This is surreal. We have just returned from a staff ‘teambuilding’ exercise that entailed an hour of ten-pin bowling at the local alley, followed by dinner at the alley’s restaurant. Sweden is SO far removed from the American influence, that to see the Americanised bowling score boards, instead of grating the senses, was rather sweet, being so out of place as things go here. We have remarked before how little billboard advertising there is, how little graffiti and how clean and neat everyone is, even the skateboarding youngsters in their baggy trousers. On the other hand, that kind of epitomises the Swedish culture of belonging to a whole, the ‘part of the neighbourhood’ feeling, the standing patiently in line and not rocking or bucking the system. So the surrealty comes to us from being part of this culture for now, but also being able to look at it from a distance; to be able to see both the useful bits and the keeping everyone in place bits. But before the philosophical debate about culture and new experiences, perhaps you’d like to know about the visit to the frizor mentioned in the last blog – it was worth every cent – a chair that massaged back and legs while having hair washed, a hairdresser who waxed about my ‘lovely curls’ instead of the usual ‘my you have very fine difficult hair’, candles at the entrance to welcome you in, and a whole hour of relaxed chat. And then the dinner – a cultural experience of Swedish pride (flags, ceremony, formality, and decorations like students dressed in formal wear and white hats who rotated very formally to hold the flagpoles during the conferring ceremony), Swedish food (trout and caviar entrée, pork roast pieces with mushroom dumpling and jus, and baked local apple desert), Swedish sing-song (after each speech during dinner, with the words printed on cards on the table and the last one performed with the whole audience standing on their chairs – yet still no nonsense or falling around) and Swedish music (the Reindeer band, a local very good big band dressed –sort of facetiously in red striped trousers and black waistcoats with medals hanging from them) whose best bit came at the end of the evening with a medley of Abba! Actually it was all a lot of fun, entertaining and insightful. And somehow the best bit was riding home on our bicycles at 3a.m. in the frost as it seemed a better idea to cycle to work, change there, walk across to the venue for the ceremony and dinner and reverse the sequence to get home, thereby avoiding the need to wait outside in the freezing cold for a taxi.
