

Over the course of the weekend we had Lucia Gasque at Västgöta, Lucia Fika at Kalmar, and a Lucia service in the magnificent Domkyrkan. All were very different events, but the thread tying them together is the Lucia procession: led by a girl in white wearing a crown of candles, a choir in white robes – the women and girls with green wreaths on their heads and the men in tall pointy white hats – enter in a slow procession, singing the haunting 'Sankta Lucia', which describes how Lucia brings light and hope into the darkness. In Västgöta nation's elegant dining hall alongside the magnificent spread of the Julbord, it was touching, over the sweet treats of Fika at Kalmars, it was enjoyable...but in the setting of Domkyrkan, with the scalloped stone columns towering above us towards the darkness of the vaulted ceiling, the huge bronze candelabras swaying above the crowd, the flicker of candlelight in the aisles, the hush of thousands of people crammed into every pew and side-chapel and the sudden sound of the choir as they emerged from out of the darkness, filling the enormous space with their voices...it was breathtaking. And, despite being called 'St Lucia', despite the cathedral setting, despite the Christmas songs that filled the gap between the entrance and exit processions, this felt as un-religious as could be, and I understood why in this nation of agnostics, this huge cathedral could be filled twice over on one day in December. Lucia is about keeping hope, and remembering the better times that will come. And when you have this much darkness to endure, it makes an awful lot of sense.



Less than two weeks passed between Lucia and Jul (Christmas, which Swedes celebrate on Julafton – Christmas Eve), and yet it is hard to imagine a busier time. I sung a solo in Swedish at Västgöta Nation's combined Jul concert with all three choirs (sadly my last performance with the wonderful VGMK), and took a wintry trip to Stockholm with Eric – a visiting friend of Lucy's – who we took to the Vasa Museum, the Absolut Ice Bar (carved from real ice!!) and our personal favourite, the fried herring wagon at Slussen. We saw the sights of Uppsala and ate far too much Fika at Cafe Linné. We hosted had a Jul corridor party in our corridor, after which I finally got a chance to try a Bastu or Sauna followed by a naked roll in the snow (did I mention it snowed?!!) on our rooftop. And sadly I said farewell to Mike, Simon, Jonas P, Aaron, Elle and Lucy, amongst many other friends. But Mike, Simon and Jonas' collective farewell could hardly have gone any better. A great party in itself, which only got better when Mike's Swedish corridor-mate Björn turned up in his psychedelic dressing gown and played incredible Swedish folk fiddle for us right there is Mike's room. But the best was yet to come. As we wrapped up around 2am, Jonas (who'd already left) sent a message that said simply “Look outside.”

And when we drew back Mike's curtains, there it was...a thick, clean, pristine, beautiful, white blanket of snow covering Kantorsgatan and still falling. The little flurries we'd seen in the weeks before, or the thick wet flakes which had plastered themselves to our faces in Tallinn, were nothing on this...even the beautiful frost on the grave mounds at Gamla Uppsala paled into insignificance. I doubt that any of us had ever put gloves and coats on so quickly. We ran dangerously fast down Mike's spiral staircase and pushed open the front door. Lucy and I stood gobsmacked and laughing on the doorstep, but Simon just hurtled past us, yelling “Quick, you Australians, follow my lead!” as he dived head-first into the nearest snowdrift. Waggling his arms and legs and spitting out snow he cried “Snow Angels!” And in a second Lucy and I were in the snow on either side of him, waggling our arms and legs about and grinning like idiots at the perfect angel prints we had made.


The next half-hour or so are a blur of happiness and face-snow. Snowballs and indeed just handfuls of snow played a big part in both of those. I remember the snow was unbelievably light and fluffy...not at all how I had imagined it. We threw snowballs at Jonas' window until he and his sister (who was visiting) came out and played with us. Thanks to an unstoppable alliance of the ruthless English and the cunning Germans, Lucy and I were helpless, and both ended up with snow caked to our faces, mine all the worse for my glasses. At last we really did have to say goodbye to Mike and Jonas, and Simon, Lucy and I brushed the snow out of our clothing and our bicycles and started the long slow cycle back to Flogsta. Cycling in snow is (predictably) slippery as hell and would have been scary if there was any other traffic anywhere in the city, but of course the sensible Swedes were all asleep. Simon was effusive and joyous on our ride back home, singing the wonders of snow and (perhaps for the first time we could recall) praising something about Sweden which was better than the UK :-P

Passing a hillside covered with snow, he yelled “Ditch the bikes and follow me!” We ran up the hill beside him, the thick, fresh snow clinging at our calves, and hurled ourselves down the pristine slope at a dangerous speed. “My God, there's nothing like fresh snow” Simon declared expansively from his bicycle as we resumed our trek, “it's so white and perfect and smooth and beautiful, and then you can just destroy it, it's fucking amazing.” Lucy and I could do little but laugh, try not to fall off our bikes, and marvel at the sight of so many familiar sights so deeply buried in white powder, in a 3am city seemingly abandoned to just us three. It really was a magic land that night. Simon had to leave at 5am, and as it was 4am by the time we arrived at Flogsta he elected to join us in my corridor for hot chocolate, banana slice with freshly made caramel icing, and cheese & vegemite toasted sandwiches. Wrapped in my mohair blanket, Simon grinned like a schoolboy into his mug and ate his toasty without so much as a mention of Marmite. I can't imagine a better way to have spent our last night together.

And before I was really aware of it, I was standing on the platform at Uppsala Centralstation at 5.30am in 18 below, watching the showers of sparks recede into the dark distance as the pantograph on Lucy's train scraped the icicles from the overhead wires, and suddenly it was just Jonas Cool, Icky Matt and I, together in Uppsala for Christmas. After a couple of slack days watching bad movies (Worst bad movie: Pluto Nash with Eddie Murphy – DO NOT WATCH! Best bad movie: Død Snø (Dead Snow) – what about 'Nazi Zombies attack hot Norwegian university students at a secluded cabin in the mountains' doesn't sound awesome?) we picked up our game, and joining up with a couple of friends, cooked up a delicious Julbord for our Christmas Eve dinner. Jonas made a tomato/pesto/mozzarella pasta bake, I roasted potatoes, pumpkin and carrots, made gravy and cooked peas in an attempt to add some green. Icky made a vat of very tasty apple sauce, and the two of us filled two bacon explosions with some of the larger apple chucks to make 'Christmas Explosion'. We had red wine and spirits and Baileys and bread & butter, and a platter of cheeses (including real Roquefort), and for dessert Jonas and Matt made Chocolate fondue and Matt dipped whole mini-Kanelbullar in it. For five students at about 120kr a head with plenty of leftovers, it was epic. Afterwards I talked to my family on Skype for Christmas morning before joingin the others for A Muppet Christmas Carol. The next morning, after Skyping with more family at the other end of Christmas Day in Australia, I spent the morning in bed eating home-baked Cheese & Vegemite scrolls and watching episodes of How I Met Your Mother. For brunch, Matt cooked us French Toast and I've spent most of the afternoon writing this, eating leftovers and planning my travels for January and February.



