Crazy Pants, or lack thereof.

Things I’ve learned from the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver

It has been a strange experience to watch the Olympics as an expatriate.

I have realized that national pride is proportional to the distance from said home country multiplied by the length of time away from said home.

Such that under regular conditions:

NP = d*t

But under Olympic conditions, this equation takes on a whole other derivation.

ONP ≈ (∑Gm + ∫CC_oc*Hc + [∂(P)/∂t]) * {ω}

where:

ONP: Olympic National Pride equals the

∑Gm : sum of the gold medals plus the

CC_oc : Canadian Content of Opening Ceremonies multiplied by the

Hc : ‘Hallelujah’ Constant for when an epic Leonard Cohen song is performed by another epic Canadian performer. Can also be substituted by any other song from k.d. lang’s ‘Hymns of the 49^th Parallel’ or Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides, Now’ or ‘A Case of You’ because it mentions Canada directly.

plus the

[∂(P)/∂t]: ‘crazy pants’ derivation (see Azerbaijan)

multiplied by

ω : Wayne Gretzky.

So, as you can see, this year the Canadian Olympic National Pride shall be quite high, although I think we could have done better on the pants. Right, Azerbaijan?

Speaking of fashion, there was one thing that I saw in the opening ceremonies that gave me such a pleasant surprise.

When Clara Hughes was carrying the flag for Canada’s entrance to the games, she was wearing a Hudson’s Bay Company scarf. You know: the ones with the green, red, yellow, blue stripes. I was surprised by the Canadian nostalgia I felt just by seeing a simple scarf. It felt like I was seeing a little Canadian secret…to a non-Canadian it was just a scarf, and quite a plain one, at that.

But to all Canadians, they see those four stripes and it immediately conjures up classic Canadian images, whether it is of the modern day department store, or the olden day fur traders, it is definitely a symbol firmly entrenched in Canada’s history.

It makes me think of home. And there is no better symbol to have of a home, than a nice, warm welcoming blanket.

Except maybe also a Timmies :)

Blue Monday

Can it really be the last day of January already?

People have said that January is the most depressing month of the year. Scientists have actually calculated ‘blue Monday’, January 18, which is the most depressing day of the year due to a complex mathematical equation which factors in the distance from Christmas past, Christmas bills coming due, broken New Year’s resolutions, and the length and breadth of the winter still to remain.

But I’d have to say that here in Sweden, blue Monday doesn’t exist.

(or maybe it still does exist but it lasts the entire month of November).

January, however, was a fantastic month- solely for the fact that already it felt as though we were no longer living in the dark. About a week into the month, the days were already noticeably longer… which in turn makes me noticeably happier! We are now gaining over 6 minutes of sun each day, which, if my math is correct, is about 42 minutes each week. Winter has been great so far. We’ve had a ton of snow here, without it being very cold. The perfect winter!

Of course even with all this snow, most people (not me though) are still riding their bikes everywhere. It is so funny to me to see people biking through the snow and carrying a set of cross country skiis under one arm.

My first adventure with cross country skiing took place last weekend. I went out with a co-worker and we skied out on the frozen lake, Nydalasjon. How did I like it? …well…it was *OK*. I wouldn’t call it ‘fun’ any more than going for a walk is ‘fun’. I kept wanting to go faster…I guess I still have a bit of downhill skiing in me. I think I will try it again though. And if anything at least I have gained much more respect for the skiers in the Olympics this year. (Go Canada! I can’t wait for the Olympics to start!)

What else is new, you ask?

Our time in Barcelona was great. I guess I didn’t post much about it, but it was pretty awesome. Barcelona is a great place to go just to wander. We saw so many strange and wonderful little things that we will always remember. Like this one tiny bar which was basically only as wide as the door to get inside it, which was crammed with so many people that not a single other person could fit inside. (In the picture, the bar is only as wide as the door on the left. The one on the right is an entrance to an apartment).

Or like how every night we would invariably end up getting lost in El Raval, only to end up at the same sketchy back alley EVERY SINGLE TIME. Or the naked man at the beach that we saw not once, but twice. Or the cat that hated tourists.

