Into the Weekend

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As I head into my last weekend before the actual semester and its "classes" begin, things are slowing down. First off, the busy busy schedule that the Swedish Program has been keeping us to is complete; there'll be no more running around the city with 30 other Americans trying to find a particular restaurant or park bench where we're supposed to meet. I like this, as now if I want to go back to my apartment and say, "take a nap", or "write a new blog entry" or "not pay an exorbitant amount of Swedish taxes for one lousy beer", then I can do so. Of course this doesn't mean that I'll be spending the rest of the semester out here in Sundbyberg (pronounce Sundby-bare for those of you following at home); it just means that if I'm tired, I won't have to adhere to a lightning-quick schedule. And speaking of schedules:
My classes start next week, and they seem to be interesting and all that wonderful stuff, but here's the real kicker:
My first class every day? 1 PM. Except on Friday. Then it's 10 AM.

This is magnificent for a variety of reasons, the most important of which is that I get to sleep in until noon every day, excpet Friday. For those of you who aren't experts on the geography of Greater Stockholm, as I live in Sundbyberg, I'm a good 45 minutes from just about anything in the city. I have to take the blue line on the T all the way into to T-Centralen (10 bucks if you can figure out what that translates to 😉 and then outbound on the red line to Universitatet. So it's a haul. Which brings me to a new segment on my blog, with apologies to Stephen Colbert:

The Threatdown:

5. Stockholms Tunnelbana. The #5 Threat I'm facing right now is the commute into Stockholm. It's long, and though the T is about as straight-forward as a metro system can be, it's not exactly the highlight of my day. The fact that just about nothing useful or interesting lies on the Blue Line (to my knowledge) doesn't help the situation.

4. The Dark. It's dark here in Sweden. Not like, Good Lord! dark (I missed that by about 2 weeks), but still Yikes! Dark. The sun sets around 4 or so every day, and though it's getting lighter and lighter outside, it's still quite disconcerting. I have a minimal grasp on what time it is outside, and so I'm a groggy kind of tired just about all the time. One of our program directors was telling us that even Swedes don't really ever get used to how much of their day is covered in darkness, but it's nice to know that things will only get better from here.

3. The Swedish Language. Jeez, is this language hard to learn! I mean, I took German for a couple of years, and that will undoubtedly help, but it's still not quite like any language I've seen. The grammar doesn't seem to be terribly difficult, and I imagine that if I kee at it, I'll be able to read Swedish just fine by the end of the Semester. But speak it? Not so much. I don't want to say that everyone around me sounds like the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show (of course I just did), but the rhythm and cadence of the language will make it nearly impossible to speak without an accent. My only hope is that with my 2 years of German, I learn to speak Swedish with more of a German accent than an American accent.

2. The Little Things. It's small actions that I took for granted back in the States that are giving me the most trouble. I can't shop/go to class/do my laundry/eat at a restaurant/ride the T without giving away my nationality. My number one goal here is to blend in, and I'm finding it exceedingly difficult to do so intially. Not being able to understand those around me makes me feel like an infant, and the most basic things that aren't even that fun to do that I find myself wishing I could do with greater ease. I bought some odds and ends at the grocer today using my minimal Swedish, so that's good, but it's only a start, and I've got a long way to go.

1. And the #1 Threat facing me here in Sweden is Bears. Now I'm sorry to those who don't get the Colbert Report reference, but these soulless creatures of darkness are a plague that must be wiped out. Thousands of these killing machines roam freely across Sweden's plains. There are even some housed in Stockholm's Skansen park, though apparently they're "Hibernating", and thus won't be a direct threat to me until later.

Well, That's all for me, folks...We're suosed to be off to a bar completely made of ice in a few minutes, and so hopefully that'll be cool. That is, if I can find everyone when I get to T-Centralen.
Hej do!

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Comments

[Rachel Lee]

Hej Mattie!
Hej Mattie! Mitt namn e Rachel och jag har larat mig Svenska for ett ar sedan. Ja, jag samtycker att Svenska e svart att lara sig. Jag hoppas det blir battre for dig snart =) Translation: Hey Mattie! My name is Rachel and I have learned Swedish by myself for a year now. Yes, I agree that Swedish is hard to learn. I hope it gets better for you soon =) Cool entry by the way. Nice to read a different view about Stockholm. And I'm not Swedish; I'm just learning it by myself because I think it's a cool language =) Halsningar (greetings), Rachel

[Ann Lindblad]

I got the bear reference!
Love the blog - and Colbert is afraid of bears, no? You write so insightfully, and with such a conversational tone it's almost like hearing you speak out loud. Don't stop!