Signs of Confusion, Part 3

More signs of confusion in Stockholm, Sweden...I can't help but share the laughs I enjoyed while examining the new first aid kits they purchased and mounted on the wall at work.

#1 Check out the spurting bloody ankle in the pink pictures. Ewwww!

#2 Why is the man lying on his side in the yellow pictures? Is he sleepy? Is he going to throw up? Is he drunk? Why is his hand to his mouth?

#3 Now the man (still in the yellow) has a comfy blanket. His hand is still to his mouth. The nice man in the Mr. Rodgers sweater should not give him any more beer to drink at this time.

These Swedes and their first aid kits are a laugh riot...

Signs of Confusion, Part 2

...So, continuing on in my commentary about my lack of understanding when it comes to many pictoral signs in Sweden, I present my next case for your examination...

Here's part of the oven controls on the oven in the apartment where I live in Stockholm. I have no idea what most of these buttons do. Since I have lived there less than one week, I have managed to avoid using the oven. OK, I get that it's "bell" but what does it do? And the "clock" sets the clock--that I get. But I have no idea about the other ones.

I guess as a Technical Writer I should be willing to find the manual and then actually read it...

Nah, think I'll wait for my flat mate to come home and explain it to me!

Signs of Confusion, Part 1

Well, I've lived in Sweden now for just over six months and I have to admit...I'm still mystified by the signs. I'll tackle the street signs in another post and for now I'll just cover the confusing pictorial directions on kitchen equipment, elevators, and, of all things, first aid kits.

Here's my all-time favorite sign. It's on the elevator of the building I recently moved to.

Is this not fantastic? I ask you. For the non-Swedish readers, the sign says that there is a "warning about the risk of getting pinned (or squeezed or jammed...depending on how you translate it)." Then it says that it is dangerous to transport things in elevators that do not have an inner door. There are lots of old elevators like that in Sweden. (In other words, there is an outer door but once you're in the lift, you could touch the outer doors on each floor as you move past them--from inside the elevator.)

What part do I not understand? Well, I guess it's just how poor "Kläm" manages to get pinned by the head to the ceiling of the elevator.

I mentioned loving this sign to my friend and she informed me that there is a Facebook group for lovers of "Kläm who gets stuck in the elevator." There are pictures of more versions of this sign on the Facebook page.

Awesome, Ted!

Tune in for my next post on signs I don't understand in Sweden.

Loaner Bikes in Stockholm

You can borrow a CityBike for 3 hours in Stockholm as long as you have a loaner card. Photo courtesy of

http://www.citybikes.se/

I wrote about my borrowed "Old Lady" bike awhile back in my blog for Sweden.se. You can read that post here. Now that I am trying to move to Stockholm from Uppsala, I have taken more notice of a system for borrowing bikes in Central Stockholm. I did a little research and found out the bikes belong to Stockholm City Bikes. The bikes are a partnership between an advertising company called, Clear Channel and the City of Stockholm. The project is funded by advertising so it doesn't cost the city of Stockholm anything. 

Right now all the bikes seem to be advertising Svenska Dagbladet whose common abbreviation is SvD. Svenska Dagbladet is published in Stockholm and covers national and international news as well as local  Stockholm news. Its subscribers are concentrated in the capital, but it is distributed in most of Sweden.

According to the CityBikes, The plan is for there to be more than 2500 rental bikes, spread over 200 stations throughout Stockholm. To use the bikes, you have to buy either a April -October subscription card for 250 SEK  (approx. $34.91) or a 3-day card for a little more than half that. 

It's a nifty idea and maybe I'll get a card although it's best to have done that back in April since it's the same price.

Here's how it works:

1. You buy a bike card and take it to any of the Stockholm City Bike stands (there's all kinds of maps that show where the bike stands are located via a PDF or online). 
2. You scan your card in the reader at a particular bike stand. You are allocated a bike and you  take the bike from the allocated slot. 
3. If you don't take the bike within 30 seconds, then it is locked again for security reasons. 
4. You are only supposed to have the bike for less than 3 hours. Return the bike at any Stockholm City Bike stand. Place the bike in an empty slot where the lock has a green light. Wait until the light turns red and ensure that the bike is firmly locked.  
5. If you return your bike late you get a penalty point on your card. After three demerits, or if you keep the bike for longer than 5 hours, your card is blocked. 

Interestingly, the section of the City Bikes website that says it is about the bikes & helmets says nothing about helmets. But I read at one of the stands that there is some sort of deal where when you buy the card, you can buy a helmet from them for very cheap. Of course, I read that in Swedish so perhaps I misunderstood. The website does says that the bikes are repaired regularly and are replaced when necessary.The specially designed bikes are meant to be used in a city environment and are equipped with both foot and handbrakes and all have three gears. 

Kinda cool. Maybe I'll check it out! 

Anybody out there use this service or one like it?

One of the bike stands near where I work...

Here's a close-up of the locking mechanism. They don't want you using your own lock...rather you are supposed to find one of these stands, even if you are going to come back and use the bike again shortly.

 

Finding a Place to Live in Sweden

Oj! Finding a place to live in either Uppsala or Stockholm is extremely difficult!

I have stayed with my good friends ever since moving here, nearly six months ago. Picture me in a teenager's room: single bed, no closet, a nine-year-old boy's room directly over head--he jumps around so much that the light fixture over my head threatens to come down.

