Two seasons in one month- Christmas in the snow, and New Years at the beach

So, Zok played the role of 'Tomtefar' or Swedish Father Xmas-

There is a tradition of a family friend dressing up and coming to the apartment after the end of 'Kalle Anke' aka the very strange, truncated bits of different Disney films, mostly dubbed via a louder narrated voice talking over the original dialog, T.V. program shown each and every 'Julafton' aka Swedish Xmas, or the 24th of December.

Our friends all remember watching this each and every year of their lives, and from the vantage of our friends apartment we could see all the neighbors doing exactly as us.

Zok was smashing! The whole experience was delightful.

Our friends came in from (ahem) taking out the trash (aka dressing up Zok in a nearby apartment) and were very animated saying "Hey, Hey we think we saw Santa walking to the streets!" and we all ran out to the balcony to see Zok tramping up the road. Hilarious.

 

 Although we didn't have an actual white Christmas, we had so much snow over November I did not feel cheated in the least. I also got to go to not one xmasfair but two, the one here in Gamla Stan and the one in Chester.

Oh! I almost forgot, I also went to the traditional market at Skansen, and it was still snowing then (with my friend who was visiting).

I wish I had the ability (motivation?) to write out just what a long, somewhat hard yet laced with many inspirations and surprises this last year has been.

Looking back on this blog, I would have to guess, because as it is not a confessional diary, and I would have to know from the lack of posts what kind of year 2015 has been.

I really have more friends that any one person could deserve. I got to see many of them this year- and many helped me more than I can repay- not that friendships are or should be about some set of accounts and balances.

Really dear friends got married this year- all quietly...which I respect.

I felt tested more than once, and now as I think back...I didn't excel but I did not do anything to embarrass myself either, and I am going to just call that a win.

For every new friendship that did not work out...I think I learned that not every person will become important in one's life, and that should not feel like some sort of failure. In fact, I choose to recognize that I am fortunate to have so many opportunities.

On the subject of the mundane, the reason this blog has been neglected since our return to Sweden, has been in part to my sudden, active, social life and my decision to go back to SFI.  Swedish For Immigrants, is a subject that deserves its own post.  But let me just note that I got up at 6 a.m. (not in my nature) Monday through Friday, for maybe four months?  Due to this I was acutely aware of the growth of Stockholm, the perspective of new immigrants, the culture clashes as exemplified on my crowded, crowded, morning commute.

While I may not have actually bonded with my classmates, I did try...which for me again, is winning.

We had a lovely Christmas, as we also did last year with our neighbors, and that feels like it was yesterday, or ten years ago...

We visited a lot of people, and were visited by a lot of people this last year and the new year is started out the same way.

All of this makes me feel very positive, if albeit a little harried...but soon I'll be able to sneak off to the beach and read a book, in english.

 

 

Same as it ever was...the good and the bad

 

Very dear friends came to visit us for two weeks, and now looking back- the time we spent seems like a blink of an eye.

Even though during their stay Stockholm went from a bright colourful Autumn scene to getting record breaking snow fall.  The local paper said that Stockholm got more snow in one day, (November making this a rarer occurrence) for 111 years.

We went from lovely wide open skies, to glittering snow.

Not every visitor gets perfect weather of course, and our next visitor has arrived to treacherous, icy paths which we both fell (get it? fell?) prey too, during our long walk around Stockholm.

Also, as I sit here, I realize the year is coming to a close, and my partner is saying things like "We go home in six weeks!"- which I am not ready to hear.

I have two trips coming up, and I am still struggling through SFI most days.

I am, however really missing my exercise routine- which is the activity that got lost among, entertaining, running for trains, SFI and what I dimly remember as 'summertime'.

At this moment most people I know connected with the united states either by origin, or living there now are stuck under a very, dark cloud.

Having grown up through the 1980s, I think I always had this view-

The 'one step forward, two steps back' view.

I really know little about the candidate that won, I gave up hope when the party put him forth, the first nominee with no experience or qualifications.

I spent some time thinking about the time and energy I put into volunteering...escorting women through crowds of people shouting hateful things as we went into health clinics, all the people I registered by hand for 'Rock the Vote', the campaigning for voter registration, the hours postering, watching friends die and medications were held up by bureaucracy, politics, fear and profits just to dredge up a few memories...

I am grateful to not be there, and I am not sure how I would be feeling if I was there but since I have the luxury of not being there- I feel that embracing negative emotions would be truly losing so I am going the other way.

 

"...when I was little someone pointed out to me....some constellations but the Big Dipper was all I could see..."

While visiting a friend who works/studies at Tekniska Högskolan, I noticed a poster for this:
alba nova 

Open night at the observatory, cheap and early.  Two things that strike my fancy.  I have done this same sort of event at other observatories, in L.A. and in Hobart.  Really, the reason to go is for a chance to look through a large telescope.  My hopes for Stockholm were high, I mean why else have so much darkness?  Only, the darkness here isn't quite true...not a darkness we have in Hobart where getting up high, and away from light pollution is still easy.  Stockholm has a strange, and eternal feeling in-between light.  Half of the year, it's dawn to high noon to dawn again never quite getting dark.  
Then this half of the year it is twilight to night, on a good day.  Other days become one day, as they range from wet gray, to wet gray to wet gray again. This makes the wait for snow seem very long, and the wait for Spring, perhaps eternal.

