They're Lovin' It

More than anything else, I'm beginning to believe that this blog just exists to expose all my ridiculous stereotypes about Swedish people. You know, They like cheesy music. They love blonde wood. They are all beautiful in a vaguely elfin way. And I always thought the Swedes were superior to Americans when it came to the food they ate. I believed they cooked more, ate more healthy foods like fish and vegetables and berries and spelt, and paid attention to the environmental impact of what they ate.

So it was to my great surprise that I discovered how insanely popular McDonald's is here. At least, the McDonald's near the public library a few blocks from my apartment. Now, I should provide some context. We lived even closer to a McDonald's back when we lived in Washington, DC, in Dupont Circle. We would occasionally grab lunch or dinner to go from there if we were in the mood for burgers, but more often than not we would hit up Five Guys. (McDonald's was, for me at least, much more about the fries than the burger.) We never, ever, ever ate in the restaurant. It would have been too depressing. Perhaps it was the incongruous location of this particular branch smack dab in the middle of a yuppie/hipster neighborhood, but very few people ate there. Yes, you would see construction workers, police officers, apartment supers in uniform, nannies pushing strollers, etc, coming out with their lunch to go. You would see angry women with picket signs marching around outside the entrance. But inside, actually sitting at the tables, were usually either senior citizens who didn't seem to have anywhere else to be, and who weren't going to be ejected by the staff, and people who may or may not have been homeless. I never asked, but I have a feeling that none of the parents I hung out with would ever be caught dead in that McDonald's. For me, it's still tasty and it's still something I enjoy eating once in a while and yes, you can think I'm disgusting, but you should see the other crap I eat. I get the impression that most American yuppie types, especially ones with toddlers, shun McDonald's and keep their children away from it. Only organic veggie burgers and oven-baked sweet potato wedges for precious Harper!

But back to Sweden. I assumed that if this was how McDonald's was viewed in Washington, then it would be the same if not more so in Stockholm. But no! I started seeing lots of kids walking around one weekend with similar-looking balloons and I was wondering if someone was handing them out for free on some corner. But then I was able to get a closer look at one, and realized it was a McDonald's balloon! These kids had all eaten at McDonald's! Another day, I looked in the big plate glass windows of the McDonald's by the library, and not only were there tons of kids in there, but there were also people who looked like white-collar cubicle workers all sitting at the counter facing the window, eating their Big Macs while wearing business-casual clothing. It's a completely different feel here. There is no obvious stigma to eating at McDonald's. Office workers seem to eat there the way they'd eat at a Chipotle or Subway or Panera in the States. And families flock there like it's Applebee's, only way cheaper.

I'm not quite sure what to make of all this. I suppose it shows that I know nothing about the Swedes' relationship to food, or anything else. If it were just about letting their children choose where to eat, I would get it. Kids here have more of a say than they do in the States. But all those single adults choosing it over, say, the falafel place directly next-door indicates that there's something else going on. Could it be that I was right all this time and McDonald's is indeed delicious?

(Open) Preschool

When I first learned last year that we would be moving to Stockholm, I wasn't exactly thrilled. The winters are long, dark and freezing. The language is foreign. The food isn't quite my cup of tea. Nevertheless, one aspect of living in Sweden fascinated me, and that was its mythic stature as a world leader in childcare and in the treatment of working parents. In general, children are a huge focus of Swedish culture and I imagine that all the Swedish child-haters out there (if they exist) must just grin and bear it. Seriously, almost every stroller you see on the street is enormous, and you just have to get out of the way or risk being knocked down. (In all fairness, I often heard people in the States mutter about the size of my jogging stroller, so I do understand why people like big strollers. They're much more comfortable to use for parent and child when it's the primary means of transportation for your kid all over the city. Here, O's stroller seems pretty average if not downright streamlined.) A parent who pushes a stroller onto a city bus does so for free. There are elevators and extra-wide gates in the subway stations. There's a playground every three blocks or so. And there are the preschools.

Let's talk about Open Preschool first, since that's what I've had the most experience with. These free government-run preschools are all over the city (I can think of two within walking distance of my building) and they are essentially playgroups open to everybody. You don't have to sign up in advance. There is literally an open-door policy. The only rule is that parents have to accompany their children the entire time. It's not a childcare service, but is instead a resource for stay-at-home parents who want their children to interact with other children, and who want to be able to interact with other parents.

