Pandemic Vacation: Lund, Day 3

My only plans for the day were the hotel breakfast (had overslept or otherwise missed it previously), a tour of the Lund cathedral, an international bookstore I’d discovered too late the previous day, open mic at Cafe och Le, and then bad movie Zoom.

Interior of the Lund Cathedral, facing the altar behind rows of wooden chairs.

There was some minor miscommunication between staff members about where the tour was supposed to start, but it all worked out fine in the end. Our guide was a cheerful and slightly theatrical young woman (she also does tours for school kids and it showed) who informed us that there was a baptism scheduled after the tour was over, so we were free to stay unless they needed to make room for the baptism guests. We stayed to watch a large, complicated clock go off, complete with good and evil knights fighting and the three Wise Men turning up to pay their respects to Mary and the baby Jesus to the tune of “Good Christian Men Rejoice,” after which I decided to wander off elsewhere and give the baptism party their….not privacy, I guess, but their something.

I made a beeline for the international bookstore I had found yesterday and immediately fell in love. No weird minimalist artsy displays with just a book or two per shelf: just shelves and shelves of books, everywhere, every which way. By this point I’d finished two of the six books I brought with me, so I was entitled to get two replacement books, right? And a souvenir book as well of course. And he happened to have the memoirs I’d been meaning to get for ages so of course I picked that up.

Interior of the French Book Store in Lund

The sign said French Bookstore, and then listed a bunch of other languages below, which I found amusing, but then once I was in there it made sense: the owner was clearly French, and also excruciatingly though charmingly slow and old fashioned. He wrote out my receipt by hand and spent most of my visit there waiting for his payment system to process a bulk order from a librarian who had come in from Malmö. And even though everything I bought was in French, I still kept to Swedish with him because my spoken French is pretty crap. But my brain did the thing and so suddenly my Swedish accent started to turn French. Wild.

I wandered a bit more and stumbled on the last half hour of a pop-up…art gallery? Flea market? Unsure. But I checked it out on a whim and ended up with three gorgeous prints painstakingly excised from an old encyclopedia: a star map with the North Star and nearby constellations, a map of “China and Japan” (and the surrounding countries of course, but at that point given as either Chinese or Japanese territory), and a watercolor illustration of a Chinese mandarin and a young Japanese woman, posed together a bit like a museum display, clearly part of the section on different cultures around the world and their traditional costumes.

The weather was starting to turn by this point, so I hoofed it back to the hotel room to drop off my booty rather than schlep it along with me to the open mic at a place called Cafe och le (Cafe and smile), which is a pretty cute little pun since you pronounce it the same as Cafe au lait. I showed up about half an hour ahead of the scheduled start so I could be sure of a seat and also have some dinner, but it ended up being more like forty-five minutes ahead of the start since it took a while to get the sound set up going.

Exterior of the Cafe och Le in Lund

It was a delight despite that, and no one who performed was tragically or embarrassingly bad. The highlight for me was an older guy who turned up and out of nowhere, THE BLUES. One of America’s few cultural exports worthy of mention; probably the closest thing I’ll ever experience to patriotism is the weird little warmth I get in my guts when I listen to non-Americans play the blues. Appropriately enough for my musical patriotism, the last song I caught before I returned to the hotel room for bad movie Zoom was “Summertime,” and boy howdy do I have strong feelings about George Gershwin!

The bad movie zoom was top notch, as always, and I polished off a great deal of (too much?) mediocre boxed wine before last-minute packing all the assorted small things and then collapsing into bed at 3 am or so.

Pandemic Vacation: Lund, Day 2

I burned through my agenda in basically one day, so I started my second day in Lund with a long sleep in and then took a walk through Stadsparken and Lund at large to enjoy the sunshine.

Entrance of Stadsparken in Lund on a sunny day.

A duck pond surrounded by trees under a bright blue sky with fluffy clouds.

A street in Lund on an overcast day. Single-story buildings in eggshell and yellow are framed by flowering bushes on either side of their entrances.
Lund feels much smaller and cozier than Stockholm.

Exterior of a hotel in Lund on a sunny afternoon.

I got a tip from a friend on a good crepe place, so I ambled over in that direction and got a crepe to go. It was a good tip and a very good crepe, so A+.

A banana Nutella crepe.

I ambled a bit more, since the weather was still good, and picked up snacks and some boxed wine for my later weekend plans. (Zoom drinking: pandemic hobbies.) I discovered a few stores and places to visit tomorrow, after the tour of Lund cathedral I had planned: an international bookstore, an open mic at a place with the very clever name “Cafe och Le.”

Exterior of the Cafe och Le in Lund

I wrapped up the night with a take out pizza, since it was Friday and old habits die hard, and then nosed around the hotel a bit to see if I wanted to use their sauna.

Pineapple, banana, and peanut pizza
Banana and pineapple are perfectly acceptable pizza toppings. Fight me.

Verdict: I don’t like Swedish saunas as much as Korean ones and I would be better served by a really hot shower in my own room. I did just that, and with my hair toweled off a bit I went downstairs to read The Stone Sky in the hotel lobby. I was hoping that the fire that had been going before would still be lit, for those good good cozy vibes, but alas it was not to be. Still, pleasant to have the white noise of people conversing (the lobby opened directly into the hotel bar/restaurant) and I read until I was ready to nod off right there on the couch.

Pandemic Vacation: Lund, Day 1

I didn’t want to fly anywhere during a pandemic, and it was a bit embarrassing to be a jävle stockholmare who had never been beyond the greater metropolitan  area even after seven years of living here, so I decided this was the year to take the train out of Stockholm and visit other parts of Sweden. This time around: Lund and Göteborg.

I sprung for a hotel room in Lund, a full on grown up suite hotel room with a kitchenette and plenty of space ALL FOR ME. Deep in my heart I’m still a slummy hostel rat, but during corona I don’t want to bunk up in close quarters with other people traveling so I dropped the cash for the fancy option in a hotel built in a converted locomotive shed.

A clean hotel room with large skylights and a freshly made bed.

