Stockholm Fun Times

Three months in, I figured it was time to pick my Top 3 times in Sweden so far…

3) Wrestlemania I – You know who loves himself some ‘rasslin?  Me.  But you know who ELSE loves himself some ‘rasslin?  Our little one-year old Hulk Hogan!

I came back from work the other day needing to take over parenting duties from Lis so that she could join a work call.  When I walked in (a little late), she was already on her computer in the living room, so I brought Calvin into the bedroom to give her a little bit of quiet. 

Shockingly, that backfired when “somehow”, I ended up giving him a body slam.  He started laughing and giggling so much that instead of walking around the bed like I had expected, we started pinning each other, tossing each other in the air and flipping every which way (always supporting the neck and head!).  A lot of attack tickles and raspberries were given out as well, obviously.

The game had to come to an initial end when I realized that, rather than letting Lisa work in peace and quiet, I had caused Calvin to shriek non-stop for 15-20 minutes.  Anytime you have to stop doing something because of too much baby-laughin, I chalk that up to a successful day.

2) Hookie! – I don’t know if you remember from earlier blogs, but Swedes (collectively), take a week off in February to go skiing.  We hadn’t known about this, so we were home, but with the whole office gone, it gave me a lot of freedom.  I was able to take off the Wed morning of that week, and go see what my peoples had been doing every day.  Lisa was always telling me about her open-daycare experiences, so I was hyped for some good ole Swedish sing-a-longs.  The one we went to that day, (a Calvin-favorite), was close by, and I think was a little more open then usual (due to skiing).  The three of us were able to bang toys together, get into crawl-chases and steal toys from other kids – well, I did two out of three of these at least.  The singing was really solid too – a lot of props (parachutes, maracas, etc) and interactive fun. Seeing how much fun Calvin was having, and knowing that Lisa and he were able to do this almost every day of the week was really great.  Got me just a littttle bit jealous, I’m not going to lie.   This was definitely an experience unique to Sweden, and one of my first experiences with seeing the “kid-friendly” culture here up close.  I was able to get to work at the end of lunch and pick up right where I left off – I definitely get used to morning playtimes and half days! 

1)  Secular Religious Holidays! – One thing I love about Sweden is that they are completely secular (a church blog post is in my queue), yet they also use any reason they can to not work.  Enter a four day Easter weekend!  I had a whole row to myself in church that Sunday, but that didn’t mean that folks weren’t going to take the opportunity to go to their summer homes Friday and Monday (and possibly Thursday as well).  With this “bonus” day, we decided to really take advantage.  So when Calvin got up at 6am and we realized it was a gorgeous day, we packed up him and the dogs and went for a long walk.  Grabbed some coffee, looked at the boats in the water and pretty much circled the island.  We ended up trading the dogs for some stale bread when we walked by our apartment at some point, and then it was on to feed the ducks.  The park close to us is a duck-feeding mecca, so I had been pretty hyped up about this for awhile.  Especially with the nice day, it was great getting some sun, and Calvin liked having the birds so close (he REALLY likes animals now, so this is probably something we need to do again soon).  From there, we did a 15 minute, impromptu photo shoot on the park bench, cause well, he was bringing his A-game.  We walked around the park for awhile again before we found a little beach where we hung out for a bit.  At this point, homeboy’s schedule was pretty out of whack, and his stroller nap didn’t give him exactly what he wanted.  So he was getting a little antsy, and we decided to walk home.  On the way, we found a new playground – and figured that he could wait a little bit (Daddy needed to get his swing on).  We spent about 30 minutes or so trying out the swings, the bouncy-horses and the treehouse-gym that they had set up.  We also used the big tire swing, with me laying down across it and him on my chest.  He loved it, giggling and smiling, and gave me a big ole baby hug as he held on tight.  I translated the hug as “thanks for having the day off pops, I’m excited that we had such a fun morning and love hanging out with my folks on a random Monday morning”.  (I'm pretty much fluent in baby-talk by now)

Looking at my list, I realized that nothing about this was overtly Swedish – nothing to do with the viking ships, cross country skiing or frolicking with reindeer – but at least 2 out of 3 would likely not have happened without the great work-life balance and family-friendly infrastructure that exists out here. Definitely makes me appreciate everything we have out here, and gets me excited to see what the next three months bring!