Only 18 days left...what a time it's been. I still have two half-finished posts to go up here before I leave, and after that there's 30 days of travels in Europe to report on, so don't stop checking this just yet...if only to find out if I survive the -21 that's forecast for Monday ;-)

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*more to come soon on this, I promise! It's been half-written for a while now...

PS: 2200 words...undergraduate essay length. I'm getting better!

Video Blogging

Or: Adventures in Wondows Movie Maker Land

This is to make up for totally failing at blogging in the last month...it's silly and not nearly as much effort went into it as a real post, but I hope you enjoy it all the same :-)




Coming Soon:
Baltic Adventures: Riga, Helsinki and Tallinn
Advent, Lucia & Jul
Swedish Food: More than just Meatballs (but not much more...)
The Västgöta ManChoir - Field Observations

Do You Know What It Means/To Miss Double Cream...

1:45pm, Uppsala, Sweden, 9 October 2009

Sincerest apologies to Eddie DeLange and Louis Alter...wherever you are.

Despite promising myself I would post at least every fortnight – mostly to spite Joe, who said I wouldn't manage it – I have failed you all after just six weeks. In my defence, quite a lot has been happening, and the Wednesday-Friday period at the end of the fortnight when I usually write these posts was filled with exams, rehearsals, dinners and performances.

For those who are just wondering what I'm up to, here is the condensed version: Bought a tailcoat, mended it myself. Protested climate change. Learning Swedish. Ate too much. Drank too much. Watched Let The Right One In. Baked many cakes, biscuits and slices. Made friends with people using same as bribes. Took part in production of a Bacon Explosion. Dinner-partied with corridor-mates, played drinking games with VG international students, cards and the Holy Bible. Partied with bad hair for Inken and in Tailcoat with Men's Choir. Sat four hour exam in Swedish Politics. Probably passed. Got a cartoon published. Changed to Winter hats. Sang on bended knee to a random woman on her birthday. Sang to a statue in a park. Sang to room full of screaming young women wearing clothes made from tinfoil. Sang to a beautiful girl on bended knee. Dressed as a Bedouin and went “Alalalalalalah!” a lot. Celebrated Kannebullens dag. Had way too much Fika. Experienced Matcoma. Tried to see the UN Secretary General. EPIC FAIL. Went to a movie instead. Movie in Italian with Swedish subtitles – fried brain trying to interpret both at same time. Wore my studentmössa a lot. Played the grand piano in the ballroom and sang Tim Minchin songs for an appreciative audience of one. Ate soup. Ate Meatballs. Won a pub quiz. Wrote a blog post. Turned into a jet. Bombed the Russians. Crashed into the sun. LIKE A BOSS. Damn Right.

I'm deep in readings for my second subject – Swedish Economic and Social Development from 1700 to the Present – so I don't have time to make it up to you just yet with a full-length post. Instead, I offer you this short post, a list of the sometimes unexpected things I'm missing here in this far-off magical kingdom.

1.) Double Cream – cream here is thin and runny and used for cooking or making whipped cream. The thick kind, which my father and I have been known to enjoy smeared thickly on freshly-sliced white bread with blackberry jam, is not only unavailable but apparently utterly bizarre in conception to everyone I ask...except for the Poms of course.

2.) The ABC Radio News Theme – whenever I hear this, I just somehow know that everything will be alright. Go on, have a listen. It soothes the beasts within...

3.) Don Don, GiGi, Shanghai Dumpling, most of Victoria Street – in fact, cheap, tasty, widely-available Asian food in general. I think that Europeans must do something dreadful to their Asian migrants that makes them forget about their traditional food culture and produce things like stir-fry without any vegetables in it. The Horror.....

4.) Trams – probably not a surprise to anyone, but it's the sound I really miss. The squeal they make going around corners, the “PZSHH...fzzzzzt...zzzzZWCK” of the pantograph leaving the overhead on a rough bit of track and then smacking back into it with sparks flying. I have lived beside tram lines for about a decade now, and getting to sleep without the gentle trundling noises in the distance is always a difficultly.

5.) Sausage Rolls – Sweden doesn't have them. This is an issue.

6.) The Age – yes, it's a pinko rag with increasingly questionable standards of journalism, but it's my pinko rag god damm it. I miss having a stack of them on the table going back weeks that I can pick through at my leisure, safe in the knowledge that whatever horror news story I'm reading about has probably been resolved by now. Also, I miss Kenneth Davidson. He is my hero. I miss doing the huge weekend general-knowledge crossword with my parents. And I miss the comics, but not the stupid one with the penguins. Does anyone you know laugh at that? This morning at breakfast I read a copy of Thursday's Wall Street Journal – Europe Edition that I won in a pub quiz last night. NOT SAME.

7.) Espresso – I know I hardly ever drink it at home, but the omnipresent nature of drip-filter coffee here is killing me not so softly with its delicate palate of sand, ash and bitterness. And of course no espresso machines means no proper Hot Chocolate either, and that DOES bother me.

8.) Weetbix – the 'Weetabix' available here are somehow slightly off. Can't put my finger on why...it might be the rounded ends. I swear that makes them taste different.

9.) Water – Sweden might have it over us in purely quantitative terms, but if quality is what you look for in your water, you just can't beat Melbourne. I've just about got used to the taste of the water here – in that I don't wince when I drink it anymore – but it's difficult to truly enjoy consuming something which has an aftertaste resembling talcum powder...

10.) Fish & Chips – oh, the things I would do for that satchel of goodness. 'nuff said, I think. And yes, I am aware that most of these are food and drink.