Once I had settled in for the night, I set about putting together an agenda for the rest of my visit. The thing I wanted to see most was the Nasal Committee, a collection of plaster casts of assorted famous noses. This sounds a bit weird when I put it like that; it’s not at all a serious exhibit but a long-running joke that started in an award acceptance? commencement? speech by a Swedish comedian back in the 80s and now here we are today. Amongst the actual noses from living people, you also have entries like the Sphinx (“mysteriously noseless” according to its little catalogue write-up), Tycho Brahe (complete with the brass bit like he had in real life) and the eel, Anguilla anguilla.

The Nasal Committee Exhibit in Lund, Sweden.

The botanical gardens were along the way from my hotel room to the museum, so I took a wander through there to appreciate the flowers and fresh air, even though the weather was a bit overcast.

The botanical gardens also adjoin a cemetery (which actually had a pair of goth kids smoking by the entrance, bless) so I had a fun time investigating the headstones. Like Stockholm, no graves were particularly old, but unlike Stockholm a lot of them had the deceased’s career listed. The most noteworthy one was a PhD. She worked too hard for that doctorate NOT to have it proudly listed on her grave!

Gravestone that reads, "Poet Critic PhD, Susanna Roxman. 29.8.1946 - 30.9.2015"

The Cultural Museum was a quite a bit larger than I would have expected, with several buildings and open-air exhibits. I ended up exploring several other areas as well.

Entrance to the Bok Kulturen exhibit at the Lund Cultural Museum.
This exhibit on the history of printing presses and book publishing was another high point of the museum for me.
Old brick work tools as part of a display in the Lund Cultural Museum.
The difference in architecture between Lund and Stockholm was a surprise to me. So much more brick work!
A display of old pinball machine art.
The pinball exhibit was a nice piece of contemporary pop art to round off my visit.

After the museum and a bit of a walk, so I decided to see if the Mexican place I passed earlier was open and taking drop-in customers. It was and they were, and for Mexican food in Sweden it was pretty good, definitely a cut above the usual crappy tacos.

A bowl of black soup with diced tomatoes and avocado in a brown clay bowl, with a small bowl of nachos on the side.

It was also blessedly empty so I didn’t feel too much like I was tempting fate: it only started filling up when I had finished, so I paid and got the heck out of Dodge.

Interior shot of an empty Mexican restaurant with bright yellow walls, black sombreros hanging from the wall, and chairs upholstered in bright stripes.
Dos Hermanos in Lund, Sweden

After a couple hours of futzing around in my hotel room (drinking loads of tea, getting some reading done) I decided to futz around at a bar instead. Most of them looked too nice to go there alone (and a bit too crowded), so I eventually ended up at good ol’ Bishops Arms, drinking beer and reading Ice  until closing. On my way home I nearly got taken out by a cyclist coming too fast around a corner, but in the end I was fine and he ended up eating shit and wiping out so I ended the night with a good laugh.

The Glorious Return: Uijeongbu

After many lean years and tight travel budgets, in 2019 I bummed a favor from my friend Yousef and got the “friends and family” price on an Air Emirates ticket to South Korea. (He doesn’t work at Air Emirates anymore so that flight was a one-off memorable experience in itself.) My itinerary was a few days in Uijeongbu, a few days in Seoul, a few days in Daegu, Chuseok in Seoul, and the last few days in Uijeongbu. I centered my visit around Uijeongbu because I had lived there for two years, so I knew people there and was eager to take in the nostalgic sites (which ended up being more “seeing how things had changed”) in addition to new and exciting cities and experiences.

The short version of fun things I did, which I might or might not expand into later entries as the mood to reminisce strikes me:

  • Hiked (“hiked”) a bit in Bukhansan park, along parts of the trails accessible in Uijeongbu/Hoeryong/Mangwolsa.

  • Visited a couple temples along said trails.

  • Finally, FINALLY attended a Royal Asiatic Society lecture about Chollipo Arboretum.
  • Finally, FINALLY attended a comfort women protest.

Weekly comfort women protest outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul.

Exterior of a shop on Medicine Street in Daegu with jars in a glass display and a terrifying pair of taxidermied deer.

  • Ate everything.

Interior of a Gimbap Cheonguk in Uiejongbu, South Korea

  • Drank a lot.

A bowl of makgeolli on a wooden table.

  • Stayed in a hanok.

Courtyard of a hanok guesthouse in Seoul

  • Saw friends and former coworkers for the first time in a million years.

A chain of soju bottle caps dangling from a ceiling decorated in fairy lights.

  • Met the next generation of teachers at my very first hagwon. They had already renewed their contract for a second year at this point in Q3 2019; I wonder how the plague year of 2020 treated them.
  • Deliberately avoided visiting my second hagwon and all of its bougie environs.
  • Mourned the apparent end of my third and best hagwon, its space now a kiddie play park above the gamjatang restaurant on the first floor (which is somehow still the same gamjatang restaurant, down to the signage—cold comfort, that)

A brightly-lit gamjatang restaurant at night.

  • Took in the late-night teenage buskers in downtown Uijeongbu.

Crowds enjoying late-night busking at the pedestrian mall in downtown Uijeongbu, South Korea.

  • Got scrubbed.
  • Actually, spent a lot of time in jjimjilbangs, up to and including the date of my departure, when I:
    • Dropped myself into a jjimjilbang locker room conversation between other foreign women and encouraged them to embrace the nudity of the sauna because it was extremely fucking worth it.

The weather was gorgeous. Typhoon Lingling hit on my last day in Daegu, prompting me to bump my departure up (too soggy to go out and do anything in the morning, which had been my original plan), and for a few days after there were intermittent showers heavy enough to warrant umbrellas, but then sometime around Chuseok it broke and it was beautiful weather the rest of the time—and I came back to a cold and gray Stockholm, awesome.

Things I loved in Korea that are no longer there:

  • Tom Bar in Uijeongbu
  • the Uzbek restaurant Jong-min and I always went to in Anam
  • My third hagwon (see above)
  • The officetel my third hagwon rented for me: the building is still standing but dark, quiet, a mere ghost; no doubt slated for demolition or at least renovation (Uijeongbu really växer så det knakar these days)

  • the Thai restaurant Yousef and I would frequent after binge shopping at What The Book?

Things I loved that were still there:

  • Cox

A dark bar, with "Cox" in light wood mounted on the black wall above the bottles.

