More blogs about buildings and food

One of the most compelling reasons for subletting an apartment while I was here instead of staying in a hotel was so that I could cook for myself. This has saved me a lot of money given how expensive it is to eat dinner in a restaurant here. Nevertheless, self-catering is not without its challenges in a foreign country.

Fortunately (at least for my shopping comfort level) Sweden seems to have embraced the US-style supermarket model. This is in contrast to stereotypical European model where everyone goes to two or three different places each day to buy that day's meal. There are a couple cool market halls that fit that mold, and I try to patronize as much as I can. But for the everyday stuff, I go to a small supermarket a block away. Because of the familiarity of the supermarket model, I haven't had many instances of complications arising from cultural or linguistic misunderstandings. On my first shopping trip, I did have a bit of a mix-up when I inadvertently bought sugar that also contained pectin. But other than my tea having kind of an off consistency, that hasn't been too big of a disaster. I swear the picture on the front of the bag depicting the sugar being poured into a saucepan full of jam looks like it's being poured into a cup of coffee, at least when you're looking at the bag in dim light (which is a common feature of all the Swedish supermarkets I've shopped at).

Saturday, I did have a somewhat unfortunate experience at an outdoor produce market I like to go to. I got there right at closing time, and the fruitmongers were eager to get rid of their stock. Somehow, my simple request for a handful of green beans turned into a pound or more of beans, a leek, a couple heavy bags of plums, and a couple heavy bags of grapes. I tried to demure on some of the items, and did manage to keep from adding any berries or melons to my haul. Unfortunately, the guy was speaking very quickly in Swedish and seemed in a bit of a rush. My Swedish wasn't really up to the challenge of negotiating, and I got a bit flustered and speechless as I watched him bag up my fruit.

Needless to say, the cost was a bit more than I'd anticipated for the half kilo of beans I'd wanted to buy (although a bargain for what I got). When he told me the final cost, I tried feebly to negotiate, but I was stuck in Swedish because the fruitmonger was an immigrant who may or may not have spoken English. That and he was Middle Eastern from a country that probably hasn't benefited from our foreign policy, so my switching to English would probably have backfired anyway. I got him to reduce the price a little bit, but I'm still stuck with about 10 pounds of fruit that's probably going to go bad before I can eat it all. It's now Thursday, and I would say I'm about a third of the way through, though the grapes are holding up remarkably well in my fridge. The plums on the other hand are starting to turn. It's beginning to look like buying the sugar with pectin wasn't such a disaster after all.

Kan du talar Svenska?

Can you speak Swedish? You may be surprised at how much you can understand, given the similar German roots of English and Swedish. Take for example, this sign promoting a magazine article hyping the Sex and the City movie (which opened here last weekend).


The sign says "Läs Charlottas intervju med SJP från Sex and the City." Translated, this says "Read Charlottas interview with SJP from Sex and the City." (I love the use of "SJP" as well.)

But just when you start to gain some degree of confidence in your recognition of cognates, you pick up a newspaper and are completely lost. Well, at least I was when I bought one a couple days ago. So the two languages aren't very similar after all. I took a couple semesters of Swedish when I was at Berkeley, and I would say I picked it up even faster than I did Spanish. That said, I've lost quite a bit in the interim, and it's been a challenge regaining it. I did the completely nerdy thing of bringing the flash cards from my Swedish class, and although I haven't been too diligent with them, my review of verbs the other night was quite helpful.

Unfortunately, the blessing and the curse of living in a country where nearly everyone speaks English is that as soon as I show a lack of comprehension, the person will switch to English and there goes my ability to learn by immersion. Even the Palestinian proprietor of the cafe where I'm typing this switched to English on me (and then proceeded to tell me how terrible the politics are in the US -- I can't say I disagreed). So I've still got three weeks here, and my goal is to be able to get to the point where the person on the other side of the counter doesn't automatically switch to English as soon as I open my mouth. The colleague I'm working with is Danish, and he says it even happens to him, so I'm not overly optimistic, but I'll do my best.

Swearing in English

I'm not the most diligent Harry Potter reader. I usually get caught up with each book just before the accompanying movie comes out. So with the Order of the Phoenix coming out soon, I decided it was time to get reading. But this post isn't about Harry Potter. It's about swearing. (yeah!)

I love how we share a language with the English, and yet we don't. I realize that this isn't particularly ground-breaking, everyone knows the English call an elevator a lift, but what really intrigues me is how different our two languages (dialects?) are when it comes to swearing. The English seem to have a much broader array of swear words and insults. They also seem to swear more, but maybe it's just the movies I watch. Anyway, the Harry Potter books are littered with English slang, and one word that keeps coming up is "prat". I love this word because it has such a solid, Anglo-Saxon bite to it. It's the type of word you can hear an English person muttering under his breath after the prat in question has left the room. I'm not sure what the American equivalent would be; probably something like "punk" or "tool". I was sharing my amusement over this word with Anne, and we got to wondering, what is the female equivalent of a prat? "Bitch" seemed a little too coarse, and the only other female insult I could think of was "slag", which is definitely not right. We were stumped, so if you have an idea, I'd love to hear it. Also, for the record, "git" appears to be stronger than prat, because it's only been used once so far, and it was in italics to emphasize the venom behind it. As yet, I have no data to say where "wanker" falls on that scale.