Sweden

Mood: Tired but Happy
Theme Song: I don't have one right now... strange

Stockholm Airport - just loved that there was someone named "Wayne" shilling coffee in Sweden

I had my first trip to the Nordic region this week. I went to Stockholm for a quick one day meeting, and so I didn't get to see very much of the city (at all), but I do have some observations in general. The first being that it was COLD, and that there was already snow on the ground. The second being that the coffee could give Turkish coffee a run for its money - that stuff could power a diesel truck, it was so strong. Yummy, but whoo-wee!

• The cuisine is very healthy and much more delicious than I expected. I thought I might be stuck eating pickled herring and other weird stuff. Instead, I had an amazing dinner (spinach, walnut, Gruyere and pomegranate salad followed by delicious cod on a potato pancake type thing topped with morels and sweetbread) and then an amazing breakfast and lunch. The breakfast buffet at the hotel was like a dream come true - all the standard stuff like eggs and bacon and the standard grilled tomato (which is weird to me), but it also had lots of dried fruit, fresh yogurt and fresh fruit. There were cold cuts and smoked salmon and fresh nutty bread. It was fantastic! Lunch was grilled whitefish served over potatoes and topped with a rich tomato sauce - doesn't sound like it would work, but it did.
• The language is not as difficult to piece together as I originally thought. Swedish is a Germanic language, and so if you listen closely you will hear the similarities - but it is much more lyrical. I also love that there are three extra letters - the are all versions of our letter "a" - there's the a with the umlaut (two dots), the a with the circle over it, and an a with an accent mark (I think) - and they are pronounced like ooh, arrr and oaaarh. Ok, that's probably really wrong... but for the record I really like the circle on top a letter. It's my new favorite letter.




View between Terminal 4 and 5, Stockholm Airport


• If the airport is any indication, then I am very much going to like Swedish architecture and design. Lots of open spaces, clean lines and wood. Parts of it looked more like a museum than an airport.
• We did get to go out to dinner Monday night, and so I saw a very little bit of central Stockholm. It was very clean and very European. And by "European" I mean the architecture, the way the streets were laid out, the mix of old and new everywhere. Now that I think of it, it's very interesting. I can be in any city in America and I would be able to tell you instantly that it was the U.S.A. (and not because things are in English - even if there were just buildings and no signs I could tell). The same holds true for Europe. It just "feels" European. I'm going to have to ponder this and see if I can come up with a better description.
• One cool thing about Sweden is that they drive on the right side of the road! But it wasn't until I was in the taxi on the way back from the restaurant that it registered to me that I was sitting in what is normally the driver's seat in the UK. And then I started noticing that the highway was a decent size, and well-lit and the signs were above the road like back home... not off to the side or printed on the road itself. I must admit that I got a warm fuzzy happy feeling inside... things suddenly felt RIGHT again. Also cool in Sweden is that they roll with regular style credit cards - no PIN and CHIP nonsense. It felt like home to just swipe your card and go.





This is what Swedish looks like... I have no idea what this says... but imagine what it SOUNDS like ;)


• I flew SAS for the first time (Scandinavian Airlines) and nothing beats hearing all the safety information in Swedish. It sounded so weird because it's not a language you hear everyday. Like when I go to Germany or another European country, even when they make the announcement in their native tongue, I've heard enough German/Italian/Spanish that it doesn't strike me as odd. Even being on Singapore Airlines didn't sound very weird because they did everything mostly in English, with a bit of Chinese thrown in for good measure. And when I flew to Japan, they did dual announcements in Japanese and English - but again, I've heard enough Japanese that my brain went "oh, yeah, ok...Japanese". But when the flight attendant started speaking in Swedish, my brain was really confused. I kept trying to hear English words in what she was saying... I kept thinking "it sounds like a language..." but it made absolutely no sense. What is cool, though, is that Swedish and Norwegian and to a certain extent Danish are all very similar. So if you know one, you can sort of speak the others. Definitely between Sweden and Norway... very close.

I am very excited to go back again... I'll be visiting this region frequently for my new job, and I look forward to seeing more of Sweden, and seeing Norway and Finland and Denmark. I've already figured out that I'm going to schedule most of my meetings for Thursdays and Fridays so I can make a weekend of the jaunt and explore. I have a list of countries I want to see in my lifetime, and I'm slowly checking them off.

On a side note, and it was total coincidence, but I got through "Let the Right One In" (aka Låt den rätte komma in) by John Ajvide Lindqvist on my trip. Some of you may have seen the movie. The book was really, really good - and it was weird to be reading about Stockholm while actually being there. I enjoyed the connection so much that I think I'm going to try to make sure I bring books written by authors from the country that I'm visiting. Next trip is Spain... and I've already read Carlos Ruis Zafon, so I'm open to suggestions.

Federman out.

P.S. - did a quick day trip to Ireland last Friday. Saw Dublin airport, our local office, and the airport again. I can confirm that despite the financial troubles, Ireland is still standing, and the people still sound like leprechauns. ;)