Kärlek (Love)

Why did I love Sweden? 

How does one come to fall in love with any person or place? What precipitates such a transformation, from comfort and congeniality to a sudden yearning for more, to hold the object of such desire in continuous and direct view of the eye and heart. When does this love become a new truth, as holy and vital as every movement in the universe that has served to bring that moment into inception? Said the little prince, "Here is my secret. It is very simple. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; What is essential is invisible to the eye." 

I knew I was in love when everyday existence became poetry. Until the day of my return to Sweden, the only thing that had ever made a place home for me was my family. When I returned from Berlin, I realized I had missed Lund in the four days I had been gone. I had missed that cold little country made warm by the sincerity of its people. And when I returned to California, I was not leaving Lund for home. I was leaving home for home. Again and again, Swedes, both homegrown and naturalized, were like flowers in a cold spring. Slow, perhaps, to open, but once they did, what beauty, and how worth waiting for. I lived in concrete-laced suburbia no longer, and found myself instead in a place gently cradled by nature, where the people lived in a mutual coexistence with the earth, with the understanding that nature was not something to be dominated, but rather an entity to be respected and even revered. A place where roses grew out of the sidewalk. A place where the night, for all its bitter cold and growing hours, became a place of solace and quiet safety. 

Mind you, I don't mean to exoticize Sweden. Many aspects have to do with the circumstance of that time in my life: it happened to be the first time I truly lived by myself, outside of America. And this place just so happened to be the medium of a lot of personal growth and change. I think I would have made the most of my experience if I had gone to South Africa or Turkey, too, which were my 2nd and 3rd choices (how different the experience would have been!). But it's unfair to take away from Sweden its unique characteristics that were conducive to such change, as tough as these growing pains can be. 

Not to be overlooked was the growth of a love of self. I do not mean vanity, which is not lacking in Sweden, as much as so many other Western countries. Rather, I was made to fall a little in love with myself, in a way that has happened so rarely in my life. My reflection was altered in the slightest of ways with Sweden as my looking glass, and what I saw was at once unfamiliar and more beautiful than myself, and yet was still me. Self-acceptance was sown at last, and it flourished in the Swedish cold. 

And then the memories. 

I remember dark, winter nights, lying in candlelit rooms, with Swedish jazz playing as quietly as the rain that pitter-pattered on the windows. 

I remember the surprising pride that stirred in my voice when I told Stefano in Berlin that I was studying in Sweden, and he was always welcome to visit from Italy.

I remember not regretting saying yes to dancing, even though I can't dance. 

I remember getting lost, all the time. And to be lost, was to be found.

I remember biking, and biking, and biking, and finding, ironically, absolute freedom in the line that closed upon itself, to make a circle. 

I remember that delicious principle of USUFRUCT. Natural and harmless. And I remember asking permission, just once. Matt and I were riding past a bunch of farms, and I noticed a house with an apple tree in the front, still loaded with good-looking apples this late into the fall. I rested my bike against the gate of a stranger's yard, and knocked on her door. I asked her if I could pick some apples, and she said yes, adding that they were particularly suited for apple pie. Perfect. 

I remember the freedom of not being Swedish in a Swedish land. And at once, the constraint. 

I remember being healed. As Menninger said, love cures people--both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.

Food ("Mat" i Svenska)

It's the little things that really get me. Like walking into a Swedish grocery store and not recognizing half of the dairy dept, and trying all the new, foreign foods.