  • What the Book? (in a new, smaller location, sadly)*

Interior of the now-closed What The Book? in Seoul, South Korea.

  • My first officetel building, once a modern piece of shiny new domination on that brief stretch of road, now dingy and old and dwarfed by taller buildings on either side
  • Cheonjiyeon jjimjilbang in Millak dong
  • The mosaic along the bike path next to the stream

Mosaic of a sunrise.

  • Maltese

The restaurant Maltese in Uijeongbu, South Korea.

The one activity I’ll detail is this:

During my last days in Uijeongbu, I bought a couple cheap-o bottles of makgeolli and a box of Korean Digestive biscuit knock-offs (my favorite snack). Then I made small little pilgrimages and offerings to places that were important to me. At each location I emptied out a measure of makgeolli or left a few cookies and sat and talked to the place, out loud like a crazy person. I have a thing about being able to say goodbye to people and to places, to have as much closure as possible. What terrifies me about having so many friends spread across the globe is the knowledge that each time I see them may very well be the last (true for literally every person you see, sure, but it feels more urgent when you only see someone every few years) and that I’ll never, ever be able to give them the farewell I’d want to give. But here was an opportunity to do exactly that, and I did.

I thanked the officetel for a good year, for sheltering me and protecting me and being a cozy little room I could call home. I also told it that I hoped whatever was going to be built in its place was nice and charming and worthy of being built there. The other sites, being more a general sense of place that’s hard to really destroy, were less emotional since they’re literally impossible to disappear the way a specific building is. But they still brought up memories of friends and a life I no longer have, and my heart ached a bit.

It turned out to be a well-timed trip on my end. The last chance to visit people in Korea before they left, the last chance to visit What The Book?, the last chance to see a familiar place before the coronavirus appeared on the world stage and (irrevocably?) changed so many things. I have such stupendously good luck so often, it astounds me.

The author at Bongeunsa Temple in Seoul, South Korea.

*As of the date on this backdated entry, What The Book? still existed, but a few months later it closed very abruptly and unceremoniously. The books I purchased there on this last trip will never leave my collection.

Bloomsday Weekend

One of my literary friends, Yousef, suggested we do Bloomsday in 2018, a suggestion we finally made good on in 2019. Yousef is also an immaculate planner so I left all of the scheduling and eetail work to him, and he didn’t disappoint. Following his lead I stayed at Barry’s Hotel, which turned out to be a prime location for us and which was both comfortable and cozy.

The first day off the plane was a bit of a whirlwind of long-overdue hellos after six years of separation, finding the right bus, meeting up with our third travel companion, Ian, and getting dinner and drinks and settled into our hotel rooms.

On the second day, my dirtbag body woke up at 5:30 am and wouldn’t go back to sleep and that was my life. I browsed the Internet, enabled data roaming on my phone so we weren’t reliant on spotty wifi, and then went downstairs for tea and breakfast: a proper Irish breakfast full of meat.

An Irish breakfast: sausages, bacon, ham, and half a tomato.

Yousef and I trash talked MFAs until Ian turned up at our hotel—then it was time for a tour of Trinity University, including the library and the book of Kells.

Then we made a beeline for Oscar Wilde and Offbeat Donuts, though not before dropping in Swenys for a live reading from Ulysses, the very last chapter. People were in seats that were in a line snaked along the tiny little chemist’s-cum-bookstore. Everyone had their copy of Ulysses out and helpful event/store clerks proffered us extra copies open to the right page if we wanted to read along. (We declined.) Things began with an elderly woman who read quite well—you got the impression she’d read this portion quite a few times. The last chapter is one I like better as well, though I’d like it a lot more with more than eight periods…! She finished, and the next reader stumbled through his bit, which is when Yousef and I ducked out.

After Oscar Wilde and donuts, Yousef had a Dubliners walking tour. I could have crashed it but instead opted for taking the tram back to Sweny’s, where I picked up another postcard plus the infamous lemon soap.

A bar of F. W. Swenys Soap.

Once reunited we made the pilgrimage to Hodges Figgis. We only had two hours until it closed, which was not nearly enough time.

“I’m glad I’m in a bookstore with people who won’t judge me for my habits,” Yousef said over the giant stack of books he was carrying. He had enough books to fill up a stamp card in one giant shop. My haul was much humbler, partially because one of the three books I found was 78 goddamn Euros! But it was a fairly academic text on translation that neither Stockholm library nor the university library carry, so I figured why not.

Afterwards we tried The Pig’s Ear, but it was fancier than we were prepared for so we left and opted for a more casual steak place (so much steak!). We started with Thai spicy chicken wings and I couldn’t help laughing.

“Thai food after book shopping, just like in Korea.”

We rounded out the night with a lot of beers at Mess Maguires and then it was the end of day two. Tomorrow would be Proper Bloomsday.

Like every other day of the trip, I was the first up and spent an hour or so on my own, reading and writing up travel notes.

“Sorry I wouldn’t commit to a time for the museum last night,” Yousef said when he got downstairs. “But it’s my vacation and I just want to sleep in.”

“No, I get it. Breakfast?”

“Just the continental today, I think.”

“Me too.”

Yousef had toasted peanut butter and Nutella, while I had corn flakes with raisins and some Nutella and jam on toast. When he went to pay with his Emirati debit card, the clerk asked a tentative question in Arabic and a brief exchange and introduction followed.

“I knew he was Egyptian,” Yousef said as we strolled out of the hotel. “I could tell by the accent but I didn’t want to say anything.”

Interior of the Dublin Writers' Museum

Our first stop was the Dublin Writer’s Museum. The thinking was that we could visit there first, learn a little bit, pick up some names or titles that might be interesting, and then go book shopping. Originally we wanted to go back to Hodges Figgis, but we ended up spending more time at the library than anticipated and since we had a tour to make at 1.30, we opted for Chapters, which was closer to the Joyce center.

A lot of the writers I noted were slightly too old but still insufficiently “classic” to be found at Chapters (which, unlike the other two bookstores we had visited already, didn’t have a separate “Irish literature” section), but I did find a couple of 20th century women writers who had been featured.