Modern Viking

I was heading out to a meeting across campus the other day, and we had to stop by another floor to grab someone else coming with us.  It was snowing out (obviously), so my manager and I were dressed appropriately with our coats, scarves, etc.  The other guy we were walking over there with comes out with just his jeans and shirt (as always, unbuttoned for the top few buttons).  We ask him if he needs to go grab his coat, and he just looks at us with disgust and replies “I’m a Viking – I think I can handle the cold”

Awesome

The Swedish Chef Diaries -- Oven baked "lightly" salted cod

Anyone who knows us for 5 minutes knows that Jon is the one in charge of the kitchen.  He is the chef in the household and without his enthusiasm to try new recipes, I would be eating an alternating rotation of rice and butter and spaghetti day in and day out.  Jon was working late one night and I was left with the agonizing decision of eating a handful of Calvin's Cheerios or trying my hand at a new Swedish recipe that Jon had lined up that night.  Sighing, I reluctantly put down the cereal box and picked up the casserole dish.  Might as well give it a try.

I'm not a fan of fish but I can bring myself to eat it if it doesn't taste too fishy.  You know what I mean.  Dress it up like something else and my brain can pretend its not fish long enough to swallow it.  Living in Stockholm, surrounded by SEA, I've tried to overcome this culinary reflex.  Imagine my surprise when I see the menu for the night is brined cod.  So... I'm going to deliberately make my fish super salty and briny and really really fishy?? Ummm...ok...

The recipe also features a shrimp salad thingy to put over top your super salty brine-y fish.  (MUST HAVE MORE IODINE!) Unfortunately, the recipe was more vague than I wanted since I really needed my hand held.  The recipe itself gets a D- since it deceivingly says its "lightly" salted (its not),  serves 10 people (who feeds 10 people?) AND doesn't give any sort of total cooking time reference (1 hr, 2 hrs? I need to know how long I'm going to be in the kitchen!!)  I had to cut the recipe in half and it took about an hour.

I had to come up with a creative side item and since we were low on extra ingredients around the house, I grabbed some carrots, apples, olive oil and lemon juice and made a cold, raw salad thingy on the side.  The tastiest part of the whole dish was the shrimp, boiled eggs and brown butter topping.  You could easily just make that part of the recipe and serve it on crackers or some tasty bread and save yourself an hour.

Here is a picture of my plate -- not quite the same as the one on the blog but we ate real food that night and didn't have to order in pizza.  A pathetic success.

Jon -- shrimp topping - 4
          brined cod - 2
Lisa -- shrimp topping - 3
           brined cod - 1.5 -- barely edible

http://blogs.sweden.se/food/2011/08/23/oven-baked-lightly-salted-cod/

Rough Neighborhoods in Stockholm

(Legitimately - first picture that comes up when you Google "bad neighborhoods in Stockholm")

One thing that Lisa and I have noticed is that we haven’t found a “bad” neighborhood here.  After we spent our first 10 weekends here walking around Stockholm, we realized we had pretty much covered the whole map but had never felt unsafe or even concerned at all.  While I am used to that, being wicked tough, it was different enough that it eventually stood out to us.  While I’m sure we would feel completely comfortable walking in every Atlanta neighborhood at night, Stockholm just has a different feel to it.  Different also from Providence, Rochester, Tampa, DC, Charlotte and every other city we have ever been to.

I’m not sure if this is more because of the Swedes culture, the socialist safety net, or just that we haven’t found the rough areas yet.  But it’s something we found interesting.

UPDATE - evidently the best Swedish soccer player right now is from the “ghetto of Sweden” – “My football is my own free style it comes from the streets and Ghetto’s where I used to play when I was young but, of course, I have to play in the way the coach wants me to here.” - Zlatan Ibrahimovic

He is from the one rough area in the country, found in southern Sweden

Lisa forgot to add an exterior pic of the house

Luckily I found it advertised at a real estate office near my work...

 Yup, that's it there in the middle

So Swedish!!!  We can't wait!!!

Searching for the "perfect" house in Stockholm...

...is nearly impossible.  When Sweden's Minister for Public Administration and Housing can't find an apartment in Stockholm himself, you know there is something askew with the system.  The state controls the housing supply and the demand is ever increasing. Other bloggers have spoken more verbosely on the topic so read their posts if you want more information.

Moving to Sweden: Finding a place to live
Got $25,000? Get a box for 30 sq feet

Basically, it's a messed up system that they've lived with for forever so it's unlikely to change any time soon.  I won't go into all of the political details about how and why the housing system is like it is in Sweden, I'll just tell OUR story about how we found our place.

