A Requiem

Ok today is my unofficial last day. I have ahead of me today some gift shopping, candy shopping, lunch with a friend, a ridiculous day of lugging insanely heavy baggage, watching the Arsenal-Liverpool match this evening, and then finally figuring out how tonight and tomorrow morning will work. The weather is bad again today but a little less wet so that is good.

I was not able to find my Swedish wife so I could get a residence permit, but there is still a day left! Its a bit like getting a bachelors degree in the US. Basically the requirements are getting accepted followed by 5-7 years of showing up most of the time and then you are awarded a certificate! That seems a lot easier than all the other routes of getting here, i.e. getting a job, going back to school (which is easy, what is hard is getting funding..if you are an American).

All joking aside..and I was only half-kidding...its been a good week. I am starting to really get tired from the lag and traveling. It is finally hitting me in the last two days, but at least I made it through the first couple on euphoria. Part of it might be that I am exhausted with the prospect of the next day or so of traveling and not sleeping. The weather plays into it as well. It was beautiful the first couple days, and that is not normal for late fall in Scandinavia. The darkness wears me out too. I get tired early when the sun sets at 3:30 pm. The other day I was reading and the cafe got crowded so I figured that was the dinner rush, then I read for about an hour afterwards and figured it was about time to head home. When I got to the train station it was 4:30! I guess the 5 hour work day throws me off too.

Well, as a final wrap-up I had a great time. I wish I had more time but there is nowhere to draw the line on that. I have more resolve to get back. It will really hit me with the vertigo as I move 70 mph past the 5 million billboards in Houston..."wait a minute! slow down, I think I may have just seen the sky...nevermind, it was a sky blue billboard partially covered by the other two billboards."

There were a few things I would have liked to have done. I wish I could have gotten some more speaking in, I wish I could have gone to Djurgården which is a big park, I would have liked to have gone up to the university, I also would have liked to have gone to the little "canal town"...Södertälje, and I wish I could have seen some friends. This is probably my last post unless I decide to use the pay net at the airport and I almost certainly won't so hej då!

Yummy

I have had strawberry yogurt for every breakfast back here (I love the yogurt up here, but its a bit better in Denmark). For lunch everyday I have had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with an apple...except yesterday which was smörgås dagen of course! And it was awefully tasty (jätte smaklig!). In fact, I think I will have one tomorrow too before I have to go. For dinner everyday I have eaten green beans and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I am actually getting a bit tired of pb and j. I am kind of craving brussel sprouts (speaking of liking disgusting food!!) but I will hold off.

Update

"En sill" means herring...hence "sillar" is the plural form of herring and my worst fears are nearly confirmed. "Salta sillar" must be candy flavored like salted herring. That's just wrong.

Jag är Jätte Trött

I think the short-term traveling is catching up to me. I am exhausted. The weather is terrible today cause its just above freezing...so rather than snow we have rain at 35 degrees. It should turn to snow as the front passes. As I look out the window at the dark, cold and rainy day I just feel like crawling back into bed for a few more hours...and I just might. Of course, my bed is a couch in the living room so that plan is hinging on whether or not the other two people living here are going to either sleep late or go somewhere.

I got most of the different candies I needed to get yesterday and the final one may not exist. In a strange turn of events I decided to have a piece of "salta puffar" and found by the end of the day a few pieces later that I actually kind of liked it. That was inevitable after nearly two years of making fun of it. Salta puffar is salt licorice of course..."puffar" must mean "puffs"...-ar is a plural ending...salta is salty when modifying a plural noun...so "salty puffs." The last thing I need to get is "salta sillar" and I do not know what sillar means. I have never had salta sillar and I will never try it. It is a salt licorice also, but in the shape of a fish. Given that another Nordic "delicacy" is pickled herring, I do not even want to imagine that it is possible that siller combines the two. That just couldn't be the case...I don't need to find out though.