Back at the Joyce center, Yousef gave me a little bit of friendly ribbing about not buying a ticket (“They were all sold out when I went to finally buy them!”) but it’s not like there were any ticket takers or handstamps so I just told the guide I was here for the 1.30 tour and that was it. The tour was a short walk and covered Joyce’s biography as well as particular spots from Ulysses. A film crew from a Farsi station on the BBC was on our tour to report about the event, except I would have never guessed or known that if I had been by myself but Yousef made a point of asking what they were filming for, and at the end of the tour he gave the producer? director? his email address and she promised to send him a link to the clip when it aired.

We had about an hour to kill before the readings, and debated carrying our book shopping with us or dropping it off at the hotel. We opted for the latter, and good thing we did, because later that evening it started pissing down rain (Ireland!) and we would have been drenched.

“Did you have a good day?” an elderly gentleman asked me as we left the hotel. I must have looked absolutely panicked, because he continued:

“We saw you leaving the hotel this morning. Have you had a good time so far?”

“Oh! Yes, great.”

“It’s not over yet,” Yousef added.

“No, the night is young and so are we!”

Street art with high-contrast black and white portraits of Irish writers on a purple background, with text that says "Feed your head: read."

We still had enough time to do a quick souvenir and gift shop. I picked up whisky cordials at Hotel Chocolat and Yousef asked if they carried anything with Baileys. No dice, but the girl at the counter suggested one of the tacky tourist tchotchke shops down the block, which was conveniently on our way. I also picked up some Baileys cordials, because why not, and then we grabbed a seat for the readings.

The whole reading was very femme and very queer, which is fitting for an event during the high holy month of Pride. The readings were interspersed with a singer performing songs from the book, which was a good call to break the monotony. Not that it would have been monotonous otherwise, but the singer was quite good so if there had been a couple duds in a row you could count on something a little livelier soon enough. The highlight of the entire event, which was a good two and a half? three? hours was a Senator who also happened to be a Joyce scholar reading from the bit with Bloom masturbating on the beach, complete with all the appropriate intonations, and then concluding his selection with: “Nothing like a spot of masturbation on a beautiful summer day!”

Ian was supposed to join us for the reading, but he took a different tour and ended up getting absolutely plumb lost, so we didn’t see him again until the cabaret show at 8. We made a beeline for the restaurant Yousef most wanted to try on his list (assembled for him by an Irish coworker who really put her project manager all into it and gave us a good selection), and by now it was getting a little chilly and I was in a light dress with no stockings or leggings and wanted to get inside.

This restaurant was BBQ and of course, since I was wearing white, I made a bit of a mess of myself. The food was worth it, at any rate, and I was glad for something warm.

Selfie of the author and her friend.
And naturally I made point of obtaining a straw boater ahead of time!

The only cock-up was a mistake in the program. Our last event for the night was a cabaret performance that looked like it started at 8 and ran till midnight. We got to the venue at 7.30 and waited for the doors to open…and waited…and waited…in the downpour that I mentioned earlier…while all the while the crowd grew larger. When the doors finally opened at 8 (which was what the program should have noted but didn’t), there was such a huge crowd and such a bottleneck at the desk that it still took ten or fifteen minutes to get everyone in. We grabbed a round of drinks and waited for the show to begin.

It was worth the rain and the waiting, though. I grinned and laughed so much my face hurt, and the acts were all really good, and really creative takes on the material in Ulysses (with varying levels of poetic license taken with the source). Ian even got called on to the stage for one of the audience participation bits, which was to use a piece of sandpaper to remove as much pink paint from a toilet plunger as you could in five minutes—again, masturbation.

“I’ll hold your drink if you get a picture of this,” I whispered to Yousef a few seconds into it, and he handed over his Beamish and then did one better by capturing it all on video.

“Blackmail material,” he said with a grin when it was over.

During the intermission we talked about US politics with a woman in costume, complete with a “Votes For Women” sash (you saw a couple of those throughout the day). I stood Yousef another round of drinks and told him:

“This is a fucking delight. You made an excellent choice with this, thank you.”

Because much as the tour was a good tour and the readings were excellent, the cabaret was next level. I’ll be honest: I wasn’t going in with really high expectations. I was expecting a kind of cringey but endearing amateur burlesque thing, but it was so far beyond that.

The second to last act was a dance routine inspired by the “Ithaca” chapter, specifically the part where Stephen and Leo go outside to take a piss and look at the stars. The lights dimmed even further and a dancer in an outfit and long scarves rigged with lights performed a routine to an orchestral version of “With Or Without You.” The effect certainly didn’t cost all too much to make—take a string of LED Christmas lights of decent quality and attach them to your fabric properly and that’s about all you need—but it was genuinely captivating, and that plus all the emotional intensity of the last few days and the disappointment at having to leave the next morning got me to crying, so congratulations I’m someone who cries at dance performances now.

Ian didn’t have to be up quite as early as us, so he bid us good night and we went on our own back to the hotel. We checked into our flights and figured out our gameplan for getting to the airport. Cab fare wasn’t outrageous, so we decided to hell with it, we’re on vacation. Plus Yousef had just a small backpack and a couple of flimsy paper bags, but a million books to fit in there: all easier to manage in a cab than on public transit.

I had a larger bag and fewer books, so I got everything packed away easily before I went to bed, set a bunch of alarms (paranoia!), and curled up for the last night in my posh bed at Barry’s.

A neatly made bed in a small, old-fashioned hotel room.

I didn’t oversleep, of course, and begrudgingly I went downstairs to check out and order a cab. I sat with one of my books—Cocktail Bar—and messaged Yousef to let him know I was up and that our cab was coming in an hour.

“Cool. Just trying to strategically back four bags of books into two.”

At ten after nine I knocked on Yousef’s door to make sure everything was cool. He didn’t answer, but I could at least hear him packing, so I retired to the hall and waited for him to finish.

“Need any help?” I asked when he came out.

“Nah, it’s okay.”

We had enough time for some morning tea and discussed the events of yesterday (best and worst readings, how good the cabaret was) and the merits of city-based literary festivals.

“I wonder if New Orleans does anything for A Confederacy of Dunces,” I said. “Or maybe that would be grim, considering what happened to the author.”