Search, search, search the inter-webs.  First, install Google Chrome because the helpful websites will all be in SWEDISH.  Rather than limiting yourself to English, fee-based sites, just search in Google Chrome and set up your automatic translator.  We found options through homerental.se and blocket.se.  There are other options but those two had the most listings that were in our range. Both are absolutely terrible websites and are not easy to navigate but what is?  A word of caution -- check the "date of availability" of the listing.  There were quite a number of great homes that were no longer available because the people who run homerental.se do not update their posts.  Convenient right?  Also, the filters on blocket.se were incorrect.  There were a lot of listings that did not indicate that they were pet friendly but that didn't mean that they weren't.  If an owner doesn't check a box it won't show up in the filter.  Basically, I limited my search using the filters and winnowed down the candidate listings when there was a secret stash of potential options hiding on the other side of those filters.  In the end, you will have to comb through hundreds of listings, send a gazillion emails and maybe, just maybe, receive 2 replies.  It suuuucks.

Jon's company provided us with a house hunting agency. Perfect! They will surely grant us access to the housing databases that are fee based, right?  Ummm... no.  They searched homerental.se and blocket and gave me the same listings that I had already researched myself.  Worthless!  Why are you getting paid again?  They didn't even arrange viewings or take us to see any properties.  Apparently they have a limit of "showing" us 3 properties. Three!?! Just like International House Hunters only not nearly as helpful, fun or exciting. "Showing us properties" entails them sending an email with the information that is provided on the free websites. USELESS!  We did have some considerations -- we wanted a house that allowed for dogs.  I guess those aren't too plentiful in Stockholm.

We took matters into our own hands and called the only property that allowed for dogs and wasn't going to be ~$10,000/mth in rent.  We searched for properties in the neighboring suburbs, Uppsala, Sigtuna, and anywhere reachable by a commuter train.  Fantastic -- we found one potential option -- in Lidingö...we had no idea where that is.  My fingers were crossed that this would work out because we really had no alternative.  We jumped on the T-bana and headed for Lidingö -- an island on the east side of Stockholm.  Lidingö has its own special banan that looks like a cute little train from 1962.

Lidingöbanan!

We trudged through a freak snow storm and ended up getting off at the last banan stop.  After consulting an electronic map, we discovered we were a 20 min walk (translate that into a 40 min walk IN THE SNOW STORM) away from the house.  Ever the optimist, Jon says, "Well, we get to see more of the island this way."  I wanted to smack him but I was too busy trying not to fall into the slushy snow that was shin-deep.  We arrived at the house soaking wet but happy to be invited into a very spacious house.  They were excited to see Calvin and talk with us about the house and their own moving adventure.  It was a good fit all around.

The house hunting agency drafted the contract during a subsequent meeting the next week and we are now confirmed!  We will have a place to live until August 2013!

The outside of the house is crack-den-ish so I'll only post pics of the inside.  We are looking forward to having some dinner parties, grilling BBQ, and enjoying the nearby nature preserve and lake!

Upstairs living room

Other angle upstairs

Bedroom upstairs

Looking into the kitchen

Dining table seats 8 -- dinner party anyone?

Upstairs bathroom

Renovated kitchen

Eat-in kitchen for 4

Spiral staircase downstairs

Downstairs common area

Guest room/study downstairs

Second bedroom downstairs

Bathroom downstairs - tub, shower and heated tiled floor

Stairway to Heaven

As a general rule, Swedes are generally more down with walking than Americans. They think nothing of walking 20 minutes to their favorite café rather than jumping in a car, and it is a very pedestrian friendly city. That doesn’t mean they aren’t lazy though!

Leaving the subway yesterday, I saw a traffic jam in front of the escalator. Evidently both up escalators were currently being worked on, but were not blocked off. So people didn’t realize that they weren’t running until they were right on top of them. This caused folks to stop in their tracks like they were about to walk on hot lava, almost get run over by people behind them, and then move to the left to take the elevator (slowest elevator in the world btw). Granted, it is a long escalator, but they people walk everywhere, its not THAT big of an inconvenience.

So along with a few other tri-athletes to be, I decide to get my cardio in and walk up the stairs. Everyone is hustling, but then about halfway up, the stairs magically transform back into escalators. This was a little jarring to come out of nowhere, but kind of fun. The funny thing was that IMMEDIATELY, everyone that had made the conscious decision to walk up the stairs determined that their legs were non-functioning any more. It was like they all had stepped into cement boots as they moved to the right side and let the escalator do the work for them. I loved that everyone changes immediately from “I will walk up these stairs by myself” to “I will let the machine carry me now”. The “I will use the escalator for assistance to speed my walk” option was not available that day I guess….