The one I've been to the most has a little playground out front (that is open to everyone, including kids in actual paying preschools) and inside the building is a small kitchen and dining area where you can prepare food for your child, with the majority of the building given over to the play areas. There's the typical play kitchen with food, dolls, cars and trucks, construction toys, animals, etc. There are also structured activities like storytelling and crafts, which are run by an employee of the preschool. For example, O and I (emphasis on the "I") made Christmas cards one week, and another week we participated in a little procession with singing and candles for Santa Lucia Day. I like the fact that there's no commitment, and that we can attend other Open Preschools if we want to, or just not go at all if we don't feel like it.

As for proper preschool, I've actually just submitted some applications for O. We applied a long time ago for one especially popular bilingual English-Swedish school and have heard nothing, so I'm assuming we are way down on the wait list. I've just applied for another independent bilingual school whose reputation isn't as great, but it's right next to S's workplace, so we'll see whether that works out. Finally, I filled in the application for the public preschools, which are all Swedish language (eeks!). You choose five schools and rank them in order of preference, then wait to be matched with one. And if all your chosen ones are super popular, you might get matched with a school that's not even on your list. Now, I don't actually have a job yet or anything, but I was advised to go ahead and apply for more schools (I'd just been waiting on that one popular bilingual school) because the wait time, even for the public schools, can be months so it would not be good to have a job offer and not even have started the process of applying for more schools.

The cost of the independent and public schools is exactly the same, the only difference being the curriculum and the application process. And that cost is insanely low compared to what I believe it is in the States. (I don't actually know since we never bothered to look up this kind of thing.) The cost is a very low percentage of your income, up to a certain maximum (so even the millionaires are paying very little), and I believe the maximum for part-time preschool is something like $150/month and for full-time, $200/month. Yeah...

We'll have to see how things end up working out for us. Fingers crossed one of the bilingual schools comes through, otherwise here's hoping for our number one pick for the public schools.

Christmas Ends With A Goat

I'm quite sure that I've mentioned Skansen here at least once before as it's become one of my favorite places in Stockholm. It's billed as an open-air museum, which probably sounds strange for a country buried under snow for half the year. And yes, it does get really cold walking around there in the winter but it's totally worth  it. Part of the place is essentially a museum of history and anthropology. Whole buildings from different centuries and different parts of Sweden were brought to Skansen along with their period furniture and accessories, and each day some of these buildings are inhabited by docents in period costume who tell you about the building and about life during that particular time. We've seen different women roasting coffee, making flatbread and knitting in dark, low-ceilinged, smoky kitchens. Another part of Skansen is a zoo. No giraffes or lions (I think they'd freeze to death), but animals such as wolves, bears and reindeer. Another part is a tiny amusement park that's essentially deserted right now but I'm sure will be busy starting in May, and then there's Little Skansen, an indoor children's museum with play structures and small animals (fish, guinea pigs, chickens, etc) that's inevitably packed.

We purchased a yearlong family membership and have been making it a point to get the most out of it. We went a few times during the Christmas season when they had special concerts and markets, and I knew that January 6 was the last day of their seasonal celebrations. I had my special Skansen Christmas calendar and noted exactly which events I wanted to see and participate in, not having high hopes that we'd actually be able to do everything. My personality's combination of ambition with laziness is bad enough without throwing a toddler into the mix. So imagine my surprise when we did it all, and more!

An early lunch was number one on the list (the park's only cafeteria-style restaurant gets extremely crowded by noon) followed by a concert of traditional fiddling. Our son is obsessed with violins, and stringed instruments in general, so I really wanted to make sure he saw this. It really wasn't so much a concert as it was two fiddlers in period dress sitting in front of a fireplace in a small 19th-century farmhouse, playing away. It was as though we (and a dozen other people) had teleported 150 years back in time into the house of a husband and wife playing music for their own entertainment. I restrained myself and didn't try to surreptitiously take a photo, but I wish I knew the name of the instrument the woman was playing. It had many strings and also many buttons along one side, and she would press the buttons as she bowed the instrument. Whatever it was, it was very, very fascinating. And O just sat there watching and listening for what must have been 20 minutes without fussing or fidgeting.