After tea, we decided to head outside and wait for our cab. The desk clerk, a friendly middle aged woman with a husky cigarette-y voice, came out with us to…make sure we didn’t get into the wrong one?

“So where did you guys fly in from?” she asked.

“Well, I’m in from Stockholm,” I offered when Yousef hesitated.

“Dubai.”

We talked a bit more about the weather and how Yousef would rather the weather in Dublin than the 50 plus degrees C in Dubai, until she spotted our car and ushered us across the street.

“Thanks for visiting, safe travels back!”

“Thank you!”

We breezed through security—not sure if DUB has its shit together or if we just picked an unpopular time to fly— and finished all of the check-in stuff by 11 or so. Our flights weren’t until almost 2,so we had plenty of time to kill. Yousef did some last-minute souvenir shopping and we had some breakfast. What we really wanted, and hadn’t been able to find in all of our restaurants, was a proper stew, so we just bided our time until the restaurant downstairs started serving lunch. What the restaurant billed as a “casserole” ended up being extremely stew-y, so mission accomplished.

I had a long schlep back to my gate once Yousef’s flight was off the ground, so I didn’t have to sit for too long until we started boarding. An animal rescue group, Dogs Without Homes, had been on my flight on the way over and sure enough, here they were on my way back, easily identifiable in their bright sky blue t-shirts. The flight back was uneventful; I read a good chunk of Cocktail Bar and, even though the flight was just a couple of hours, snuck in a quick nap.

Would that I could just create an imaginary city with everything and everyone I love from all over and then just never leave. Alas, stuck here in this material realm, limited by the laws of space and time.

Den mörka portalen and NaNoWriMo

My Saturday was extremely literary! A member of one of my critique groups has, after years of hard work, self published the first novel in a planned trilogy. The release party was at noon at Marabouparken, and I stopped by to give my congratulations and enjoy a little bubbly to celebrate Den mörka portalen. It is surprisingly heart-warming and gratifying to see yourself appear multiple times in the author’s thanks.

Shot of the author's thanks (in Swedish)

Once under my own name, once as “Stockholm Writing Group” (the writing Meetup I organize), and (if I’m feeling generous) even a third time as a fellow redaktör and korrekturläsare, though I work in English and not in Swedish. Still, editor solidarity!

The venue was also lovely. When your park is named after one of the most famous candy companies in Sweden, it sets certain expectations (see: Hershey Park in the US), but it was actually quite understated. Dare I say…high brow, even?

A slate walkway and some statuary at Marabouparken on a rainy, overcast day.

As it turns out, Marabou no longer owns the property. It’s a bit of a misnomer.

After that I was off to help plan this year’s NaNoWriMo. Have you signed up yet? You should! And if you’re in Stockholm, you should come to the kickoff! We’ll have fika and pep and writing activities to get you all fired up for November. And, of course, my lovely face. Can’t wait to see you there!

Stockholm Kulturnatt 2018

A fortunate turn of events meant that a little over a week ago, I was able to finish my usual Saturday obligations earlier than usual and meet a friend in town to attend Stockholm Kulturnatt.

Even though Kulturnatt has been an annual event in Stockholm since 2010, this year was the first I’d heard of it. I’m glad I was able to make time this year, but I’m also a little disappointed at all of the years I’ve missed!

I didn’t know quite what to expect, except free admission to assorted “cultural events.” But I’d been thinking recently that I don’t really do enough to actually enjoy Stockholm (aside from my annual treks to Litteraturmässan), so Kulturnatten seemed like a good way to remedy that. I met up with a friend from Meetup, Thomas, with plans to meet other friends of his later in the evening. We queued forever, which seemed ridiculous since it was a free event.

“Maybe they’re counting heads for fire capacity?” I suggested.

“But the building’s huge!”

“Bureaucracy.”

As it turned out, the bottleneck that was leading to queuing was the clerk at the desk, explaining the evening’s program (a couple of lectures and a self-administered quiz) to visitors.

“Jesus, is this it? This is so awkward. Can’t we just walk past?” I asked no one in a low voice, but shuffled up to the desk to hear the presentation nonetheless. No ticket was given, no name taken, nothing. We smiled at the clerk and took the flyer and the quiz and then went on our way. A safe distance from the counter, we laughed.

“That was the entire reason for the queue. That was, literally, the most Swedish thing I’ve ever seen,” Thomas said. “People queuing because they’re too polite to just walk by. Oh, God. In Britain people would have figured it out and just walked past, given a little nod. Oh, Sweden.”

We had a wander around until his Couchsurfing friends showed up; a mutual Finnish friend of ours had been ahead of us in the queue and was off somewhere with her own friends.  The Army Museum wouldn’t have been my first choice, so I didn’t pay too much attention to anything (though I still learned about the S-363 incident, so that’s something); I was pleasantly surprised to see placards featuring wartime literature (George Orwell, All Quiet on the Western FrontBödeln). By the time the rest of the group arrived, Thomas and I had pretty much had our fill, so after confirming we’d missed the last lecture of the evening, we waited by the entrance for the Couchsurfers to finish the quiz.

The de facto leader of our little group, by virtue of her nerdy enthusiasm, wanted to go to the Nobel museum, so once she and the other Couchsurfer finished the quiz, off we went. Meanwhile, the Finn and her friends had since departed for the Finnish Institute without catching up to us—ships in the night. Thomas and I stayed with the Couchsurfing friends at the Nobel museum for just a brief moment; Thomas read the mood and came to the conclusion that the male half of the Couchsurfing couple was really interested in a date night with Excitable Nerd, so we broke off and made for SF Bokhandeln, with a pit stop at Storkyrkan.

“I’ve never been in here,” he commented.

“I don’t think I have, either.”

They were having a choral performance which I would have been happy to stay and listen to, but I also took the time to wander around a bit like a tourist. (I didn’t think to take any pictures, though. I guess not that much of a tourist.)

The interior of Storkyrkan in Stockholm, Sweden. The view is down the center aisle, facing a stained glass rossette. On the left hand side is a spiral staircase attached to a column, leading to a pulpit. The ceilings are high and vaulted; the columns are red brick. The seats on either side are empty.
Image courtesy Holger Ellgaard.

Such opulence and artistic finery surprised me in a nominally Lutheran church, and I said as much to Thomas.