11.) And ten thousand little details: breaking crusty bread at Sunday Roast with Grandpa and the family. Trying to finish the crossword AND the Sudoku in the MX on the one weird evening express between Melbourne Central and Riversdale. The serenity of the System Gardens on a spring afternoon. The bagpiper on the Princess Bridge who only knows three tunes and always plays Auld Lang Syne when I walk past. Walking through the Old Quad in the evening and whistling the Harry Potter theme. Standing on the end of St Kilda Pier at 4am watching the milk crates you threw in float gently back to shore. Chocolate Brownies at Max Brenner. Sour cherry muffins at Castro's. The grandiose charms of Victoriana, in brown and grey and white and red and cream. The LaTrobe Reading Room in the afternoon light. The nationwide echoes of “Oh do shut up Malcolm!” when the Oppositon Leader appears on TV. The unique and musical calls of the Big Issue sellers (“GeeeeEEEAATchaBigIshewOnleeFIVEDollarrzzzuPOORTthe
HomelezzenLongtermUnemplOYED...”). The Yarra at night, reflecting the city. The smell of eucalyptus, of Chinatown, of fresh-cut grass in the Royal Botantic Gardens, of the sea. The seasonal changes of the day. The remarkable, unfathomable light.

12.) And of course, all of you. Awwww.

And that's the kind of drivel you can expect from me in the future I suspect...

I should get back to work now, but I will try to put up something else soon, to make up for missing a fortnight.

Of Chocolate Chips, Fika and MAX, of Sexa, Choirs and Kings...

2pm, Uppsala, Sweden, 16 September 2009

The time has come, the Walrus said...

Actually, the time has long since passed. It has been two weeks since I last wrote something here, and I have to apologise to all you vicarious travellers for not writing anything sooner. I'm still debating in my head the best way to use this blog: should I try to have a “weekly diary” of happenings, or would a series of shorter posts on particular topics like 'The Nations' or 'Swedish Food' be more interesting? Or perhaps a mix of both? One thing I have decided is that I will write shorter posts from now on, in the interests of perhaps getting them up more frequently.

This evening will mark the end of four full weeks in Uppsala, and almost eight weeks since I left Melbourne. Terminal one at Tullamarine seems impossibly far away and long ago...even arriving in Uppsala feels like a distant memory. Each evening as I cross off a day on the little hand-scribbled calendar on my desk, I am reminded of how little time I have here, and feel a renewed commitment to my number one rule for being on exchange: say 'Yes'. So this post will be about a few of the things I've said 'yes' to in the last few weeks, and some of the wonderful moments I've encountered along the way.

One thing I have little difficulty saying 'yes' to is Fika – that wonderful Swedish word for sharing coffee and cake with friends. Older people in Sweden have an almost religious commitment to the daily schedule of meals – Breakfast, Fika, Lunch, Fika, Dinner – while younger people will Fika (yes, it's also a verb) at just about any time: I myself had midnight Fika with some of my corridor-mates just a few days ago, and last Saturday I had a little over three hours of back-to-back Fika before waddling back to my corridor filled with kladdkaka (incredibly dense chocolate cake), snikertårta (a sort of peanut & chocolate slice), blueberry pie and chokladbullar (something like a rum ball sans rum). Getting into the true spirit of Fika, I've also made couple of things myself – namely a huge batch of choc-chip & cornflake biscuits and a large chocolate brownie cake (that's brownie made in a cake tin because our kitchen has no slice tins: very thick and not really cooked in the middle...my corridor-mates approved.)


Mmmm...Fika...

And where in Uppsala can one sit Fika-ing in the sunshine for over three hours without spending a fortune? Why, at a nation of course! When my temporary student ID expired on the 31st of August, I had to make a decision: which of the 13 nations would be my home away from my home away from home this semester?* In the end, the choice was easy: the first nation I ever visited had won my heart from the beginning, and so I have nailed my colours to the pointy spire of the orange 17th century castle that is Västgöta Nation – universally known as “VG”. And I don't think I've made a better decision since arriving in Uppsala...except perhaps making the brownie cake, but it's a close call. I think I might do a whole post on why VG is awesome, because there's quite a lot to cover, but I will mention two things: Reccemottagning and Manskören.

A reccemottagning is the nation's reception (mottagning) for recentiors (freshmen), and VG held its reccemottagning last Saturday afternoon and evening. We began at 3pm, gathering in the nation's top-floor library to hear speeches. First up was the nation's Inspektor, a Professor of Finno-Ugric Languages by the delightful name of Lars-Gunnar Larsson, a charming old gentlemen resplendent in leather-elbowed tweed and overgrown grey Colonel-Sanders-esque facial hair, who addressed us in Swedish, English and German before conceding defeat after just a few words of Polish... Next to speak was the wildly be-dreadlocked Förste Kurator (aka 1Q) Adam, followed by the second and third curators Hanna and Sebastian; the Kuratorer are the nation's semi-permanent student managers. Fun fact: all three have red hair...

After the speeches were done, we were divided into groups and, lead by a 'father' (in my case Cara, one of the International Secretaries), we spent several hours touring the nation taking part in various games in an effort to win points for our team: from song-guessing contests with the Mixed Choir to “guess the beer” taste tests with the Bar Masters, from charades with the Theatre Group to drinking games with the Pub Managers, from Chokladbullar-rolling in the Fika kitchen to being questioned on the nation's history by the Aldermen in the medieval cellar, we were put through our paces...and for the most part found severely wanting. We shone in only two places: Matt, our 5-foot-nothing American, rolled an astonishing 28 Chocolate Balls in two minutes (that's one every 4 seconds!!), and when the newspaper editors asked us to write a story, we shot to glory with the surreal tale of a depressed Roof-Beaver (they live on rooves...what of it?) named Karl Gustav John Linné and his quest for hearty bacon soup.


Drinking games with the sexmästare.


The Aldermen in their cellar.

Exhausted from our trials, we were paired up boy-girl with strangers (by means of magazine pictures that had been cut in half) before piling into the nation's main hall for a sexa, an informal dinner. The Swedes, however, have a slightly different take on “informal”. We sat at three long tables covered by white table cloths, with the three kuratorer (in full tuxedoes, or traditional costume in Hanna's case) sitting at a high table at the end of the room. We were served two courses: salmon in a white sauce on pasta, and then enormous banana splits dripping with merengue and chocolate sauce for desert.

All the while we were plied with alcohol, and I must say the Swedes have elevated mixing one's drinks to an art-form. Before entering, we could have champagne or cocktails, and on sitting down we were immediately given a choice of beer or cider, and a glass of one of several choices of snaps (I had a very strong, very sour white spirit which I was told was called something like “ohr-yah”...no idea how to spell it...it packed a punch though). The main course was also accompanied by red wine, and with dessert we were given coffee-cup-sized glasses of punsch – which is not our 'punch' but rather a strong, sickly-sweet, amber-coloured liqueur made from the South-Asian spirit Arrack and god knows what else...

