Category Archive

Yesterday was my first 4th of July in the US in four years. We started the day with blueberry pancakes at a nice little café with a slightly overbearing proprietor who, upon hearing that I had worked as an English teacher in Russia and Sweden, tried to persuade me that it would benefit the world much more if I worked at a for-profit American school in Gaza that he helped found. While I have sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians, I also have sympathy for the plight of the Israelis (not to mention the fact that Kostia’s brother lives in Israel), so I can’t say that Palestine is going to be my next big cause. I also can’t see how working in a for-profit school would contribute to the greater good. Oh well. It’s a nice café anyway.

We went to the Independence Day parade in Canandaigua, my dad’s hometown and the place where I’m spending most of this month. Here are some pictures. 

In the spirit of American democracy and bad fashion, I wore my new ill-fitting Obama t-shirt to the parade, hoping to irritate some Republicans. I think I achieved my goal.

Marching band. This was about the only one, surprisingly, though there were bagpipers…

There was all kinds of culture, including the South Bristol Cultural Center, which, according to their banner, celebrates culture. That sounds pretty vague to me…

Good old Uncle Sam on a Vespa

Patriotic fashion…

… which is not as cute on older people:

There were classic cars to make a Dalarna County redneck drool

And classic fire engines too.

 
After the parade we wound up on an impromptu wine tour, if two wineries can be called a tour. Those of you not from Upstate New York might be surprised to know that western New York state is a wine-producing region. Too bad for my grandpa, who has lived here for all of his 89 years, yet is a teetotaller. I wonder how many wine tours he’s been dragged on in his life.

It was decided we needed to pose in front of this barrel

View of Canandaigua Lake

And a vineyard

And a winery that I really liked - both the atmosphere and the wine

In the evening we went to the fireworks on Canandaigua Lake. It was a great fireworks show, but I’m not sure that arriving an hour and a half early to find parking and then taking an hour and a half to get out of the post-fireworks traffic jam was worth the 20 minutes of visual entertainment. Oh, the things we do in the name of tradition.

1. The New York Times. Print edition. Especially Sunday.

2. English muffins.

3. Making small talk with strangers without having to think about what I’m going to say and whether it’s grammatically correct. And oh, do Americans love their small talk.

4. Heat and humidity. Yes really.

5. NPR (but then again, I listen to NPR on the internet anyway).

6. Not having to convert prices in my head to dollars to fully understand if something is overpriced or not (though now I find myself converting from dollars to Swedish crowns - “Would I think this was expensive if I was in Sweden?”).

Someone heard my cry for Peeps! My friend Kevin sent Peeps, and a whole bunch of other stuff, including some nostalgia-inducing Nader 2000 memorabilia (we know each other from working on the campaign) and paper dolls of Jenna and Barbara Bush. This is the first care package I’ve gotten in, like, forever. Kevin gets a package of weird Swedish stuff in return.

What-all Kevin sent me. Those are my feet.

Well, I know it hasn’t been terribly exciting around this blog recently. That’s what happens when life goes smoothly, I guess. Work is going well, classes are going well, I’ve been gardening and we’ve hosted some dinner parties.

Spring is in full swing. Lenka and Dima gave Kostia a cute little grill for his birthday,

I think mostly because they didn’t want to listen to me argue with myself about whether I should buy one, so it was really more a present for me. Kostia tends to sit inside reading while I’m out grilling, and yesterday he said that he didn’t want to eat hot dogs again for a month. Perhaps he’ll take an interest in the grilling if we make shashlik.

Thinking about making a quick trip to St. Petersburg at the end of the month, since Kostia’s parents miss him, my current visa expires on the 30th, and if the Swedish migration service takes as much time to renew Kostia’s work permit in June as they did issuing it in January, he’ll have to spend summer vacation in Sweden waiting for it. I hope that won’t be the case, as we have Napoleonic summer plans (as they say in Russian - do we say that in English??) but prepare for the worst, eh?

And that’s about it, really. Will try to think of a juicier post in the next few days.

Today I met up with some former co-workers from the kindergarten. We went to an English pub called Dickens. When we got there, nearly all the tables were empty, but had ”reserved” signs on them. “Football starts at 2:00″, said the waitress. Clueless non-sports fans that we are, we didn’t realize it was the Russian national league championship game, and St. Petersburg’s team was playing. Still, we squeezed into a table that wasn’t reserved because it wasn’t in view of one of the TVs. If I leaned back, I could see the TV screen, and I was lucky enough to lean back at the right moment to see the single goal of the game, which made Zenit the Russian champions. After the game, the city went wild - it felt a bit like New Year on the streets. This is the first time in more than 20 years that Zenit has won. I couldn’t care less about who wins sports games, but I’m glad the city’s in a good mood tonight.

It’s been winter for the past week. The view out our window has been looking like this lately:

Winter notwithstanding, we carved a pumpkin last weekend. I tried to find one before Halloween, with no success. But when I saw a babushka selling this nice plump orange one the weekend after Halloween, I had to buy it:

I’ve been doing a bit of clothes shopping recently. I got a new hat which is ideal because it isn’t too bulky but it is warm and has ear flaps. I also got this totally awesome sweatshirt (which also has an ear flap) at Savage, which is Ksenia Sobchak’s clothing brand, who is the Russian Paris Hilton. Even though she apparently has lots of money for self-promotion, she doesn’t have enough money to have someone who speaks fluent English work for her clothing company (really, take a look at their web site - my students write better than this! I mean, there’s nothing wrong with not speaking English per se, but if you’re promoting yourself in English and writing English on your clothes, hire a professional for god’s sake). On the back of the sweatshirt and on the sleeve, it says, “I’m feel good!!” In comic sans, no less. There’s also a dachshund on this sweatshirt. You can’t really tell from the picture, but he stretches all the way around the side to the middle of the back. This sweatshirt was such a piece of work that I just had to buy it. I’m going to wear it every day that I don’t have to dress professionally.