Today I may just go to an art gallery. I want to do something free. I also have gift shopping to do cause I saw some things yesterday while candy shopping. All of this will be miserable if the weather does not clear up or change to snow...but it may mean that the pedestrian roads will not be very crowded.

I am on my last two full days...tomorrow is going to be really rough for several reasons. Due to the limits of public transport it makes no sense to come all the way back to this apartment just so that I can get up at 1 am Monday to try to start lugging things around from bus to bus in the freezing cold. So I will stay at either the train station or airport...I likely won't be able to sleep, but maybe I will be able to sleep on the way home as a result.

It is also going to be a feat worthy of write-up in the annals of history to try to make my connecting flight in Paris. I have a 45 min. lay-over. For those of you who have never flown into Charles De Gaul it goes a bit like this. You are slated to land at gate 2E or something, and on the off-chance that you actually do...you do not really land there. You land somewhere east of Berlin basically and then get on a bus that drives you to the gate. All joking aside, this bus can take 20-30 min. to get you to your gate after you land. Getting through the airport is rough as I have said, and then you have to recheck security. You have to cut in front of the line and make all the French people mad if you want to make your flight. Last time I got to the gate as boarding was going on so its going to be tight.

I also just hate lugging all this stuff around. I have to walk down the mountain that my old apartment is at to get to the train station. Both my bags are big so I cannot stack them. I think I will pay the 10 dollars to lock them at the train station on Sunday so I do not have to pull them through Stockholm all day. I am supposed to meet a friend that afternoon who has been out of town this week. That will be nice to have one pleasant aspect in what will otherwise be a very rough day.

In the end I am also just sad to be going. I love it here. It is such a nice change of pace. Everything in the US now is so stressful and then you add to that the hustle and bustle of US society and that just makes it worse. You are having a rough run of luck and to top it off you have to drive everyday past a hideous kaleidoscope landscape of billboards, shopping centers, etc. It feels a bit like living in a filthy room all the time whereas Stockholm is that refreshing feeling of having just done a thorough cleaning, put on some nice music, and sat down on the couch to look in awe at how comfy and roomy your once cluttered life can be. I was also not able to see all my friends and being this close without being able to just makes me sad. Anyway, back to the couch for a dark, cold nordic nap!

The Cartel

Alright I am off to centrum and the many adventures and suprises that await me there! Today should be largely uneventful. I may go get a sandwich at a place I enjoy (yup, smörgås...med utan bordet! så det är inte "smörgåsbord"...ganska "smörgås" :).

I also have to continue my impromptu role as international candy trafficker. My Swedish friend in Houston wants some candy, and you guessed it! Heavily salted licorice!! I will pick up some extra so people can get a feel for this truly bizarre phenomenon. Of all the ridiculous things Nordic people have believed in; beserkers, shape-shifters, dragons, having a pluralist socialist society...the idea that salted licorice tastes good, or is even palatable for that matter, ranks high on the list. Don't take my word for it...give one piece a try.

I will also try to get some pictures today of the unfrozen Stockholm since it is supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow. Then tomorrow I can take the "after" shots if the snow comes through...I am hoping it does. I would hate this to be the first span of time I have spent in Stockholm that it didn't snow...it just wouldn't feel right.

Flera Om Mina Vänner

Today I finished all my packing and then left the apartment for the city around 3:30, as the sun was setting!!! I was just going to go to the cafe since it was getting too dark for pictures. Most of the people I know here work at the cafes because when I lived here I spent 14 hours a day between them and the Royal Library working on my dissertation. I was happy to find that many of them are still working at the two cafes I have been to.

Mostly though, today was an opportunity to get reacquainted with a few of my oldest and best friends, my books of course. Another of my friends, this one is actually a human being, has called my relationship with my books "unhealthy." According to her I "absolutely have to end up becoming a well-known writer or thinker, otherwise traveling half way across the world to safely steward home a stack of books starts to look like run-of-the-mill obsessive-compulsive behavior." This friend knows crazy when she sees it too, she is Norwegian and Norway suffers from collective national madness. Any place where heavily salted licorice can gain near universal praise has to be suffering from some kind of collective delusion.