The drinking was slowed at least a little by the requirements of protocol, which my lovely partner Klara was kind enough to help me through. Speeches were given at regular intervals by a variety of the nations' ämbetsmän, announcing the winners of the day's contests. Before each person rose to speak, our attention would be called one of the ämbetsma banging a short rhythm on the floor with the nations's ceremonial mace. There were performances from the nation's choirs (the mixed choir's rendition of “Fix You” by Coldplay brought a tear to the eye of even Jonas, my diehard metal-head corridor-mate) and speeches by the kuratorer and the Aldermen (who declared the entire cohort of recentiorer unfit to join the nation, until 'persuaded' to relent by 1Q in exchange for a bottle of punsch), but perhaps the most quintessentially Swedish thing was the singing.

Every ten minutes or so throughout the evening, the mace would bang on the floor and the Sånganförare (song foreman) would rise and lead us in a drinking song from the Västgöta Nation Sångbok...and the Swedes knew them all, and sang along cheerfully before raising their glasses in the recognised pattern (partner, neighbour, ahead, Skål!) and sipping their snaps. It was all completely delightful, genuinely Swedish and heaps of fun :-) After clearing the plates, and then the table to make room for a dance floor, we danced until 1am (late when you start drinking at 6!!) before drunkenly wheeling our bicycles back to Flogsta in the crisp September night.

After hearing their wonderful work at the reccemottagning, how could I say anything but 'yes' to the Västgöta Manskör or male voice choir. Rehearsing for three hours every Sunday night, these thirty or so young men make some of the most beautiful sounds I've ever heard – it is simply a joy to be able to sit among them and join in their singing. That said, it is also quite challenging; they are singing at a very high level and I have to work hard to keep up. Of course, they also sing a lot of repertoire in Swedish (which is great pronunciation practice for me) as well as English, German, French, Finnish and Estonian. I take some small comfort from knowing that most of the Swedes find those last two hard also! And on top of the singing, the rehearsals are conducted entirely in Swedish...which is REALLY testing me. So far I know 'page', 'system', 'bar', 'slower', 'faster' and 'longer phrases'...thank goodness at least that 'mezzoforte' is still 'mezzoforte'!! The choir is also a tad bizarre at times, on the verge of some kind of strange secret society. For one thing, they all have secret “choir names” that they reveal only to members...our conductor is “Mjao”, my section leader is “Unsymmetrical Åke” and one of the 2nd Basses introduced himself to me as “Tutten” which translates as “the boob”...

One final thing which I had great difficulty in saying 'yes' to was not murdering the man who promised two weeks ago to sell me a bicycle. After at least four fruitless visits over the space of two weeks, I turned up ready to give old Geppetto (as we have named him) a piece of my mind...but it didn't work. As soon as I started to speak, he grab the bike and literally ran down the stairs into his basement shop, and by the time I had followed him down the bike was up on a hoist and he was sawing away merrily at the rusted-out D-lock with an angle grinder. In the space of less than 10 minutes, while he busily worked away greasing and sanding and oiling and wrenching, he had me laughing along with his jokes, listening to his stories about bikes and odd customers, talking about Swedish Politics (“All is going to shit here...they make us like America!”) and of course answering his questions about Australia.

Bits of bike hurtled about the tiny workroom as he played rubbish-bin basketball with the rusted-through parts that he pulled off my bike-to-be; before rummaging in cupboards and boxes (and a storeroom which was like the Elephant's Graveyard of bicycles) for replacement parts, talking all the while in his endearingly-broken, heavily-accented English (“I read for 9 years in school...but that was 40 years ago.”). By the time he was done, the bike had a new chain, new gears, new rear brakes, new wheels, tires and tubes, new lights and reflectors and, of course, a brand new bell. But before I left, he proudly showed off the cans of Surströmming (that's fermented herring, a Swedish delicacy that is not especially delicate) he had ordered and was storing in the crowded little office: “Tomorrow I have my one day off for this year. I go in my car to up North of here, and I will eat this with my friend. It is very nice, you must try before you go home!”

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*Home = Melbourne; Home away from home = Flogsta; Home away from home away from home = a Nation.

PS: MAX is the Swedish equivalent of MacDonalds, only better. I only put it in the title in order to preserve the rhythm of the line...sorry about that.
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Ben will return in Åttakisse...

The Land of the Long White-Blonde Queue

11pm, Uppsala, Sweden, 31 August 2009

Well ladies and gentlemen, it is blog time once more. As I mentioned in my last post, my travelling adventures have come to an end, here in the wonderful little university town of Uppsala, about 70 km north of Stockholm in the province of Uppland. Or seven miles, as the Swedes would say, because for some unfathomable reason a “mile” here is ten kilometers...but if you describe someone as “six foot two” they look at you like you just announced that you can speak Aramaic, and ask “What is that please in centimeters?” :-)

Flower-laden bridge on the Fyris River

I write this tonight from a large, and already extremely messy desk in my room on the second floor of Höghus 2, in Flogsta, one of the main student accommodation areas here in Uppsala. Flogsta lies about 3km away from the centre of the town, and consists of around sixteen Höghusen (literally “High Houses”) of seven or eight stories grouped around a road that from the air resembles the layout of the tape in an audio cassette. Around the towers are woods and fields in two directions, and a mix of residential housing ranging from modern 'terrace houses' to little red and white country cottages that look like they were built off a postcard rather than a plan. Students, many of them internationals like myself, live in the first ten Höghusen, the other six seem to be “normal” people. Scattered around the base of the buildings are a small number of shops catering to students: bicycle store, convenience store, solarium, pizza store; in the basements of at least two buildings there are laundry rooms, and on every roof there is a Sauna. It is a very Swedish piece of prioritizing to give every building a Sauna, but provide only 15-20 washing machines and 10 dryers for upwards of 1,600 students. A Swede would nod sagely at this and say in a serious fashion “Yes, it is a pity there could not have been a sauna for every floor.”

I have my own bedroom/study and my own bathroom, and share a corridor, kitchen, lounge room and balcony with eleven other students, some of these shall be introduced in greater detail later. The room is large and light, but a little bit sterile in it's lack of colour; the kitchen is, like the rest of the building, aging a little, but it's cosy and fairly well-equipped – kitchen gear extends beyond the standard offerings to a Wok, an Electric Mixer, a sandwich toaster and even a coffee machine. No bread knife though...and no sink plugs either!