I arrive home. Kostia is staring at the computer.

K: There aren’t any sea manses left.

Me: Really? (Thinking Kostia is reading the BBC news and some obscure breed of starfish or walrus has gone extinct.) Umm… what’s a sea manse exactly?

K: SEA MANSE.

Me: Sea manse. Sea manse?

K: A Siemens is a mobile phone.

Me: Ohhh.

All of Kostia’s previous mobile phones have been Siemens brand. I bought him his last one for his birthday a year and a half ago. He picked it out. It was cool-looking, but it didn’t last too long. Perhaps that’s why Siemens isn’t making mobile phones anymore. So Kostia bought himself a very nice new Nokia. I have a Nokia too. It was a Christmas present from Aunt Kelly almost three years ago. It still works perfectly. Which is unfortunate because I really covet Kostia’s new phone. Kostia says I should just buy one for myself, but I can’t justify buying another phone when I have one that works. So I think he should just trade with me, because I would use all its fancy functions, like the budgeting and the sudoku, and he doesn’t use any of them. But no. He’s so selfish. 

We’ve come back from Kostia’s family’s house in the country, to the land of internets and running water. I’m catching up on e-mails and things and will respond to comments soon!

OK, it’s not my motherland. A lot of people ask me if I have Russian ancestry, since there can’t possibly be any other explanation for an American Russophile, and all I can say is, does a name like Megan Lindsay Case sound Russian to you? Not that I couldn’t be Russian on my mother’s side or something, but no, I’m not Russian. Still, coming back feels like a return to reality in a way, as if my last 10 months in Sweden were just a dream…

On Tuesday I was pretty sad to wake up in Russia and not in Sweden. Our flat is pretty nice by Russian standards, though I feel like we live in a concrete box only barely concealed by some badly-laid linoleum. The worst part of it is how far we are from the center.

When we went to our old neighbourhood, Komendantsky Prospect, which is an end-of-the-line metro station, the other day, that felt like going to civilization. But look, the kitchen is big and bright and comfy:

Anyway, our location is only temporary and we plan to find something closer to the center in the fall. We’re lining up students and other work, and tomorrow we’ll go to Kostia’s family’s dacha for about a week. That will be nice. Kostia’s mom will feed us till we burst, we’ll go swimming in the river, eat shashlik, wash in the banya, drink milk fresh from the cow, be chased by aggressive turkeys when we go to get water from the well, and be eaten alive by mosquitoes. 

Travel tips: Five years ago I rode the ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm for the first time. I met several other young travellers on board, none of us had booked a cabin and we spent most of the night hanging out. When I finally got too tired to stand, I went to the room where they had train-style seats for the cabinless passengers and got a bit of sleep. Our experience on Saturday night was rather different. For one thing, the ship we were on didn’t have the seats for cabinless passengers, so I got a few hours of fitful sleep on a bench and Kostia didn’t sleep at all. For another thing, the Saturday night ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki is full of booze-cruising Finns. Listen up: if you’ve never been to Finland before, do not take the Saturday night ferry from Stockholm, because you will get a very bad first impression of Finns, who, in all my other experiences, have been incredibly nice, normal people. It’s just that people aren’t at their best on a booze cruise. And the segment of society that likes to booze cruise as a way of spending the weekend isn’t exactly the most, um, as Russians would say, culturniy. So. Take the ferry, it’s a fun, scenic and cheap way to travel, but be sure to get a cabin and don’t take it on a Friday or Saturday night. 

They’ve got a shiny new train on the Helsinki-St. Petersburg line! There are two trains between Helsinki and St. Petersburg daily, one Finnish and one Russian. The Finnish train is a typical European train, clean and modern and yada yada yada. The last time I took the Russian train, it was an old-fashioned Russian one, with closed compartments for six people each rather than rows of seats in pairs. The compartments had a sort of charm, but when we got to the station on Sunday and saw the sign that the train was fully booked, I was dreading it a bit, because the compartments are a lot less comfortable when filled to capacity, and furthermore I was dead tired from the night on the ferry and just wanted to go to sleep, and that’s nearly impossible in a compartment of six people with non-reclining seats. But when we got on the train on Sunday, it was new and clean and sleek and had seats in pairs rather than compartments! But, they retained the perk that the Finnish trains don’t have – a free snack. You can choose between the beer-salami-and-roll snack or the yogurt-juice-and-croissant snack. We had the former, of course. It was a real beer with 5.2% alcohol, not a Swedish lättöl, and a very generous portion of salami. Mmm.

I heard about it on the radio yesterday and I wasn’t quite sure I was understanding the Swedish correctly. They’ve been talking about it all day on the radio and of course Swedes and the resident Russian can’t understand why the U.S. doesn’t do something about its gun problem. And I can’t either, 15 years after the shooting on my own college campus.

I don’t really want to write any more about it, but Rooted Cosmopolitans have some words of wisdom.