“Yeah, that didn’t come until the Communists. They used to be Greek Orthodox or whatever before that.”

I thought of the occasional midnight Easter and Christmas services I had attended at my dad’s childhood Eastern Orthodox church, so much bigger and fancier than the Methodist church I had grown up with. “That explains it.”

We both had a chuckle over the prayer candles that now, in addition to (or maybe instead of?) the donation box, simply had a sign with a phone number where you could Swish your donation.

After a few minutes, we turned tail and headed for SF Bokhandeln. We were too late for any of their events, so we just browsed. I ended up picking up Hanabi, which I hadn’t seen the last time I was there. I also picked up a book for Austin Feminist Sci-Fi Book Club that I was having a hard time getting from the library. I’ve since started reading it and unfortunately I’m having a bit of buyer’s remorse. So it goes.

“I wonder how long it would take you, if you just sat down and tried to read the whole shop. Years?” Thomas wondered, picking up and putting down a generic-looking space opera book. “Like, this is the kind of stuff I want to have time to read, but I just end up reading the summary somewhere instead.”

“I mean, not all books are good books. Some are only worth the Wikipedia plot synopsis.”

Finnish friend had shaken her group and landed at a bar on Sveavägen and asked us to come join her. The weather was nice, so we capped off the night with a walk from Gamla Stan to Hötorget. So clear! So warm! Nothing like moving a few degrees’ latitude north to make you appreciate the shift in seasons. If this isn’t nice, what is? But it had been a long day for me (I was up at 6 am!), so after the walk, I bowed out of drinks and went home.

There were still lots of events that I wish I had attended (concerts, primarily), but for my first year at Kulturnatt and going in completely unprepared, I had a really good time. I’ll certainly be marking my calendar for next year’s, and hopefully a little more planning means I’ll get a lot more out of it!

What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Day 19.5: Boston, MA to Stockholm

I say “19.5” because with a flight out of the country in the evening, this wasn’t exactly a whole day in Boston. I spent a smidge over 24 hours in town, so should that count as two days?

I woke up a little before Diana’s alarm and futzed around a bit on my phone. She showered and got ready for work, and I got dressed in my lazy bum traveling clothes and we were off.

My morning wasn’t too eventful. I dumped my travel bag at the station, and then spent the rest of the time I had until burritos with Diana and Walter writing in Boston Common and then wandering through the botanical gardens.

The Massachusetts state legislature on a sunny day.
Much State. Very Legislature. Wow. So Government.

 

A plaque commemorating the dedication of the Boston Common, gold text on a black background set in a white marble facade.
I appreciate the bird photobombing but not dude in the fannypack.

 

A zebra on a carousel

A fountain in Boston Common on a sunny day.

It was SO. HOT. that day and I very much wanted to jump in any and every body of water I saw. Fountains, duck pond, the little kid wading pool…all of them.

All of this was right after Nazi demonstrations and protests and tiki torches and all of that good stuff. (I picked a helluva time to be back in the US!) It was a topic of discussion when we were at dinner in Old Orchard Beach. Seth (Walter’s boyfriend) was amazed that Nazis would even dare to turn up and show their faces in Boston, of all places—the city is so progressive and liberal and etc.

I shook my head. “Nah man, what I’ve heard from non-white friends of mine who live there…it’s a different experience.”

There were leftovers of protests and rumbles on the Common.

"RACISM WILL NOT WIN" in pink and white chalk on black asphalt.
The text spraypainted on the ground reads “Racism will not win.” We can only hope. =/
Close up of a monument to The Pilgrims in Boston Commons, with graffiti: "$ IS POWER X FREEDOM I$ RESISTANCE"
And on this monument to I guess the Pilgrims? “$ IS POWER XFREEDOM I$ RESISTANCE.” I don’t know if I hold entirely with that logic, protest artist. The first half, yes. But I don’t know it’s connected to resisting or freedom. Maybe “resistance is freedom”? Otherwise you’re maybe putting the cart before the horse.
A Civil Mar memorial to white officers and black rank and file.
Civil War memorial to “white officers” and “black rank and file.” It feels like a lukewarm attempt at Black History TM by throwing them in with the white officers but on the other hand if they fought together, shouldn’t they be memorialized together?

I finished my writing and my photo-taking and wandered in the direction of the public gardens, because I guess that’s what I do on vacations now?

A sign for the Boston Public Garden, founded 1837. City of Boston Department of Parks and Recreation. Martin J. Walsh, mayor.

Purple and pink roses in the Boston Public Gardens on a sunny day.

Overheard in Boston:

“The flowers are dyin’ ’cause they don’t water ’em.”
“They do water ’em, every day.”
“Why are they dyin’, then?”
“‘Cause of the sun.”

Purple hyacinths and other flowers in the Boston Public Garden on a sunny day.

A pond in the Boston Public Gardens on a sunny day, lined with weeping willows. A duck boat tour is turning around a small island in the middle of the pond, and a goose and some ducks are swimming in the lower left corner in the shade of a willow tree.

More overheard in Boston:

“MOM! A duck bit my thumb!”

There were a couple buskers out in the park. An elderly Asian man playing what I think was an erhu, and then a hip young white dude with a tenor sax: “Careless Whispers,” “What A Wonderful World,” etc.

A tree with an interesting pattern in its bark on a sunny day.

I wandered over to the burrito place to meet and Walter. It was a take-out place for nearby young professionals, and since I was eating with young professionals, that meant there was no place to really sit or any time to really talk.

We said our goodbyes and I walked around the city a bit, despite it being SO. HOT., because I figured if I’m going to say that I visited Boston, I should have at least seen some of it? The other times I’ve been in Boston, I’ve been sequestered away indoors at anime conventions so I wanted to say that I had actually been in Boston. Or whatever.

Psychadelic-style street art on a utility box: guitar outlines with different stained glass-like images against a backdrop of abstract color swatches.

A light gray cupid and sun stenciled on white concrete. The cupid has the planetary symbol for Venus painted in black on its wing, and another alchemical symbol painted on its groin.