My room on the night I arrived

Our communal kitchen

I have been here now for twelve days, but it feels like much longer – the principle reason for this being that the middle seven or so days were O-Week for us International Students. There are not many major experiences in life that you get to have multiple goes at: I guess you can get married quite a few times, and you can have multiple children, but most things happen just once: finishing year twelve, your first kiss, your twenty-first birthday and so on. For most people, O-Week falls into the latter category, but for we few, we happy few, we band of brothers, we get to have a second go at it. And I have tried to take full advantage of that by means of a 'Policy of Yes' – I have tried to say “yes” to anything on offer which isn't actually going to get me seriously injured or thrown out of the country. And I have to say, it has rarely failed to keep me entertained...

The last two weeks have revolved around two types of activity: those that involve getting practical things done, and those for having fun and meeting people. The first involves the three great Swedish leisure pursuits: queueing, paperwork and queueing. This is not always as bad as it sounds, as you'll see below...There is also some overlap, which I'll go into in a moment. Leaving practicalities aside for now, let's have a look at fun.

Uppsala is a small town (by Australian standards) of about 140,000 people, of whom perhaps 40,000 are students, and having fun in Uppsala centers on the Student Nations. Nations are an apparently exclusively Swedish phenomena – not quite a fraternity, not quite a student union, not quite a college, not quite a student club, not quite a restaurant, pub, club or cafe – not quite like anything else really, but something of all of these things and more. They have all sorts of facilities, from libraries, study rooms and computers, to pubs, restaurants, cafes and clubs with student priced food and beer. Activities and events range from choirs to ice-hockey, chess to theatre sports, formal dinners in white tie and tails to disco ping-pong evenings (more on that another time). You can work there to earn some pocket money, you can live in their accommodation, you can even get scholarships and loans.

The house of Västgöta Nation - aka "VG"

There are thirteen Nations here in Uppsala, and they are linked to (and take their names from) the counties and cities of Sweden: Norrlands Nation, Uplands Nation, Stockholms Nation and so on. Swedish students tend to join the one linked to their home town, but for international students the choice is a bit trickier. You have to join one; having existed since the early 17th Century, the Nations have become so absorbed into University life that you are not technically a student until you join one. They issue your student card and allow you to access your results. So they're pretty important, and apart from having fun, getting to know Uppsala, and meeting new friends, the chief purpose of O-Week here is to help us decide which one to join.

My last week has been a parade of events at various nations, and every time I visit another it seems I make a table full of new friends without even trying :-) Because only students can enter the Nations' pubs, clubs and so on, everyone you meet is a student just like you, which makes meeting people easy. And because everyone had to be checked on entry, the long queues provide another great opportunity to chat to those around you...usually about how impressively long the queue is, and what other good queues you've been in today. I swear, most of the security guards and door-bitches (is a male door-bitch a door-bastard?) checked my temporary Student ID and Passport more thoroughly than any Customs Officer I encountered in 4 weeks of travelling!

My last week has been filled with lunches, dinners, city walks (a pleasure in this beautiful little town), BBQs, pubbing, clubbing (yes really...I went clubbing. Twice actually. Hip-Hop clubbing no less...), and the wonderful Swedish institution of Fika. A twisting of the word 'Kaffe' (Coffee), Fika is meeting your friends for coffee(s) and cake(s) and whiling away the afternoon chatting. Of course, we do this in Melbourne too...but I think the fact that Swedes have a word for it, and that that word is not only used as both a noun ('We had Fika.') and a verb ('Shall we Fika on Saturday?'), but also spelled with a capital letter, gives you an indication of the importance of the institution here. I will try my hardest to live up to their expectations, even if it means having to eat literally hundreds of servings of the local specialty, cheesecake. I will struggle through, for the sake of inter-cultural understanding.

:-P
Some Fika in process...

I have met far more people than I can possibly mention by name, people from all over the world and from all over Sweden. Special mentions go to Kai and Karen from Germany, who busted their best moves with me on the Hip-Hop dance floor at Stockholms Nation until closing time (I hope whoever stole your hat is suffering now Kai), to the posse who took me under their collective wing on Friday night's pub crawl: Johanna and Jasmina (Swedes), Lucy and Ben (Adelaide), Leo (Italy) Caroline (France), Eva (Germany) and Dennis from Dresden, whose name makes my dad laugh so hard. Also to the hordes of Science-Po Frenchmen (and -women) in my Swedish Politics class, but especially Thomas and Clement. Big props to Adrian, French Jazz Guitarist extraordinaire, who sat with me in the sunshine by the river Fyris one afternoon and jammed (even though I had met him half an hour before), and to my Swedish-Tunisian buddy Jonas for offering to drive me to the cargo terminal at Arlanda for my boxes, and being a generally damn-good bloke. To all the Aussies I've met even though I'm trying not to, especially Aaron & Elle, who make me very jealous that I couldn't have brought MY girlfriend along. Finally to my corridor-mates Jonas (another German), who cooked me tomato pasta and suffered my terminally dreadful indecisiveness in IKEA, and Jonathan (from the very far north of Lapland) who sat on the floor of his furniture-less room and shared his beer with me. You and many others are all awesome, and I am having such a great time already because I met all of you.

The whole gang in the vault at Upland Nation

Of course, it's not ALL partying here...even though classes haven't begun, I have had lots of practical matters to sort out. Furnishings, textbooks, stationery, banking, rent, enrollment, bus pass, nation, luggage, currency exchange and the eternally frustrating Quest For A Bicycle. As this is Sweden, nearly all of these involve paperwork, queueing, bizarre opening hours or all three. I should say first up that Swedes LOVE queueing. They queue for everything, more often than not by taking a ticket (like at the Safeway Deli) but also using the more traditional “stand-in-a-line” method. The formation of neat, orderly lines to acquire goods and services is something the Swedes take great pride in, and god help you if you try to push in, or even cut the line. You would be subjected to a tirade of...well, I don't know. I've never seen anyone try it. Swedes are polite and composed to the point of shyness in public...perhaps they would all cough suggestively at you: “Ahem. Ah-hem. A-HEM.” Or maybe they'd go totally berserker and run screaming at you with an axe covered in runes.

I'd ask you all to just think for a second now, remember the last time you queued for something. I mean seriously queued, not just had to wait behind a couple of people at the ATM, or to get your soy chai latte from Castro's. How long did you wait? Five minutes? Ten maybe? That was a long time, right? Oh no it wasn't...