After a week of wandering the city, we were still finding cute shops and restaurants that were tucked away in the strangest places. It was great to get away, but after a week in hectic Barcelona we were definitely ready to come back to face a quiet winter in Umeå.

Good Luck/Bad Luck?

Imagine: getting shat on by a pigeon (in Barcelona) at exactly the stroke of midnight, at the turn of the decade-- a comment on the quality of the past year? or a premonition of the quality of the year to come?

Either way, it does nothing to help my fear of birds which has escalated rapidly since 1) being pecked in the head (twice in rapid succession) by a particularly aggressive seagull this past summer and 2) seeing the movie “The Birds”.

Apparently in Romania it is considered good luck to get pooped on by birds, so I think I will stop worrying about the symbolism and just go buy a lottery ticket :)

Merry Christmas, God Jul, Gott Nytt År!

We had a lovely, if not quiet, Christmas this year. We missed our friends and family terribly of course, but I think we made the best of it and tried to embrace Swedish traditions. Here's how...

:: We bought a Tomten. Traditionally each farm or family has their own Tomten, which is a gnomey little guy with a long beard and a red hat who delivers presents on Christmas. We actually bought three (for good luck).

:: We also bought an electric candelabra for the darkened window of our apartment. Almost every window of every apartment in Umeå has one in it and it looks very pretty.

:: We ate a julskinka (ham) on Christmas eve.

:: did a lot of baking and attended a Christmas fika.

:: We watched a Donald Duck (Kalle Anka) cartoon on Sveriges Television at 3pm on Christmas Eve

:: drank glögg and ate pepparkaka

:: We had an advent candelabra in which you light one candle for each week of advent.

After having a very white, very snowy Christmas, we are off to Barcelona for a week to get some much needed warmth and sun!

Merry Christmas to all our family and friends. We love you very much and think of you often. :)

The Scream

So it has been a little dark here lately.

There are still two weeks left until the winter solstice.

That means we are still losing light (albeit more slowly) for two more weeks.

This also means that in four weeks it will still be as dark as it now.

The thought of still a month of this darkness ahead of me made me want to go out to the Ume Älv and reenact a very famous painting by a very famous Scandinavian (Norwegian) artist.

Instead, however, I joined the local gym. To call it a gym is a bit of an understatement…It is not just a gym, it is IKSU. The biggest training facility in Europe, I think. (Look it up if you don't believe). Even to a non-athlete type person like myself it has a mind-boggling assortment of things to do. Ping pong, floor hockey, swimming, yoga, afro-dance funk, golf, aquasize… In order to promote health and wellness, my work subsidizes (of course! this IS Sweden after all!) my membership, so I get my gym membership for about $10 CAD a month.

I attended my first class there tonight. It was a yoga class…in Swedish of course! It wasn’t so difficult to follow, because “trigonasana” in Swedish is still “trigonasana”. I’m excited because it feels good to be doing Sun Salutations again. I’m also excited because going to these classes are also going to help me learn some more Swedish as well.

I’ve already learned “andra sidan” means “other side”.

Another thing I learned the hard way:

“herr omkladning” means men’s changeroom.

In doing so, I kind of reenacted that painting anyway.

oops.

From Prussia with Love

Long overdue update: I spent a month living in a place formerly know as Prussia, working at a research institute, spending most of my weekends and some weeknights in Berlin.

Prussia!!!!

Ok, so technically I couldn’t have been in a country that no longer exists!

I was actually staying in Potsdam. And I loved it! Potsdam combines a really unique mix of old Prussian history, glamour, and glory with the decrepitness and decay of the city as it suffered through years of the communist regime under the GDR. In the same small city there are magnificently restored Prussian palaces –Sanssouci, Neues Palais, Charlottenhof- along with completely abandoned, decrepit, depressing buildings like the chilling KGB headquarters and prison, and watchtowers from the time of the Berlin wall.

During my whole stay in Germany I was really struck by the role Berlin has played in shaping 20th century world history. I don't think there is any other city in the world that has been so central to the events of the 20th century as Berlin. I was even lucky enough to be in Berlin during the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall!