My thoughts are with you, Hokies.

Edit: I guess I do want to write a little more about it. I’ve been avoiding reading too much news coverage because it can’t tell me anything I don’t already know. The particulars of the perpetrator are irrelevant, considering that this is a regularly recurring phenomenon in the U.S. I think I used to be much more into the “America is a sick society” explanation for these things, especially immediately after what happened to us at Simon’s Rock. After having travelled a bit, I think the “America is a sick society” explanation mostly applies to the gun lobby. People go off the deep end everywhere in this world, but the difference between whether a disturbed person stabs somebody or beats somebody up, or whether they manage to kill 32 people in a couple of hours has everything to do with the availability of firearms. Can we reduce violence in this world by working to create mentally healthier societies? To a certain extent. Can we reduce the amount of carnage people can create when they go nuts by making firearms difficult to get, as most of the civilized world has done? Absolutely. The American gun lobby is directly responsible for this horror.

Some organizations that are doing something about it:
Stop the NRA
Million Mom March
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
Brady Campaign

Lo those many years ago (7, to be exact), when I was working on Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign, for which transgression I will never be allowed to work in mainstream US politics (not that I want to anyway) because it is my fault that George W. Bush is president of the US (never mind the 48 million imbeciles who voted for him), my co-workers and I were out drinking after a late night at the office as was our custom. We were already in an advanced state of drunkeness when we somehow wound up sitting with some rather strange people who had gone to high school with one of us. One was a girl named Alice who kept smoothing her eyebrows with her pinky fingers and repeating that the “A” in her name corresponded with the “A” she got in honors English in high school.

Dedicated to Jonah Baker. If you’re out there, get in touch, eh? That goes for all you Naderites.

I have a blogger pet peeve. Maybe I’ve even been guilty of this myself at some point (need to check the archives to be sure) but I hate it when people write vague things in their blogs like “there’s stuff going on in my personal life” and then never say anything else about it. That’s like, teasing, people! We read blogs to get the juicy details! If you’re not going to write about it, don’t say anything at all! Or if you’re trying to blow off steam, make a secret blog (even though such blogs aren’t very secret).

The downstairs neighbor has been listening to Coldplay nonstop for two days. I don’t even know who lives down there, but now I’d guess it’s a guy in his mid-20s who’s just been dumped. And right before Christmas. How sad. I feel like I should bring him some cookies or a six-pack or something. Like I said, I don’t actually know who lives down there. Could be anybody. But two days of Coldplay is a cry for help, in any case. If you ever hear me playing Coldplay more frequently than once in a four-month period, bring me some cookies AND a six-pack.

For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to put some of the money I earned in Russia in my US bank account rather than just change it all into Swedish kronor directly. I thought it was better not to have so much cash, etc.

When we got here the exchange rate was about 7.2 kronor to the dollar. It hit a high of 7.4 in early October, at which point I should have taken all my money out of the bank. But I waited. And the dollar started to sink. “It’s OK,” I thought. “It will go back up again.” But no, it got worse and worse. And I kept thinking, “should I take money out now or wait and see what happens?” I waited. This is what happened: the rate is currently 6.88. Aaaaaaaaah!

We can live another month or two on the cash we have here, but at some point we’re going to have to use the money in the account, and I hope the dollar gets better by then. Do any of you know anything about economics and how likely that is to happen?

All right, listen. I’m a union supporter. My dad’s really involved in the union movement. I also understand that rank-and-file members don’t always see what their unions do for them and resent their union dues. I fear I’ve become one of those people.

Here in Sweden, membership in the student union is compulsory for all students. It costs 310 SEK a semester — about 50 bucks. Without your student union card, you can’t take exams. The student union card also entitles you to student discounts on Swedish trains. Beyond that, I really don’t understand what the student union does. At the presentation for international students at the beginning of the year, the student union representative could only manage to repeat “We have a pub” over and over again. But you have to pay 30 SEK ($4.25) just to enter this pub if you’re a member (more if you’re a guest)!

All right, so instead of just bitching, I did a little research and came up with this info page from the Swedish Institute. They say that “compulsory membership fees have allowed them to improve conditions for students”. That’s pretty vague. They also say that student unions are in charge of accomodation at some universities. Here in Falun, though, the housing is arranged through the municipal housing authority.

Education in Sweden is free and $50 per semester is a small price to pay for a master’s degree. And I want to believe that the student union is there to advocate on behalf of the students if necessary, in which case I’m happy to contribute my bit. It would just be nice to know that our student union was doing something besides running this lame pub.

We celebrated international Thanksgiving yesterday. There were two Americans (including me) two Swedes, two Germans, a Canadian and a Russian. Turkey and pumpking pie filling are hard to find in Sweden, so there was chicken and apple pie, but other than those elements it was pretty authentic.

After announcing the end of autumn a few weeks ago, I failed to mention that we had only one more minimal snowfall after that, and the snow has slowly disappeared over the past couple of weeks. The temperature has been hovering around 0 (that would be 32, for you Fahrenheit people). Today, it’s downright balmy out.

On the other hand, it has been pretty gloomy. Today there has been some sun and blue sky, but for most of the past three weeks it’s been really dense cloud cover. Sometimes it’s foggy, too. Combine this with the fact that it gets light out (I can’t say the sun rises, because we never see it) around 8:30 a.m. and it starts getting dim at 2:30 p.m. (though not really dark til 3:30 or 4) and you feel like you never really had a day at all. We’re at the same latitude as St. Petersburg, so technically we get the same amount of daylight, but the weather and the fact that the sun rises and sets earlier here due to our being in the eastern end of our time zone really produces a different psychological effect.

