Denmark: The Mexico of Scandinavia

This weekend I went to Copenhagen (called Koebenhavn there) to visit the delightful Kasper and Maria. Denmark is a fantastic place, very warm and festive. It's hotter and sunnier than Sweden, and the nightlife is more raucous. For this reason it is considered the Mexico of Scandinavia. 

However, I arrived in Copenhagen too late, and the country has since been renamed McDonaldstan. However, Denmark is largely responsible for today's world of corporate entertainment, not only did they give us Lego, but:

They invented the amusement park. Tivoli was the world's first amusement park, although it's a long way from Disneyworld. 

It has an old-timey circus vibe, but I don't mind. Elephants are nice. 

Copenhagen was also home to Hans Christian Andersen, the world's most famous tortured-closted-homosexual-depressed-misanthrope whose work has been adapted into Disney feature films. Here are the stars of his tale, "The Ugly Duckling". In fact a swan with her three cygnets. There are marshes and lakes everywhere in the city. 

While I was there it was Halloween!

I did get to celebrate Halloween a little while I was there. I went as a man with a dinosaur for an arm:

The Danish do not have a strong tradition of Halloween and it has only recently begun to be practiced, but there is no excuse for this:

No Denmark, Halloween is not "15th - 24th of Oktober", it is October 31st! There is no room for debate over this issue, it's a fact, just like there are 365 days in the year, and that "Blackout" is the best Britney Spears album. Inarguable facts. 

Perhaps we cannot blame Denmark for its Halloween confusion. It is, afterall, a lawless society. Here is a view of Christiana, where cameras and police officers are forbidden. It is a commune separate from the rest of Denmark where they administer their own laws. Marijuana is legal, but needle drugs are a no-no. While being there on a Friday night felt like being in an apocalyptic hobo camp at the end of the world, they do accept Visa. 

There were 8-year olds in Halloween costumes playing beside the hash vendors, and I watched two dogs get in a fight - they bit each others faces! Kasper was scared, but I thought it was exciting. 

To overcome our fear, we went to an all-you-can-eat Sushi bar, called "Running Sushi" because the food is on a conveyor belt. Those with quick reflexes are rewarded. AYCE sushi is my favorite thing about Canada, so I was glad to see it in Denmark. The lack of AYCE sushi in America is truly a failure of liberty. 

Copenhagen is similar to Stockholm in size and both feel Nordic. Copenhagen is different though with its canals, which appear rather Dutch. 

Copenhagen is more casual than Stockholm, which is quite conservative by comparison. Copenhagen has a more lively nightlife and arguably has a larger culture scene with a large amount of contemporary art and architecture being produced there. 

Building on its historical traditions, Copenhagen is still a major design center. I met a designer while I was there, and her job is to use a computer to figure out how clothing should be assembled and fit. I didn't know that job existed, but apparently it happens here. 

This is the apartment my friend Maria shares with an architecture student. In Scandinavia, real life looks like Ikea. (Disclaimer: They decorated the room themselves, and painted the furniture. No actual Ikea was used in the making of this photo.) 

Denmark is also a city of romance. While walking back home at 4:00 am because the trains stopped running (I was so unhappy.) Kasper and I came across a romantic bridge where a new tradition has started. Couples place a lock on the rail of the bridge, and throw away the key. Some locks are kind of weird, and have three names (Polygamy is practiced in Denmark). Me and Kasper wanted to add our own lock of undying affection, but we couldn't find a locksmith that was open at 4:00 am! 

Basically, Copenhagen is really good and I would highly recommend it. It's what I imagine Amsterdam to be like, only less tacky. Being the Mexico of Scandinavia, Copenhagen is a Nordic Tijuana, a meticulously clean and effortlessly stylish party town! 

PS: Danish newspapers are shocking! On the front page there was a picture of a naked woman in the middle of childbirth, this was done to illustrate an article about natural birth, but still, the NYT would have ran a picture of smiling mother and child, freshly clean. 

Danish cartoons are also vulgar and provocative. One featured a nude Lars von Trier hanging is mother with his own umbilical cord. Another featured a phallus erupting from a beaten man's head. I know the Danish papers got a lot of flack over the Mohammed cartoon, but I doubt that is the most offensive piece they have published. 

I am a huge proponent of free speech, so I like that the Danish papers are challenging and provocative, but it is very different from the "family newspaper" that exists in North America. 

