San Francisco, the temptress

I just came back from a whirlwind 5-day trip to San Francisco. I had the best time. The entire time I felt like San Francisco was trying to prove herself to me and tempt me home. Look how beautiful I am! Look at the weather I have in March! Look how friendly my people are! Look at all the amazing people you know who choose me! What do they say about having to leave to appreciate what you have?

My primary mission for the trip: register Ava in a SF public school. For anyone not familiar with the enrollment process for the SF Unified School District, let me say that it can only be described as long, opaque, stress-inducing and random. People cry ... people call each other bad, bad names ... people move to Marin ... people enroll in very expensive private schools (we're talking $15,000/year and up) because they give up on the process ...and some people thank their lucky stars. Happily, after 6 months of angst (and waaaay too much time reading a blog called the SF K Files, which covers getting into kindy in SF) we are in the latter group, slightly stunned to have received our first choice school in the lottery. So Ava is now officially registered in kindergarten. Weight off shoulders officially lifted. There's still that little issue of the school district needing to cut $113 million next year and California schools ranking in the bottom 20% in the nation, but hey, I'm feeling cheery anyway.

I also managed to renew my driver's license. Sounds small, but it's huge since I haven't been able to drive in Sweden since last September. Now I plan on just driving in circles around Gothenburg, just because I can.

Great Swedish kiddie lithographs

Melodifestivalen

Ever wanted to see Dolph Lundgren (he's the Swedish guy who played the big blond Russian in one of the Rocky movies) sing "A Little Less Conversation" while he chops ice and wood blocks in half with his bare hands? No? Well, the Swedes do, and now so do I!

It's all part of the annual magic that is the insanely popular Melodifestivalen. Melodifestivalen is the Swedish run-up to the Eurovision Song Contest. Each week you watch 8 performers sing some of the greatest and most horrendest pop songs ever and vote for your favorites. Then there's a finale in Stockholm at the Globe theater and the winner gets to be Sweden's official entry at Eurovision in the summer. The cheeze! The fashion! The Swedish pop! We have been watching on Saturday nights with the kids, who tell us whom to vote for. Julian always likes the blond ladies with big boobs and flashy clothes, like the lady from the Alcazar in the picture above. Ava actually picks songs she likes, for example this catchy number called Kom from a band called Timoteij (and yes, the girls in the band do all look like those old Timotei shampoo ad girls).

Gothenburg for kids - best places

For anyone coming to Göteborg, here are some of my favorite things to do with kids:

Universeum
Otherwise known as our home away from home in the winter, Universeum is science discovery museum right next to Liseberg. The 3-story indoor rainforest is always a winner (especially when the monkeys are out), as is the aquarium, where you can see Hermann the shark. We spend most of our time, however, in the play area called Puls on the 2nd floor, where you can test your speed on a mini sprint track, ride on a mechanical horse, design your own digital truck, and lots more.

City Library
I just love the Stadsbibliotek, not just because it's around the corner from our house on Götaplatsen, but because it's got a cozy, warm and bright kid's room (with a potty!) with lots of English (and French, German, Norwegian, Arabic, etc.) books, some puzzles and toys. They also put on an amazing array of talks, story hours, lectures, exhibits, etc. Plus, they added a decent cafe off the main rotunda last year so you can buy a juice box on your way in or out.


Liseberg Amusement Park
Our local amusement park with a surprising number of rides for kids ages 2-6 (and of course plenty for older kids, too). I like it best during Christmas time when you can still go on a roller coaster in the snow, but also go ice skating, visit Santa, ride a reindeer-pulled sleigh, check out the Christmas crafts market and warm your hands over drums of hot coals set up around the park as you drink a mug of glögg.

Maritiman
Scramble over and through a collection of 12 or so ships that are anchored in the river close to downtown, from a destroyer to a fire boat. Then have a good cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun in the floating cafe.
Waffles and fish
At the Sjöfartsmuseet (Museum of the Sea) in the Majorna section of town, start your weekend with an all-you-can-eat waffle breakfast in the small cafe, then check out the aquarium or the new play room on the 3rd floor and let the kids burn off the whipped cream and strawberry jam toppings.

Stadsmuseet
The City Museum has a large play area for kids where they can play store, give lessons in an old school room from the 180os, or move barges around a winding model of the Göta River. Head downstairs afterwards to the super-cozy cafe that has a box of toys in the back and plenty of pillars, nooks and crannies for the kids to chase each other around.

Slottskogen
In summer, nothing beats a picnic and people-watching in this sprawling park at the top of Linnegatan. We have spent many a sunny afternoon hanging out on the lawns, playing at Plikta playground, and visiting the cute petting zoo (where pony rides are just a couple of dollars each). Also hidden in Slottskogen is a pool full of energetic penguins, a moose family and a few bored seals. My favorite place to get a glass of wine in summer is Villa Belparc, a restaurant with a huge, picturesque outdoor terrace that overlooks a small lake/pond with a big fountain. The kids love exploring the terrace, eating the yummy french fries and feeding the ducks. In summer, don't forget to buy strawberries on your way home from one of the stands around the park.