For those who read Russian, here’s a sad story about a circus hippo who died recently after 27 years of service.

Zhuzha

I’m feeling a bit groggy today as a result of last night’s presentation by the Ukrainian and Czech students in my program, which turned into a party featuring Becherovka, horilka, Waragi, Russian vodka and Jim Beam. Being an international student is great!

OK, I know I write about alcohol a lot on this blog, but I don’t drink that much, especially not since leaving Russia for Sweden. This is only my second hangover since August.

Here’s an article on the perils of drunkenness.

Drunken elk drowns after falling through ice
Published: 23rd November 2006 12:05 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/5591/

AFP

Sophie said…
Hi, this is a bit of a random moment to ask this, especially since you’ve just moved, but I’ve been reading your blog a while and just lurking… I’m wanting to go to Russia, either Moscow or SPB this easter and do an intensive (fairly beginners level) language course for maybe 3-4 weeks, do you recommend the one that you went on?
thanks
Sophie

Yes, I would, actually. It’s really affordable, the teachers are good, the program is well-thought out, it’s easy to get a visa, the dorm is nice by Russian standards and it’s near the Gulf of Finland and a laundromat… here’s the link:

http://www.russian4foreigners.spb.ru/

I recommend going in the summertime, at least the first time you go to SPb!

This site’s quizzes are lamer than average, not to mention that the creator of this one was lacking in The Spelling and The Grammar, but it was too funny not to post.

You’d think that having a state monopoly and incredibly high taxes on alcohol would be enough to satisfy people that the government was doing its part to discourage excessive consumption, but it’s not enough for some…

Militant tee-totallers smash booze store
Published: 16th November 2006 14:04 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/5530/

Paul O’Mahony

Foreigners visiting Russia like to complain about customer service. It can be pretty horrible sometimes. Waiters and salespeople come across as rude, impatient, or just uninterested, and service can be unreasonably slow.

Russians (and others) who have been to the US like to retort that American customer service is irritating, overbearing, and fake. All the “can-I-help-yous” and “have-a-nice-days” and “my-name-is-Jenny-and-I’ll-be-your-waitress” and small talk and smiling seem quite absurd if you’re not used to it. And working in customer service can suck, with pressure to work fast, be nice, and pretend that “the customer is always right” (because, let’s face it, sometimes the customer is wrong).

As in so many things, Russia and the US are extremes. And, as in so many things, Sweden seems to have found the happy medium. Customer service here is helpful, efficient but not rushed, and devoid of emotion. They give you what you ask for, usually with just a nod of the head and a quiet “varsågod” (”you’re welcome” or “there you go”) and then it’s as if you disappear from their field of vision. Sometimes the American in me finds this a bit abrupt, and I stand there feeling a bit silly, like “is that all? Should I say something else? Did I piss them off?” But after a second I remember where I am, and I remember what it’s like in Russia, and I appreciate Sweden for, as always, being so reasonable.

Phew. The term paper that threatened to become a thesis is finished and submitted. I am relieved. I was co-writing it with my fabulous classmate Oleksandra (hi Oleksandra! :-)) and at one point we had almost 40 pages together. Now it’s a more reasonable 22.

Here’s a nice picture that’s on the cover of our paper.

Not procrastination, actually, just a break from this term paper I’m writing. Unlike my younger incarnations as a student, this time around I’m pretty good about not procrastinating. Instead, I’m getting anxious about writing this stupid paper because for some reason I feel it needs to be perfect, and of course, it can’t be, nor does it need to be. So, OK. I’m going to stop being anxious and just take this little coffee break (fika) and think about Aki Kaurismäki.

Until this weekend I think the only full-length Kaurismäki film I had seen was “Leningrad Cowboys Go America”. Not good credentials for someone who aspires to be a Finnophile (but I’ve also seen the Leningrad Cowboys live in concert, which must count for something). The DVD collection in the university library here is a bit heavy on the artsy classic Nordic filmmakers, as you might imagine, so on Saturday we randomly borrowed “Shadows in Paradise” (original Finnish title “Varjoja paratiisissa”), made in 1986, which has got to be one of the ten best films I’ve ever seen. It’s like, the perfect socialist realist love story, with absolutely deadpan humour. The stereotype about Finns is that they’re really intense and quiet, and the actors play up this stereotype really well. (The film does, however, negatively portray Swedish-Finns.) There is no unnecessary dialogue in this movie. I had to watch it again the next day.

So, now my goal in life is to see as many Kaurismäki films as possible. After I finish this paper, of course.

…and for the first time since I started spending lots of time abroad in 2002, I don’t feel completely embarassed to admit that I’m American.

From the article:

The Socialist Group in the European Parliament, the legislative body’s second-largest voting bloc, called the election results “the beginning of the end of a six-year nightmare for the world.”

“It took a while for the Americans to realize who they had elected and the damage he had caused in the world,” said Philippe Bas, 56, whose newsstand near a Paris subway stop was stacked with newspapers from across Europe carrying analyses of the election.

In Britain, the headline over the Guardian newspaper’s lead editorial read, “Thank you, America.”

The assignment was to read a letter about autumn from our teacher and write a response. (This is the teacher-reviewed version)

Falun, 5 nov 2006

Hej Julitta!

