Week One in Goteborg

How's Sweden? It's great! It's the expected answer for the typical question people back home ask me. What else can one say? What they really mean is: how are you, and how do you find Sweden? We never really ask what we mean to ask, with a question. It's one of my pet peeves about communication.

So how is Sweden?

# I notice myself hunching sometimes because of the cold. 11-28 degree weather for summer.

# There's broken glass all around the student housing area from last night's party, when people got so drunk they started smashing things or dropping bottles. Iusually leave before that happens, though.

# Goteborg is rainy. Intermittently rainy, which is bad in that the weather is unpredictable, but good because bad weather is over quickly. But there will be more rain.

# It's expensive (duh!). The cheapest groceries are slightly more expensive than buying food in Singapore, but some things are very expensive. Fresh fish is at least RM50 per kg, and even more for salmon.

# Everything comes in XL size--the wildlife, the vegetables and the people. We bought an onion larger than both my fists put together. Here' s my RM1.30 white button mushroom, known as champignon at the local markets. It's a medium-sized one of the day's pick, by the way.

# People are friendly. They offer help whenever they see you lost and staring at a map to figure out the 11 different tram lines.

# Goteborg University has one of the best exchange student programs, with special courses for exchange students (because everything else is in Swedish), student buddies who actually organize things, dedicated administrative officers who reply emails on time, and even a special welcome dinner from the city council. This is what the cheapest student housing looks like (all furniture from IKEA). The armchair was originally just draped in white cloth, but I found a throw left behind by my predecessor, among other useful things. Of course, it's relatively the cheapest. I'm paying the equivalent of a fully furnished room in Singapore. The plus side is, this is student housing, so we get to cook and have parties.

# For photography, natural light can be very harsh. I had problems taking landscape photos when facing west in the afternoon, and when facing east in the morning (whether or not the sun was in the picture). Note the glare from the window in the first photo above. I had to draw the curtains to get a decent result for the second photo, and that was the light from a southeastern window on a sunny morning.

# It's beautiful, and the houses are pretty. The red house with the slate roof is typical of houses in the countryside. I have yet to see a building with peeling or weathered paint.

# The world has expanded. I learn that Nazis still exist in Germany (as a tiny and vehemently opposed minority), find out where all the police are hiding in Sweden, and realise that most European countries do not hold parades involving the military.