Things I've tried:

1. Caviar in a tube

2. Bread with cheese with jam on top

3. Kanelbulle (Cinammon Buns)

4. Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes and lingonberry sauce

5. Kebab pizza

6. Fladerblom Must (Elderflower juice)

7. Strömming på knäckebröd med gräddfil (Herring on "Crispy Bread" with Sour Cream)

8. Non-refrigerated eggs

9. Rooster sauce (in Sweden!...it's a big deal for me)

10. Swedish tacos

11. Marabou chocolate
12. Hasselbackspotatis (courtesty of Evelina, these are baked potatoes sliced many times, thinly, but not all the way through, and then covered with butter, salt and breadcrumbs. I had a 5 kilo bag of potatoes to go through at the time, and these got me through them!)
13. Elk meat

Things I cook for myself:

1. Sandwiches

2. Noodles

3. Rutabaga Mashed Potatoes with Viennese Veal Cutlet

4. Pizza with the gang (from Pizza kits)

5. My grandmother's curried chicken recipe

6. Torsk (Cod) with Dill in Butter Sauce

Things I've yet to try:

1. Fresh-picked kantereller (chanterelle mushrooms)

2. Smörgåsbord

3. Reindeer

4. Nyponsoppa (Rose hip soup; I see rose hips growing wild everywhere! And apparently this is a popular-ish Swedish dish)

5. Princess cake

6. Smörgåstårta

7. Swedish pancakes (pytt i panna)

Originally written August 16, 2011

Priscilla

I miss my gypsy, who left me and was left by me for the other side of the world.

The Forest is Magic

I grew up on a steady diet of fairy- and folktales. Not just the stories that inspire watered-down Disney movies, but the darker and more fantastic tales, devoid of logic or unimaginative ties to reality. Women who spend years stitching nettles into coats to transform swans into men. Woodcutters meeting lucky spirits in the stream that runs through the forest. In particular, the Grimm brothers collected a lot of these stories from different villages and towns, where they were passed down through the generations from villagers living surrounded by the forests. The beauty, mystery, hope and danger that the forest presents throughout these stories is something the villagers drew inspiration from for their stories. I have always been captivated by the forest.

As I've always lived in the suburbs, I became nostalgic for something that didn't really exist in my concrete jungle. I have seen and loved forests all over the world, from the sun-drenched pines of Northern California to the ancient, gnarled, multicolored trees of Japan to the tall, nameless trees of Bangladesh, that at once shade beneath a magnificent rainy sun and seem to hide something.

Sweden's moss-covered giants are no exception. I have gone mushroom picking twice now, the first time guided by a mycologist and the second time only with a friend who loves the forest as much as I do, and each time the forest was perfection.

The road to Torup, in Malmo.

Meet Alexander.

Swedish children grow up in the outdoors. The first time I went picking, on the tour, there were several families there, exposing their children to the elements.

The first mushroom of the day...appears poisonous, though attractive.

This mushroom has a beautiful amethyst color that results from taking up a toxic amount of arsenic into itself.

Lucky ladybird! Hardy prefers to create his own luck, though.

Life abounds: spiders, ticks, mosquitoes, frogs, and deer were just a sampling of the friends we encountered.

Hardy told me in Austria, the folktales take a snail's height on the base of a tree to be an indicator of how high the snow will fall in the upcoming winter. However, this next Swedish winter is supposed to be a cold one, so we both agreed the snail had some climbing to do.

Stepping on puffballs to see the smoke-like spores waft out! It's addictive, like hookah for your feet. They're called roksvamp in Swedish: literally, "smoke mushroom".

The moss, and the sweet, mellow light filtering in through the endless trees.

Another world exists if you just look down. They are like little tree spirits.

We'll certainly be coming back.

Impressions

I woke up to a beautiful morning. Beautiful enough to make me regret choosing to spend the day studying rather than go hiking in Kullaberg, a nature reserve situated between forest and sea, as was the original plan. It is a solitudinous day, marked by pillowy clouds sleepily drifting across a once blue sky, painting it a familiar new shade: "Lund gray".

Some time has passed since my first encounter with this color. Enough time to make friends, do a laudable amount of traveling, studying, pseudo-painting and pseudo-partying, and seeing the sights both well-known and taken for granted by the natives. Our bright eyes in the beginning, shining on our faces between our screams of "look at this place" and "see how old these buildings are" and "have you been here yet" and "would you like to come with me then, tonight" and "can it really cost that much" and "i can't wait for everything to begin" have shaded over a bit. My focus is starting to settle. The diaphragm has opened even wider, letting in enough light to expose even the darkest days. And the days will get darker, and colder, and shorter--every Swede has assured me that is a promise. I find myself at once apprehensive and excited, just like in the beginning.