Tack för ditt brev. Jag var mycket intresserad att läsa om höstens traditioner i Sverige. Jag tycker att det är redan vintern! Det har snöat och jag har köpt en stor säck med chokladdryckspulver. Men i kalendern är det bara november, så jag ska skriva om hösten.

Du frågade om hösten i mitt land. USA är ett stort land med många olika klimat. Jag är född i staten New York i nord-östra USA, där är hösten kylig men angenäm, det regnar och solen skiner lika ofta. Staten New York är inte staden New York, och där har vi många träd. I Falun är träd för det mesta björkar och tallar, men i New York det finns lönnar, eker, och olika andra träd (men få björkar), därför är hösten annu mera färgstark.

Redan vet du om halloween. I Amerika är halloween för barn nästan lika trevlig som jul. De brukar klä ut sig och fordra sötsaker av grannarna. Det finns fester i skolor, och ”spökhus”, där kan man se häxor, monster och spöken. Vi gör lyktor av pumpor, det är mycket kul. I Amerika kan man åka till en bondgård och ta upp sin pumpa själv. Där är pumpor billiga, inte som i Hemköp!! Förra oktober var jag i Ryssland och arbetade i en förskola. Där visade jag barnen hur vi gör lyktor av pumpor. Barnen tyckte det var jättekult! Jag kan skicka dig några foto av det.

Du skrev om Alla helgons dag. Jag bor nära kyrkogården i Falun och såg lyktorna i fredags och lordags. Det vär vackert!

I Amerika hedrar vi våra döda i maj. Den helgen kallar vi ”Memorial Day” eller ”dag av minne”. Den dagen är särskilt för de som dog i krig, men man kan hedra andra slaktingar också. I Ryssland hedrar man döda i juni. Man kallar det ”Troitsa” och man lägger inte bara blommor på graven, men saker som de döda tyckte om, till exempel smörgåsar, vodka, och cigaretter (man förstår hur de dog!). Jag har också ett foto av det.

Jag tycker om hösten och jag är bedrövad att den är så kort i Sverige! I New York börjar det snöa vanligtvis i slutet av november, inte oktober! Men vintern är också bra. Jag tycker om att tända ljus, dricka choklad eller glögg (med alkohol!), titta på filmer, läsa eller lyssna på lugn musik och, i allmänhet, känna sig mysig. Då och då tycker jag om att åka skidor eller skridskor (fastän jag är inte så bra på det), men jag har ingen idrottsutrustning här i Sverige. Så ska jag stanna hemma och läsa svenska i vinter. Vad ska du göra i vinter?

Hjärtliga hälsingar,
Megan

They post a lot of funny and interesting (not to mention disturbing) stuff over at English Russia, but something about this post struck me as especially funny and especially Russian — turning an old printer into a bread box. This combination of computer geekiness and resourcefulness and pirozhki (mmm, pirozhki, how I miss you) fits in nicely with my fonder associations with Russia.

Some of my classmates have blogs, but only German ones:

http://schwedentagebuch.blogger.de/

http://svenska.blogger.de/

http://manuswelt.sonoris.de/

http://sverige.blogger.de/

Here’s one in French from here, but I don’t know the writer:

http://francoistornier.blogspot.com/

Since we moved from the dormitory into our own apartment, we don’t have a television. I’m not a big fan of TV, but I kind of think we should get one here — it’s good for helping us learn more about Swedish culture and language. Of course we wouldn’t watch any of the numerous American programs which are merely subtitled and not dubbed into Swedish!

Anyway, the main thing that I miss now that we don’t have a TV is the nicest reality show ever — Bonde Söker Fru, or “Farmer Seeks Wife”. They got a bunch of cute and humble farmers together, women from all over Sweden wrote them letters, and now they’re showing the process of them meeting. OK, the idea sounds a bit gross, but the execution is classy. Really.

It’s become one of the most popular shows ever. Here’s an article about it.
http://www.thelocal.se/5371/

I cast my first ballot in 1994, the year Mario Cuomo, one of the best governors ever, was defeated for re-election in my home state of New York. It’s been pretty grim ever since. This the best election result since I started voting — and the first election I didn’t vote in. Maybe I’m a bad luck charm.

A special hurrah for New York voters.

And Massachusetts

From The New York Times:

For the first time in memory, The New York Times is not endorsing a single Republican candidate for election to the U.S. Congress. Although Times editorials tend to agree with Democrats on national policy, we have proudly and consistently endorsed a long line of moderate Republicans, particularly for the House of Representatives. Our only political loyalty is to making the two-party system as vital and responsible as possible.

That is why things are different this year.

To begin with, the Republican majority that has run the House of Representatives - and for the most part, the Senate - during President George W. Bush’s tenure has done a terrible job on the basics. Its tax-cutting-above-all-else has wrecked the budget, hobbled the middle class and endangered the long-term economy. It has refused to face up to global warming and done pathetically little about America’s dependence on foreign oil.

Republican leaders, particularly in the House, have developed toxic symptoms of an overconfident majority that has been too long in power. They methodically shut the opposition - and even the more moderate members of their own party - out of any role in the legislative process. Their only mission seems to be self-perpetuation.

The current Republican majority managed to achieve that burned-out, brain-dead status in record time, and with a shocking disregard for the most minimal ethical standards. It was bad enough that a party that used to believe in fiscal austerity blew billions on pork-barrel projects. It is worse that many of the most expensive boondoggles were not even directed at their constituents, but at lobbyists who financed their campaigns and high-end lifestyles.

