Small Spring Problems

This last week it has been a wonderful warm and sunny spring weather. At some point I even think Sweden had the highest temperatures in Europe, which of course is not normal. It is much warmer than normal for the season. This means you face a number of small unexpected problems. Of course you want to sit out in a street café, but realise that there hardly are any. To set out a couple of tables and chairs outside your café or restaurant, before the first of April, you need a special permit! Another thing you want is to enjoy a refreshing ice cream. Then you might end up with a piece that is more ice than cream, as you never know if your ice cream is from this season or has hibernated the whole winter in a less temperature stable freezer. Uack!

Standard small town

Today I made a short visit to the dreaded small town earlier mentioned. Hmmm… was rather interesting. I survived though!

Hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t seen a Swedish small town, but for anyone who has, the pattern is familiar, big empty square, same shop chains as everywhere Konsum, Fonus and Systembolaget (in this case next door neighbour to the Salvation Army!) a slow pace of life and an impressing amount of old people with walkers!









To its advantage today was a very warm and sunny spring day, which makes any place look a little more pleasant, but still…



There are definitely some parts of the town that are very idyllic. Or as friends of mine would call it; it is an "idyllajävel".



What really struck me was the amount of old ladies with walkers. But as a friend later commented; those are probably the only people up that early in the morning without any particular place to go, so they might not be representable for the whole population of the town.

Women and shoes

Sometime I just hate my self for doing stupid things. Today I did something stupid, and was angry with myself, but then I was surprised how much support I got fot it anyway.
For four days I have been thinking about a pair of shoes I first saw in a shop in Zwolle. I absolutely don't need them and I don't really have money to spend on more shoes right now, but I liked them!
Anyway, I tried to be sensible and did not immediatly buy them. The day after I tried them on in Utrecht again, but still hesitated. Maybe one does not have to buy everything one likes, i thought! The day after that I had another look at them in Amsterdam, but still did not buy them. Yesterday I found out that my flight back to Stockholm today was not departing 12.00 as I thought but 14.20. Excellent I thought! That is a sign! I will buy the shoes. Leaving Ilpendam in time to go to the shop in Amsterdam and buy them before going to the airport I felt fine and happy about my decision. Unfortunatly I did not remember exactly where the shop was and coming out from the wrong direction from the Central Station I ended up in the very wrong place. I realised that and started walking back to where the shop must be. I did not have a map, but was dragging my suitcase with me so it took me quite long time to come back to the right street. I also realised I was running out of time, but at this point my stubbornness had taken over and I was not ready to give up my shoes. Finally I got the shoes and surprisingly they were 10 Euros less in this shop so I was happy. I took the tram back to the station but was very well aware of that I was short on time. Well to make the story a little shorter, I got the shoes but missed my plane!
Fortunately I did not have to buy a new ticket but they just rebooked me on a (much) later flight. I think this is due to the understanding KLM-staff! At the check-in and at the ticket couter I met nice women who completely understood my situation and found it quite natural that you can miss a flight because you have to buy shoes. "Women and shoes" said one of the nice ladies and smiled. So maybe I am not such an untypical women after all! :-)

Cleaning out my closet?

So, is there any statistical measure of how many clothes an average person needs? I actually decided to try to bring some order in my closet and yesterday while taking all clothes out (and putting most of it back again!) I counted the pieces of clothes I have. I somehow feel it is quite a lot. At least I got tired after having taken care of only one of my three closets. In this one closet I found:
20 knitted jumpers
13 cardigans
4 polo-/turtle neck sweaters
20 t-shirts
9 jumpers/tops
9 skirts
11 pair of jeans
7 pair of other trousers
Leisure and sports wear not counted!

And besides this I have two other closets like this one, packed with shirts, skirts, suites, dresses, jackets and trousers, a chest of drawers which contains most of my tops and t-shirts and an unknown number of cardboard boxes full of clothes in the basement of my parent’s house. Also not counted are the clothes just being washed or waiting to be washed (i.e. the clothes I actually use the most) and the clothes I keep in a big walk in closet at my parent’s place.
It seems quite a lot, doesn’t it? Is it normal? I have no idea. I just know I find it very hard to throw or give away any of my clothes, even though I am fully aware of that I only use a fraction of them. Maybe I would need one of those styling experts that come home to you and just pick clothes out of your closet (and give you new nicer ones!) A friend told me, however, that that is pretty normal to have a lot of clothes that you don’t use. Apparently the clothes in your closet fall under a rather general 80-20 rule, which means you only use 20 percent of them. Or how was it Karin?

The friendly dentist problem

I just cancelled an appointment with my dentist. In a way that should be a very normal thing to do, as I really can not make it that day, but I also told them I don’t want to come there for a while and that felt a bit strange. The thing is she wants to remove a wisdom tooth and I don’t want to let her do that. At least not right now. I have absolutely now problems with it now. I don’t say she is wrong when she says I will get, but I am fine now and as it is so extremely expensive to go to the dentist it is just not on top of my priorities right no. Let’s deal with the problems when they are problems. But I have another problem to: I started going to this particular dentist quite recently and I am quite satisfied and she and her husband whith whom she is working, are both extremely nice, but I have the feeling they are even more expensive than other dentists. Therefore I have considered to change and to try finding another dentist, but that is not so easy to tell them, as they are so nice. And here I discovered a problem I was not aware of: I don’t want to find my dentist nice! I don’t want to like my dentist as a person! I want her/him to do a good job, but I will still hate going to the dentist so I don’t want them to be my friends. At least not unless they are such good friend they give me a huge discount!