Time to give my friends their privacy back. Time to be a big girl and find a place of my own.

Another friend (a guy, of course) told me that all I need is a "place to put my milk" and that's it when it comes to finding an apartment. I thought to myself that I actually required a little more but what he told me has been stuck in my head for months.

I am registered in housing queues in three cities but you have to be in the queues for a long time before you have enough "points" to actually win an apartment. In some neighborhoods in Uppsala, the wait can be 10, 15, even 20 years. Isn't that amazing? People take the apartment after all that time whether they need it or not. Then they sub-let it out.

I have also been actively searching for and responding to ads on blocket.se. For those of you in the U.S., it's the equivalent of craigslist.com--a place where you can buy and sell stuff, find apartments, etc. A lot of the apartments are just people looking to rent their place for the summer while they travel or go live with mom (students) or whatever. A lot more people seem to live in apartments here than where I am from. It is much easier to own an apartment than to find one to rent.

In a short space of time I almost got caught by two (not one but two!) scammers. At least I think they were scamming...

Scam #1

The first was an apartment in Stockholm that was really near to work. I started thinking about how I could walk to work and how great it would be. It's too dull to go into all the details but suffice it to say that my email correspondence got weirder and weirder with the guy who supposedly owned it. He said he was in England and could only show me pictures of it. He said there were three rooms but only two were available as a German woman was soon moving into one of the three. Later, he said he was going to be back in town in June and would be staying there in one of the rooms. I saw pictures and even talked to him on the phone but the connection was very bad. Then he suddenly got sick of our correspondence and wanted me to send him, among other things, my passport number. Huh? Then he would send the lease (any amount of time I wanted), then send him the rent and security deposit (never specified what that would be) and he would send the keys.

This after we have never met each other and I had not even been in the apartment!

Scammy, no?

I told him to forget it and he actually wrote back and asked why. Who knows what he was up to?

Scam #2

The second one I almost fell for was also in Stockholm. I responded to an ad and received a response about how this guy (the owner) was actually in Malmö...There were "so many people interested" that he could hold it for you if you me if I paid a rent in advance of 8300 kr ($1196.00) before seeing it (to ensure that I would show up on the one day he was going to be back in town to show it to people). If I wanted to go forward (and I got the impression this was going to more than just me), he would send pics, I would Western Union him the money and then... 

Yes and then what? It was all very shady...what exactly that money was for, how I would get it back if I didn't rent the apartment, etc. He didn't seem particularly worried about whether my schedule permitted meeting him on the one afternoon he was to be in Stockholm.

I didn't even bother to reply.

My First, I Mean, Second, Post...

I forgot to post this introduction before I published my first post. Oh well. This is my first second post on my own blog. For six months I blogged for the Swedish Institute at Sweden.se. I think you can still read the 72 posts I wrote there: http://blogs.sweden.se/work/. Those posts were about what it's like to work in Sweden as a foreigner. I am looking forward to being even more free on my own blog, which is to say I can write about anything I want.

My No-frills Swedish Mammogram

The nurse looked looked at me and I looked back. What did she want?

Take off your shirt, she said, pointing to a hook on the wall to hang it on.

I looked around for the curtain to change behind and the paper poncho to put on but couldn't locate them.

I tried to play it cool. Sure, I can get undressed right here in front of you. I do that all the time.

It was my first medical appointment in my adopted country of Sweden.

As soon as I was registered in Sweden (which means I got an honest-to-god personnummer (personal number)), I began receiving unrequested appointments to have a mammogram and other assorted services. I was surprised because I didn't call and ask for an appointment nor say when I could come, they just sent me a summons in the mail. Kinda like, Hi, welcome to Sweden. We need to check your lady parts.

Well, OK! Really, what could be more fun than navigating the joys of a mammogram in a foreign language?

The appointment I was sent actually did work for me as it was 7:50 in the morning and I could go before work. So on the designated day, I took the bus to downtown Uppsala and made my way to the Health Center. I waited on a bench in the hallway outside the office on the third floor. I was glad to be able to wait inside because it was windy and cold.

Once they opened up the office, I was pleased to be able to conduct the entire registration process in Swedish. I had to show my Swedish ID card which has an electronic chip with all sorts of info about me. Who knows what it says about me. Then I paid 150 kr. (approx. $22) with my bankcard (everyone pays for everything with their bankcard in Sweden) and proceeded to the waiting area. While waiting, I noticed signs all over the waiting room that said I would be called by my first name only and that that name would be the first name I was registered as. I imagined that there must have been lots of confusion in the past. Oh, I didn't know you were calling me! No one calls me by my first name, Mary, so I didn't think you meant me!

I must say that I was a little disappointed that the nurse came out and called, "Kristin Lund." Geez!

I followed the nurse into a room containing a mammography machine. She took my ID card again and asked me a few questions. Once again, I was able to conduct the transaction in Swedish which made me proud. She explained she would take four pictures and then handed me back my ID.

That's when I had to strip right in front of here and walk across the room, bare from the waist, to the waffle maker. That's what I call a mammogram machine because it always looks to me like they based the contraption on a waffle iron and went from there.

Sadly, there was not some super-duper mammogram machine design in Sweden. Since I wear such rose-colored glasses about all things Swedish, I must admit that I had held out hope that the Swedes had a nicer, more user-friendly machine but it was not to be. It looked just like the American version.