Our telescope guide explained to us that Stockholm, is too low, too cloudy, and too filled with artificial light to have good scientific viewing.  If the sky had been clear at all though, we would have gotten to see so much more than any hobbyist gets to see from a commercially bought telescope.  I really wanted to see a constellation as it is seen from the North.  But no luck.
We fared better with the lecture, his lecture perhaps, was a bit of a rehearsal for his dissertation but that didn't make it any less interesting.  He works with computer modelling of the gravitational lens effect- one of Einsteins predictions within the 'general theory of relativity'.  If I understood correctly, as scientists can see further and further out into space - this helps them understand what they are looking at.

I felt like he was pitching his audience correctly, as he used 'Interstellar' to help illustrate a point, and we had just gone to see the movie the night before.
I was happy that they showed it in a theater with a balcony.

 

Why live in a city if you do not take advantage of all the activities you can find in a city?  Well, this is what I tell myself when I cast about trying to keep myself occupied.  Maybe occupied is not the word I am thinking, perhaps interested would be closer- because the many, many hours of gray need some extra motivation.  Yesterday all I did was struggle along trying to figure out how to make our Christmas cards and to finish sewing a tortilla warmer (cozy).  
Today, is honestly, truly the sixth day of just pure gray.  The effect is a bit like living in a house with really low ceilings.
I will admit I was a bit too cavalier talking about how much I wanted to experience winter.  I was thinking of Hobart's crisp, clear and bright Autumn days with some of Stockholm's wintery, snowy, picture perfect days and forgetting about the storms, or the weeks of gray in-between the picturesque.

"...and shining it down the vine, out of her nightmare, back into mine..."

For anyone who might be stopping back to see what I have been up too- I thought I'd mention a few events that are not looking at subway art.

I do not want to make the impression that I am just a girl alone...riding the rails...

The top photo was my best second hand shopping score in ages.  So good I am not going to mention where the store is.  I got a few designer (Swedish) items- casual clothing to be sure, but still a score, many dvds including harder to find ones such as 'Moon', and 'Rock-n-Roll Highschool', Pixar in Swedish, a few vintage children's books, and best of all a heap of textiles.  All for about 150 kr. or $25 Australian dollars. Joy!

The other photos are both showing (as I am only just realized) what a jerk I look like in the 'vip' section of shows...

We were seated in the 'royal' box for a show recently, this was actually because of an over sale of tickets (reserved guest seating got sold accidentally).

Mostly, I have just been wrapped up in how happy I am that it is Autumn.

I love the rain! I love kicking my way through heaps of fallen leaves. I love to sit in the (suddenly) quiet outdoors and contemplate the sky.

Typically, I also love sweaters, and have been congratulating myself on buying some during the heat wave of this last July, they were super cheap and they great for walking.

Zok is home, but soon to be gone on a tour that seems to be getting longer and longer. Meanwhile, each day I sing the song I made up about how wonderful snow in October would be, and do my weather witch dance.

 

Lights to stave off winter

Tomorrow is a big day because we are going to pick up a couch.
So far sitting on the floor has been our one option.
There are thirty stairs from the front door of the building up to our apartment door.
When your shopping list is as basic as 'condiments', toilet paper, step ladder, trash bin there are a lot of trips to various stores and up and down the aforementioned stairs.
We did have boxes to move but that mostly consisted of all of Zok's paperwork from the last twelve years of tours in Sweden.
Oh, and many, many bags of apparently very important free clothing that has never been worn...
The apartment is way too white.
Zok was very happy to find out that there are like seven chopping boards built into the kitchen.
I plan on fixing that as soon as I know what our furniture that we haven't found to buy yet looks like.
I don't think or I don't remember ever living in an actual apartment before.
At least never in a large building. Mostly I kept to guest houses, or bungalows where my front door opened to the outside world. I came close when I first moved to Seattle, I lived in a small brick place with six apartments.
But this place is large, we have maybe 8-10 per section and maybe 20 sections? I am just getting used to all the differences. However, the design of our building is a half circle, and our apartment has great windows, a small enclosed front porch and a large terrace on the other side.
I am happy.
I am also very tired.

In Sweden 'Jul' or Christmas starts about the 30th of November.
All at once almost every window has lights in it, mostly paper stars of various sizes and colors and sort of punctured with designs so the light streams through in patterns of shadows and light.
I choose a copper star. There is also a wooden traditional light fixture with about seven small lights-painted in a Swedish folk style. We have one in Tasmania that gets very little use as the seasons are reversed. When darkness falls by 3:30 p.m. lights seem much more of a necessity.
Also almost every apartment complex has a live tree with white lights adorning the branches.


Meanwhile Team Sweden is playing in the Blood and Thunder Roller Derby World Cup and I have been getting up at odd hours to try and watch them play live, streamed online.
http://www.derbynewsnetwork.com/live/events/2011/12/blood_thunder_roller_derby_world_cup