Behold ye! Teh intarwebs!

At last I have internet in my room, so I am now going to post all the stuff I've written down over the last week. I've only figured out how to frontload pictures so far, so the ones above are:

the pink castle of the S-Nerikes Nation
the Fyris, the river that runs through the city
the Carolina Rediviva, the main university library
the cathedral
the botanical gardens across from the main university building (which is ALSO a castle)
the big cemetary across from my Swedish class
the street my class is on
my Swedish class is under that awning thing in the middle
the kitchen
the living room
view out my window
the view out the kitchen window
my room part 1
my room part 2
my room part 3
this was on my door when I arrived. Made me feel right at home.
do you see a goddamn flushing mechanism on this toilet? DO YOU??
the view when you step out of the train station. Look real close at that fountain.
the train station in the airport in Stockholm. Note how many helpful people there are around.

It is almost exactly five kilometers from my room in Flogsta to my class in the Engelska parken, Humanistiskt centrum. I walk it very early in the morning, as I have yet to get onto a normal sleep schedule and wake up at 3:30; in that hour or so of trudging, Uppsala could be a ghost town. I seldom see people; only endless trees and empty, trundling, lopsided, green buses. Appropriately, the Engelska parken is across the street from the biggest, most elaborately landscaped cemetery I have ever seen. The thing goes on for miles, filled with old trees and giant gravestones which seem to be carved on the same rocks Stonehenge is made from. To the best of my knowledge, I’m the only one of the two thousand-odd students in Flogsta who walk to class—everyone thinks I’m crazy for doing it. I’ll get around to getting a bike eventually, I tell them. Probably this weekend. Just learning my way around first, as it’s rather difficult to read a map while biking.

The city center is busy after class, and very typically European—everything is made of cobblestones and Vespas. There are a lot of outdoor cafes and small cluttered convenience stores, and thousands of blondes on bicycles. The buses are insufferably hot and driven by surly, taciturn guys with sunglasses. They shake terribly on the cobblestones, and the big plastic light fixtures tend to fall off the ceiling and land on your toes.

My room seems a bit excessive, as I have no less than two bookcases and a spare wall-mounted shelf, but only a half dozen books. I have more closet space than my first apartment had square footage, and the shower is gratifyingly powerful. There are at least ten other people in the hall—with the exception of that one guy, I have yet to meet any of them. The kitchen has more than lived up to its reputation of being “somewhat grotty.” There are four freezers in one room, three fridges and sinks and ovens in another, and all of them are littered with the detrius of human habitation. Everything is half empty and spoiling, covered in crumbs and unidentifiable little organic gobbets which have turned a uniform purple-green. Huge fat red flies, their energy dulled by the morning sunshine, mutter from crumbs to sticky spills in a stately waltz rotation, making a constant low moaning sound. There are cooking implements about, but I have yet to establish the governing system of ownership, so I have not yet endeavored to clean any of them and cook some food. I bought some pots and bowls and silverware at IKEA yesterday, so I’m mildly confident I can create some sort of pasta and/or rice concoction to feed my scrawny self.

I’ve been sitting around with my door open and Tom Waits crooning loudly, in an effort to let any passersby know that I’m inside and feeling like a chat. Nobody’s come by yet. Most students are still on vacation, and the bulk of the exchange students don’t show up till the last week of the month, so I’m not feeling terribly neglected, but it would be useful to have a local around to ask some questions to. Like who taped condoms to my door and why and if they’re female or not. I’m vaguely planning on venturing up to the sauna on the roof later, but if it turns out to be in a condition equivalent to the kitchens, that could be an unpleasant sight indeed. I invited a Belgian named Alexander and a rather flirty German girl over for Cuban rum and Bush-mocking, but as they can’t get into my hallway without a card/passcode, and I have no telephone for them to call, this may prove somewhat difficult.

The Swedish instructor never uses English. She says crazy things in Swedish, and sometimes we repeat them. Everyone else in the room (except for two hungover Australian girls) speaks at least three languages already. The aforementioned German (I sat next to her) speaks five. She decided to go here because it was the only study abroad program her school in Munich offered in a country where she didn’t already know the language. They all seem to be picking up the Swedish already too, something my feeble, ethnocentric American brain cannot comprehend. Generally, the class seems to consist of the instructor saying about five minutes of disconnected stuff in Swedish, sometimes in wacky voices with facial expressions, then a motion for us to do something. I then turn to the German girl and say, roguishly, “Whaaa?” and she explains that we’re supposed to ask each other our ages, majors, and places of birth then present one another’s answers to the class.