That was already the situation in 2004, and even then this page endorsed Republicans who had shown a high commitment to ethics reform and a willingness to buck their party on important issues like the environment, civil liberties and women’s rights.

For us, the breaking point came over the Republicans’ attempt to undermine the fundamental checks and balances that have safeguarded American democracy since its inception. The fact that the White House, House and Senate are all controlled by one party is not a threat to the balance of powers, as long as everyone understands the roles assigned to each by the Constitution.

But over the past two years, the White House has made it clear that it claims sweeping powers that go well beyond any acceptable limits. Rather than doing their duty to curb these excesses, the Congressional Republicans have dedicated themselves to removing restraints on the president’s ability to do whatever he wants. To paraphrase Tom DeLay, the Republicans feel you don’t need to have oversight hearings if your party is in control of everything.

An administration convinced of its own perpetual rightness and a partisan Congress determined to deflect all criticism of the chief executive has been the recipe for what we live with today.

Congress, in particular the House, has failed to ask probing questions about the war in Iraq or hold the president accountable for his catastrophic bungling of the occupation. It also has allowed Bush to avoid answering any questions about whether his administration cooked the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. Then, it quietly agreed to close down the one agency that has been riding herd on crooked and inept American contractors who have botched everything from construction work to the security of weapons.

After the revelations about the abuse, torture and illegal detentions in Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Congress shielded the Pentagon from any responsibility for the atrocities its policies allowed to happen. On the eve of the election, and without even a pretense at debate in the House, Congress granted the White House permission to hold hundreds of noncitizens in jail forever, without due process, even though many of them were clearly sent there in error.

In the Senate, the path for this bill was cleared by a handful of Republicans who used their personal prestige and reputation for moderation to paper over the fact that the bill violates the Constitution in fundamental ways. Having acquiesced in the president’s campaign to dilute their own authority, lawmakers used this bill to further Bush’s goal of stripping the powers of the only remaining independent branch, the judiciary.

This election is indeed about George W. Bush - and the Congressional majority’s insistence on protecting him from the consequences of his mistakes and misdeeds. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and proceeded to govern as if he had an enormous mandate. After he actually beat his opponent in 2004, he announced he now had real political capital and intended to spend it.

We have seen the results. It is frightening to contemplate the new excesses he could concoct if he woke up next Wednesday and found that his party had maintained its hold on the House and Senate.

Strong words from The New York Times. You may think it’s a left-wing rag to begin with, but if that’s the case, you’re probably a right-wing nutjob. From my far-left point of view, the New York Times has always been very measured and moderate. If they’re saying this, you know it’s serious.

Those of you in the US, don’t forget to vote tomorrow, and not for no Republicans neither.

Did I vote absentee, you ask?

No.

Am I a lazy hypocrite, you ask?

Erm… not entirely. I’m still registered to vote in Washington, DC, which has no voting representation in Congress, and where the mayoral race is decided in the Democratic primary, and I don’t even know what’s going on with the school board or the ANCs or anything since I haven’t lived there in two years.

Should I still have voted to show my support for the Greens’ candidate for Mayor and Shadow Rep and so forth?

Yes, I should have, and it really didn’t occur to me until it was too late.

Don’t follow my example. If you’re in the US, get out and vote tomorrow.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for awhile, but am just now getting around to it.

Living in a small town in Sweden after living in a big city in Russia is… not a culture shock exactly. Going in the other direction would be a shock, going in this direction is like falling into a pile of feathers or something.

In St. Petersburg I felt like I always had to be on edge. I once had a wallet stolen, a very common occurrence in SPb, and another time had a knife pulled on me in a residential elevator. Here I feel like I could leave my wallet in a public place for a few hours and it would still be there when I got back.

To be fair to Russia, these things happen all the time in the U.S., too, particularly in Washington, DC, where I lived for 5 years. I had a bike stolen there once (though I found it the next day). Bike theft in DC is epidemic. You have to have at least one Kryptonite lock, preferably two, and make sure you lock both your wheels and take your seat with you if you have a nice bike.

In contrast, let’s look at a Swedish bike lock:

You swing this little pin around and it makes it so the back wheel can’t move. A thief couldn’t ride away on the bike without breaking the lock (which wouldn’t be too hard), but could pick it up and carry it somewhere. But they just don’t. Look at hundreds of bikes locked up in the town square in exactly this manner (and some of them not locked at all):

This isn’t just a small-town phenomenon either. My first time in Stockholm a few years ago I rented a bike and went biking with a local, and both bikes had these kinds of locks. If I had a really expensive bike in Stockholm I’d probably put a Kryptonite lock on it, and I did see a “lost bike” sign with a picture of a fancy bike here in Falun in September, but if you have an ordinary bike you don’t have to worry too much.

Now let’s look at the faculty mailboxes at the university.

All the locks have keys in them. Meaning, the keys are left in them, so they’re not locked. All of them. All the time. So faculty leave messages and articles for their students there. Anyone can just go into anyone’s mailbox. It was like that at my college in the US, too, but I think they’ve changed it now and anyway, there we had 300 students; several thousand students use this campus.

Of course, everything isn’t 100% perfect here. There’s a nice kitchenette for students with microwaves, so you can bring leftovers from home or buy a frozen meal from a vending machine and heat it up, if you don’t want to spend so much money on eating at the campus cafe.

