A Swedish-Vegan takes on the Super Bowl

(SCENE – 7pm Stockholm Time on Sunday, January 20th)

WOOOO!!!!

It’s the AFC/NFC Championship games today – and BOTH of our families favorite teams are in it!!!  We root for 2 out of the final 4 teams left playing!!!  This is going to be the best Super Bowl EVER!!!!

(SCENE – 7am Stockholm Time on Monday, January 21^st)

Uhhhhhhhh – I hate football

(SCENE – Mid-Day on January 23^rd)

Jonathan:  OK Lis, I think I’m ready to start preparing for a Super Bowl Party.  It’s basically a holiday in the US and most of the time we don’t have a team in the game.  We need to get our heads right and make America proud.  The game’s in New Orleans this year, so on top of the normal pizza and wings, let’s get nuts and make some jambalya with sausage and shrimp too – they have a ton of that stuff out here.

Lisa:  I want to go vegan

Jonathan: ……………..

Fantasy Fotbol

I’m not stranger to fantasy sports – I’ve probably been in at least one league a year since 2000 or so, and have had teams for football (obviously), baseball, basketball and I think even hockey one year.  (Let’s not bring up the F1 league run by the Dwyer’s – I’m an embarrassment for 5 years running)

But earlier this week I had a new “first”.  I was walking into the building in the morning with my Italian buddy and he asked I was interested in a Champions League Fantasy Team.  I said yes before we even finished the sentence, but he kept trying to explain

Topics that I don't care enough about to give full articles...

I’ve tried recently to put out a lot more blogs, but my queue is still building up, so I figured it was random observations time.  As usual, just a few little things that have jumped out at me, but are not long enough for full-length blogs.

Linguistic Oddity #1 - Pie v cake – When we were having a few meetings discussing the presentation we were building, I kept getting confused with everyone talking about cake.  It was “cake this” and “cake that” and, because we have pastries delivered to the office every other week, I was getting pumped up.  Then I realized that they all substituted “cake” for “pie” when discussing pie charts – “we need to get a bigger piece of the cake” instead of “we need to get a bigger piece of the pie”.  Just a slightly different take on it, but it really threw me for a loop.  Thinking about it, I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen many “pies” available at the bakeries here, just various sorts of cakes, tarts and pastries.  So maybe the “pie” analogy just wouldn’t make sense here.  Regardless, this will require more visits to the bakery to investigate further…

 Linguistic Oddity #2 - Question Marks  – Normally when talking about an issue, ‘mericans say “well, that is the question”.  Here though, I’ve heard numerous folks say “well, that is the question mark”.  Just a fun little discrepancy there.

Linguistic Oddity #3 - Facebook “Assault”  – I overheard my coworker (mid-30s single Greek/Swede guy) talking to some folks the other day.  I initially started paying attention when he started explaining how he was “assaulted” the other day, then became perplexed when he explained that people “liked” it afterwards without knowing.  He then repeated the story to someone else how he had been “Facebook Assaulted”, and someone had posted a fraudulent status that garnered a number of likes from his friends.  No one else had batted an eye during this, so I’m not sure if this is a Swedish thing to use “assaulted” (actually a little more graphic verb) instead of hacked, but I don’t like this oddity as much as the whole pie vs cake thing. 

Dogs -  In the US, you would only see a dog off it’s leash in public when at a dog park.  NOT HERE – it’s everywhere.  In the park, on the running path, in the middle of the sidewalk, crossing the street, there are no limits here.  I’m not sure if they just spend all winter just training their dogs to not leave their side or what, but I know that if Darby (Bessie loves food too much) is off her leash for 2 seconds she will sprint after the nearest duck/rabbit/squirrel/shadow and we will never see her again.  Give us one more winter I guess

Pocket squares – All the euro-guys at work wear pocket squares in their suit jackets.  I realized that my suit jackets looked really, really plain, so I added that little item to my birthday list for this year.  I’m in the fashion capital of Scandinavia – I need to step my game up.  

Live odds during sporting events – When I’ve watched hockey or fotbol on TV and I’ve gotten confused at the sports ticker on the bottom of the screen.  It popped up every few minutes, but the scores didn’t really make sense to me.  That’s when I noticed that they were sponsored by betus.com, livesports.com and a few other online betting sites.  Evidently these were the live odds offered by the online gambling companies.  So if the original odds have Stockholm as the big favorite against Helsinki, but then Helsinki scores a goal, they will update the odds in real time so that degenerate/awesome gamblers can put more money down.  I love it because it is so different from the US method of trying to pretend that sports betting doesn’t exist or that it is the end of pure sports or whatever.  Unfortunately I don’t know enough about soccer or hockey to take advantage of these bets and pay off calvin’s college fund, but if I see these things on during an American football  broadcast, I am IN!

Decks – Now that it is nice out, a lot more restaurants offer seating outside.  By that, I don’t mean that they just toss a few tables and chairs out there – I mean that they build a whole deck, taking up 90% of their sidewalk.  I’m assuming that this isn’t the first time they’ve done this, which means that they must rip down the decks come Sept/October.  These guys LOVE the outdoors once it gets nice out!