Fall, Candy, Ducks

In Swedish autumn, the days grow short, the sun setting noticeably earlier by the week. When the sun is up, it's beautiful and clear and bright. When it gets dark, now before 6:00pm, there's little reason to go outside at all. So, I've furthered my investigations into Swedish candy.

Daim is one of my new favorites. It's milk chocolate with bits of toffee crunch inside it. 

Basically, it's the Swedish version of what in Canada is called Skor, and in the US is known as a Heath bar. It's tasty but not revolutionary (Not in a Marxist way at least.) 

Pigall is more interesting, different enough not to warrant any direct comparison. The inside is a light, airy, yet crispy chocolate flavored filling that is reminiscent of a 3 Musketeers in taste but not in texture. The texture is unusual and not uniform, some areas are crispier than others. 

This is known as a "Japp". It is a rather thick chocolate coating with caramel and a fine chocolate flavored nougat. It is essentially a Mars bar/Milky Way (which are essentially the same themselves.) More confusing is that Japp copies the same font and packaging as Mars, and both are sold widely in Sweden. I love Mars bars, but I fail to understand the existence of Milky Way and Japp imposters. 

Now this is a weird one, and lives up to Sweden's international reputation as a producer of disgusting food. Plopp (with three 'p's) is a milk chocolate bar with a salted licorice filling. Imagine if someone replaced the caramel in a Caramilk bar with a salty black tar. That is what this is. It is at once offensive, but intriguing. The licorice filling is strong tasting, but is perhaps balanced by the milk chocolate? I don't know. I once ate salted chocolate chip cookies that were very interesting. This is also interesting, but harsh. Salt and chocolate is a strange flavor, but not destined to failure. The addition of the rather herbal tasting licorice is very typical of the Swedish palate, and I doubt this is sold anywhere that wasn't settled by Vikings. 

But Sweden is more than objectionable chocolate. Sweden is also known for the deep respect they pay to nature.

Here a duck enjoys a bottle of wine and some snus in its natural habitat. 

Ducks have an eclectic taste in beer. Here they enjoy Red Stripe and Carlsberg, domestic brands are not sufficient. 

Here a duck rejects a proffered Abro. Discount brands are frowned upon. 

So that is all I have to say this week on the subjects of fall (pretty), candy (varying in quality), or ducks (silly). 

Food and Festivities

The traditional way to end summer in Sweden is with a kraftor-fest, in English, a crayfish dinner party. I believe summer in Sweden ended long before I arrived in the middle of August, I still wanted to try out the tradition, and had the chance to do so with my old Cornell Swedes (Maria #1, Maria #2, and Erik - Swedes are infamous for uncreative naming.) 

In order to properly enjoy crayfish, one must have themed plates and napkins. The crayfish on the plates are cheerfully gathering dill and lemons to aid you in eating them, while the napkin crayfish is lighting fireworks. The crayfish we consumed were not as lively, but they were tasty. The taste is similar to lobster, but the crayfish are cooked in a dill brine. We also ate shrimp, which come with their heads on here. The shrimp head contains some organs, possibly a stomach/brains. It is very flavorful though.

A large part of the tradition is singing songs and drinking liquor. The songs are all old Swedish drinking songs that come in a song book, with lots of variations that use basic nursery rhyme melodies. After each song you drink some snaps, with is a Swedish spiced liquor. I don't understand the songs, but snaps is nice. 

Also, I discovered a new fruit recently! Physallis, I don't think we had these in North America, but they are pretty common in Sweden, served as a cocktail fruit. It is sweet and tart, like a citrus-y strawberry. (It's hopeless to write about food, it's like dancing about architecture.) But it is exciting to discover a new fruit after I had eaten all the "big ones", it's like seeing a new color. 

I went on a cruise of the Stockholm archipelago recently on one of the few beautiful days this autumn. 

The boat we took was apparently 100 years old, but it was very well preserved. 

We left from downtown Stockholm, where the boat was docked in Ostermalm. This is the poshest section of Sweden. Here are some highly enviable apartments on Strandsgatan ("Beach Street", an optimistic name if there ever was one.)

We passed by a haunted amusement park which looked very Scooby-Doo. 

No children spin in the strawberry-octopus' arms any more, and so he sits by the dock forlornly. 

A large amount of the Stockholm archipelago looks like Canada, more specifically like the Thousand Islands on Lake Ontario. (But the Stockholm archipelago never lent its name to a dressing.) I actually took few pictures of it because I had a "seen-it-already" feeling. 