Modern Stalking

It is amazing what Google can do for stalkers! Not that I am stalking anyone, nor even googling people regularly, but recently I was sitting in front of my computer and was a bit bored and somehow came to think of an old ex-boyfriend. “Hmmm, I wonder what he is doing now” I thought and then I just tipped in his name in Google. I did not find any certain information about him, not like he had a private homepage or so. I did not even find a picture to prove that it was really the person I was looking for and not just another with the same name. But I did however find traces of him and they were clear enough to make me sure it was him. I found his name on the homepage of his work and that made sense. Not that he was working there those 15 years ago I knew him, but I think he mentioned that is what he would like to do. I also found some advertisements he had submitted in a local paper, all addresses pointed to the place where he used to live, these ads told me what sports he is (still) doing and from them I could also tell he and his girlfriend have three kids. From another advertisement a year later, I could guess they are not planning more children as he was selling some baby equipment… Then it got almost scary and I stopped googling. It felt as if I was sneaking into someone’s life and I felt uncomfortable. I am happy there is nothing to be found about me at Google. You will not even find this blog!

International Women's day

By the way, before this day ends I will have to make some comment on the fact that it is International Women's Day.
Not that I really know what to think about the fact that there is such a day, as I think every day should be women's day. Just as much as they are men's day or children's days. But anyway, as there are still quite some unjust and unequal treatment of the sexes I send a thought to all you intelligent, strong, independent, brave, modern and smart people -women and men - out there, who have the guts and energy to stand up for equal rights. Especially of course for all the women how still sometimes face themselves put in second place after a less intelligent, strong, independent, brave, modern and smart man, whose only exclusive quality is that he is male. You go girls! Fight on! Don't give up!

Shadow Sculptures

When I was in Malmö recently, I visited a gallery in the very fancy building Turning Torso. http://www.gallerimiva.com There I found some very nice sculptures (and very appropriate for the building!). They are made by the artist Randy Cooper and are bodies/torsos made of metallic cloth. http://www.randycooperart.com/galleries.asp?id=187
The very fascinating thing about them are the shadows the cast, therefore they are called Shadow Sculptures.
So if anyone would like to give me some nice present any time, this is a good tip! :-)

Riots??!!

It is fascinating that it always seems to be riots in Copenhagen when I am there. I don't know whether it is because there always are some kind of riots or if I just have been there too often lately, but I can assure you: I didn't do anything!!
We were not even caught by the police and did not notice anything..

Semmeltårta!

I will write this post in Swedish because it is about a phenomenon so Swedish you will not understand it unless you are Swedish anyway!

Jag vill nämligen skriva semmeltårtans lov!

Ja, jag gillar semlor och tycker att de är en av de få bra sakerna med den här årstiden, men semmeltårtan är faktiskt ännu ett snäpp bättre. Jag har ju vetat att de finns länge, men det är först i år jag upptäckt deras förträfflighet. Tidigare har jag nog tyckt att de är ett onödigt modernt påfund (ja, jag kan vara lite konservativ ibland jag också). Men det är ju fantastiskt smart! Eftersom man skär en lagom stor bit så kan man bestämma själv hur mycket eller lite man vill ha och slipper därmed den där äckelmätta känslan som man ibland kan få efter att ha tryckt i sig en hel semla. Dessutom blir det mindre andel torr bulle per portion eftersom man skär den i delar. Helt strålande! Ok, nu kanske en semmeltårta inte är något man sticker iväg och köper till sig själv, men är man några stycken så... Den räcker ju dessutom ett tag och så länge inte grädden blir äcklig betyder ju det att man kan gå och mumsa på semmeltårta längre! :-)

To blog or not to blog...

For being a blogger myself, I read very few other blogs, partly because whenever I do I feel like stop blogging myself. Either I find other people’s blogs so much better than my own, which makes me feel inferior and wonder why I am doing this; or they are so pretentious they just make me tired; or I find the other blogs so extremely bad and nerdy that I start to wonder if mine is too. Nevertheless, I will keep doing it for a while still.

However, the last couple of days, there has been a massive media debate about the blog of Sweden’s minister for foreign affairs, Carl Bildt. He has been criticized for using his blog to vent personal opinions on foreign policy and other issues in a way that would not be suitable for a person in his position and also for using it for spreading information without having to answer to the critical questions of journalists. Therefore I had to read his blog today and some of the comments there. I must say, I don’t understand what the fuss is about. Isn’t blogging just about giving a personal view on things? And I am quite sure he is smart enough not to reveal any state secrets on his blog. And isn’t a blog a perfect way to communicate directly to those interested, without the filter of not always very objective and unbiased journalists? Because I can not imagine that he would stop talking to journalists completely.

With all respect for some journalists, I have to say that many journalists and media in general have lost credibility. They seem to see themselves as a purpose of it’s own, never to be questioned themselves. Questioning a journalist sees to be the worst thing you can do sometime.

Without any other comparison between my blog and Carl Bildt’s blog, I see we have one thing in common; he started writing in English but has shifted to Swedish after some consideration. I have been thinking about that too, as I feel most of the readers understand Swedish and above all, I think the quality would increase if I did. But at the same time, I need the practise and I know some non-Swedish-speaking people read it every now and then and those are the one I speak to most seldom anyway, so I will continue…