God Jul!
Good Yule!
Merry Christmas!
I left my Christmas plans up to my friends in Bulgaria. They chose Sweden. She has relatives in Sweden so that meant free accommodations and they were quite willing to host me as well as the married couple. I gave the plan two big thumbs up. Swedish is the only ancestry that I really identify with. I know I have other peoples in me but I believe I’ve got more Swedish than anything else and that is the only part of my heritage that was really celebrated by any of my family at all growing up. When hearing that this was where I was heading I tried to find out if I still had any family there, but was unable to track any down. I did discover where my family had come from, but it was a tiny town on the other side of the country from where we were staying and I didn’t think it would be all that interesting for my friends to visit there and would probably only really interest me for the hour that it would take me to see the whole town.
There were plenty of other fun things to do while I was there though. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights.
First though, a non-highlight.
It was not a white Christmas.
I know that was probably one of the first things that crossed your mind when I said Christmas in Sweden, but it was not even close. Believe me, it was the first thing that came to my mind as well and I was highly disappointed about that fact when I arrived. The weather was actually very similar to the weather I have experienced most Christmases of my life back in Tacoma. Major bummer. Fortunately that was definitely the low point of my trip as the rest of the time was pretty great.
Before we left for Sweden I was told that there would be an opportunity for a polar bear plunge. I have always loved the water and have done some swimming in really cold water before, but have never actually done a polar bear plunge and even if I weren’t trying to do new things I would probably have wanted to do this anyway. So, on the morning of Christmas Eve my buddy and I went down to the beach a few blocks away with one of our hosts and the two of us did the Sea Your Valley swim in Haverdal, Sweden while our host took some pictures. He told us that it was six degrees Celsius outside and four degrees in the water. It felt colder. I went out far enough for full body submersion and then on my way back in, felt my legs going numb. Most of my body warmed up fairly quickly but my feet took a while to come fully back to life.
So, in Sweden Christmas Eve is the big day of celebration and Christmas Day is much more subdued. One of the Christmas traditions that most Swedes participate is watching a Donald Duck special at three o’clock called “Donald Duck and his friends wish you a Merry Christmas”. I have more questions about this tradition after having participated in it then I did beforehand. First off: Why? Most of the cartoons aren’t Christmas related in any way, they are just random Disney cartoons. Secondly: What is with the randomness of the dubbing? They have dubbed several parts of the special in Swedish but there are many random parts throughout that are just in the original English. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to when or why certain parts are only in the English. Thirdly: Why do they refer to it as a Donald Duck special? Most of the cartoons are just random clips from Disney movies and in the clips with the big names in Disney, Mickey Mouse is featured just as much as Donald Duck. In America if we were to refer to this special by the name of a Disney character, I’m sure it would be Mickey Mouse, since he is the more prominent of the two in the Disney universe. Which leads to the fourth and possibly most important question of all: Is Donald Duck Swedish? I mean he definitely does have an accent. I always thought it was just a duck accent before, but maybe it’s a Swedish one. He does always wear a sailor outfit, and the Swedish people definitely have a great seafaring tradition going back to the Vikings. He is also very fair in complexion. Something to ponder.
So, a little while after the special ended we went over to the parents of one of our hosts for Christmas dinner and a Secret Santa gift exchange. Before we left though there was a knock at the door. An ominous knock. Our host opened the door and who should stand before us? A terrifying Santa Claus (or Jultomten as he is known is Sweden). The Santa Claus that I always think of is a portly fellow with a fake beard. In Sweden they don’t seem to really care whether Santa has diabetes or not. He can be quite trim for all they care, although it does seem important to them that he be pretty old and decrepit. I’m not sure if that has always been the case or if they have decided to kill Santa in Sweden and figured it would be easier on people if his health started to go first so that people had time to prepare and his death wasn’t a sudden thing. Whatever the case the thing that makes Jultomten so much more terrifying than the Santa Claus that I grew up with is that instead of just a fake beard there is a whole creepy mask that he wears. I’m sure most Swedish children and probably a lot of the adults have nightmares about him. Not cool Jultomten.
After passing out a few presents at the apartment he made another appearance later in the night at our host’s parent’s house when it was time to do our secret Santa gift exchange. The gift exchange was a very interesting experience as a few of us were getting gifts for people whom we had never met before. I was supposed to buy a gift for the father of our host and all I had been told about him was that he liked things that moved, like a dancing Santa Claus. So, I had searched for a dancing Santa Claus. For two weeks I had searched store after store in Sofia to no avail. I was beginning to lose hope until I went to Athens. Oh, Athens. Of course you would have a dancing Santa Claus. And a Santa Claus climbing and then descending a chimney. And Santa Claus rocking out. And several others as well. My worries about not being able to find a good gift vanished very quickly after arrival, and one night during my stay I passed by a stand selling members of the Santa band and picked up a Santa Claus playing the drums, one playing the keyboard, and one playing the sax. Unfortunately they were sold out of the Santa Claus playing the guitar so I was not quite able to complete the band. At the exchange I was excited for him to open his gifts, because if my information was correct and dancing Santa was a good gift I figured that these three fellows would be a smash hit. I was not disappointed as he was clearly delighted by his present and they were the life of the party being played over and over again with the three different songs that they played clashing throughout the evening.