I queued for two hours in a bank to open an account. I queued for almost an hour in another bank just to pay a bill! I queued for 40 minutes in a Forex office to change some money, at about 3pm on a weekday...why weren't these people at work?? I queued to get into clubs, which is normal, in the supermarket, which is understandable, at IKEA, which is tolerable, in a bookshop, which was a little odd, and in a pub, which is totally bizarre. I don't mean you had to push through a bit of a crowd at the bar...I mean the Swedes formed a neat queue from the bar which stretched out the door.

But as I've said, the queuing isn't so bad. I met many of my new friends here while standing in the queue at Västgöta Nation on the first day, waiting to collect a temporary student card and sign up for activities. That queue took over two hours, but I'd really got to know people quite well by the end of it :-) I think some people further back in line had actually got married and started families, and I swear I heard bagpipes playing a funeral march at one point.

One thing which mercifully did not involve any queueing, was my quest to get a bicycle, the key to student life in Uppsala. With Bus fares costing 30 SEK one way each time (about $5-6) and a pass costing 500 SEK per month, a second-hand bike is worth it's weight in gold to a poor student. For over a week, with my feet and wallet aching from alternately walking everywhere and paying for buses, I visited every bike store in Uppsala (there are about a dozen, maybe more) at least twice, called the numbers on every “For Sale” poster I saw, and even considered texting the extremely dodgy character known only as 'Ole' who looks like a hobo and always seems to be able to get a bike...usually one with a “broken” lock :-| With my feet aching, I arrived at the very last store, far out to the north of the town, and descended into a basement which looked like the Elephant Graveyard of bicycles. Fully expecting another “Nej”, I ask the question again: “Har du några begagnade cyklar?” “Oh ja, ja,” came the reply, and before I knew it I was presented with a trailer full of used-bikes. Jackpot. Blue mountain bike, 26” frame, 18 speed, new gears and chain, new lights and that slightly beaten-up look that will hopefully ward off thieves. 800 SEK, and I can collect it on Wednesday – after which I will be zipping around town with the best of them, and the callouses on my feet can be brought back to a reasonable level, somewhere between buffalo hide and tortoise shell. I must buy a decent lock though; apart from queueing, the major Uppsala pastimes are stealing bicycles and throwing them in the river...

This is what happens if you leave your bike beside the river without chaining it up...

Tune in next week kiddies, for another exciting episode of “Uppsalaphilia”, in which Ben goes to lectures and possibly bakes some chocolate biscuits. Hold on to your seats...

It's Tuesday, so that must have been Belgium...

12:50pm, Copenhagen Kastrup Airport, 11 August 2009

I'm sitting in a cafe at Kastrup Airport south of Copenhagen, picking at my leftover wedges, listening to “Rocket Man” on the PA system, waiting for my flight to Bergen (on the Western fjords of Norway) and trying to collect my thoughts on the last twelve days. In that time I've visited five different cities: Copenhagen, Malmö, Brussels, Bruges and Antwerp; I've met many new people; I've taken over one thousand photographs; I've attempted to speak Danish, Dutch, French and Swedish (none of them with much success, although as always my pronunciation of the four words I can remember is just lovely) and I have turned twenty-three.

Forgive me, vicarious travellers, for not posting anything sooner, but I think from that brief summary you might be able to gather why I haven't!! It is difficult to start...although I boarded that train in Stockholm just twelve days ago, it feels like much longer...

My X2000 high-speed train to Malmö left Stockholm's grand Centralstationen at 7:21am and very quietly (at least from the inside) rocketed south through the Swedish countryside. The scenery was slightly unreal...like something from a chocolate box or a children's book, and the relative silence of the train as it hurried along only added to the impression of something fantastical. Thick green pine forests broken at intervals by lakes – sudden shocking expanses of silver water – giving way further south to fields of waving yellow grain, and all of it interspersed with cute little red and white half-timbered houses, barns and summer cottages. I spend the journey nibbling at my food supplies, writing postcards, staring out at the countryside and reading Silence of the Lambs to counteract the impression that I had crossed over into Toyland.

In Malmö I had a picnic beside the canal in the sunshine – sharing my slightly squashed strawberries with a overly-friendly bumble-bee – before decoding a Swedish ticket machine and boarding an Øresundståg to Copenhagen. The Øresund Bridge between Malmö and Copenhagen must surely be one of the most astonishing works of engineering in the world, an eight-kilometer bridge and undersea tunnel carrying road and rail traffic across the Øresund between Sweden and Denmark via an artificial island just off Copenhagen. The bridge is 7.8km long and 204m high; this connects to a 4km artificial island, which itself is the beginning of a further 4km undersea tunnel to the Danish mainland. I took advantage of the tremendous views on offer by falling asleep, only stirring when the train slid into Køpenhavn H and disgorged me and my bags into the startling Danish sunlight.

Totally disoriented, tired and sore from my stupid shoulder bag, I blundered out into the centre of Copenhagen, and proceeded to write the whole place off as ugly, dirty, noisy, cluttered with too much ugly 70s high-rise and basically inferior to Stockholm in every way. I flounced down to the hostel I'd booked, City Public Hostel on Absalonsgade, and immediately had my disappointment reinforced. It appeared to be school which was closed for summer and hastily retro-fitted as a hostel. Everything had a partly institutional, partly temporary feel, and it wasn't even cheap.

By the next morning, Copenhagen was beginning to look much rosier. It was still not as pretty as Stockholm, but a good night's sleep, a shower and a shave, and a lobby full of friendly Aussies (from Geelong, no less...) do wonders for one's open-mindedness...

I spent the day wandering in Copenhagen, and once I got out of the centre, I found it much more attractive. Having been a bit sad to leave Stockholm on the verge of its apparently very exciting Pride Week Parade, I was surprised to find Copenhagen hosting the World Out Games. There were dykes and drag-queens and gay Nordic men in tiny shorts and angel wings as far as the eye could see. I felt bad for every gay person I know for not being there...it was some party! Feeling rather out of place as a straight man, I climbed up a church tower (around 390 steps) for a fantastic view of the city, walked along the canals looking at cute wooden boats and wandered through the rather sad remains of the “Free Town” of Christiania. Once apparently a thriving commune, it now resembles the Royal Melbourne Showgrounds if that was taken over entirely by aging hippies, dodgy carnies and drug-dealers. So a bit like the Royal Show then, but without the cows. I visited the Christiansborg Palace complex in the center of town. This is the seat of the Danish Parliament (which I couldn't find), and was in the past the Royal Residence. After being burned down and rebuilt for the third time (with no incarnation last more than about 50 years) the Danish royals apparently gave the whole thing up as a bad job. Now they use only the Royal Reception Rooms, which I had a guided tour of. They are very beautiful, and have a library straight out of “Beauty and the Beast”. I also thought I saw Mary & Frederick (HRHs) in the gardens nearby with their little princes, but not being an avid reader of New Idea, I couldn't be certain...