"Just try one more piece, its an acquired taste."

"Can I at least wait until the nausea I acquired while you forced me to eat the last five pieces recedes before I get back to acquiring a taste for it!?"

In other news, I was watching a documentary on icebergs this morning while packing when I was hit with a brilliant insight. It must be that Scandinavians developed the ice blue eyes and platinum blonde hair so that they could blend into icebergs and glacial outcroppings a long time ago. These are the only other places that such shades of white and blue are found existing in the world. It must have helped them hide from polar bears or something.

Speaking of great ideas, I have often told people that I think more clearly up here. Cold weather is conducive to productive thought. On the other hand, cold weather is clearly detrimental to life so this fits into the old paradigm of thinking or philosophizing as being at odds with life (think of Socrates willingly drinking the hemlock because after life he would be more fit to philosophize, or Montaigne and the quote that "to study philosophy was to practice dying"). I am by nature a very undisciplined and disorganized thinker, and these attributes are greatly heightened in warm climates. In cold weather I would need to have a tape-recorder constantly at hand to keep up with the pace of clear ideas that come to my mind. Perhaps it is the fact that cold restricts your blood flow and your brain operates on the oxygen carried to it through your circulatory system. In warm weather the blood flows freely and quickly through my veins, and with it the so-called mental product of my mind, gone as quickly as it comes and with as little trace as that left by a light breeze. In cold weather the restricted blood flow keeps the oxygen in my brain just a trace longer and allows me to sustain a thought a little bit longer. So my thoughts are less scattered and they freeze into "concepts" more frequently. Conceptual thinking is the product of "reason," and the production and clarification of concepts is the aim of philosophy. Of course there must be a balance because too much freezing of thought produces worn-out and rigid concepts, which manifest themselves in less lively prose...the proper balance of life and death, though more of the latter. Ahh, this is precisely the kind of terrible scientific theorizing that arises from thinkers trained in the humanities!

I Sverige Igen!

Well I am back! Only for a few days unfortunately. So I will begin by re-capping my trip (I have to relearn the punctation on this keyboard so bear with me). The flight was the second worse of my life...coming a very distant second to my first flight to Europe. It was not the flight itself so much as my inability to sleep, general discomfort, and insanely wretched stomach sickness developed mid way through.

It was a very turbulent flight, but that did not really bother me. Air France was comfortable and pleasant as usual. I always get stomachaches on international flights, ok I get stomachaches everywhere, but international flights are among the worse. Its the combination of anxiety, eating, and sitting still and upright for 10 hours that does it to me. On the flight to Paris it was just generally nagging stomach pain, but on the one to Stockholm from Paris it was intense pain followed by the requisite frequent trips to the bathroom. As for the lack of sleep, that just happens from time to time but is never pleasant when it does.

I sat next to an oversized Italian man who drank about a gallon of vodka, and while he was rather nice, he was more than "boisterous" the entire time...as Italians tend to be. It would not have been bad had it been for 5, 6, even 7 hours...but at nearly 9 it was rough. The same goes for the overflow of his body that shared my seat with me the whole way.

I had a hard time making the connecting flight at De Gaul as well because the airport is organized like a labyrinth with misleading signs, and the French are more insane than we are about security checks...a hint to my friends in France, design your airport so connecting passengers do not have to re-enter the general population in order to get to their flight and you will not have to re-check everyone of them before they can board...but, hey, it would not be France if it were not a little inconvenient. If it were England it would be more chaotic, they would charge you for every breath you took while you were waiting, and you would be accompanied by loud, obnoxious, horse-faced drunks the entire time. Arlanda airport in Stockholm has a new policy called a "silent airport," which means that instead of the cacaphony of incoherent messages delivered without end in a series of languages they post messages on digital boards. One more attempt by the Swedes to make their existence so peaceful that it slides off the other end of "existence" altogether.

