News and pictures from around town.

What have I been up to lately? For the most part, trying to get by on as little as possible – Stockholm ate up a surprising bit of this vacation’s budget. I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately, the highlights including Street Trash, North By Northwest, and of course, Meatballs. Here’s some pictures and news from the past few slow weeks.

You may have noticed I haven’t been posting pictures from recent bike rides. The reason is two fold – one, the weather has been pretty bad the past few weeks. There are some nice long stretches of dryness, but those are in between windstorms and thunderstorms, and general moist greyness.

The second reason is that I put my bike up for sale and sold it – I didn’t think it was going to be that hot on the market, but it’s gone now. I thought culling it would save me some hassle, making it one less thing I have to check in on the return trip, but as it turns out, I really missed having a bike. I began reading classifieds for used bikes, and a rediculously awesome Eddy Merckx Corsa Extra pops up one day, just over in Malmö. I might be overextending my unemployed ass a bit, but I:

• was going to buy a bike back home anyways
• would kick myself for letting this deal go (it’s worth more than I paid for it)
• need transportation here in Sweden
• missed going on bike rides. I never made it to Helsingborg Smygehuk, or Falsterbo.

So I pulled the trigger and this amazing machine is now mine.

It fits great now, but I’m going to put a shorter stem on it back home. I don’t have clipless shoes here, so I’m going to find some cages and straps. The front brake is too small, and squeezes the rim AND the tire, which is no good – so I’m on the lookout for a longer reach brake, ASAP. Those are the only things holding it back from being perfect, which is pretty amazing. Components are a strange mix of Shimano 600/Dura Ace and Campagnolo, along with those ill-fitting Universal brakes. I’m going to need one or two of these (1,2) if I bring it to the Bay Area with me.

A week or two ago was the high-schooler’s graduation. I saw this in Stockholm, too. It’s pretty traditional for graduates to rent gigantic trucks with their friends, loaded with rediculous stereos, blasting trashy Euro-trance loud enough to get Satan dancing, and drive in endless circles around town. The girls are all in blazers or dresses, the guys all wear traditional “student” captain’s hats, and everyone is completely hammered, and all of downtown smells like cheap beer. I wish the US had a tradition like that.

The wasted 18-y.o. girls are all blowing on obnoxious whistles, waving and screaming so that passerby on the sidewalk acknowledge their accomplishments. Any OTHER time that you publicly acknowledge another person’s existence in public, it’s considered rude and crazy, so you better believe I waved to every single truckload of girls that passed.

Here’s Petter and his 4 goats (it’s clever because his sign rhymes in Swedish).

I’ve also been marvelling at how light it is (even on cloudy days like lately) at night, and how impossibly early dawn comes. Here’s a picture from a few weeks ago taken around midnight.

Here’s a shot of my apartment complex around 2:45AM at Midsommar, the longest day of the year. It might not compare to the last picture on my last post from Stockholm, but it’s still surprising to us southerners.

Even with blinds closed, my room is light enough to read by, by 4:15AM every day. I can’t imagine what it must be like in northern Sweden now (well, actually, I can guess that a lot of reading gets done up there).

The one nice day last week, I went downtown to Mårtenstorget to buy sorbet, and a local bank-sponsored soccer team was inexplicably having a beach-soccer expo.

Here’s the bike racks across from the train station. When travelling from Lund a few years ago, I’d bike to the station, lock up, and come back a week later to spend half an hour searching for my bike.

Here’s a pretty sweet chainguard.

Here’s a button sitting around in a thrift store, making no sense.

The ICA Qvantum near Lund’s Central Station has a pretty sweet chocolate selection (in addition to the sorbet that I couldn’t find anywhere else).

Then I saw a couple dogs.

And then there was some bitter-ass graffiti. I don’t know what kind of luck this dude has, I mean I’ve met nice cops before, jeez. I just wasn’t holding an armful of Krylon when it happened.

Here’s what my friends ask me about when they hear I like Sweden. OK, I guess they exist (kinda hard to find even)…

…but I feel bad for Swedish tourists to the US – “oh, you guys have such amazing candy – I bet you eat tons of Swedish Fish”. A German traveller on his US vacation might ask “oh, you Americans have such amazing music – I bet your favorite artist is David Hasselhoff; he’s mine!” The thing is, we do claim the Hoff, but there’s so much better stuff that we should be known for.

Here’s what Sweden should be known for:

Blood Orange and Ginger sorbet. I’m officially buying an ice cream maker when I move into my next place. 100%.

I also made some rad-ass ginger beer using Swedish clover honey, Äppelmust (fresh-pressed apple cider) from nearby Österlen, brown sugar and cinnamon, and had the bright idea of freezing the bottles of my un-fermented ginger brew. Thaw, dilute (the stuff turned out way too concentrated), pitch yeast, carbonate, refridgerate, enjoy the best ginger beer ever created. I’m going to have to peg down a recipe and let fame and fortune follow.