Bad Neighbours

Another thing that is different in The Small Town is the phenomenon neighbours.
I have moved a lot and lived in many strange places, but I have never had any problems with my neighbours. I have hardly been aware that I had neighbours. Ok, some of my friends might have heard me complain about some neighbour at some time, their memories seem to be working better regarding these things than mine, but as far as I am aware of now have never had any problems with neighbours. Until now! I absolutely hate my downstairs neighbour who is always playing music too loud and is generally annoying. The other neighbours do normally not disturb me, although I think some of them seem a bit strange. Of course I could try to talk to my downstairs neighbour, but I am afraid that won’t be too fruitful. I could also talk to the landlord and have them talk to my neighbour, but I really hate these things, so instead I keep quiet and suffer. I have also been thinking about looking for another apartment, but the funny thing is that all my colleagues seem to have problems with their neighbours being loud, aggressive or dirty or some other problems. The only one who was not complaining about his neighbours today was a colleague who has a hearing problem!
Could it be that this is a general problem here?! Or are we big city dwellers more sensitive about our neighbours’ activities?! I don’t know.

Exclusive blogging

Last week I read an article in the major daily about the three most read blogs in Sweden. Apparently they all belong to the same family, two brothers and the wife of one of the brothers. Out of curiosity I had to check the three blogs out, although I had never heard of them before. But honestly, I only managed to read two, three, maximum four posts before I was fed up. They were just so uninteresting! They were mainly just throwing shit on people and trying to be as arrogant as possible. The big thing right now was obviously the wedding of two of them and all three of them seemed to think everyone is immensely interested in the planning and the preparations for the wedding. Honestly!!! Who the hell can bother to be interested in some unknown peoples wedding?!?!? Don’t people have friends of their own who get married??!! But I believe that most of the readers are very much younger than the bloggers themselves, so that might explain it. The small kids might think they get something of the “coolness” these people are trying to display, by reading and commenting on their blogs. But how pathetic isn’t that?!
I am by no means trying to say that my blog would be more interesting, but I don’t have thousands and thousands of people who read my blog every day, which I honestly am very happy for! You, my dear readers are a much more exclusive bunch

Small Town Exotica

Some of my Swedish friends use to say that the stories I tell about The Small Town are just as exotic as the ones I told about Harare or Manila and this one is for me, one of them too. It is just hilarious!

Unfortunately I am not sure if it will work in English, but I will give it a try. Today I went out with some colleagues to celebrate a birthday with a couple of drinks. After a while the colleague who was sitting next to me wanted a small beer and asked for that. And here comes an explanation for the non-Swedes: the standard order for a draught beer at a Swedish bar is “en stor stark” which actually means “one big strong”. That will give you ca 40 cl of any random beer of the stronger class. It is the equivalent of ordering the house wine; it will most likely not be the best kind of beer, but the cheapest.

So my friend had had some of those but now felt she wanted a smaller one. When the very young and very inexperienced and maybe not too smart waitress brought the beer she asked “vem var det som ville ha en liten stor stark?” “who wanted the small big strong?” I spontaneously burst out laughing; I thought it was just so hilarious. Especially as the waitress did not react or seemed to see the missing logic of what she said. It can not have been that she did not hear it as I was not very subtle and my other colleagues also started laughing. After a while my colleague wanted another one and this time she was a bit hesitant how to order, as she did not want to start another laughing orgy. We were all paying attention and heard her ask for a “small beer”, but apparently the waitress noticed her hesitation and to confirm she asked; “en liten stor stark?” I think you can guess our reaction.

My colleagues jokingly blamed me for being an arrogant big city snobb, and were making jokes about us living like expats here and making fun of the locals, but they were laughing just as much. This is, however, quite much small town and the truth is, we are living quite much like expats and do not mingle with the locals!

Modern Freak Shows

To follow up on the TV-theme I just have to come back to another theme that I have touched on earlier, the programmes that teach people how to live their lives. Just happened to end up watching a show about dieting obese children. It is a British show about an obese 11-years old girl. After only watching it for a couple of minutes I realise it is not only about teaching the family how to eat healthier and exercise, it is about educating them like parents normally educate their children. So the family even was thought not to use bad language!! It is amazing!! It is so prejudiced. It is almost like an old-fashioned freak show, where you put poor, uneducated white trash on display and then do a “good deed” by telling them how to live their lives and become better people!! How can they get away with that?!!? And how can any adult persons accept to be told how to talk and not use bad language on a TV-show??

Material Girl

Oh Gosh! I think I am becoming materialistic! I have started to buy and own Things! This last week I bought a bike and a car! The bike might be ok, although I actually already had a good bike. This one is more of a mountain bike type and I need that for the multi sport race I have registered for in August (another crazy thing, but more about that later!). But a car!!!
Ok, it is of course a used one and I have been thinking about it for some time (since I moved to the small town) but anyway. The day after I bought it I woke up in agony thinking about all the expenses I just bought me; thinking all my money will now be spent on the car and fuel and much less left for travelling!:-(
Anyway; it is nice to be able to drive more freely and it makes you more flexible. I just took a short ride just for fun, checking out beaches outside the town! But still; there is a lot of money involved, because it is of course not just the car; you of course need a lot of other equipment and accessories as well! And that is when I realised I was getting materialistic, because I feel I need a lot of car-things I never thought of before! I guess it is the influence of small town life. I am also considering buying a couch and who knows, if I live here long enough I maybe I even might buy a flat screen TV!!!