Berlin, and Germany in general, is in a very unique position to study the merits of preservation versus restoration in the context of world history. In the case of Berlin for example -a divided city trying to emerge as one after decades of being split in half- how important is it to preserve this divided history? How much effort, if any, should be put into healing and rebuilding this division? How much effort, if any, should be put into preserving the history of this division? How much do you rebuild/remove in order for the psyche of the city as one entity to recover? How do you honor and preserve the memory of atrocities in a way in which does not celebrate the perpetrators?

The only satisfying answer I heard while I was in Germany was that in preserving history, they take the approach that EVERYTHING must be done to memorialize the victims and NOTHING must be done to memorialize the perpetrators.

This explains why there is a chilling and touching Holocaust memorial in central Berlin, but the ruins of Hitler’s bunker is now a nondescript parking lot.

My favourite example of preservation is the bombed out Kaiser Wilhelm church. It has been left ‘as is’, as a testament to the destruction of war. To me, someone who really has been lucky enough to live a life that has not known this kind of destruction, it is a truly important memorial to see.

A strange example of restoration in Berlin is the original Berlin city palace. The Stadtschloss was the seat of the Kings of Prussia and the Emperor of Germany. WWII severely damaged it, and, after the war, being in East Berlin, the GDR finished its destruction and built their own state parliament on top of the ruins. Now after German reunification, the GDR parliament building has been destroyed and plans are underway to rebuild the original Stadtschloss on top of these ruins… which are on top of ruins. A perfect example of the stratification of history in Berlin. Dig down deep enough and you see one regime replacing the other, on and on and on…

When there have been many different regimes overthrown at different times (first reich, second reich, third reich, GDR), how do you decide which version of history gets preserved?

To me, one of the most fitting memorials I saw in Berlin was a memorial for the Nazi book burnings which took place in Bebelplatz square, just outside of Humboldt University. It is so unobtrusive you could easily miss it. It is just a clear plate of glass in the ground in the centre of the square. You could walk by it two feet away and not notice a thing, but if you get close enough and if you look down through the glass you will see a room of all white, with empty bookshelves on every wall.

More lighthearted highlights of my trip included seeing and climbing the Siegessaule - I was disappointed that I couldn’t stand on her shoulder like Bono does in the video (one of my favouritest songs in the world)- and finding my new favourite online radio station http://www.radioeins.de/.

I truly loved my time in Berlin and Potsdam and am already hoping to go back soon. If you have never been, you should go too.

Auf wiedersehn.

Scariest night of my life.

Imagine it is dark out and you are already late for a dinner party. You’ve already gotten lost in the woods once looking for the bus stop you were supposed to transfer onto and had to wait 20 minutes for the next bus standing along a dark deserted stretch of road. Imagine also you just realized you are totally completely and hopelessly lost and you are just wandering the streets aimlessly not sure in which direction to go. These dark streets are basically deserted and all you are trying to do is find Gregor-Mendel-Straße (shout out to Mendel and his peas!!). You try to call your host to ask for directions, because although you weren’t smart enough to bring a map, you did think to write down your host’s phone number, and also to bring your mobile, only to find you can only dial 3 numbers before the network keeps cutting out. Panic is starting to set in a little bit.

Then you see it.

A guy, alone, walking towards you (also alone) in the dark.

He passes under a streetlight and you get a better look at him.

He is covered in blood…

and is slowly walking towards you…

carrying a chainsaw…

wearing a bloody hockey mask.

Seeing a guy dressed up like “Jason” from Friday the 13^th might not normally scare you on Halloween.

But imagine you are in a foreign country where you have been told no one celebrates Halloween, and based on your previous experience the year before also in a European country that doesn’t celebrate Halloween, you have no reason to doubt this information. You, actually, have pretty much forgotten that October the 31^st is any different than any other day of the year.

Then you see a serial killer walking towards you when you are lost and alone in the dark on the street.

And, in my own defense, that serial killer was the only person I saw all day who was (presumably) dressed up in costume.

Scariest Halloween ever.