There are also some refrigerators where people put stuff that they bring from home. One morning I put a yogurt in the fridge, and by lunchtime it was gone. I was traumatized. How could this happen in Sweden?

That was a minor incident, though, and overall I am thoroughly enjoying the absence of stress that comes with a culture of trust. Part of it is just a small-town thing, part of it a Scandinavian tradition. Like the people that put the following outside their house in September:

Every morning it was filled with apples for passersby. Since the passersby were mostly international students coming from the dorm, the sign was in English. Isn’t that nice?

Last weekend I was horrified to find people playing American football in the university “stadium”. There are reasons why I don’t miss the US, folks, and football is one of them.

The transition to winter was fast! We were enjoying an extended golden autumn, and now the landscape is transformed.

The view out the window yesterday morning, after a day’s snowstorm:

Our neighborhood looks different now.

Downtown too.

It’s been chilly but clear the past few days. I thought we’d make it to November without snow. But when I opened my eyes this morning I was greeted with this view:

It’s like, a foot deep on the ground. It looks really lovely. But now it’s going to be like this for the next 5 months at least!

For contrast, here’s the same view the day before:

Source code here. Info on Google Bombing here. Thanks to a certain unnamed blogger.

–AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl

–AZ-01: Rick Renzi

–AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth

–CA-04: John Doolittle

–CA-11: Richard Pombo

–CA-50: Brian Bilbray

–CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave

–CO-05: Doug Lamborn

–CO-07: Rick O’Donnell

–CT-04: Christopher Shays

–FL-13: Vernon Buchanan

–FL-16: Joe Negron

–FL-22: Clay Shaw

–ID-01: Bill Sali

–IL-06: Peter Roskam

–IL-10: Mark Kirk

–IL-14: Dennis Hastert

–IN-02: Chris Chocola

–IN-08: John Hostettler

–IA-01: Mike Whalen

–KS-02: Jim Ryun

–KY-03: Anne Northup

–KY-04: Geoff Davis

–MD-Sen: Michael Steele

–MN-01: Gil Gutknecht

–MN-06: Michele Bachmann

–MO-Sen: Jim Talent

–MT-Sen: Conrad Burns

–NV-03: Jon Porter

–NH-02: Charlie Bass

–NJ-07: Mike Ferguson

–NM-01: Heather Wilson

–NY-03: Peter King

–NY-20: John Sweeney

–NY-26: Tom Reynolds

–NY-29: Randy Kuhl

–NC-08: Robin Hayes

–NC-11: Charles Taylor

–OH-01: Steve Chabot

–OH-02: Jean Schmidt

–OH-15: Deborah Pryce

–OH-18: Joy Padgett

–PA-04: Melissa Hart

–PA-07: Curt Weldon

–PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick

–PA-10: Don Sherwood

–RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee

–TN-Sen: Bob Corker

–VA-Sen: George Allen

–VA-10: Frank Wolf

–WA-Sen: Mike McGavick

–WA-08: Dave Reichert

…another story about Sweden from The Local.

Swedes think US ‘greatest threat to peace’
Published: 29th October 2006 12:37 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=5345

TT/The Local

Sweden ‘one of world’s worst polluters’
Published: 25th October 2006 10:25 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=5312

TT/Paul O’Mahony

This weekend we had what Kostia often calls in Russian “a full cultural program” (once when we were in his hometown and I suggested buying a watermelon, he said “ooh, we’ll have a full cultural program this evening,” so you can see how this phrase is taken very seriously).

Friday night we went to a hockey game. There’s another American studying here (she’s not in my program though, hence the solo Power Point presentation) who is a fundamentalist Christian and a hard-core tomboy (I hope she wouldn’t be offended by my saying that) and plays ice hockey on the Falun women’s team. Her team was playing a “friendly match” against a team of 11- and 12-year-old boys. The teams were, surprisingly, quite balanced and the final score was 3-3. Needless to say, it was one of those experiences you don’t really anticipate having, watching grown women play hockey against pre-teen boys.

Saturday night we had a housewarming party. Our little apartment was filled to capacity. My classmate from Japan brought two friends with her, both of whom were Asian-Swedish. The Bangladeshi-Swede said to me, “When I heard that there was an American-Russian couple here, I thought, they’re making world peace in a neutral country!” I hope that isn’t a sign that a new cold war is starting. American-Russian couplings really aren’t so unusual as to be symbolic anymore… or are they?

(By the way, the Power Point presentation went pretty well today, though people didn’t laugh as much as I expected. My Mexican classmate did a really kick-ass presentation.)

Oy. I’ve just spent the afternoon making a Power Point presentation about America.

Somebody got it into their head that the students in my program needed to make fun presentations about their country of origin. Which is fine for the Germans and Poles, there are like 10 each of them, but I’m the only American. Tomorrow I get to present with the Canadian and the Mexican. Three of us total from the Western Hemisphere.

As you can imagine, it’s very easy to represent a country of 300 million people, especially when I don’t live there on purpose. And thanks to cultural imperialism, what can I tell people they don’t already know?

Well, I tried to make it funny, at least. And we’re serving Mexican food, so hopefully that will make people happy.

I’m co-writing a term paper with a classmate from Ukraine, and yesterday after meeting about the paper we had lunch together. We were talking about some of the differences between Sweden and Russia/Ukraine, and all I had to say was “public toilets” and she started laughing hysterically.

