Dear Soy Yoghurt...

Look what I found! Soy yoghurt! I assume we have this back home, and I've just never noticed it, but I'm still pretty excited by my discovery. And it's blåbär (blueberry) flavour!

Did anyone else ever do this as a child? My Dad and I always used to put spoons on our noses and pretend to be koalas... I don't know if that's an Australian thing, or a Tessa thing, but I still think it's cool.

As you can probably tell, this post has very little direction and is mainly just a form of procrastination to postpone studying for my neuro exam on Tuesday. The best way to avoid studying however, is to go on a weekend trip to Kiruna with a bunch of other exchange students to see the northern lights and go husky sledding. So obviously that's where I'll be until Monday!

Dear Sweden...

Yesterday my residence permit card arrived in the mail.

Although all it does is allow me to legally live in Sweden until July, I feel like I can claim I'm officially Swedish. And having been here for over a month now (deary me that went quick), the anthropologist in me has been running wild analysing Swedish people in their natural habitat.

One thing I've noticed so far regards stranger etiquette. Let's start with this image my Swedish friend posted on Facebook the other day. I found it an amusing exaggeration of how Swedes deal with others.

However, only the next day, I found myself standing at the bus stop and essentially acting out the above scene. I drew a picture to give a fairly accurate account of the situation (snow included).

I'm not joking. When I arrived at the bus stop, the other two ladies were literally standing at least 4 metres apart from each other, and we only all came together when the bus finally arrived. Oh Sweden.

Now some people (mostly Australians) would find this highly bizarre. I mean, how can you have friendly chats with strangers if they stand that far away from you, right? Well in Sweden you actually follow the rule your parents taught you- 'don't talk to strangers'. Swedish people aren't interested in having menial conversations about the weather (we ALL know it's cold), and although some people might find this lack of conversational interest rude, I quite like it. Yes you miss out on the odd good conversation you may strike up with a stranger, but you also avoid all the awkward half conversations you are forced to constantly go through on a daily basis. But don't get me wrong- all the Swedish people I've met at uni or through friends so far have been incredibly nice. Truly. In many ways they're even more friendly than Australians (but let's save that explanation for another day). Once you've been here for a while, you start seeing how this whole thing works.

The second difference I wanted to point out is Swedish people in relationships. I think this one is my favourite, and it is well and truly the polar opposite to home. In Australia young people often flaunt their relationship like it won't exist unless it's right in your face, all the time, in every situation, without fail. However in Sweden, you can't even tell if two people are going out or not. The don't sit next to each other, they don't hold hands in public, they don't kiss, hey they don't even talk to each other that much if they're with others. Many people would say this is unnatural. That Swedish people must simply be uncomfortable with showing their personal feelings so openly, but that's not it. The typical behaviour of being inseparable and all over each other like most couples back home are, is considered childish and immature- something you did when you were 12 or 14. I know this is a big generalisation on both sides, but based on personal experience, the differences are astounding. You really can't tell if people are dating or just friends. Now I'm just curious to see how Swedish flirting works.

Dear Marabou Mjölk Choklad...

"The best chocolate in the world" is a big call to make, but I thoroughly believe that the Swedish brand, Marabou, definitely take the cake (or chocolate in this case). You may think that Cadbury or Milka or Lindt or some other chocolate brand make the best chocolate- and you're entitled to your own opinion- but I'm sorry to tell you that your opinion is wrong. Unless you also love Marabou, nu är du ute och cyklar (you are now outside riding a bike). See my very first post if you don't understand this Swedish saying.

For proof of how great Marabou mjölk choklad (milk chocolate) is, today I bought a block of ridiculously cheap IKEA chocolate for 5 krona (70c in Australia), which I'd tried my first week in Stockholm and found pretty good. But now having eaten Marabou, IKEA chocolate doesn't even taste half decent, so I'm stuck with chocolate I don't even want to eat. Talk about first world problems.

P.S. I plan on literally lining my entire suitcase with Marabou mjölk choklad when I leave Sweden. How much chocolate does one need for a 'life time supply'?

