It is a dreary Wednesday afternoon in Gothenburg. As ever, it is raining. I honestly do not remember the last time that
a day was completely free of rain. At the
very least there has been a daily shower for at least the past three weeks, I
would say, perhaps longer. Today, however,
it is not merely showering and for the second time this week a violent burst of
thunder has made my window panes shudder.
I was about to venture to the supermarket when the heavens opened but
the thought of donning my rain coat again is less than appealing – it even came on a night out last Saturday, a new low? –
so here I am.
I’ve perhaps neglected this blog slightly lately, due to having been concentrating on other things. One
of these is a project that has come about after a slight ‘what am I
going to do with my life?’ crisis which I may share in due course. However, I must admit that mostly I have been
working my way through a frankly quite impressive amount of episodes of Sex and
the City. Sigh. I have not been completely idle though;
since I last wrote I attended the first meeting of Druty and a dinner party, finally started running
again and dabbled with veganism. Oh, and
I spent another Saturday at Sticky Fingers – didn’t I say it would become a
habit?
Firstly, perhaps, I shall explain what Druty means. It is, or so I am told, a Polish term which translates
as knitting needles, which may give you an indication of what the group
involves. It is a Swedish handicrafts group,
involving mostly knitting and crocheting, but can really included any textile
based craft I assume. When joining this
group, I did wonder if my old lady tendencies were perhaps getting a little out
of hand, and if I should maybe say farewell to the inner seventy year old once
and for all. However, after a delightful
Saturday morning exploring flea markets around Redbergsplatsen, having a very
cheap but lovely fika and discovering a box of ‘gratis böcker’ (i.e. free
books, which are, as anybody will tell you, my absolute favourite thing, even if
they are in Swedish) with five other students, I admit that my concerns were
unfounded.
A highlight of the morning, although perhaps less so for
myself than for my Grandma, was when a lady on the craft stall in one flea market
produced a lace pillow (to clarify, I am referring to the pillow on which lace
is made, rather than one crafted from lace) on which she was in the process of
creating a piece of traditional Swedish lace.
Before I came to Sweden, my Grandma got rather excited about Swedish
lace, producing all sorts of books and patterns for us to pore over. In a typically grandmotherly fashion, I showed
interest in one head dress and she has already begun its creation to be worn
at my wedding, apparently. I couldn’t quite
bring myself to fill her in on my current very firm singledom as she seems to believe this wedding might be occurring in the near future, but it was a lovely thought nonetheless
and I know how thrilled she would have been about the encounter. It’s slightly disappointing, however, that the
owner of the lace pillow didn’t speak a word of English and vice versa. Hopefully that will be changing quite soon
though as I have my first Swedish exam on Monday and all I know so far is my
name, princess and king – useful components of any conversation! At one of the flea markets we visited I purchased
a Famous Five book which I hope to be able to read before I leave here, and
hopefully to return to its origins to continue the lace conversation as
well. Fingers crossed.
As I mentioned, I have also started running again and been trying
out a (mostly) vegan diet. These
decisions mostly came from me deciding once and for all to stop being such a
big chub after looking at some old pictures of myself, good lord. Despite many
people’s assumptions, I have found veganism alarmingly easy to adapt to and am actually cooking nicer, not to mention healthier, food than I have ever before. Also, in search of vegan food in Haga on my
Thursday lecture-gap-cum-lunch-break, I discovered my favourite eatery in the
city so far. This wonderful venue goes
by the name of ‘En Deli Haga’ and, as it says on the tin really, is a vegan
deli. You can choose from a selection of
items on a cold buffet, such as houmous, stuffed vine leaves and spicy lentil falafels
alongside various salads, which are then either put into a delicious wrap or served
on a mixed plate. There is also the
option of soup, with unlimited amounts of delicious bread and oil/vinegar dips,
and I spied some baklava for desert but I was simply too full to even
contemplate it. It was truly delicious
though, exactly my cup of tea, and I will be taking all future visitors there,
including the carnivorous ones.
I must point out that the veganism is a purely health motivated
choice, rather than being anything to do with animal welfare (don’t worry, the
Chickens in Need days are not making a comeback), and I therefore haven’t felt
too guilty on occasions when I have strayed.
This has only happened twice (or three times if you include the drunk
McDonald’s on Saturday but we aren’t), today taking advantage of my Dagens lunch
voucher from ABF Vux and last Tuesday at a dinner party. The dinner party took place at Birger Jarl,
another set of student housing across the city, and coincided with our month anniversary
in Gothenburg. There were around twenty
students of various nationalities and we all took a different dish to share. The name cards had been distributed randomly
around the table to give everybody chance to mingle with new people. It was a great idea and I had a lot of fun,
not to mention some delicious food, however once again the language barrier proved
to be quite an obstacle and by the end of the evening it seemed that everybody
had drifted back to fellow speakers of their mother tongue.
I really do feel that it is about time that I got to grips
with at least one other language as I’m quite ashamed of how ignorant and just
plain lazy native English speakers are.
As a literature student, it perhaps goes without saying that I really do
love the English language and all that it has created and accomplished, but I
don’t really feel that that is a valid excuse to simply ignore the importance of every other language. In day to day interactions with other Erasmus students and whilst volunteering at ABF Vux language school, I hear so many other languages that it would be quite possible to just close your ears to if you desired. Yet, every now and again, when straying from the well-trodden, tourist-friendly paths of Gothenburg's main streets, you find somebody who doesn't speak English and realise that you can't properly understand a society if you are still hearing about it through your native ears and describing it in your native tongue. With that in
mind, I bid you farewell now with the intention of learning some Swedish. Did I mention that I have an exam on
Monday? Oh… yeah.
(It's still raining, by the way.)
Great read! Got to your blog because I was going on about the constant rain in the UK at the moment. Please don't stop writing about your experiences there - it is well entertaining and informative. Had the most wonderful Swedish colleagues a few years ago - I hope you experience all Swedes to be like them.
ReplyDelete