Crayfish party!

Last Saturday I was lucky enough to participate in a traditional Swedish Kräftskiva, or crayfish party.  These parties originated back when it was illegal to catch crayfish until the crayfish trapping season started in late August. 

Our landlords here on the farm opened up one of the barns and invited all the tenants who live here to come and celebrate...I think there were around 60-70 people in total.  The barn was decked out with paper lanterns and a big stereo system with disco lights, which really came in handy later in the evening when the tipsy dancing began.  Unfortunately M was away at sea, but his brother was here to help initiate me on proper crayfish-partying.  The rules are pretty simple: grab a crayfish, crack it open and suck out as much meat and juice as you can, sing lots of rowdy songs, and (most importantly) drink snaps at the end of every song.  Some neighbors gave me a taste of dill-flavored snaps, which I don't think would work with very many foods in very many situations except for washing down crayfish!

As one might expect, there is not a hell of a lot of meat inside a crayfish.  And, it takes some work getting the little buggers open.  So, between singing at the top of your lungs and drinking a shot of booze every few minutes while having not-quite-so-much food in your stomach, you end up getting really drunk, really fast.  Here's the official version of the drinking song Helan Går, they way it's supposed to be sung:

Loosely translated, the words mean:

 

The whole shot goes
     Sing hop fa-da-ra-la-la-la-lay 

The whole shot goes 
Sing hop fa-da-ra-la-lay
And he who doesn't take the whole shot 
  Doesn't get the half shot either
The whole shot goooooooooes
[Drink the whole shot]
Sing hopp fa-da-ra-la-lay

Now, here's how the song ends up sounding toward the end of the night (not my video): 

It was a really fun party, especially since my house was just a few hundred tipsy meters down the road at the end of the night.  Next year I'll try to remember to eat more bread to balance out all the booze, my hangover will thank me in the morning.

Things I Like About Sweden, Part 1: Public Restrooms

I've started a list of pros, cons, and "meh"s about living in Sweden.  The list is getting pretty long, so I'll tackle it one step at a time.

A big thumbs up in Sweden: public restroom design (I'm talking about the normal ones in restaurants and airports and such, not the stinky little buildings that you have to pay 5 kronor for on the sidewalk in Stockholm).  Instead of rows of open stalls with partitions on the sides, each toilet has it's own private room, a door with full coverage, and a lock that turns red on the outside so the people waiting know that the toilet is occupied.  A lot of the time you even get your own private sink. 

Why haven't we figured this out yet in America?  It seems so silly to have to peek underneath all the bathroom stalls in order to figure out which ones are free, half the time the door doesn't lock at all, and you have to lean over and hold it shut with your hand.  Or, you end up with a big gap between the door and somebody's little kid is running around peeking in at you, all the while you just want to pee in comfortable privacy.

Another feature of Swedish restrooms that make us Americans look downright primitive are dual-flush toilets.  Almost all toilets have two different buttons that let you choose whether you want a big flush with lots of water or just a little flush...I obviously don't need to describe the specific situations as to why you need a big or little flush.  Dual-flush toilets cut back on 50-75% of water usage, and for some reason toilet-clogging doesn't seem to be a big problem here. 

So, like many other things Swedish, the restroom design here is more practical, functional, clean, and comfortably civilized than it is in the States.  Not to mention a far cry from the olden days of Peace Corps Guatemala:

Running is for girls

When I first arrived in Sweden, I decided to sign up for a race at the end of the summer and start training for it...I didn't want anything too extreme, just something that would keep me motivated to get my ass out on the roads after sitting on boats for weeks at a time.  I found the website for the Tjejmilen, or "Girl's Mile*," a nice-sounding girl's-only 10k in September that sounded not-too-hard and not-too-easy...they even give everyone a free slice of cheesecake at the end of the race!  When I mentioned my idea to M, he gave me a smirk and told me I don't even want to know the jokes that they make about that race.  The tamest joke I could get out of him was: "What's 10 kilometers long and smells like fish?"  Hmm, you can probably guess the answer. 

I decided to up the ante and in a moment of tough-girl stubbornness, I went ahead and registered for the Stockholm Half Marathon on September 11th.  That's twice as long as the wussy girl's-only race.  Twenty-one kilometers.  That's thirteen miles.  Oh crap.

Fast forward to today, 26 days before I'm scheduled to torture myself through the streets of Stockholm, and this summer's festivities, eating, drinking, and traveling have not exactly been conducive to my running schedule.  I've been trying to run at least three times per week, but I've been slacking lately and seriously need to get my ass back in gear.  Yesterday I downloaded a bunch of new upbeat songs and ran eight 10-minute miles in the cool weather...and I felt fantastic, I couldn't believe it!  I'm starting to feel like it might be possible, if I just stick to my training schedule and remember how good it feels once I start running.  Here's my newest favorite running song, it actually made me start running faster when it showed up on my ipod around mile 6:



Between good music, cooler weather, and the dorky t-shirt that came with my race registration and says Jag tränar för Stockholm Halvmarathon (I'm training for the Stockholm Half-Marathon), I now have no excuses.  And, I'd bet money that M would have a hard time running the girl's mile if he tried. 