My second day was even better. I made friends in the hostel lobby with an Englishman named Tom, and together we caught the train up to the palace/fortress at Kronberg in Helsingør. Never heard of it? Yes you have. In English we call it Elsinore, and it's the fictional home of Bill Shakespeare's Prince of Procrastination, Hamlet himself. In real life, it was a symbol of Danish power and a practical weapon in control of the entrance to the Øresund. From the cannons on top of the walls, it was easy to see how the incredibly narrow straight and the prevailing winds could be used to force ships into the range of the guns and thus extract the “Sound dues” demanded by the King's treasury and the salutary dipping of the topsail demanded by his sense of self-importance. For anyone getting bored by the history, I also looked at the gorgeous carvings in the chapel, explored the very cool, almost pitch-black catacombs under the fortress, and (for the Gilbert & Sullivan fans) learned what a Ravelin is. It's a sort of defensive island within a moat, between inner and outer gatehouses. Now I just need to discover what the hell a Mamellon is, and I'll be the very model of a modern Major-General...

On returning to Copenhagen, I had one last walk through the city, checking out Castellen, the city's fort (still in military hands), the Little Mermaid (terribly underwhelming), the Danish Resistance Museum (terribly sad, but made me feel good about humanity), the Amalienborg Palace (a palace in the round...) and the University quarter. Then I headed to the train station where, after a few false starts (Danish trains apparently don't work in the rain) I crossed the bridge to Malmö, this time actually taking in the magnificent views of the Øresund.

There is apparently a saying that runs “When one is tired of Malmö, one is tired of life”. This could be considered a slight overstatement. A good breakfast smörgåsbord, a light drizzle, a plate of reasonably-priced meatballs, a twisted skyscraper, a collection of interesting museums (helpfully all in the same place: the Castle) and some amusing Welshmen are all very well, but hardly left me ready to write to Dr. Philip Nitschke...even when you throw in the vintage tram, the walk in submarine and the nocturnal animal house with its cute sugar gliders. Still, I had a reasonably entertaining time given that I had only one day to explore Sweden's third largest city.

Of course, I had only one day because I was spending my twenty-third birthday in Brussels with one of my oldest friends. Yes, you did forget my birthday. (Unless you didn't of course, thank you to those people, who are staying in the will). I was offered a bed (or a floor, at least) for as long as I wanted, and in the end I stayed for seven nights, leaving early this morning.

“What on earth does one do for six and a half days in Brussels?” I hear you wondering. “We didn't sign on for vicarious travel to the dullest capital city in Europe.” (feel free to suggest/share stories of duller European capitals in the comments below, by the way)

Fear not friends, for Brussels is the kind of town where having a local guide opens doors to a much more exciting lifestyle. And, while I lacked a true local, I did have perhaps the greatest Francophile and Europhile ever to come out of the ANU, my dear old friend Trina. My seven nights on Trina's floor (actually...six nights, and one on her friend's bed with about five other people in advanced stages of unconsciousness after a crazy housewarming party – actually the only one who didn't sleep on that bed was the hostess – she slept on the couch!) were actually an absolute godsend, and I'm sure I overstayed my welcome, although Trina insists not, and even gave me waffles to take on the plane with me...I'm nibbling on one as I write this...

This post is already far too long, so I'll have to just give the absolute highlights of the week. Firstly, a big shout out to any and all of Trina's friends who I met in Brussels, especially Rowan and Maaike, who were both so hospitable and asked only for foot massages and dirty secrets about Trina in return. On my birthday I wandered through the Art Nouveau wonderland of the Musical Instrument Museum, with its rooms of bagpipes, accordions and talking drums, its marvellous seven-belled valve trombone, and other instruments so weird I couldn't identify them (especially not with labels in Dutch and French); then Trina and I ate cake in her kitchen and we drank beer and ate fantastic choose-your-own-adventure stir-fry in Place du Chatelain. The following day for lunch I ate frites from the Best Little Frite-house in Brussels (reference entirely for Josh, who would love frites) toured the European Parliament building, which was fascinating to an EU novice like me, and spent the evening drinking mango juice and smoking strawberry shisha in a flat overlooking the Red Light District. Maaike provided binoculars for entertainment – I think I saw some guys break into a car...

I made two trips to Flanders on Trina's railpass: the first to Bruges, the second to Antwerp. In Bruges (hehehe) I wandered into a little church and sat listening to an organist practicing, before chatting to an ancient Benedictine nun who asked me (in Dutch, German, French, and eventually English) if I played the organ and then confessed that she had (at approximately 85) started learning so she could play at Mass! I took a boat cruise, ate more frites (which are freiten here, and God help you if you accidently say bonjour or merci...), climbed a belfry, ate a ridiculous amount of chocolate and walked all over town taking an absurd number of photographs. In Antwerp I explored every facet (pun for you sir) of the intruiging Diamond Museum, marvelled at the Brabant-Gothic meisterwerk of Antwerp's enormous seven-aisled cathedral (with its many excellent Rubens'), and ate delicious waffles with melted chocolate from a stall in the remarkable turn-of-the-century train station.

I saw the grand and beautiful high-baroque and high-gothic guild halls of Grand Place, the nineteenth-century elegance of the Galleries St-Hubert, the proto-fascist exuberance of the Mont d'Arts and the Gothic splendour of Notre-Dame d'Sablon. I wandered aimlessly through picturesque gardens, reading, writing postcards and eating ice-cream in the shade of grand avenues of oaks . I ate chocolate-coated strawberries so good that Trina and I agreed they were an adequate replacement for sex. I drank at least 6 different types of beer (not a lot for Brussels, where one bar has over 3000 different types), rode the filthy but surprisingly efficient underground trams and metro all across town for free, because nobody pays in Brussels (the city can't be bothered paying for revenue enforcement...too much like hard work), played “never have I ever” in a bar at 2am and partied in the open air outside the enormous Palais de Justice.