Dear Ugly...

Hey there cutie,

Today in our Neuroscience lecture on the self we learnt a pretty interesting fact about personal image. Apparently if an average person is asked to rate themselves in intelligence, looks, appeal, etc. they tend to give themselves a higher rating than how the rest of the group perceives them.

Now that's nice. A little bit of self confidence is always good for the ego.

What was interesting about these social experiments though, was when people with depression were assessed. As my Swedish lecturer put it nicely, 'Depressed people rate themselves lower than a typical person would. They're actually much closer to the common ranking others assign them.'

How happy is that? A "depressed" image of yourself is just how everybody else sees you. Basically you're never as good as you think you are. Or perhaps you are, but no one else agrees with you.

I thought this cheery post was a nice one to do the day before Valentine's Day. I know I for one, will be pulling all the guys tomorrow with my charming looks.

Dear Jumper...

A while ago I said I bought a cool jumper for only 75,- (AU$10) and that I would put up a photo of it, so here it is finally.

That is the smile of someone content with having spent a good couple of hours researching cute little cafes and alternative music bars in Stockholm. And now that I'm armed with a list of goodness, I plan to check out each and every place while I'm here.

But for now I'm off to the coolest bar in Stockholm (much sarcasm)- Västra Skogen Pub. The exciting part is that we're finally starting to convert other exchange students into hitting up this happening joint.

Dear Music...

You know it's reached a point of desperation when you find yourself dancing like a crazy person to your ipod for over an hour and a half, alone in your room after getting back from a night of 'dancing' at a club. I know in movies people always seem to dance in their rooms, and I'm not sure how much that happens in other people's real lives, but it certainly never happens in mine. I hadn't realised how reliant on good live music I'd become, but now I'm concerned for my sanity (or what sanity that existed in the first place). I know 90% (insert correct percentage here) of the youth population enjoy the music that's played in clubs, or at least pretend to enjoy it, but honestly it's the worst. Take me home to New Moon Blues, The Smallest Gig, FBi Socials, MUM at The World Bar, gigs at the Metro, Enmore, Oxford Art Factory, Manning, Hermann's, The Annandale Hotel, Good God, the Vanguard, Summer gigs like Garden Music, and the Surry Hills Festival, gigs on a train, in a backyard, in Hibernian House, sing-a-longs to a guitar/ukulele/piano with friends on a balcony, in a lounge room, in a tent, on a beach, on the grass, in the sun, at night, in a bar, in an alley way, music through an ipod while you bounce on a trampoline in the darkness looking at the stars.

P.S. Sober Tessa, don't delete this.

Dear Australian Sense of Humour...

If someone has a great sandwich that they specifically say not to touch when they leave, you obviously hide it as soon as they're out of sight, right? Wrong. Well, wrong if you're in Europe.

Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Australia any more.

I broached this potential joke at lunch with some Swedish friends the other day, and I got back a mixture of confusion regarding why you would do it, and how it was funny. One guy even went so far as to say, "He said not to take his sandwich. Why would you?", to which I answered, "Because it's funny." Obviously not. I tried to explain the humour in the situation, but to be honest it's hard to make stealing people's sandwiches sound funny unless you're used to such things. I gave up on the reasoning and concluded with what is fast becoming a common saying of mine now, '... it must be an Australian thing'.

To further test the uniqueness of Australian humour, I asked a selection of exchange students what they thought of the "joke" after dinner last night, and sadly received a similar response. Although the copious amounts of cheese and white wine helped lessen the confusion this time (the Swiss guys had cooked fondue for 15 of us), still no one really understood the joke. I had no idea that this style of humour wasn't shared by the French, Swiss, Germans, or Finnish. I feel so alone in my amusement.

On a side note, apparently I'm also alone in drinking alcohol in coffee mugs. I don't know if that's an Australian thing, or just something my friends and I do, but it makes me miss weekends at the Hickie Household, drinking from coffee mugs late into the night and waking up to sunshine mornings and the sounds of a guitar drifting in from the balcony. Summer nostalgia at its finest.