With that here we are, in Sweden! It is just as wonderful as it was when I left minus about 12 hours of daylight and 40 degrees Fahrenheit. When I got in I was unable to contact my old flatmate and I was operating without sleep, winter clothes and with a crippling stomachache...I needed coffee of course. So I dragged my bags to one of my favorite cafes in Stureplan and prepared for 7 hours of reading and trying to stay awake while I waited for my flatmate to get home (it would turn out that her phone was not working). It was actually very pleasant out, probably low 50s or high 40s, but very sunny so comfortable. I scoffed at the silly locals in winter jackets, scarves, hats and gloves (although people look very classy in winter clothes and Swedes need little help as it is given that they are probably the world's most naturally beautiful people). Here is a bit of advice for you lone warrior travelers out there...if the locals do something there is often a reason for it. Around 4 pm when the sun went down that reason became more than evident.

Back to the cafe though, and back to changing paragraphs whenever I feel like it and with little regard for linguistic convention. I cut quite the odd figure in there being underdressed and carrying two empty suitcases. I was dressed nicely, don't get me wrong I always am here, but the jeans, button-down shirt and blazer were not becoming the weather at all. So I figured that since I was already offending the hyper-conformist tendencies in Sweden I would do the ultimate social sin and, god forbid, talk to someone I don't already know!!! It was going to be a revolutionary or seditious act for sure, but I was tired of pumping worthless American money into phone calls and I needed to see if someone would let me use their mobile phone. I was once told by a Swedish friend that she thought that one should not just start talking to someone they do not know because it invades their "social space"...only in a big country of only 15-20 people, like Sweden, does such an idea of "social space" take on that kind of acreage...leaving aside the fact that this makes initially acquiring friends a logical absurdity. Here is a trick about Sweden, sometimes Swedes can seem a bit cold or stand-offish but if you take a chance and talk to them you will find that there are no nicer people in the world. So of course someone let me use their phone and even came later and asked before leaving if I would like to use it again.

As I mentioned, my flatmate's phone was not working, so I could not get in touch with her. It eventually came to the inevitable hike back to the apartment on a leap of faith that somebody would be here. At this point the cold was nearly unbearable and the walkways had iced-over so the path was treacherous to boot. Ok, I will not even bother trying to make this part exciting...I got home fine and she was here to let me in. I slept like a baby and I am near finished packing.

I am going to give some things away to "charity"...assuming there is someone in this country who is not living an upper-middle class life as it is...maybe they will ship it back to America and I will see someone sporting it by where I live where ethnic-cleansing, oops I mean "re-gentrification" or "urban-renewal," has pushed all the poor people (out of sight, out of mind...oh wait, the Democrats are back in power I guess so now we should get some righteous indignation to go with corrupt and ineffective government instead of just callous, corrupt and ineffective government). There are things I do not need like t-shirts, under shirts, sleeping shorts. I am also consolidating by putting cds, dvds, into my case and throwing out there individual cases. As it is, I have nearly all my clothes in one suitcase but I may spread them into two because the books are going to be too heavy for one bag. There are a lot more books then I had remembered. The skateboard is going to be a problem. I have to call Air France and see what the charge is, but I may have to find a friend who can hang on to it here.

Once I finish this I have a few days to try to enjoy life. I have emailed a few law firms and if they get back to me then maybe I will be able to meet with people. I suspect that will go one of three ways...1) they won't get back to me, 2) they will not be able to employ me unless I am bar approved, 3) they will not be able to employ me unless I take a local legal masters degree. I will also try to catch up with some friends, make new ones for no reason at all, and do a bit of sight-seeing and picture-taking.