Another notable moment during my stay in Sweden was a dance aerobics class I attended with my friend and her cousin. Unlike jumping into the bitingly cold waters of the Kattegat this was a thing I had never done before that I would not have done now if I weren’t on a quest to try many new things. I’m not much for choreographed dance. I love to freestyle it out on the dance floor, getting down and busting moves, but dancing in an orderly manner along with others is not my forte. To make this whole experience even more unsettling there were several people wearing costumes including the two leaders of the class. It was an hour long class, and was every bit as ridiculous as I imagined it would be. However, like with almost every time I try something knew, I was definitely glad that I did it. For one, it was a really good workout and I’m always down to get some exercise. Also, I was actually able to follow along for the most part. There were two sections where they got ridiculously complicated, combining several different elements, so I pretty much just flailed my limbs aimlessly during these sections, but aside from that I was at least doing close to what I was supposed to be doing. Overall the whole thing was definitely an experience.
In addition to my swim out in the open water we also went to an indoor pool one of our days in Sweden. While I did have a great time playing a lot of pool volleyball, this section is not about playing in the water. No, this section is about dicks. So, I took swim lessons for years when I was a kid and then was on swim team for a while, but since then I had not spent much time in a locker room. I had gym in middle school, but we don’t really shower in gym in middle school. We strip down to our underpants but no further, and then I never took gym in high school, avoiding it my freshman year and then going to a school that didn’t offer it the rest of high school. I have had a couple different times when I was signed up for a gym as an “adult” but except for a couple of times when I used the pool, I never really used the locker room at the gym. I would just go home after working out and take a shower there. All of that lack of gym usage combined with the fact that your average American is a lot more prudish about nudity than your average Swede led to me not really being prepared for all of the dicks that I saw in the locker room at the pool and at the gym where I did my dance workout. It was a little jarring. Just a ton of penises.
New Year’s Eve was a fairly low-key event. Not the mellowest New Years Eve that I have ever had but definitely not the wildest either. We had a delicious three-course meal, and in case I haven’t been clear I love food, so obviously the evening was a smashing success to me. There was dancing, there was drinking, and my buddy, our host, and I sang and danced to Twist & Shout while their wives looked on and acted like we were nuts. It was a beautiful rendition and it is a shame that we did not perform it on a world stage. When it was getting close to midnight we went over to the nearby town and went down to the beach to watch the local fireworks show. It was the closest I had ever been to the big guys going off. Not by a lot as I have been pretty close at Mariners games back in Seattle, but not quite this close. The show was pretty good, the only critique is that it didn’t really have a grand finale. It got pretty big near the end, but then it just kind of tapered off and finally stopped. The only part of the night that was a bit of a letdown was that we did not go somewhere that had a lot of single girls, so I was left without anyone to kiss at midnight. Bummer.
Now of course, it’s time to talk about the food. If you go to Sweden you better like fish. Fortunately, fish just happens to be my favorite food (maybe it’s the Swedish in me). We’ll start off with the traditional Swedish Christmas food. So, there is a wide assortment of food at Christmas and the meal as a whole is called Julbord. It is either all served at once or there are two rounds of food, the first round being the cold food and the second round being the hot dishes. At the meals I had on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day there were several different kinds of pickled herring (of course), smoked salmon, deviled eggs, bread, cheese, summer sausage, liver pate, beets, crackers, bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, and several different mustards and other sauces. Those were the cold dishes. The warm dishes were Swedish meatballs (obviously), ham, sausage, a couple different kinds of cooked cabbage dishes, a casserole with salmon and cheese and other deliciousness, and Jansson’s temptation (a potato dish with anchovies). I apologize to any food items I may have forgotten from this list. I loved you too. For drink I had some Julmust, which is a Swedish Christmas pop. Later in the evening we had some glogg (mulled wine) and some candies. I had at least a little of everything that was available to eat and while I definitely preferred some dishes to others there was nothing that I didn’t like.
A few other notable dishes I had while in Sweden that were definitely Swedish dishes were fish soup (a couple different kinds), more Swedish meatballs (Can you ever get enough? No. The answer is no.), and pepparkakor (a cookie very similar to a ginger snap that if you tap right and break into three pieces can make a wish come true). Although not exactly a Swedish dish, I feel I need to include this next item as well. Plus, being fish it’s close enough to Swedish food. On my friends birthday we went out to an English Tavern and I got fish and chips. I am including this because I am very upset. I feel ripped off. They bring me out my fish and chips and is it a three piece? Is it a four piece? NO. It’s a ONE piece fish and chips.
Okay, so granted it is an enormous piece of fish, but still, really all that means is that they had the opportunity to make the best fish and chips ever. If they had brought me out three of those with my chips I would have been overcome with joy.
A few last things to mention before we leave Sweden:
One of our most common activities while there was going on hikes. Sweden is a beautiful country and we hiked through the woods and down by the beach on several occasions and even though the weather was usually dreary it was still a very photogenic country.
There was a very odd experience of culture blending, as one night while flipping through the channels we found an NFL game being broadcast in Spanish. American football. In Sweden. In Spanish. Trippy.
We watched a decent amount of television in Swedish, and one show that had a bit of Norwegian with Swedish subtitles. Of course those of us from the states would have been completely lost had it not been for the valiant efforts of our host. She proceeded to translate these shows for us, at time for hours on end as there was one show that her and I were binge watching. It was pretty impressive.
Finally, at Christmas Eve dinner there was a cat. He was a super chill dude and despite the activity around him and people sitting with him and petting him then getting up to leave, he did not move for hours from his spot on the couch. He was a baller.