The Swedes are definitely more reserved than I’m used to from an American context. I do not mean unfriendly, but they are like flowers in a cold spring: slow to open up, though well-appreciated when they finally do. Lund is charming in its age; such long histories are missing in America.

Although I’ve been here only two months, I’m already taking for granted the cobblestone streets, lack of cars, the stemroses growing from the sidewalks. They are a part of a very different and very lovely landscape and soundscape.

Compared to home, there are far fewer people and there is much more preservation of nature, and open expanses of land are abundant. Simply biking outside this small town brings you to seemingly endless fields of wheat and turnips, dotted by stretches of forest. This country is nothing if not scenic.

Things are so expensive here.

Nothing is censored in Sweden…the word “fucking” is present without a second thought on a poster in a train station, or in songs on the radio, or on the most basic cable channels. 1,500 Swedes and I were collectively flashed by a singing group of sixty-year-olds whilst they played their ukuleles (an impressive feat of multitasking, now that I think about it), and it was only I and my fellow American that found ourselves expressing an inkling of discreet shock.

And I'm cheating here, since this isn't a first impression; rather, it's the opposite of an impression, since I've given it much thought and mulling over: I find Swedish liberalism to be somewhat paradoxical, but that is a story for another time.

Music Makes the World Go Round (Part I)

My third weekend in Lund was one of the most musical of my life, and also mostly spent outside of Lund. That Friday night, 19 August, began Malmöfestivalen, a weeklong, free and fantastic music festival in the neighboring city, bursting with names big and small, festival food and drink, rides, crayfish parties and loosened-up Swedes. A bunch of us went to see Iron&Wine that night.

Trying our first crayfish at a kräftskiva (crayfish party)

The Iron
The Wine
It rained on us, but at moments that made everything more beautiful.
Floating art

The next day marked an event I'd been waiting for pretty much the entire time I was in Sweden. Kristina and I set off to take the train to Helsingborg (the closest Swedish city to Denmark), where the goal was to gather at least 900 Swedes (or pseudo-Swedes, likes us) to beat the world record for the biggest ukulele orchestra playing a song together.
From the uke shop, this pair sold us our Swedish ukes, since I left mine back in California and Kristina was a ukulele virgin (no longer!)
I was amazed by the variety of people there: young, old, ukulele masters and people like Kristina who had been playing for a total of 3 hours (bravo!).
The man on the book cover and the man holding the book are one and the same! Ukulele love forever, through the decades.

In the end there were 1,547 of us, and beat the world record we did. What an amazing day! They filled the day with rehearsals, performances and ukulele-jokes (bad ones). We played Vikingarna's "Leende Guldbruna Ögon" (Her Golden Brown Eyes), which is every bit as awful as it sounds, but is pretty fun when you're playing it along with 1,500+ other ukulele enthusiasts.

The middle woman is from Guinness World Records, and announced that we had officially broken the record! The audience thundered into Bob Marley-style victory "oi oi oi"s.
We walked away as world record-breakers and spent the rest of the daylight exploring the beautiful city.

That night, I returned to Malmöfestivalen to see an excellent performance by Amadou&Mariam, a blind couple from Mali that combine French, Mali, and other worldly rhythms into their extremely dance-inducing music. I couldn't stop moving.

I must credit an old friend, Hjalmar, who told me they'd be there, and he was actually the first friend from International House that I had a reunion with. Back in San Diego, Hjalmar and I would trade ukulele lessons (me) for Swedish lessons (Hjlamar).
The lovely Raphaelle, Antoine and Robin
The boys

One of the best weekends of my life, both for the music-related events and the company. Music has turned out to be a huge part of my journey abroad so far, entwining itself into the best moments I've had in Sweden, in other countries and in the friendships I've formed. Next post, exploring Skåne and then exploring Berlin, Germany. It only gets more musical.