My latest plan is to take the bar in NY so that I can work in NYC because its the best place besides DC (which is federal so covered by the NY bar exam) to use as an international point of departure. This approach is severely flawed because its so pricey and the test has such a low pass rate (I got in contact with old law school classmates and only 2 of them have passed the bar yet...about 10 have taken non-legal jobs and decided not to bother with the law anymore). Take this as opposed to say, taking a Swedish legal masters which would be free for me except cost of living, would defer my loans, and would make me eligible for employment during and after school and it is not really clear as to why I have chosen the former route. I guess I have no faith in getting a job at all anymore, and if I go to more school and then still cannot get a job then I am back to the miserable place I have been in. To take the bar is to drive out this never-ending lost cause to its final point. I am still extremely reluctant though because my chances of passing are very low and this would completely break my back financially if I do not pass. Again, I shake my head when I think that a country I am not even from will educate me for free and then make me eligible for work while in my country the debt just continues to grow and seems to be its own industry, to the point of requiring more money to be borrowed after school so you can take a nearly impossible test in order to get a job. God bless the USA! If I had known all this when I was younger I would have done things very differently...more recently I would have passed on the LSE and gone for free to a Scandinavian school to get my legal masters and employment eligibility...hmm, Sweden-finish American law school and take a free one-year masters or America-finish American law school and take a 5,000 dollar test hardly anyone passes so that you can be left wondering what to do after that...tough decision, I will certainly make the wrong one in keeping with the trend.

For now I am in a place I am happy in so I will forget about the crummy modern condition I have to live my life out in. Maybe I will get some clear thinking done, at the very least I will have a pleasant week. Jag älskar sverige mycket och jag ska flytta här någon dag!

Tjena!

Some things I am looking forward to:

1) Seeing my family
2) Working out
3) Getting my paperwork all handled to come back
4) Finishing my dissertation
5) Movie club with my little sister and buying new clothes with her...she is a hipster doofus so she can acquaint me with what the kids are wearing these days.
6) Working out with my brother if he has a membership...I am going to make you hurt! (and me too I think)
7) Going to College Station and using the library, having coffee at one of my favorite coffee shops in the world (and I have now had coffee in a lot of countries!), and eating at some places I like...maybe even an evening round of disc golf to wind down
8) Fresh salads...not having to hunt down food in Scandinavian grocery stores...I feel like a savage stalking his quarry in the darkened regions of a mystical wood
9) Hurricanes...while the rest of the country gets whipped into a frenzy by propaganda, I mean the news, I will paddle out and get a view from the angry sea
10) Seinfeld 6x a day with my dad
11) Eating lunch with my mom and half-listening to her never-ending pleas to turn me into a white collar zombie ;)
12) Having a phone and phone card again and maybe being able to talk to friends that I miss...including long lost surf buddies and the latest installment to the Norwegian Government outpost in Hungary!!

Hej Då

Its interesting writing in this thing now that nobody reads it. I can say whatever I want! I am dreading the next couple days. I actually cannot think of a worse stretch of time under my current situation than 14 hours on airplanes, 3-4 on busses, 12 in London airports, etc... I am also pretty sad about leaving Stockholm for so long, as I have mentioned. Its really deflating. Its not just that I like this place, a lot, its the whole thing about being uprooted and dislocated again. I was getting very comfortable for the first time in about a year and its not easy to pack up and throw it all into uncertainty again.

My life actually runs strongly against my impulses. I like a lot of constancy...it has to be interesting constancy, but I don't like rapid and frequent changes. So living in four countries in just under two years has gotten pretty miserable for me...I am just looking forward to getting situated here in Sweden and taking normal visits to places. Near a month in London a couple months ago was not normal, and I hated it. Two months in Houston is not normal either...I won't hate that anywhere near as much as I hate London though.

There was a stretch in college where I was crashing on various people's couches while I waited to finish and get on to the next phase in life. This was very uncomfortable to me...and this is my precedent for the last couple years...its like 2 years of being places I don't want to be and in living situations where I feel more like an unwelcome guest than a resident. I really enjoyed Copenhagen in the last couple months, but I could not have sustained my living conditions there as they were...I would have needed an proper apartment. I didn't like London a bit and I hated my apartment. I was more comfortable on friends' couches than I was in my own bed at my own apartment.