The Swedish Chef Diaries – Cod on Bacon with Mushroom and Potato Puree

After a week without and seafood, I decided to dive back in with a FANCY lookin dish that caught my eye on the official Sweden blog. This one sounded / looked complicated, but was actually pretty simple. Its basically easy mashed potatoes, easy baked fish and a somewhat complicated sauce. By “somewhat complicated”, I mean you sauté bacon, onions and mushrooms then put in some stock and red wine. Let that simmer for 20 minutes and BAMMO, taste explosion.

I added some sautéed spinach to it to get a little green in there, but all in all it was very simple to put together. The picture on the blog looked well put together, so I insisted that I bring out the plates put together, rather than the usual “family style” we normally do.

Overall, I think this might be our big winner so far. Fancy enough to look impressive, but simple enough to pull together quickly / easily. And tasty – that’s the important part obviously

Jon – 5 BORKS

Lisa – 5 BORKS

DOUBLE 5!!!!! FIRST PERFECT SCORE !!!!!

http://blogs.sweden.se/food/2012/01/12/cod-on-bacon-with-mushrooms-and-potato-puree/

Shoppers rejoice - it's IKEA's homeland!

Here we go!

When IKEA (is it all caps?) came to Atlanta, there was a line of cars around the block waiting to park in one of the numerous parking garages.  The store was crazy hectic for months until the novelty wore off.  At first I didn't get it.  Who needs to make their own bed with only an allen wrench and directions ALL in pictures?  I hated going to the IKEA store in Atlanta because I didn't have much need to see how much furniture can cram into 237 sqft of living space because I would never, in my right mind, ever ever live in an apartment that was sooo tiny. Americans look around the showcase floor like its a museum.  It's interesting but so abstract because we can't imagine living in that small of an apartment.  Who lives like that?  Swedes do.

And I get it now.  After living in Stockholm for nearly 3 months, I understand the space limitations that led to the development of such efficiently compact furnishings. I also understand why they developed those living space show rooms.  Those aren't just funky rooms to rubberneck around in the store.  They are rooms to give you IDEAS on how to make the tiniest apartment imaginable habitable for a family of 4 because that's your situation.  I will say that we are extremely fortunate to have corporate housing that gives us plenty of space (66 sqm) but in all honesty, nothing we've seen even comes close to our townhouse in Atlanta -- which was small by Atlanta standards.  If only we could transport our townhouse  to Stockholm, even a suburb of Stockholm, we could easily sell it for $900K (maybe more).  I'm not joking.

Our trip to Ikea was kind of like a pilgrimage to shopping mecca. We walked there from the commuter train because the weather was so beautiful.  As we turned the corner, I saw the famous blue and yellow building on the horizon like an oasis in the desert. I started getting all giddy and Jon just looked at me sideways, like "really?"  There were tall flag poles waving the Ikea signs bravely in the wind.  Nothing is more exciting than a HUGE store filled with HUGE savings!

We toured the showroom floor with more interest now -- looking for real solutions and ideas for creative design but really we were there for 2 things.  1) black-out curtains for Calvin's room and 2) a potato smasher -- we only ended up finding one of these.  We mostly wandered the store and paid a visit to their cafeteria for some real Swedish food.

Easiest way to get around

We grabbed some Swedish meatballs and coffee mugs for the requisite post-lunch coffee and looked for a place to sit.

So much better with ligonberry

We found these great playground "rounds" (or whatever you might call them) that allow the parents to sit on the outside like a lunch counter and watch their kids play in the center.  It was great because Calvin had zero interest in sitting down and watching us eat.  He loved being able to play and explore and we actually enjoyed a stress-reduced meal for once.  He is still learning how to interact properly with other kids and that's always fun to watch.  He got pushed around a bit but ended up pushing back.  I'm not sure if I'm supposed to correct him at this age or just let him figure it out.

Food and a show?

hellooo!

Fun stairs AND a wall spinny thingy

We ended up wandering the store some more -- actually picking up a few items to buy and walked back to the commuter train to try to get home before Calvin really crashed out. We were a little too late on that one!

Asleep on the train

Overall, the IKEA stores in Sweden are identical to the ones in the States with a few exceptions.

• The kid drop off/play area before you get into the store was about 3x larger than any I've ever seen.  Calvin needs to be a bit older before he can go in but it looked like a ton of fun.
• The play areas in the cafeteria -- I've never seen those before
• They provide shopping bags on wheels rather than carts.  This is kind of impractical because the handle isn't long enough to prevent the skateboard thingy bottom from banging into your ankles as you walk.  I traded this in for a regular yellow IKEA hobo bag pretty quickly.



It's on wheels!

• The showroom floor was much larger with more room examples (for obvious reasons)
• People were more tolerant of kids running around the store -- or maybe I was more tolerant -- either way it was fairly enjoyable!