Plopp

Yes, it's a candy bar called Plopp. And yes, I've tried it and it's slightly better than the name implies.

The Sing-along Wedding

After surviving the winter bazaar at the kids' school Saturday morning (think tons of people, games, auctions, crying children, bake sale, bead explosions, etc.), Adrian and I went to Trevor and Malin's wedding in the evening. (Trevor and Malin are the owners and lead consultants at the small firm I work with called Lorensbergs). The ceremony was at Utby Church -- very oldy-wordly-Swedish and cozy on a dark December night. The ceremony was in both English and Swedish, and except for the time when the minister said Malin and Trevor were now of one fish when I'm pretty sure he meant one flesh, it was very traditional and tear-enducing.

The fun began when we went back to their house for dinner. I sat next to a zesty British woman named Leigh. Even after she told me for the fifth time: "Nevada, couples have to grow TOGETHER, not APART. Graham and I grew TOGETHER. K. and A. grew APART" (and boy do I wish I could write that with her West Midlands accent), I still loved her. Here we are before dessert:
Some time after the first course little sing-along booklets were passed around, a guitar player jumped up, and the singing started. A sing-along wedding! We sang Sailing by Rod Stewart, Love me Tender, a Swedish song called Främling that everyone seemed to know, and on and on. At one point Olle, another Lorensberg consultant (and psychologist) got up and sang this incredible Swedish a cappella song about 3 flowers representing faith, love and trust (I think). Watch for Olle on next season's Swedish Idol.

My pictures from the wedding suck, but I blame that on a) what is probably by now an antique digital camera and b) not being able to move from my seat between 5pm-10pm. So every picture I have looks like this (Malin and Trevor are, sadly, right behind the flickering candle in the middle of the frame), but you get a sense of the cozy atmosphere: Swedes really love singing, and especially group sing-alongs (allsång), so I shouldn't have been so surprised by the musical wedding. There are huge televised sing-alongs from Stockholm (Allsång på Skansen) and Gothenburg (Lotta på Liseberg) every summer. If you knew the songs and could sing I could vaguely imagine finding this fun, but since neither applies to me, not so much.

Advent

You can't grow up attending a Waldorf school and not love advent. The scent of beeswax and pine needles, apples turned into candle holders, visits from St. Nicholas, almond cookies and Christmas stories all made this time of year one of my favorites. But my mom gets props for the best part of advent: the advent ribbon. Every year, my mom hung up a thick red ribbon onto which were pinned 24 small presents, goodies like stickers, mini tea sets for my dollhouse, and chocolates. Working from the bottom I opened one present a day until Christmas morning, when the ribbon was tossed aside in favor of bigger, more exciting things happening under the Christmas tree.

Last year I started the advent ribbon tradition in our house for Ava, who sweetly and joyfully opened 1 present a day just as I remember doing. This year I decided to do a ribbon for Julian as well. For those of you with 2-year-old boys, warning bells might be going off in your heads right about now. Perhaps they were for me, too, but I decided to ignore them because I had too much glögg -- who knows.

In any event, I did a ribbon for both kids and this morning they ran over to their ribbons with happy faces. Ava opened her first present (some princess stickers) and all was good. Then Julian opened his present (a squeezable snake that sticks out its tongue). Then Julian wanted to open all the other presents. Then we said no, you open 1 a day. Then Julian grabbed at the presents and started screaming. Then we moved the entire ribbon. Then he tried climbing the bookshelf to get the ribbon while screaming "nej, nej, nej!!" (this is the extent of his Swedish, used only in times of crisis). Then Julian proceeded to have a temper tantrum for the next half hour and we had to force him into his clothes and snowsuit and out the door. So much for a peaceful beginning to advent. I think I need some glögg to get through 23 more mornings that include the advent ribbon.

The System

I can't believe I haven't posted about this before, but in Sweden alcoholic drinks (with an alcohol content greater than 3.5%) are sold to the public only in state-run stores called the Systembolaget. Of course you can also buy drinks in pubs, cafes and restaurants (because who doesn't want to pay $10 for a beer and $15 for a cosmo?), but if you want to drink something at home you've got to go to the "System" (pronounced approximately "sis-tame"). Aside from the limited opening times (closed around 2pm on Saturday and closed on Sunday), and the prices, which are probably more a result of tax than anything to do with the System itself, the whole thing seems to work pretty well. The stores are bright, modern, well-stocked, conveniently located (for us anyway), and apparently they'll order any bottle of anything for you from all over the world. Just get ready to hand over the SEK.

What is most fascinating to me about the System monopoly is what is represents about the Swedish relationship to alcohol. I don't pretend to understand this relationship fully, but it seems to me as a casual observer that Swedes have a love/hate relationship with alcohol that strikes me as not too dissimilar to the American relationship with the bottle. It's that same puritanical thing about booze being evil because it makes you lose control while at the same time loving to have a drink (or two or fifteen). Friends tell me that it's still considered a bit unseemly to drink wine during the week, but that the attitude has relaxed a lot in the last 10 years.

This "ad" (I don't know what else you'd call it) by the Systembolaget was recently in the paper: The title, on either side of the bifurcated viking dude, says "We Swedes came up with the smartest way of selling alcohol (maybe because we needed it more than others)." I love this. It's so Swedish to think the Swedish way is best and to be so self-reflective at the same time. The "ad" goes on to say that before the monopoly was formed in 1955 people drank 4 times as much as today and the problem was "enormous." It claims that studies show if alcohol were sold in grocery stores, consumption would go up by 30%, which would lead to about 1600 more deaths and 16 million more sick days every year.