In the winter, try the Naturhistoriska Museet (Natural History Museum) that looks down over the playground. It's a bargain (a yearly pass is about $7) and the collection of stuffed animals is old-school creepy to delight boys and girls of all ages.
Swimming
In the summer, the possibilities for swimming are endless. The beaches along the coast are gorgeous and rugged, but we like the kid-friendly and sandy beaches in the Delsjön nature area, especially the beaches at Harlanda Tjärn and Delsjön itself. Both have grassy shaded areas, sand, swings, shallow water for wading and ice cream vendors (key!). An extra benefit of this beach is the cute Cafe Lyckan that is just a short walk away. They do delicious waffles, and outside they have a goat and some bunnies (that they say you can take home if you like). This is the beach at Delsjön last June.
In the winter you can do drop-in swimming at the very warm and low-key Sporthallsbadet, which is next to the large Valhalla swimming complex. This warm pool has tons of floaties and swim noodles to choose from, and a tiny slide. For older kids, Åbybadet south of town is a huge, raucous swim complex with multiple pools, a decked out kiddie wading area and 3 huge spiraling slides that elicit screams from swimmers of all ages.

Kid-friendly Cafes
Most cafes in town are generally kid-friendly (and many have changing tables), but some try harder than others. Glädjebubblan is a big cafe with a play area that's great for babies and young toddlers. And I just love Språkcafeet, the language cafe.

They have a box of toys in the back and a changing table in the bathroom, but this one gets my recommendation because you can sit outside (like the ladies above) and let the kids run around Esperantoplatsen as you eat your delicious vegetarian buffet lunch.

That's all for now, folks!

Is Rudeness Relative?

Along with the very real possibility of being impaled by 6-foot-long icicles I have been thinking lately about whether or not rudeness is always relative. I tend to think about this most after I have become extremely annoyed by a Swede doing something I perceive to be super rude and they seem positively astonished by if I say anything. These incidents tend to involve:

• People cutting in front of me or the kids as we go into the library, get on a bus, etc.
  
• People bumping into me or the kids in the street and not saying anything
• People pushing by us to get somewhere without saying excuse me or whatever

Now Swedes, unless they have lived abroad for a long time, would not think any of the above are rude or out of the ordinary. Notice that all of these involve pretending you don't see the other person you are pushing, bumping, etc. The norm in Sweden, in public spaces, is to not see anyone and not speak to anyone you don't know, and that includes people you injure. The weird thing about this to me is that Swedes, when you've met them, are truly the humblest, most egalitarian people I've ever met, and that's perhaps why the public behavior is so bizarre.

My theory is that this all relates back to the Swedish value/norm of "lagom," which translates badly to just enough. Swedes are often worried about being too much of anything -- too loud, too smart, too outgoing, too fat, whatever ... they want to be just enough of everything. They are most comfortable when everyone is the same. And when everyone is the same, I guess you don't have to say excuse me when you push by someone because why the heck should you apologize to them because they're not any more special that you and shit happens, right?

Anyway, this is the clearest example I have in Sweden of rudeness being relative. What is rude to me is clearly the norm for the Swedes, and so I go around muttering to myself about rude Swedes when of course in their minds they aren't at all.

So are there some things that are ALWAYS rude across all cultures? Well, you gotta figure that making jokes about someone else's country that refer to sensitive political or historical events are up there. Take the participant I had in my cultural understanding course this week. His jokes over the two days included jokes about:

• The French letting the Germans walk right into Paris
  
• The Germans not being welcome in Holland in large numbers when they wear green
• Not going to Venezuela because you'll never come out again
• It's better not to have oil in your country because the U.S. will invade you

This guy had no edit feature and, as far as I could tell, no practice in putting himself in others' shoes, so we worked on both of those things. We'll see if he can hold back on the Stalin jokes when he goes to Russia next week. Sigh.

Ava is 5

Well I gave in and we had Ava's 5th birthday party at one of those indoor playland places because that's what everyone else with birthdays in freezing months has been doing here. I studiously avoided having it at Lek & Bushuset, otherwise known as Lord of the Flies Comes to Sweden with Pixie Sticks, and hosted it at a more modest one called Lekstan in Sisjön instead (Sisjön, by the way, is pronounced something like SI + wh if you were exaggerating that combination + UN) . I was feeling sort of guilty about outsourcing the party because it's so impersonal, but after seeing how much fun the kids had (and how little there was for me and Adrian to clean up afterwards), I am sold! These places are da best! You show up at the appointed hour with your kid and a cake, and they do the rest, including herding the children into the Jungle Room for hot dogs, serving ice cream, and providing goody bags. Two hours later, happy kids and presents in tow, you just go home to your clean (ha!) house.

I'm guessing there are tons of these kind of indoor play places in parts of the U.S. where there is a) snow and/or b) lower property costs, but there sure aren't any nice ones in San Francisco. Too bad because sometimes drinking a good cup of coffee and talking to your spouse while your kids happily climb and run with abandon when it's yucky outside is pretty nice.

Snow life

The sign outside Liseberg says "Don't be doubtful, Spring is coming" (I'm sure there's a better translation for the "miströsta inte" part ...), but I'm feeling pretty darned doubtful after the amount of snow we've had over the past few days, with more on the way. We're hunkering down waiting for the next storm to arrive. In the meantime we're enjoying watching the huge icicles form outside our windows and drinking lots of hot cocoa.