*A little clarification: one Scandinavian mile is equal to ten kilometers, which is equal to 6.2 regular miles.  Confusing, I know.

Homestead-y

Aside from last-minute Spanish adventures or cheering on drag queens in Stockholm, I've spent the past few weeks getting used to being in Sweden on my own while M is away at sea.  Everything is getting easier and easier now that I can understand a lot more Swedish (I'm still around the level of a 2-year-old as far as speaking, though).  I've picked up some extra work as a nanny for a few days a week, which should work out nicely with my Swedish classes once they start later this month.  Being around kids is by far the fastest and most fun way to learn Swedish...kids here don't start learning English until age 9, so it's not an option for me to wuss out and speak English with them.  They talk nonstop, usually seem fascinated by a silly grownup who can't speak correctly, and they love teaching me new words and correcting my pronunciation.

In the meantime, I've been crocheting (virkning) a blanket for M's cousin who is having a baby boy next month:

Hmmm....I don't think she reads this blog, so hopefully it will be a surprise!  I've also been on a potato-harvesting spree since M volunteered us to tend two 80-meter rows of potatoes on our landlord's farm.  I had never harvested potatoes before, but it's pretty fun...you turn over the whole potato hill with a pitchfork, then sort through the soil with your fingers and pick out all the buried treasure.

Lots and lots of potatis.

So far I've picked over 40 kilos (90 pounds) of new potatoes!  The new ones are small with thin skins, and you have to eat them right away or else boil and freeze them.  While I like potatoes as much as the next guy, I'm nowhere near as crazy about them as your typical Swede.  So, the majority of the potato harvest went straight into the freezer or was given away to friends and family...I'm sure it would've been a different story if I had been picking raspberries.  But, between the potatoes, deer, moose, fish, and wild mushrooms, there's something intrinsically satisfying about watching our big chest freezer fill up with fresh food from just outside the door.

Impromptu weekend in Spain

Last Thursday I decided at the last minute to buy a cheap flight to the south of Spain at 6:00 the next morning.  M's boat has been in the port of Algeciras for engine work the past few weeks, and I though it would be fun to surprise him with a weekend visitor.  I didn't tell him I was coming, I just packed up a small carry-on and took off....unfortunately I had a babysitting gig that ran late on Thursday evening, so I was operating on around three hours of sleep.  I was counting on my previously-exceptional Spanish skills to help me pick up a cheap rental car in Malaga and drive the 120 kilometers (that's 75 miles) south to Algeciras.  Since I spoke Spanish for two years when I lived in Guatemala, I figured it'd be just like riding a bike to fall back into speaking it again.  Ha! 

I arrived in hot, crowded Malaga and picked up the cheapest rental car available, a so-called "Smart" car that looks more like a toy than a safe form of transportation:

The woman at the counter assured me the car was safe for driving on highways, and since the car rental line was huge I grabbed the keys and got out of there.  When I got to the car, I realized that the map directions from Malaga to Algeciras that I had carefully printed out had been sitting underneath the pile of paperwork for the rental car lady.  Oh well, said my tired, impatient, blonde brain.  How hard can it be?  Keep the mountains on my right and the sea on my left and I'll be there in no time.  I pulled out of the airport, promptly got turned around, and was lost in the busy Spanish traffic for the next two hours.   I stopped three times to ask for directions, only to find the my Spanish had turned into a choppy mixture of Spanish, Swedish, and drowsy blonde "uh" sounds.  I could understand everything that was being said to me, but there was too much Swedish clogging up the language station in my brain for anything properly Spanish to make it out of there.

Once I somehow found the correct highway south, I was about to breathe a sigh of relief when I realized it wasn't such a "smart" car to be driving on the mountainous Spanish highways at 120 kph.  It felt like the wind gusts and semi trucks zooming by could have flipped my little toy car waaaaaay down to the canyons far below at any second.  I finally reached M's boat much later than I had expected, tired and dusty and shaky...not exactly the beaming surprise girlfriend I had planned, but at least in one piece.

 M's boat with Gibraltar in the background.

We ended up having a lovely weekend...M managed to escape from some of his captain duties to wander around with me.  Algeciras is not a tourist town at all, so it was fun to sit outside at the tapas bar with pitchers of sangria for a few hours and watch the Spanish nightlife go by.  The next morning we took a ferry to Gibraltar, which was absolutely a crowded tourist mecca, but fun to see regardless.

Since there was a Harley convention on Gibraltar and the place was packed, we decided to skip the touristy streets and instead hiked up the side of the mountain overlooking the city. 

The next day we walked down to the beach in Algeciras and enjoyed some swimming, ice cream, gin and tonics, and general lazing.  The weather this weekend was hazy and cloudy for the most part so my photos weren't terrific, but it was more than nice to see my Swedeheart for a few days.

I opted to drive back to Malaga on the slower seaside roads, which were much better suited to the Smart car.  I'd recommend one for driving in cities - the mileage was great and I could park just about anywhere - but you won't see me driving one on the highway again.