-------
Completely irrelevant, but I promised to put these up, plus I can't do a post without photos.

(The sad thing is that we didn't even coordinate to swap facial expressions)

P.S. if you'd like to know more about the blue marshmallow above, you can find him on his blog here.

Dear Stockholm Night Clubs...

Never have I ever felt young when going out. I was the first of my friends to turn 18, and when you turn 18 in Australia, you're legal to do everything. So not being able to get into the club tonight because I wasn't 25 was the oddest experience imaginable. I wasn't even close to getting in! And I'm also the youngest person (as far as I know) among the exchange students, and among my Swedish classmates in biomedicine. So weird!

But what do you do when you can't get into the club? Go home and watch Kung Fu Panda at 2am, with four French people, a Hungarian, a Finn, a German, and an American. And when everyone goes back to their rooms to sleep, you write a blog post instead. Obviously.

Obligatory Photo Booth photo- note the Sydney Uni jumper. Someone has to represent USYD and Australia over here, right?

P.S. Sorry for any spelling / grammatical mistakes. It's the vodka's fault if they slip through.

Dear Bus Drivers of Stockholm...

Bus drivers in Stockholm are great. Every day I catch the bus, and I solemnly swear that I have never seen a bus driver not wait for someone running to make the bus. While in Sydney the doors will literally close in your face, here the bus drivers will open the doors again for late people once, twice, and sometimes even thrice (even after we've started pulling away from the curb!). And while a Sydney bus driver will give you the 'Sorry I wish I could open the doors for you, but we're on a time schedule and I just can't do it' shoulder shrug, Stockholm drivers smile and wink. It feels like they're saying 'Hey, I know you've had a long day / rushed morning. Sometimes that happens to me too and that's ok'. In Sweden, bus drivers can be nice AND always be on time. Sadly, Sydney can do neither.

And while I'm at it, buses in general in Stockholm are great. Anyone back home could tell you that I actively hate buses. I only ever seem to have to catch them when I'm going somewhere I don't know, and if I want to avoid getting off at the wrong spot and walking for an extra half an hour, I instead have to spend half an hour on google maps familiarising myself with the area so I can recognise where to get off. I find the whole thing really stressful, and almost always opt for catching trains and walking.

But in Stockholm every bus stop has a name- be it the train station that's across the road, the name of the street, or a Swedish word you don't understand the meaning of. And not only does each stop have a name, but every bus has a screen that flashes up the name of the next stop, so you always know when to get off. The extra great thing about naming each stop is that you can look at the bus timetable and know exactly which bus goes where, instead of looking at a map with coloured lines and complicated coding systems for 15 minutes trying to figure out how you can possibly get where you want to go.

Get your act together, Sydney. Stockholm is judging you (silently, of course. It's not very Swedish to cause a noisy confrontation).

'YOU could ride a bus with friendly drivers too if you lived in Stockholm'

(P.S. I swear I actually wear different clothes and not just my Swedish cow jumper all the time...)

Dear Tuesday...

Today, on Tuesday 31st January 2012, I:
- Spent 10 hours studying the eye and made really great notes
- Tried to say 'en bukett tulpaner' ('a bunch of tulips') far too many times, and I still can't get it right
- Pondered the existence of consciousness with my Swedish lecturer and some class mates for an hour after the lecture
- Jumped through the snow as much as possible on my trips to get coffee between lectures
- Learnt about what Carina really did on Saturday night
- Had dinner with many, many Swedish people and exchange students at the Global Friends welcome 'seating'
- Sang a Swedish song about foxes, and dropping beer but that's ok because your liver will be happy
- Did a shot of weird Swedish liqueur that was ridiculously sweet
- Learnt about 'Midsommar' and how Swedes celebrate it by getting drunk and jumping like frogs around a maypole resembling a penis covered in flowers... only in Sweden
- Performed a thorough study of Swedish T-bana (train station) escalators (they stop moving when no one's on them)
- Discussed how to pronounce vowels in Swedish with a random guy on the T-bana
- Wore a Swedish flag in my hair all night

Typical Tuesday.