“Jesus Christ bananas,” I usually say at that point.

I took an immediate liking to this German girl, not the least because she speaks five languages idiomatically, and was the first one to chortle at the prevalence in Swedish of the word “slut.” She seems to have an alarming knack for organization and information retention, and she writes really weirdly, putting the pen between her index and middle fingers. I keep worrying irrationally, though, that one morning she will annex the Austrians and lapse into fascism. I can only assume that after that, poor Alexander the Beanpole Belgian would not be long for this earth.

I got to class about an hour early the first day, since I had missed registration the day before and had no idea where I was supposed to go or what I was supposed to do once I got there. I immediately met a group of nine exchange students from Shanghai, whom I now mentally refer to as “the Communist bloc.” They go everywhere together, asking people how to connect to the Internet. I see them all over the place now: at the Carolina Rediva today (the enormous library which I seem to be forbidden to enter), at the bike shop in Flogsta, on the stairs in the Engelska parken, in my underwear drawer. They seem to speak no English whatsoever, except for the words necessary to ask everyone they meet how to connect to the Internet. It is an impressive thing indeed to watch them attempting to learn Swedish from our teacher, who also uses no English.

It appears to be a great misconception that Swedish women are generally busty. After extensive research, I have not found this to be the case. They are almost universally tanned and attractive, but they seem to all possess a state-subsidized, general-issue B-cup. I think of this as the mammary expression of welfare state socialism. They are, however, improbably bouncy, even when wearing several bras and not moving. I passed a girl on my way home today standing perfectly still, and those things were bouncing away, like a pair of rats in a duffel bag.

Every morning, the Swedish instructor writes an agenda of sorts on the board. Whatever its strange and mysterious permutations, always ends with “12.00—Slut”

Now, imagine my disappointment day after day when noon rolls around and no government-issue sluts appear at the door. I rather liked my understanding of the word the way it was, but eventually I found myself compelled to look it up.

Turns out, “slut” means in Swedish: “end/ending,” “finish off,” “has a sad ending,” “leave school,” “finally, in the end,” “all gone,” and “there will be no more peace.”

…There’s always one WTF definition. Here’s another good one: “Kål” can mean either “cabbage,” or “attempted murder.”

I bet that makes for quite a lot of amusing misunderstandings in police stations.

“Sir,” the bloodied, bedgraggled man panted, “I have to report…a cabbage.”

Or

“Could I have an attempted murder on my salad?”

The guy in charge of the International Office is a small, trim, well-groomed man with a dry sense of humor, a very precise diplomat-style accent, and the general look about him like he’s just come from Metternich’s solar, discussing the junker estates in Prussia. He is also missing the last two fingers on his left hand, and they appear to have been chewed off, raggedly and unevenly, perhaps by a rabid animal or a large, fierce woman.

As everyone enjoys talking about that which they are passionate about and know best, I have found that the best way to befriend an Australian guy is to ask him what is the best pub in town. He will always have at least three answers, starting from what is cool and trendy, progressing to where he goes when he gets tired of the poseurs at the first place, and ending with what he will inevitably call a “meat-market.” This is where you want to go swill rotgut rum in the middle of the week after trying to find a way through the theoretical maze of econometrics to empirically verify the labor theory of value. If you ask a group of Australians, there will be disagreement and dissention, and there will be nothing for it but to go with them to all of the pubs they recommend, so that you may make your own judgment and resolve their dispute. The Australian girls all seem to have come here together. They hang out together, and apparently party till the wee hours together every night. Their industriousness impresses me—I’ve only just figured out how the goddamn toilets work.

The best way to befriend a Swede, it seems, is to think of a blonde or dead baby joke—preferably tasteless and offensive, and replace the operative noun (“blonde,” “dead baby,” “rabbi,” etc) with “Norwegian.” Kills ‘em every time.

The trip was actually fairly unremarkable until Heathrow. I sat next to a nice British guy who’d been traveling by train around the States for three weeks. He liked rugby union and had a sense of humor as dry as his gin. I watched “Brick,” which was one of the best (though rationally ludicrous) noirs I’ve ever seen. Watched “Ask the Dust,” which had a naked Salma Hayek in it, and otherwise was pretty terrible. It was a ten hour flight, though, which is never a hell of a lot of fun, especially for those of us who can’t sleep on airplanes, and always sit in the window seat, where you can’t stretch your legs or get up to pee because you can’t climb over the two sleeping Brits next to you.