I was due to meet another friend, Amy, at a marketplace in the afternoon, though I turned up quite a bit early so I could browse around a bit and enjoy the air conditioning. I bought some yarn for one of my knitter friends back home, and picked up a business card from American Stonecraft. I love rocks, and I love New England, and this is exactly the kind of thing that my mother-in-law loves, so I’ll probably buy something online for her birthday or Christmas present. (Probably a coaster or two.)

Pots of sunflowers at an indoor farmer's market.

Once in a green time a flower
Oh, fell in love with the sun.
The passion lasted for an hour
And then she wilted from her loved one.

A cash register with a sign on the tip jar that reads 'SCUSE ME WHILE I TIP THIS GUY and features an image of Jimi Hendrix shredding.
I appreciated the tip jar humor but was fresh out of any cash at all by this point. Nor did I feel like buying some nuts, even as the guy behind the counter was really friendly and offered me some free samples. Womp womp.

Amy did the very smart thing and brought GAMES because two people with low-key (and sometimes not so low-key) social anxiety need all the help interacting they can get! Or at least I do, even if meeting Internet friends is always less fraught than I expect it because it’s not like I don’t know them at all or anything. Although I was still a bit of a traveling mess—piecey hair, clothes chosen for comfort rather than fashion, indescribably sweaty—so props to and everyone else that day for spending time with my unattractive self!

After we got chocolate and chatted a bit and I saw some Andy pictures I hadn’t before (ATTACK OF THE FIFTY-FOOT TODDLER!), we played a couple rounds of Hanabi, which I sucked at but enjoyed nonetheless and have since added to our small roster of games (Munchkin, Dixit, Magic: The Gathering).

After that it was off to the station to pick up my bag, which I had to pay some extra for by all of ten? fifteen? minutes. Ugh. Nonetheless, it was worth the convenience. I had a hell of a time finding the bus to Logan, and then the check-in line for Norwegian was FOREVER LONG. It wasn’t as stressful as it would be if it were my flight going in—I had no pressing plans back in Sweden that would suffer if I got bumped back a few hours or even a day—but it still made me anxious. The family behind me, on the other hand, realized they had the wrong passports, and it was a rush of phonecalls and sending out teenage son to meet dad and etc. to fix it. So someone was having an even more stressful wait than I was!

We boarded on time, though, and everything went smoothly. My layover in Copenhagen was slightly shorter this time around, so I didn’t try to do any more exploring. I just hung out at one of the terminals, charging my phone and letting my boyfriend know that I would be at Arlanda in a couple of hours.

Stockholms Litteraturmässan 2018

Utställarhallen Hörsalen Kulturhuset Stadsteatern Stockholms Litteraturmässa 2016
Image courtesy Kulturhuset and Stockholms Litteraturmässan

Another year, another successful Litteraturmässan! Or, at least, it was successful from my perspective. I guess it’s up to the vendors and the sponsors to decide if it was successful in a more typical sense. The panels I attended and my thoughts on them:

Vi minns Ursula Le Guin

It took me twenty years to get into Le Guin, but I made it eventually. Still, interesting to hear people talk about her who fell in love with her writing from the get-go. (The difference: half of the panel seemed to get into her via The Left Hand of Darkness, whereas my first attempt was either A Wizard of Earthsea or The Dispossessed.) Also weird to hear a discussion about Ursula K.  Le Guin in Swedish when English and Swedish pronounce the name of the letter “K” differently. (It’s the little things.)

Tema Fristad: Housam Al-Mosilli

Al-Mosilli was engaging and so was the moderator (interlocutor?), Kholod Saghir. Here’s an interview with him in English from Sampsonia Way.

Sveriges dolda historier

I don’t know if it was because I had a hard time tracking the discussion in Swedish or because the topic wasn’t as engaging as I thought it would be, but I confess to ducking out early of this one. It might have been better if I had read the books in question prior to the discussion: Aednan and Släpp ingen jävel över bron, both of which sound interesting in their own right.

Tema Fristad: Zurab Rtveliashvili

While I found the discussion frustratingly limited (John Swedenmark seemed extremely uncomfortable with silence and therefore didn’t allow Rtveliashvili as much time to answer as maybe he needed), the poetry readings and performances were engaging. Here’s a clip of Rtveliashvili reading a poem he also read at the panel (though without the instrumental accompaniment).

De värnlösa

Never a bad time to discuss Nazis and their nonsense. I picked up a copy of Lilian O. Montmar’s book (same title as the discussion panel) in the market for my sambo.

Tema Fristad: Basim Ahmed Jamal

An accomplished musician who sort of stumbled into opening Mosul’s first bookstore in the 1990s, Jamal was an absolute delight and maybe my favorite presenter. I may be biased because he also played some songs on the clarinet (an instrument I kind of, sort of play myself) to open and close the panel.

Flora Nwapa and African women in world literature

I didn’t get to see as much of this panel as I would have liked, but I liked what I saw. Heard? I hope that the library will get in more copies of Flora Nwapa‘s books in soon, because now I’m quite curious about them!

Tema Fristad: Tesfagiorgis Habte

Habte was perhaps the most at-ease speaker in all the panels I attended, or at least the one most willing to crack jokes. It helped that Sami Said was also a great interviewer: they had good banter and he allowed Habte time to answer questions. Habte spoke about his years in prison, but there’s only so much to cover in twenty-five minutes. His piece at PENeritrea touches on many of the things he talked about, and then some

What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Day 19: Walden Pond and Escape Room in Boston

We hit the road early the next morning, while Theophanes’s brother and his girlfriend and her nieces were still asleep. First order of business: a picture of this thrift store sign, which caught my eye even on the delirious and sleep-deprived drive up in the middle of the night. Unless Mildred Wymen was really into Stephen King? Orthography is hard!

Then breakfast at a greasy spoon and we were off to Concord!

I was originally going to bus down from Maine to Boston, but Theophanes  volunteered to drive and do Boda Borg with me and my hostess with the mostess in Boston, Diana. I broached the subject of stopping by Walden Pond on the drive down, since it wasn’t too out of the way and I didn’t know when I’d be in New England again. (I mean, I’m sure I will be—I just don’t know when.) She puzzled it over in the GPS and agreed, since it wasn’t ridiculously out of the way. It just would have been a little far for a day trip from the cabin.