It is very much autumn in Uppsala now. The leaves are changing and falling (but not as beautifully as in Ithaca.) The days are also getting much shorter. When I arrived here in August, the sun would rise at 5:30am and set just before 9:00pm. Now the sun doesn't rise until at least 6:30am and it sets at 6:00pm. I've still got another 5 hours of daylight to lose though, so I'm trying to enjoy the sun while I can. 

And finally, a treat for all the Daniel Craig fans who have visited my little blog since I mentioned the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" movie that has been shooting in Uppsala. Here he is for you to enjoy. 

Maybe I enjoy it a little bit too. 

Movie Magic

This week I bring you exclusive photographs from the set of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo",  the soon-to-be international blockbuster, which just so happens to film some of its scenes in Uppsala. 

Of course they closed down several blocks of the city during the day for when the filming was being done, and I did not see Daniel Craig, the star of the film. But at night, they opened the streets up again, and it was possible to see the set and the changes they had made. 

For instance, the store above is not at all a "Mjolk Bar", but instead a convenience store. Similarly a DVD rental was transformed into a butcher shop ("Charcuiterie"). 

The scenes being shot in Uppsala are to be used in a flashback set in the 1960s. This was the reason for changing some of the store facades. The sign above is meant to evoke the '60s, because that was the last time food was so cheap. I'm not sure if this sign will actually feature in any way in the film, and the audience is unlikely to pick up on the prices if they are just in the background. Oh well, I'm not a director so what do I know. 

These facades are also fake. One sign here advertises a radio and TV repair, which is an entirely fictional business. 

The filming will continue next week for another three days. Perhaps I'll meet Daniel Craig then. I have only read a part of the first novel, I should read the rest but I feel embarrassed to read them while in Sweden, like it's too much of a cliche or some kind of kitschy tourism.

Rainy Day in Stockholm

Sweden has some of the dreariest weather in the world, and I know bad weather, I've lived in Canada and Upstate New York. Sometimes after a gray, rainy day, a magical Swedish rainbow arcs across the sky, and not everything is so bad. However, this is an Uppsala rainbow, there was no rainbow to my rainy day in Stockholm.

Stockholm is beautiful and filled with churches, mansions, and palaces. It's the kind of place that would be incredible in sunlight or blanketed in snow. Under a rainy sky though, the city is quite imposing. 

Swedes realize this though, and to fight the gloom, they paint their buildings the color of condiments. 

This was the first European large city I had ever been to, and what struck me most was how quiet the city was. I've lived in New York before, a city where the sound of traffic is integral to the identity of the city. Toronto too has certain sounds that are unavoidable. Stockholm is very still, and my friend took me to a place called "The Street of Silence". It's very different from the kinetic energy of North American cities. Even Washington DC, with all its institutional dullness had the sounds of street preachers and police sirens as a soundtrack. 

It's funny that certain parts of the city look unchanged from the Medieval era. This patch of the Bronze age is directly across the river from the most expensive apartments in the city. My friend asked me why us North Americans are impressed with old things, why don't we have Medieval things ourselves? 

My friend also took me to Sodermalm, an area that would be the Swedish version of Williamsburg or Queen West. Seeing Swedish hipsters, it became apparent that their fashion reference of the season is North American white trash. For instance, it's very popular to wear a denim jacket or shirt with jeans, usually in the same color. I grew up knowing this look as "The Canadian Tuxedo", so it hurts a little everytime I see it. Who knew the style icon of one of the European capitals of cool would be "Beer Store parking lot, Scarborough, circa 1986." I don't think I could ever wear matching top and bottom denim, not as a Canadian at least. 

Cuisine of Sweden

Swedish cuisine is often maligned as being absurd and unpalatable, for instance pickled herring. Before I arrived, one subject I was decidedly not excited about was the food. I had Swedish food occasionally in North America, and I could not tolerate their desire to make things that are not naturally fish-flavored to taste like fish. (Anchovy-flavored potatoes were particularly traumatic.)

However, my mind was completely changed when I went to my first Swedish grocery store and saw entire aisles of cookies and candies that I had never eaten before! It is my responsibility to explore the world of Swedish sweets, and dutifully report their quality.