I had an hour to get across Heathrow to my flight, which shouldn’t have been a hell of a big problem, except that they make you GO THROUGH SECURITY AGAIN. There were four 747s disgorging some three hundred-odd passengers each, and the line was…Biblical. That, combined with the daunting size of Heathrow combined to make me damn near miss my connection. I got there at last call, sweating, grumpy, aching from carrying my goddamn heavy laptop bag.

I have no memory of the connector flight. I guess I was on it. I do, however, remember getting all my bags, getting some kroners, and having to walk to the train area, which is four terminals over from the international arrival area. Altogether, my bags weighed about a hundred and fifteen pounds, and after eighteen hours of travel, I was not at my physical peak. There was a part where you have to go up this goddamn hill in the middle of the Arlanda airport—I mentally refer to this geographical perversion as “The Mountain of Despair.”

After an hour of Herculean toil, I made it to the train area, and somehow bought a ticket from the cryptic Swedish-only ticket machines. Descended into the dank, freezing cold basement area where the trains arrive.

It was an hour wait for the train to Uppsala. I was the only person there, talking to myself and walking around so as not to fall asleep and freeze to death. Here, rarely, I’m not exaggerating-- I could see my goddamn breath in there.

Finally made it on the train, and got off at the station in Uppsala. Called the Studentstaden guy, hefted my bags again, and wandered off into the maze of downtown Uppsala. Took me another hour of wandering, beset by flocks of cannibal pigeons and disdainful Europeans, before I found the Studentstaden office. Was met there a half hour later by the Officer in Charge—a rugby-player looking guy on rollerblades. He had a yellow beanie and a lot of tattoos. I signed some stuff (hell if I know what), and he advised me to get a cab, which I did.

Made it to my building, and carried my fucking bags up six flights of stairs. Naturally, the light is out on the landing where the hallways branch off on my floor, which makes it difficult to punch in your passcode into the crazy machine they have here. After a good deal of swearing and beeping red lights, I managed to get in and was greeted by a bewildered looking blonde guy with a plastic bag on his hair and a toothbrush in his mouth. He had a complicated cell phone ear-attachment jury-rigged around his head with a system of little ropes and pulleys. He said his name was Benny and he’d just finished throwing things on the balcony. He said he was a law student and wanted to know if I planned on getting a Ph.D. I told him someone had stolen my brain and replaced it with tater-tots.

Went into my room, discovered the toilet apparently had no flushing mechanism, and went to sleep.

Had a long conversation with Benny this evening, while he made some sort of mess in a cooking pan. I get the impression I’m sort of a combat replacement in a tired regiment: he’s obviously an old veteran, and he could easily remember the last two people who had my room. Emma, down the hall (who I haven’t met, but who has a great American Empire poster on her door) has apparently been here even longer. Got some good information out of him and managed to convey that I’m not a Bible-thumping, Limbaugh-listening, Pabst-Blue-Ribbon-drinking redneck gun-toting Jesus psycho. Mostly. He’s also a member of the S. Nerikes nation, which I guess means he bested one of their worthy members in single combat at some point.
Good guy, I like him.

They all seem rather entertained and mystified by what I guess they consider brash American ingenuity. Apparently, you see, everything you say with an American accent sounds terribly tough, and as I am also the only person in the entire country with facial hair, they seem to regard me warily, like a large animal which is pretty interesting, but which may prove to be dangerous.

Now, it’s oddly hot up here (I wasn’t expecting 90-degree heat—or 32 degree heat, to these crazy metric-ians—in Sweden), so I tend to sit around in my room in shorts and an undershirt, drinking rum from various inappropriate containers, since I keep my two cups in the fridge in the kitchen and can’t be arsed to go get them. Last night two of my hallmates who I hadn’t met yet knocked on my door. They were surprised to find a bearded, skinny American inside, wearing a wifebeater and drinking Cuban rum out of a cooking pot. They stood there for a minute: one of them a foofy-haired guy with dimples like ragged meteor craters, the other exactly what you think of when you imagine a Swedish girl, only more tanned.

They looked at me. I looked at them.

“We’re going to Portugal tomorrow,” the girl said.

“Have a good time,” I told them.

Going on a tour of Uppland tomorrow. Probably more pictures then.