The Christmas market still had a few food stalls open, so we got to eat freshly made waffles and sweet roasted nuts. We also danced around the large Christmas tree in the center of the marketplace (ok, we danced near it and watched all the other people dancing around it as a live band played and sang) and we discovered a little playground that we'd somehow missed on all our previous visits. But the craziest thing of all? The Procession. Apparently in ye olde tymes, people would dress up and parade in the streets singing and chanting in rhyme to beg for food and drink. Kind of like wassailing, I guess? We thought we'd be watching this from the sidelines, but when it began, everyone was encouraged to BE part of the procession. The leaders were three youngish guys, one of whom was dressed like a bearded old man, one of whom was dressed like a woman, and one of whom was dressed like a goat or possibly a ram. Had it not been for the goatman, it would have all just seemed silly. But the goatman was completely sinister. He was wearing sheepskins (ok, so ram seems more likely) and in front he held a bright red goat/ram's head on a stick with the horns sticking out, and he bowed his own head down so you couldn't see his face. And of course we couldn't understand what they were saying. Totally out of The Wicker Man.

I expected us to walk past houses with people in costume standing outside who'd give a few of us something small. Instead, they started ushering everyone into the first house. By that point O was asleep (thank goodness) so S said he'd stay outside with the stroller. I wanted to see what would happen next, so in I shuffled foolishly. The tiny farmhouse was being heated by a log fire, so it was very dark (a little kid in front of me started crying because she'd fallen over the threshold), very hot, very smoky and extremely crowded. Once I was inside, I realized how many people were in there and how many more were still coming in, and I also realized that I had no idea how long this part would go on. And I realized it would all be in Swedish. And that there was a goatman blocking the exit. I was starting to feel claustrophobic and decided that, cultural curiosity be damned, I was getting out of that farmhouse before it was too late. So out I went against the flow of people, walking past the three men while trying to project the message, "Nothing personal, just too crowded." Maybe next Christmas we will brave the goatman again. Or maybe he will just haunt my dreams.

New Year

Who can believe another year is already here, or that I'd be witnessing the dawning of 2013 from my son's bedroom window in Stockholm? Of course his room had the very best view of the fireworks that were lighting the sky all over our neighborhood, so S and I crept in at midnight after he'd already been sound asleep for hours (how is it that toddlers can sleep through extremely loud explosions and yet will catch any word you don't want them to hear when muttered as softly as possible under your breath?) and we pressed our faces to the glass of the French doors, watching the bursts of color in awe. Maybe S will deny feeling any sense of awe. I think he's more jaded about these sorts of things than I am. But no matter how many fireworks displays I watch, every single one inspires as much joy as the last. There are only a handful of things that propel me straight back to childhood, and fireworks are high on that list. For me, they are not just fitting at the new year because of their celebratory nature, but because I associate them with youth, with the promise of excitement, and with wonder.

I'm disappointed to admit that I didn't feel much of those things when it came time to make our big move in 2012. I don't think I've ever felt so old, being responsible (along with S) for all of those big decisions about travel and housing and the general logistics of moving to another continent, all with a two-year-old in tow who was completely reliant on us (and who was also very, very ill at the beginning of the move). I never felt more like a grown-up, which basically means that I don't think I've ever worried so much in my entire life.

The worry, and the pessimism, and the homesickness all kept me from feeling as excited about living here as I should have. I'd like to live my life with more excitement, with more wonder, which really shouldn't be too difficult with a toddler for whom almost anything is exciting and wonderful. For that's the kind of excitement I mean, the excitement and wonder of discovering or rediscovering something. It's the kind of feeling that is so easy to capture in childhood, and just as easily lost. I don't plan to discover the joys of downhill skiing or anything else potentially risky, thankyouverymuch. My plans are more low-key. Discover new places in Stockholm. Rediscover old pleasures like writing and language-learning. Let go of some of the worry and pessimism that hinder the general enjoyment of life. Goals like these are always easier said than done, but I hope that by saying them, I'm taking a step towards making them true.