Now Stockholm...I am very happy in Stockholm. My thoughts have gone from staying here for a few years to staying hereindefinitelyy if I can pull it off. I am even thinking of bringing a surfboard out here when I come back so that I can get into that again when I get a job. Picking up surfing somewhere different for me is the equivalent of when the average herd-people get married and start a family somewhere...it means that I am committed to the long-haul here. I also like my living situation here...probably the best I have had since college.

I don't want people in Texas to take this as me not wanting to see them...cause I do...take it as me asking you to come spend three months on the floor in my apartment here in Sweden while I carry on my day-to-day life here. You will be basically left to your own devices and you will have a month or so of paperwork to fill-out which will determine if you can go home or if you have to spend anindefinitee amount of time on the floor in my apartment. Living out of a suitcase, in different cities all the time, staying long enough to make friends to say goodbye to, etc...I am exhausted with it. Its had a real impact on me too...I think I look exhausted. I don't even bother with people anymore because there is no sense in bringing people into my rent-a-life for a few weeks before the carpet gets pulled out again.

Trevlig Resa! To me I guess...

London :(

I have a psychological thing with this city now...Its absolutely beyond the cognitive capacities of the average person to understand how much I dislike London. Its to the point that even passing through is unbelievably unpleasant to me. I fly into one of its airports that is like an hour outside of the city. I think that big financial scam of a city planned ahead of time to have all of its local airports so far away that you have to pay for overpriced bus tickets after arriving to actually get to the city...in this case my bus ticket is almost as much money as my flight from Sweden to Sodom. I have to get to another of its airports like an hour outside the city. There is a bus that runs from the one airport to the other. It costs about 40 dollars and is 3-4 hours depending on what time you take it. So its cheaper and takes less time to fly from Stockholm to London then it is to get from one part of London to the other. I would say that this is really stupid, but thats a bit tautological when speaking of London. I will say though that this is the first time I have dreaded a flight to the US not because of the flight itself, or the fact that I have to leave where I am (more on this later)...I am dreading this flight because of the 12 hours I have to spend in London. I am not 100% thrilled about leaving Stockholm either...but for legal purposes this is necessary anyway so its no big deal. I am just tired of having to be in different places all the time. When you only stay in a country for a couple months it feels like a several month lay-over. You cannot begin a life, you cannot make friends and such because you have to leave for almost two months...so you may as well wait till you get back. Its this waiting to have a normal life, going on for nearly two years now, that I am so tired of. This has nothing to do with this particular trip to the US because it is necessary as I said...its the necessity in general of it that is so frustrating. When I get back here it seems like it will just be something else. I am like an abused dog at this point...I expect the worse-case scenario in all cases...I am used to not knowing anybody where I am, having no human interaction, etc...I am really ready for it to end. To stay in the same place for a couple years at least without one to two month trips to other places.

Mina Vänner

Got some cool news yesterday. My friends from London are coming into town. The guy who works for the NFL will be getting here tomorrow and staying for ten days for the European youth championships in American football. Could mean that I get to see a game or two as well. The other guy, who has recently moved to Dublin, is coming the following Friday for the weekend. We were all friends in London.

The budget is getting microscopic at this point though. I am fine to get through the next two weeks as I have been going, but getting through it with visitors is a different story. I have to start brainstorming some free and fun activities! I have told them that I really don't have the money to be doing much so they know...just have to convert some more English money to get a better idea. I was going to try to hang on to English money cause its more valuable, but its only two more weeks. At this point I am fairly certain that I will have nothing left when I get back to America because my rent for August to hold my apartment is 200 British pounds...I have 250 left right now. So I will not be doing anything when I get back to America...which is fine cause I don't want to.