Blankets – Along with the whole “outside seating” thang, it’s also been interesting that each bar with a  deck has a pile of blankets available for patrons.  These were available in the winter, but honestly, who would sit outside in the Stockholm winter.  Now though, if the sun goes behind the clouds, the blankets are “really comfy cozy!” (according to lis)

Hockey Sticks – I know that I joked when we first moved out here that I was going to get big into hockey and that Calvin would become a gretzky-style star.  But really, these guys LOVE hockey.  Even now in the summer, I see people walking around with hockey sticks (usually the plastic ones).  Doesn’t matter if it is on the Ericsson campus, at the café or in the subway.  Young, old, guy, girl no difference – they are always ready if a faceoff challenge occurs at any point.

Casino Visit - Part Deuce

After being shut down last week when I tried to get my gamble on, I showed up prepared this time. I strolled up and paid my 100 SEK ($13) – now I was good to go to at the Casino Cosmopol for a year.

Walking in, it was definitely a busy scene, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t waste any opportunities, so I decided to explore first. The casino is in a really nice, older building in downtown Stockholm – maybe used to be a theater, or something similar. There seemed to be three floors, so I did a quick sweep of the main level first. A lot of table games – blackjack, craps, roulette, etc. There were a few seats available at the 50 SEK blackjack tables, which I took note of. There was a bar in the back, a smoking room that reminded me of the Atlanta airport and a ton of euro-fashion – what could be better? In general, the crowd was 90% european dudes - mostly UK, Finnish or Dutch from my quick conversations. The other 10% was all older asian ladies - NOT there to mess around.

Downstairs was pretty boring – just a ton of slot machines. Only interesting part there was that it was crowded and I almost bumped into some guy coming around the corner. As soon as I did, I recognized that he had “the crazy eye” and probably would have slugged me if we had knocked into each other. Considering that him and his other 22yr old buddies were roided up, had neck tattoos and were being shown around the casino by a manager, I’m assuming they were some type of professional athletes. Or I’m just becoming old…

Upstairs was pretty sweet. They have some additional table games – much less crowded and without any minimums info, so I’m assuming more of a high roller area. The best part was the big opening in the middle that looked down into the main level – I hadn’t noticed it from below, but it is a great spot to get your card counting on. Its kind of a fun way to get the birds eye view of the casino – I definitely tried to “catch” cheaters, to no avail. A fancy / overpriced restaurant was up there as well – if you want to get some food, but not leave the casino for any reason whatsoever.

Once I checked everything out, I found a seat at the blackjack table and found out a few other “differentiators” from vegas:

1) the dealers CANNOT accept tips. One of the guys left the table and left the dealer a few crowns – probably a buck or two. The dealer had to stop the cards and called his manager over to clearly put the tips in a separate box. We discussed it afterwards, and I explained that I would normally go balla style in vegas and leave a few small tips after good hands, etc. He explained that the casino was gov’t owned and that the dealers were paid a legitimate wage, so tips weren’t allowed. He thought about and realized that in vegas, income per shift probably fluctuated pretty significantly – he then decided that he was good with the business model in Sweden.

2) They don’t let you make “crazy” gambles (crazy like a fox!) – the dealer had a hand that was going to bust, and I had a decent hand, so was going to double my money. He politely let me know that that was not allowed unless I had a very specific set of cards showing. I think he did not actually bust that hand, so he probably saved me some money on that one, but in the long term, really decreased the potential of calvin’s college fund.

3) No cocktail waitresses NOR complimentary drinks. This was obviously a major downer for me, but I persevered. When you want a drink, you tell your dealer who hits a button on the table. The waiter then comes over and takes your order. When they come back with the beer you can pay in chips, which is nice – and then they give you change in currency.

Overall, I’d say it was a fun time – but the stratosphere is still safely in my “favorite casino” ranking. I’ll show up a handful of times I’m sure, but probably mostly when folks are in town – gambling solo (outside of 3am after coming back after drinking) is a little much for me I think.

Luckily – Lis and I found a horse track today though, so it might be time to go hat shopping!

The Vegas of the North???

So I evidently have the self-discipline of a Tibetan monk, and I didn’t check out the local Stockholm casino for the first 5 weeks we were out here. But NO LONGER!

I caved (and was very excited about it) this Saturday night, when Calvin was asleep and Lisa was Skyping with Samantha, I checked out the Stockholm casino (5 min walk from our place) and found out 2 things:

1) they have blackjack tables with table minimums of 20-50 crowns ($3-7) which is double-down city

2) to actually "go in" to the casino you need your passport to get a membership card - so I didn't get a chance to win Calvin a new pair of shoes yet

I'll report back next time about actually playing there, I'm assuming it's filled with crazy Russians though.

Until then, I'll be on the lookout for a gun range with automatic weapons.