I have no doubt the stats are true. Maybe after we get a public option for health care Obama should try to form a national alcohol monopoly? Or else he could just shoot himself in the foot and hand the presidency to the Republicans for the next century.

November is horrible

For the past few weeks my life has consisted of:

• Dressing and undressing children in rain and/or snow gear
• Schlepping children through the rain to and from school, the grocery store and the library
• Procrastinating doing anything useful
  
• Trying to pretend the sun might come out
• Trying to not check email 100 times a day out of boredom

Yes, the expat life is like one big vacation.

Swedes and other longer-term Scandinavian expats assure me that November is the worst month. Last year I must have still been riding the wave of expat adrenalin because it didn't seem so bad, but this year I feel like someone dropped a bag of bricks on my head and I can't squirm out from underneath. The result of this is a Mom with a less than sunny outlook on life (at least it's consistent with the weather), in which all things positive are now hideous and inconvenient:

Our great apartment? Horrible! If I have to haul 2 kids and 5 bags of groceries up this mini elevator one more time I'll die! The terrific public transportation? Heinous! What is wrong with these crazy people stepping on my children and not apologizing?! My favorite cafe near the kids' school? The tables always tip over and the chairs are broken! Etc.

So you see, I am doing a very poor job of dealing with November this year. Only 10 more days until Advent. Here's hoping the Christmas lights and glögg improve my mood (for the whole family's sake). Bah humbug.

Swedish justice

Last week I was in Lund again doing the Cultural Understanding course with a chatty group at Sony Ericsson. One of the models I use in the course to represent the difficulty of changing deeply held cultural beliefs is a drawing of a buoy. The buoy floating on top of the water that you can see represents behaviors -- they're observable and can change pretty easily. Below the water, hidden from view, is the buoy's tether -- this represents the norms we live by and the values we hold, which are more difficult for us to change. And where the tether is anchored to the ground at the bottom of the ocean, that's where our core assumptions about life are. These are nearly impossible to change and make us very uncomfortable when they are challenged.

I bring up this model because I was surprised by my angry reaction to a piece in the paper today about the murder of a teenage girl a few months ago here in Sweden. The 15-year-old girl was strangled to death in a forest by 2 other teenagers (a girl and a boy), both 16 and mentally fit i.e. they weren't psychotic or on drugs when this happened. Yesterday they were sentenced to a mere 20 months in a youth facility ("undomsvård" -- have no idea if this is prison type situation or a tennis camp in Solna. Please tell me it's not cozy or I might be ill).

In the paper an expert says that 20 months is a reasonable sentence because children are very sensitive and if they served a long sentence the perpetrators might never recover and "have a future." It's best for society, she argues, that they received a short sentence. Now, if you ever wanted an explicit example of the fact that Sweden prioritizes the needs of society over the needs of the individual, here it is. As an American I wonder where on earth is the justice for the victim and her family? How are they supposed to cope with the fact that these murderers are going to be out running the streets in their tight pants and died blond hair in 20 months? In Sweden are they really expected to accept this verdict for the greater good of society? Personally, I think this is way too much to expect of these parents, Swedish or otherwise, and in my rock at the bottom of the tether, justice has not been served.

Germish

Earlier this week I facilitated a workshop for a bunch of Germans on working successfully in Sweden. I spoke mostly English and some German, and was sort of horrified to realize that my German is sounding a bit Swedish (a bit too sing-songy with too many "-ning" noun endings when they should be "-ung") and that Swedish words are coming to my mind faster than the German equivalent. In short, I realized I now speak Germish instead of German. So sad, my German was so good ... and that was so many years ago.

For the workshop I used Geert Hofstede's cultural dimensions and it's the perfect model for Germans and Swedes working together because there are huge gaps in two of the dimensions: Masculinity (how assertive people are), and Uncertainty Avoidance (how comfortable people are with ambiguity). Sweden is the least masculine (or most feminine) culture in the world according to Hofstede, and so Germans tend to perceive Swedes as, well, girly men, and Swedes perceive Germans as overbearing, immodest and aggressive. Swedes are much more comfortable than the Germans with ambiguity and so they need fewer rules designed to eliminate uncertainty. As a result, they tend to view Germans as process-obsessed and unwilling to listen to different opinions. Germans tend to think Swedes are slow and wishy-washy.

As you can imagine, this led to some great discussions. Since they were German, it was all very frank and helpful I thought. I did my cultural adaptation part and prepared lots of graphs and data. (You Germans out there might be rolling your eyes, but there are not too many cultures out there in which people tell you they don't agree with various parts of your model and that they are going to change it so that it "makes more sense".)

Having had so many Swedes in my workshops lately, I was almost taken aback by the energy of the Germans -- lots of talking, side conversations, jokes, and just more body energy. Very un-Swedish. Sort of refreshing, actually. It was like the undercurrent in the room was buzzing, when usually it is, well, very low-key and Swedish and everyone listens calmly and politely and doesn't question too much and quietly enters and exits the room.

At the end of the day the participants said they were going to involve their Swedish colleagues in decision-making more, expect longer decision-making timelines, stay calm when they disagree and ask open questions to get the other person's perspective, and make an effort to go to more coffee breaks (fikas) to build relationships with colleagues. So I think some of what we talked about sunk in. But somehow I don't expect Jens and Hans to be dancing around the maypole by next mid-summer. Naja.