This is the little hut next to our apartment building where the dumpsters and recycling bins are. It’s totally clean and not at all smelly. You could have a picnic in there. Somehow I feel that this is one of those things that could only happen in Scandinavia.

This is a sign that was up next to a parking lot that they’re repaving near the campus.

It says: No entry except for workers! Parents who let their children play at this construction site are responsible for accidents that cause injuries.

The sign was only there for a few days, though, and there wasn’t anything visibly dangerous around — just a large, flat, dirt-covered place. Given the retro look of this sign, maybe someone just put it up to be funny.

Here’s the view out our windows. I like it a lot.

Here’s a view of the neighborhood from the balcony. Unfortunately we don’t have our own balcony, but there’s one at each end of the corridor, on each floor.

And another view of the neighborhood.

Well, I managed to upload half the photos I wanted to, anyway.

Here’s our new building. It’s the most Soviet-looking building in Falun (really closely resembles the Stalin-era buildings in St. Petersburg, only much nicer and cleaner) so we feel at home.

We have a room and a kitchen. We’ve rearranged a bit since taking this picture, but here’s half the room…

… and here’s the other half.

Here’s half our kitchen…

…and the other half.

Still to come: views of the neighborhood, the woods we can see out our windows, and the very nice trash hut (really!).

This is the title to one chapter of a very good short introduction to Swedish, which can be found here. I think this is an extremely amusing title for something, but not as amusing as the next chapter: “Even More Things”.

I’ve tried to post some photos of our new apartment and neighborhood, but Blogger’s photo tool is being a pain, as usual. I know I should move this blog to some other host, but I hate making life any more complicated than it already is. In the meantime, you’ll just have to wait until Blogger is in a better mood.

Well, I’ve already blathered on about how good the new apartment situation is (except for that shower-in-the-basement thing). Oh, except that yesterday I did laundry in an actual washing machine for the first time in six months (Kostia’s place in St. Petersburg didn’t have one, and although the dorm did, the laundry room was really scary and we decided just to keep hand-washing things), and machine-dried them for the first time in almost 2 years (though Aunt Kelly and I had a very posh apartment by St. Petersburg standards, a clothes dryer would have been just too much). Ah, warm, fluffy laundry. In an odd coincidence, Kostia’s mom called yesterday to report that she had bought a washing machine. Not just a new one, but her first one. As you can see, laundry machines are still a luxury in Russia. No matter where I live, I will never take a clothes dryer for granted again.

Hooray! Kostia and I moved in to our apartment today! We were, in the end, a little sad to leave the dormitory — it was a nice community of international students. But we really like the apartment and the neighborhood a lot, and we’re so much closer to the university.

We went to the secondhand shop today to get kitchen basics. It’s a Salvation Army, but you can tell Falun’s an affluent town in an affluent country because everything is really nice. And it doesn’t even smell like old clothes. We got silverware, plates, bowls, pots and pans, lamps and chairs.

I’ll post some pictures soon. I should also post some pictures of our dorm that I took last week. Like I said, for a dorm, it was really nice. But there comes a point when one can no longer share a kitchen with other people, fruit flies, and dirty dishes.

Last week I started my very-part-time job. I say “very” because it’s an English teaching gig where I work only one day a month. The students do most of their studying over the internet and then get a half-day of intensive class time. Perhaps if the company I work for gets more clients in this region, I’ll have more work, but for now it’s just one day and some online support each month.

So last week I rented a car and drove to Bollnäs, a two-hour drive. Probably the trip could be made a bit faster, but fines tend to be pretty hefty here and I hate to think what a speeding ticket would cost, so I was very conscientious.

It was a nice group of students, a cute town, and a really beautiful drive.

Here’s the road:

Here’s Bollnäs town square:

Here are some things I saw on the way home:

Well, I don’t want “poopfish” to be the first thing you see during times like these.

I haven’t got much time to write today, so I’ll give you a link to Vilhelm Konnander’s moving tribute to Anna Politkovskaya and try to post some more links this evening:

Death & the Kremlin

Mari said…
Bajsfisk = shitfish. At least literally. I have no idea of its possible deeper meaning…?

Vilhelm said…
Being a native Swede/swede(?) I feel that I have a stylistic objection to the translation of “bajs” into shit. Shit would in Swedish rather be “skit” whereas “bajs”, I would say, has a softer connotation, namely that of poo. The distinction may be narrow, but I would argue that it is stylistically important. Metaphorically, one might imagine a “poo fish” whereas a “shit fish” seems abominable. “Bajs” is something a five-year-old would say, while “skit” is regarded more of a swear word. Studying Swedish, this, of course, belongs to the category “vital knowedge”.

Yes, it is indeed vital knowledge. Maybe I need to get a preschool job here — I learned much of this most important vocabulary in Russian at the kindergarten. Though, it is sometimes a relief to think that I may never have to hear anyone shout “ya pokakal!” or its equivalent ever again.

(Ya pokakal = I pooped. Also: bajs = kaka. Skit = govno)

For more on poop visit Jane

Oh god, and Alex. It’s like, the theme of the month.

Last weekend we went to Kopparberg, a small town that annually hosts one of the largest outdoor markets in Sweden. Most of the stalls offered cheap Chinese goods, but there was a special section which was supposed to look olde and Swedish:

The town has a very beautiful church…

…with a very unique and cozy interior.

Oh, and here’s the Eldorado potting soil.