It is Swedish custom to eat cookies everyday in a ritual called "Fika." It involves drinking lots of coffee (always free refills in Sweden) and eating little cookies. Above, I have pepparkakor and punschrullar. Pepparkakor are the brown cookies, and are a Swedish version of gingerbread. They are very crisp and spicy, heavy on cloves, nutmeg and cardamom. Cardamom is a very popular flavor in Swedish cooking, which surprised me because I had only ever had it in Indian food before. The funny green things are punschrullar, which translate to mean "punch rolls," but another name translate to mean vacuum cleaner, because they look like the head of an old Electrolux. The punschrullar is an unusual cookie. It is covered in green marzipan and dipped in chocolate. Inside there is a spongey cake that is soaked in liqueur. The liqueur flavor reminded me of rum, but it's much more exotic than that. It is "arrack" flavor, an exotic Asian liqueur made from palm trees. It is a very heady flavor.

Swedish candy is entirely unique from that of North America, and follows two consistent themes, raspberry (hallon in Swedish) and licorice (lakrits in Swedish). Many candies combine these flavors too. Saltlakrits is the most popular candy, it is an intensely salty licorice that is an acquired taste. I've grown to love the saltlakrits because it offers a very complicated flavor. Different candies are more or less salty, and an unsalted licorice is usually called "English licorice." The small red and black discs are quite strange, being raspberry, licorice, salted, and sour flavored. Swedes are often surprised when I tell them we don't have salted candy in North America, but I can't see it ever being very popular outside of Europe. 

Being Sweden, fish is very popular. Above is "knackebrod med smor-mjolk, gravad lax, och kaviar," or a cracker with cream cheese, smoked salmon, and caviar. Caviar is fairly ubiquitous in many forms. Swedes particularly like tube caviar, which has a toothpaste-y consistency. I prefer the jarred caviar, which is very inexpensive (about four US dollars a jar.) Caviar is considered a staple, rather than a luxury. Before I feel too decadent, I should mention that a friend told me much of the caviar is dyed to be black, to make it seem like Russian caviar, and that Swedish caviar is actually of very poor quality. Whatever, I feel very fancy eating caviar on everything. 

Another popular food in Sweden are fish salads. This is a shrimp and crab salad, pre-prepared and sold in a package. It's quite heavy on the mayonnaise (Swedes love mayonnaise like Southerners do.) There are dozens of different seafood salads, with shrimp, herring, tuna, oysters, etc. Also, the usually sell shrimp with the heads on here, which is a little gross. 

And yes they eat meatballs here, but really they deserve their own discussion, to come at a later date. 

First Impressions of Sweden

I intended to post earlier, but perhaps it is best that I didn't. Now that two and a half weeks have passed (though it feels longer) I feel settled enough to form an opinion on everything I've been experiencing. 

I intend to write more detailed and specific entries about particular, for example about Swedish food, politics, etc. 

Firstly, I have to say that Ikea does offer a surprisingly realistic portrayal of Sweden. Ikeas in America are just the same as here, a strange example of Swedish cultural colonialism, exporting Swedish values with pressboard furniture. Ikea may be even cheaper here though, a meatball dinner costs the equivalent of two dollars. 

Of course Sweden is much more than Ikea. Uppsala is dominated by the Domkyrka, an old cathedral that is the largest in Scandinavia. The towers are incredibly tall, almost 400 feet (120 metres) and dominate and otherwise flat landscape. It took over two hundred years to build, beginning in the 1200s. It didn't receive the distinctive towers until just over a hundred years ago. But history is boring, and the city is beautiful regardless of the time in which it was built. 

Uppsala doesn't look as I expected it to. Rather than looking Gothic, most of the inner city is stucco and red tile roofs, lending it a rather Mediterranean feel. Although I was unsure of what to expect Sweden to look like, and in all honesty probably expected it to be woodsy and "Nordic". An unfair expectation that many visitors probably harbor towards Canada until they see it for the first time. 

A river runs through the middle of the city, and although it is filthy it lends the city a Venetian charm. (Although the canals of Venice are no doubt more disgusting.) 

Uppsala is appropriately beautiful and European, but what I like best about the city is the people. Swedes are notoriously friendly, and the city is actually incredibly cosmopolitan. I worried before I came here that Sweden would look like a recruiting poster for the Hitler Youth, but Uppsala has people from all over the world in it: Germany, Iran, Belgium, Hungary, France, etc. (Perhaps too many French even.) It has been great so far, meeting people from all over the world, and not too many Americans. (Although I love Americans, hope to be one eventually!) 

I hope to update very soon, perhaps on the Swedish election. (Which makes Washington look like a circus, which of course it is. It has affirmed my love of American politics as a spectator sport.) 

That's all for now,