Pirates off the West Coast

Back from a nice sailing trip along the Swedish West Coast. Well the weather could have been better, but we had quite good wind and some really nice sailing. Being out with an old boat like that you get some interesting reactions sometimes. Especially if you sport a different flag, as this time when we had a Jolly Roger hissed. In one harbour I heard a little kid ask his father; "Are those real pirates?". The father answered: "yes, that's what pirates look like". I somehow felt compelled to add that we are rather nice pirates.


Our pirate ship found some friends! We are on the outside. Later we were sandwiched between some Polish juvenile delinquents and German MedDr and PhD:s, quite some pirates...

Ejdern aproaching the harbour, or actually moving to let the ferry let some people off!

Of course real pirates open beer cans with a knife!

The very idyllic Fiskebäckskil! Between the thunder storms!


A real "Idylla-Jävel"!

Finally we reached our final destination, Bovallstrand. We had quite some problems finding a place in the harbour. Because of the hard wind the harbour was completely full of boats and then arriving with 20 tonnes is not the easiest thing, but after having alerted the harbour management and engaged 15 people ashore to help us, we finally made it.
N.B. this picture was taken the day after, when the wind had decreased and many boats had leaft.

Actually, the only bad thing with the west coast are the nasty jelly fish! In Bovallstrand there was a proper jelly-fish-soup! Just as well the weather did not invite to swimming anyway!

Holiday time

It is amazing the way everything close down during summer. Offices in Sweden are really empty in July! This feels a little new to me as I have been working abroad during summer the last four years. Today there was not too many of us in the office and there will be even less next week, but then I will not be there either, so I don't care! :-) I just hope there will be no tsunamis, earthquakes, wars, floods or other disasters in the world next week or maybe especially not after next week when I am back in office again...

Next week I am off for sailing on the west coast! I really look forward to it and only hope the weather will be ok. It hasn't been great this far, but that means it is about time it gets good.
So; no disasters and nice weather and everything will be fine. Fingers crossed!!

Laundry Room Fascism II

Now I am back on one of my favourite topic of hatred, the laundry room fascism! Since I now live in a very typical (although very unusual to me) Swedish standard house with rented apartments I am now personally affected. When I first moved in and went down to book a time I was shocked to see I could not get a time in three weeks!! There are two washing machines and 36 apartments that share them. That should not be too bad, but since the day is divided in three bookable blocks per day whereof only one actually is an option for people with a normal daytime job, there are not so many options left. (I even discovered that people who work are further discriminated as the two daytime blocks are five hours whereas the evening block only four!!!) And if you then, as I, don’t spend your weekends here, there are two days less. Maybe you also have some meetings or other appointments during the week and you are in big trouble and there is no room to be spontaneous. I think you can understand than one does not want to miss a booked time. But still I refuse to let my life be governed by the laundry room fascism!

Today I had booked the laundry room from five to nine in the evening, but then a colleague asked if we should play tennis. Dilemma, I really didn’t want to say no to tennis, but as I am going on holiday next week I also really needed to wash. However, the tennis court is close to where I live and I booked it from six o’clock which meant I could go home and start washing to show my neighbours that I really was using my time (if you don’t someone else normally is allowed to use it after an certain time) and then leave it while playing tennis. When I came to the laundry room I saw a note from a neighbour (kindly) asking if she could wash after me when I was ready and left her phone number. First my egoistical me thought; what the heck, it is not my problem, if I have booked until nine I can be here till nine, but of course if I am ready earlier I can give her a call. But on my way out I met the neighbour in question and then my “real” kind and soft me took over and suggested that I just finished this first one and then she could wash between six and eight o’clock, while I was playing tennis. She was very grateful and happy. We were chatting for a while and complained about how difficult it is to get the time to wash. She agreed completely and added…”especially when you have three kids..” So I guess I felt kind of stupid, standing there with my tennis racket and my luxury problems…

Today I was planning to complain about that I don’t feel very comfortable with the normal life in the small town. Or the fact that the summer in Sweden is rather shitty this far. I haven’t spent the whole summer in Sweden in quite many years and now I think I will have to try to avoid it in the future as well.
But just before I started writing I heard on the regional news that someone had been sentenced for attempted murder on a pizza restaurant owner. The man had previously threatened to kill the same man, after having received mushrooms on his pizza instead of shrimps….
Somehow that made me rethink, look at things from another perspective and forget my complaints for a while. People are mad!!

Almost famous

I just love the way they call the local TV-channel here in Kristinehamn, KLTV. Ok, it is a logical abbreviation for Kristinehams Lokal TV, but still it makes me think of something completely different. It makes me think of that 80-th’s TV-series Midnight Caller, with Jack “Nighthawk” Killian as a late night radio talk show host. Do you remember? Ok, the name of that radio station was KJCM, but still….
“Good night America. Where ever you are!”