Drinks with Sanna and Other Structural Changes

Tom Waits used to have a standard joke where he said what he was really looking for was a woman who owned a liquor store. That isn't exactly an option out here in this frozen den of godless communism, but in the aftermath of two really excellent dates, I seem to have fallen accidentally into the next best thing. I think I might be dating a girl who runs a bar.

Some exposition is in order. You will recall that I got this girl's phone number when she was tending bar at GH nation a week or two ago. I thought at first that she was American or Canadian--she has literally no accent whatsoever and unlike the other accentless Swedes, she leaves off the ends of words in the manner of a natural speaker. And she knows her liquor. We arranged a Saturday lunch date, and she showed up even after I drunkenly texted her a few days before, which I considered a good sign.

I tend to consider first dates to be sort of like job interviews. This one went well, and we made arrangements for another. I saw her and her drop-dead gorgeous friend (you know that Swedish supermodel Tiger Woods married? This is her cousin) again Friday night, when it became clear that Sanna (the girl) is pretty much in charge of the pub at GH and can get burgers pretty much any time she wants. She has keys to the place. She gets drinks for free, and GH has the most robust stock of beer in Uppsala.

Friday night went (ahem) well. Having gotten through the awkward introductory phases and determined that there is chemistry and that the other person isn't an axe murderer or anything, we seem to be past the initial hurdles and are about to begin coasting on that intoxicating early-relationship buzz. All that's really left (in Sanna's words) is to get seriously drunk together, since you learn quite a lot about someone by doing that.

My point in relating this is not (entirely) to gloat, but more because this has prompted some interesting structural changes in my life here. A friend of a friend once very accurately said that the worst thing about being single is that you feel the obligation to be nice all the time, even to the most uninteresting, self-absorbed, manipulative people. I will add to that by also suggesting that being single can be a source of constant pressure and (if company is your aim) essentially precludes enjoying yourself while in the process of trying to meet somebody. Let me give an example: I went to a party last night, and I'm going to a party in about two hours. Previous parties have been generally uninspiring at best--my cheerfully self-destructive relationship with Sarah has guaranteed that I have been afflicted with all of the problems of being single, but none of the freedom to try to meet anybody new, since I have been constantly fending her off. Parties have consisted of trying to impress people I don't really like (but who are the only ones around) while avoiding Sarah and being ever conscious of the almost anthropological observations of Sarah's Media-and-Communications-Studies classmates. This is not a recipe for meeting new people, starting up things with women, or even having interesting conversations. I tend to retire to a dark corner with a bottle until I eventually get bored and go home. Or until something weird and surreal happens, which my regular readers will know is fairly often.

But last night's party? Had a hell of a good time. I don't have to worry if this snidey French girl I'm chatting up likes me or not. I don't have to care if Sarah's making an ass of herself. I don't have to talk to anyone I don't want to talk to, charm anyone I don't want to charm. There's no pressure, no expectations on my part. I don't usually let myself become concerned with what anybody thinks of me, and now that I've realized just to what extent I had done so and now stopped, it's quite liberating.

In what is (probably) an entirely unrelated story, I've also started using more of my primitive Swedish and been eating Swedish food. The former consists of attempting to order coffee and tell corridormates where I'm going in Swedish, only to be met by a) English (since they know my Swedish sucks) or b) a barrage of rapid-fire Swedish (because they are joyless sadists). Swedish food consists of two options. The first is crackers (knäckebröd) with something on top. This is usually butter and a slice of cheese. Sometimes it's a slice of meat and cheese. Sometimes a slice of cucumber. You get the idea. This, my friends, is smörgås, which means "sandwich" and therefore, a smörgåsbord consists of several of these sad little things. Yes, to a Swede, a sandwich is a cracker with something on it. And a smörgåsbord, which we in the States had been led to believe was a feast of epic Nordic proportions, is in fact a pathetic excuse for light refreshments.
The second option is what I've taken to calling Mandi-food, since it's the only thing I ever see my corridormate Mandi eat. Mandi, by the way, is the infamous Kurd of previous posts, and seems to be very worried about the Illuminati.
Mandi-food consists of a plate of macaroni smothered in ketchup with a half-dozen meatballs on top. I'm aware how disgusting that sounds. The real problem is that macaroni (especially when covered in cold ketchup) does not retain heat well and thus starts to cool around the edges very quickly, necessitating that you eat it very fast.
The benefit is that you can get a box of macaroni for about two bucks. You can get a tub of meatballs for about five bucks. And ketchup is about two bucks. That'll get you somewhere around fifteen of these meals, and they take all of ten or twelve minutes to cook. A ten minute meal for under fifty cents? Yes, please.

Also! Starting next week I will go from having one fairly difficult class to having three simultaneously. See, this isn't supposed to ever happen. Trouble is, I'm mixing history and government department classes and masters and undergrad classes, and it seems to have blown everyone's minds. I'm going to continue with this masters course on Yugoslavia till March. The undergrad class on the vikings starts up and goes for a month, which is exactly the same time period as my other masters class on international politics. Yes, that's right. They're letting me take masters courses in two different programs in two different departments. This is unheard of in the entire history of Sweden, and everyone I tell is aghast. If I owned anything, I suspect they would have already called dibs. This means I may actually be busy and (don't jinx it!) intellectually stimulated while saving money and having an independent, interesting woman at the same time.

Now I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Nothing goes this well.

What I'm Reading
Dashiell Hammet, Red Harvest (in Swedish! Ellroy's book defeated me utterly, so I'm trying an older noir, hoping for more simple language. If this fails, I'm switching to Hemingway.)
Basil Davidson, The Black Man's Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State.

Also, finally put up a new blog over at my other spot.