Indeed the only downside of the entire trip has been that Brussels Airlines managed to shred my bag somewhere between Copenhagen and Brussels. The poor thing looks like it's been dragged across bitumen all the way from Denmark...they have offered to repair or replace, but how the hell am I going to get one in Europe. I have bought a strap to hold it together and am hoping it all holds out until Uppsala. If need be I'll ship it to Australia and send the bill to Brussels Airlines ]:-)

This post must end here, it's already too long. I'll try to update a bit more often in the future...but I can't promise much. Next stop, Norway!

PS: There are photos coming...I just forgot the cable...

EDIT: I fail at technology...photos will happen, but probably not until I'm settled in Uppsala...which actually isn't that long. Thursday, hopefully...

One Week In

10:30pm, City Public Hostel, Copenhagen, 31 July 2009

It is now 6:30am in Melbourne, Saturday August 1. One week ago today I was sitting with my family, my girlfriend and my best mate, getting ready to board my flight. Just one week, but it seems like an eternity. I am now sitting in my third city proper, and my (quick finger count) eighth including all stopovers and flying visits. Today has been a day of travel, communication, rest and planning, but tomorrow I launch into Copenhagen, the city I have found myself in almost by chance, even as my current plans veer still further from the original itinerary. But I should return to the beginning.

After a long flight Melbourne – Sydney – Adelaide – Singapore, I arrived at the delightfully simple Changi Airport to be greeted warmly by my Uncle and Aunt and whisked back to their apartment in Mandalay Road (via many of the island's landmarks, if Simon's running commentary was anything to go on). There I showered, changed, and was taken out for Vietnamese food. The food was quite reasonable, the night air a pleasant thirty degrees, but the highlight was probably the reaction of the restaurant's patrons and staff to the enormous rat that darted along the overhead latticework about two-thirds of the way through the meal. Simon's cry of “Oh, a Tarantula” had me flat against the opposite wall long before he had corrected his assumption.

My short stopover in Singapore continued along similar lines, a sort of guided tour/running commentary from Simon, interspersed with suggestions from Ly, sumptuous feasts of Asian and Colonial cuisine, and diversions to purchase an Armani suit, an electric blue handbag and a stack of books almost as large as my travelling baggage. One of these went to me; Simon of course refusing to let me pay for anything despite repeated assurances of how marriage and unemployment are driving him to destitution.

The tome in question is now my most prized possession short of Joe's music box, my external hard drive and my much loved teeny puter: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. I have only read a little, but it is a triumph in the fine tradition of Studs Terkel, who wrote the definitive oral history of WW2. Apparently published in 2006, how this gem has escaped my browsing is a mystery.

My plundering of Singapore's literary resources completed, I journeyed onwards, and (skipping all the exceedingly dull parts in between) I found myself stepping through a set of glass automatic doors onto Swedish soil. Or Swedish floor anyway. Arlanda Airport and it's zippy yellow connecting train are a breeze (silly bloody Melbourne Airport), and I was soon strolling north on Vasagatan, delighted by even this rather ugly part of Stockholm and immediately regretting my choice of a shoulder bag in combination with my backpack. There is simply no method for comfortably wearing both together. Lesson for future travels, I suppose. Although I suspect the best thing would be to have no permanent daypack at all...

Yay, new packing goal!

I was delighted to find that the hostel I had booked, CityBackpackers in Norrmalm, was everything one could hope for. It occupies the ground floor and basement of a delightful eighteenth-century building in the Swedish neo-classical idiom, complete with yellow-washed plaster, white and marble trim, round corner towers and a peaked, well verdigris-ed roof. The facilities were modern, yet sensitive to the building's heritage, the large central courtyard and public areas were attractive and cosy, the security was top-notch, the staff helpful and friendly and freebies included: wireless internet, sauna, 2hrs bike hire per day and all-you-can-eat pasta. There was also a sweet little cafe and the offer of a bike tour of Stockholm, which I accepted enthusiastically.

I can't possibly list everything I saw and did in Stockholm...even in three and a half days there was much too much, and still more than a weeks worth of top notch stuff entirely unseen. I could probably get another four days or so out of the things I've already had a look at, to be honest.

Personal highlights included wandering through the narrow cobbled lanes of Gamla Stan, the old city, and it's neighbouring island Riddarholmen, particularly the cathedral Riddarholmskyrken and the unexpected and utterly delightful vistas which revealed themselves with every twist and sag and lean of the medieval buildings, streets and alleyways. Unexpectedly pleasant also was pushing up through the 1960s ugliness of the Centrum (all the more horrifying if one stops to consider what must have been destroyed) to the beautiful heights of Norrmalm, including the breathtaking City Library and the Observatory hill, where I saw a wild rabbit darting among the trees in the heart of the city. Wandering the foreshore of any and every aspect of Lake Mälaren, exploring the green spaces and and bobbing boats of the old naval island of Skeppsholmen, or riding the powder-blue vintage tram to Djurgården, Stockholm's pleasure garden; all have their own joys.

I visited the National Museum, which features pre-twentieth century art (no Hermitage certainly, but some very fine and well-known Rembrants and some fabulous Rodin bronzes) and a fantastic temporary exhibition on Swedish design from 1900-2000. I spent hours in the Vasa Museum, which houses an almost perfectly preserved 17th century warship raised from Lake Mälaren in 1961 after 333 years on the bottom. I rode a bottle-green and gearless Scandinavian-style bicycle through much of the city to the tops of the cliffs at Södermalm and on to a picnic in the park on the picturesque former prison island of Långholmen. I spent several happy hours among the scale models in the Architecture Museum, enjoying it's clear and articulation explanations of the evolution of Swedish design, housing, town planning, and public and private architecture. I took guided tours of the City Hall, where the architecture echoes Byzantium and Venice, and of the Riksdagshus, where the Swedish system of “consensus building” politics that first drew me to study here goes quietly about it's business, and I watched the changing of the guard at the Royal Palace. I ate ice-cream in the shadow of the royal cathedral Storkyrken and sampled fried, crumbed herring in the sun beside the locks.

I don't think I've ever fallen for a place quite as much in such a short space of time. “The Venice of the North” is more than worthy of its title.

Tomorrow I will see how Köpenhavn, “the shopping harbour”, compares. But I don't have much hope that anything can beat the beauty of Stockholm.

Look out for pictures in the near future...As you can imagine, I took over 5GB of photos, and I need to pick just three or four to illustrate this...