It’s really hip these days, at least among the people I like and admire, to hate on Thoreau and Walden. And I guess I get it—he was only able to stay at the cabin as long as he did because of the good graces of other people and he was an obnoxious houseguest to boot, he’s maybe (even inadvertently) the foundation of modern American libertarianism, he was kind of a pompous ass, etc. etc.—but for a weird, thoughtful kid in high school to read about this dude being weird and thoughtful by himself in the woods was reassuring. Even as I drink tea and continue to use a doormat.

I was surprised to see so many parents of very small children trying to do the educational, dutiful thing and go through the assorted signs and the replica cabin and whatever tourist center is also on-site (we didn’t visit it, though). Maybe I’m underestimating kids, but I don’t think a 6-year-old is going to be super interested in, or at least appreciative of, someone living by themselves in the woods. I’m pretty sure they just want to go swimming in the damn lake.

I have to admit, sometimes a cabin out in the woods sounds like the most appealing thing I can imagine. We peeked inside and it was easy to imagine me holing up in such a space for the rest of my days. Maybe in a place a little bigger, only because I’m less stingy than Thoreau when it comes to books worth holding on to.

It was then very weird to see that the plot of land where he went to live simply, away from people and society, so filled with people. In addition to all of the signage and statuary and sites associated with Thoreau, the pond itself is now a local swimming hole. The sound of people talking and laughing and splashing in the water was the background sound for most of the trip. Incongruous, but at the same time, maybe it’s better that such a spot be appreciated by the general public rather than forgotten.

(I still did my best to get this picture of the lake without any people in the shot, though.)

There were also these assorted illustrations from some kind of Walden ABCs book where I’m not sure if it’s actually for kids, or a kids’ book for adults (a la Go the Fuck to Sleep), along the assorted paths. This was by far the reach-iest one of them all:

and I, when we saw the first one (“C” or something), started speculating as to what they’d do for the trickier letters. I thought “X” would be for “fox,” but no. “Z” either was or should have been “zephyr.” I was right, though, that “Q” would of course be “quiet.”

If the pond and the museum-type stuff was relatively packed and full of people, the site of the actual cabin was mercifully quiet. Theophanes pointed out that many of the trees in the area were fairly young, so one wonders what happened to the patch of forest between when Thoreau was here and when the site was discovered in 1945. (Or perhaps it was never actually discovered; perhaps that’s just a random spot along the lake that they decided to declare Thoreau’s Cabin in order to give visitors something concrete to experience.)

People also left little stacks of stones next to the cabin. For me, this is something people do in Korea (maybe East Asia?). I saw this all the time, especially in temples; from my understanding, it’s part of a folk Buddhist tradition that has to do with making wishes or requests. (Do ones this small still count as cairns?) For example, here are some I saw by Cheonjiyeon falls in Jeju in July, 2012:

And an anonymous Korean woman building one at Bulguksa in Gyeongju, January, 2010:

And yet maybe last year or two years ago, my crunchy granola friends started sharing articles like this one, as if making those tiny towers had suddenly become a widespread Thing in the US as well. It was certainly a Thing at Walden, anyway, and I left my own, because it’s a way for me to connect my time in Korea with the places I visit elsewhere.

Other people left messages or drawings on stones, which I hadn’t seen in Korea. (Though at temples, you can buy a roof tile for X amount of won and leave a message on it.)

The weather was warm enough that by the time we were back at the lake I was regretting leaving my bathing suit in the car; Theophanes as if reading my mind, said, apropos of nothing, “I’m going to take off my shoes and dip my feet in.” I followed suit. The rocky shore of the lake made the barefoot journey less than appealing, but the payoff was worth it. The water was ice cold and stung pleasantly at the myriad mosquito bites I had acquired at the wedding (open-toed shoes and a knee-length dress means lunchtime for bugs). We stood in silence for a while and watched some small fish come and dart around our ankles. I splashed some of the water on my arms and face and filled up a tiny pocket of my heart with the experience to draw on later, when I feel like garbage. I also picked up a white piece of something (quartz? marble? I’m a bad junior geologist, guys!) as a souvenir.

When we used to visit Emerald Lake State Park as a family, I (and maybe my brother?) would always want to take home a rock or two from the bottom of the lake. Dad, a former Boy Scout and adherent to the “leave it better than you found it” ethos, would always make us put them back: “What if everyone took one? There’d be nothing left!” (I totally managed to get one out with me once, still, when I was maybe eight.)

The thought crossed my mind as I washed the grime off the rock and dried it with my shirt: “What if everyone took one?” I’m an adult now, and that means I get to violate Boy Scout prescriptions on nature preservation whenever I want!

Diana had been anticipating watching the eclipse with us (this was the day of the eclipse), but we ended up spending it at Walden instead, which I’m kind of okay with. Spending a significant astronomical event at a site that’s personally meaningful is a pretty okay way to spend it, in the end.

Another friend from the wedding, Walter, wanted to meet up in Boston once he knew that’s where I was going, but he couldn’t make it out in time for Boda Borg, so it ended up being just me, Diana, and Theophanes. This was probably for the best—they say “up to five” in the groups, but anything more than three people would have been cramped, really. It was my and Theophanes’s first escape room and I suppose we did OK, although the first room we picked was obnoxious and we couldn’t get it. Fortunately, it seemed to be way harder than many of the other rooms, and we still managed to solve a few puzzles and pick up a few stamps.

Before Boda Borg was Vietnamese food and introductions. Afterwards was boba tea and farewells. Theophanes was off to her mother in Rindge, not super far from Boston (certainly closer than the Maine cabin). and I spent the rest of the evening with Diana watching The French Revolution episode of The Supersizers Eat and talking about stuff. I left most of a six-pack of Yuengling (I am trash and love my regional PA trash beer that would be prohibitively expensive and thus pointless to acquire here) and the last of my roadtrip music (Black Masala, Gangstagrass, and I think also Galactic?) in exchange for an autographed stand-up album. Before we hit the hay, I solidified plans with people the next day: lunch with Diana and Walter, then later meeting up with a blogger buddy  before the long flight home.

And like the other Maine parts of my trip, Theophanes also wrote about it. There are a lot more pictures of Walden and some more details about Boda Borg over on her blog.