A New Voice Joins Sweden.se's Expat Blog

Please read my newest post A New Voice Joins the Expat Blog

at: http://blogs.sweden.se/expat/2012/09/10/a-new-voice-joins-the-expat-blog/

Riddarholmen, Stockholm. Photo by Ildikó Lukács/imagebank.sweden.se

Switching Venues For Awhile

Dear readers,

I wrote a blog for 6 months for the Swedish government about what it was like to come to Sweden for work. Now I have been offered the opportunity to blog for them about being an expat. This basically covers what I write about here on my private blog. (There are a few exceptions...things I can't write about for them that I can write about here but we will see...).For now, please switch to reading my posts at Sweden.se.

Read the expat blog at http://blogs.sweden.se/expat/.

You can subscribe to it at http://blogs.sweden.se/expat/feed.

I expect to return to blogging here when the Sweden.se blog is finished so please don't cancel your subscription here. For those of you who find it more convenient, I will also  post links to the Sweden.se posts whenever they are published.

Thanks for being such loyal and interested readers! 

- Kristin Lund

Swedish Women's Soccer Gets a Boost

A little over a month ago, I wrote on this blog about my undying passion for Women’s Soccer. More specifically, I was discouraged by the challenges of watching the Olympic women’s soccer matches on TV in Sweden—especially when it wasn’t necessarily the Swedish team playing. I love watching the US women play and they did, in case you missed it, win 2012 Olympic gold.

Pia Sundhage

I also mentioned how wonderful the US Women’s National Team (USWNT) coach, Pia Sundhage is. I admire her enthusiasm, her soccer knowledge, her fun and calm attitude and of course, her winning record with the US team. To quote Sports Illustrated, "In just under five years with the U.S., Sundhage compiled an 89-6-10 record, winning two Olympic gold medals and finishing second at the 2011 World Cup."

Pia Sundhage, as I mentioned in my last post, is Swedish.

And now…

She’s just announced that she is stepping down as coach of the USWNT and moving back to Sweden to become the head of the Swedish National team.

Whahooo! This is great news. I am not the hugest fan of how the Swedish national team currently plays and I think Pia will bring great energy and new ways for the team to come together and play great soccer. (Note: Nice slide show of Pia on the Swedish page linked above. It's written in Swedish but just click the small blue box nearly half way down that says "Visa bildspel.")

Marta

Marta Vieira da Silva (known simply by her first name like all the Brazilian greats), who many say is the best female player in the world, comes from Brazil. She played in the professional league in the US and I saw her play many times for my home team, FC Gold Pride in the Bay Area. (now defunct league…don’t ask…painful subject). Marta previously played professionally for Umeå in northern Sweden. Why am I writing about Marta? Well because Marta also decided to move back to Sweden a few months ago and she signed with Tyresö FF here in Stockholm.

Awesome, Ted! (What? You never watched “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”?)

Two last points...

* Please don’t fail to notice that I am a trailblazer…both these women made their decisions after I moved from the US to Sweden.  (lol)

* Birthdays (I'm just saying...)

• Pia Sundhage: February 13
• Marta: February 19
• Kristin Lund: February 21

The Viking Gift That Keeps On Giving

These are Swedish scientists at Chalmers in Göteborg. You'll have to imagine British ones. Photo by: Jan-Olof Yxell/imagebank.sweden.se

Have you heard about the Viking artifact they found in Britain many years ago?

It is, in fact, a Viking turd.
 

Here's what went down. (Yes, these jokes just write themselves...)

During excavation prior to construction of bank vaults at Lloyd's Bank in York, England in 1972, archaeologists found a mineralized Viking Age human stool or “coprolite.”

Analysis of the find produced knowledge about what they euphemistically refer to as “the producer of the stool” on the Archaeology of York website. Scientists discovered that the Viking had eaten “cereal bran and other unidentified organic matter. ..[that]confirms other forms of evidence which suggest that diet at this time included meat, fish, shellfish, cereals, fruit and nuts.” 

On a more “ooh, gross!” note, they could also see that the individual had a good amount of intestinal parasites. You can find out more using the links below.

Here’s a list (in pictures) of significant finds in York.

Here's more information about the coprolite.

But wait, the story gets even better! 

The coprolite (don’t say I never taught you a new word) was accidentally dropped and broken into pieces during a school visit to York's Archaeological Resource Centre. Read about this titillating event on The Guardian Newspaper’s website.

Still with me? All humor aside, check out the tiny writing tablets they also found in York. Very cool!

Swedish Humor

I absolutely love when I come across somebody's humor unexpectedly. Maybe it's in something they say that is otherwise serious. Maybe it's something they say in an email.

Maybe it's out in the middle of a field.

What?

Yup, I stumbled across somebody's humorous installation in the middle of a seldom-seen field in a northern part of Öland, a long, skinny island off the eastern coast of Sweden. I was on vacation and out for a walk with a group of adults and kids.

There, on the side of this seldom-used dirt road, was a viking boat grave.

This isn't it. But here's what they generally look like so you have some sort of reference:

Here's what another boat grave looks like, also on Öland. Photo: C. Michael Hogan

The one we found was also a bunch of large stones in the rough shape of a viking boat.

The stones were set down in the field in the shape of a boat hull.

...But wait, there was a sign explaining things...

...So we stepped forward to read the sign,,,

...See below for the translation...

Translation (trying to be "Old Swedish"...doesn't really translate?):

This type of boat grave (?) of the type, spurius, positioned facing south, derived probably from the early 2000's
constructed in the days of Ch. Sachs and T. Birath

These Swedes. A veritable laugh riot.

Empty Offices in the Swedish Summer

Time? 3:40pm

Last email arrived?  1:37pm

Over two hours ago! In Space, no one can hear you scream.

Help, I’m trapped in a Swedish office and 75% of my co-workers have left on vacation!

Empty desks where I work...

Wow, it sure is empty here. I ride the empty subway cars to work and then I work 8 hours in a nearly empty office. Even though there are roughly 25 people here at any given time, I can’t see them without heading down a long hallway because my desk happens to be at the other end of the hall from those who are not on vacation at this time.

I’ve never experienced anything like this. The vacation time is substantially shorter in the US and I’ve never worked anywhere in which the whole office emptied out. (I was lucky if I got 2 weeks in the US, here I get 5 weeks, although one of those weeks is in compensation for not receiving overtime.)

No one in any of the conference rooms...

I tried to prepare myself for it. I knew I was taking my vacation unnaturally early (mid-June to mid-July) on account of family coming to visit but I didn’t quite realize how strange it would feel when I returned to an empty office.

It’s great for my personal productivity because there are a lot fewer distractions and “fires to put out” but it sure is lonely...

Will the last one out of Sweden please turn off the lights?

Watching Women's Olympic Soccer in Sweden

It's a whole other cup of tea, watching the Olympics from a foreign country.
Admittedly, I am not a huge Olympics fan. I like looking at how fit everyone is (seriously, swimmers and their shoulders!) but I find it a little dull in general. However, I am a HUGE soccer fan.

Women's soccer fan.

The US Women's team celebrates a goal in the qualifying matches (photo: Yahoo Sports)

Sometimes I watch men's soccer but I don't find it nearly as interesting.

It was a little difficult at first to figure out how to watch the games I wanted to watch. I would turn on the Swedish TV and they would have a sort of "Olympics magazine" type thing going where they just talk right through the actual bits I wanted to see. This guy, in particular, André Pops, does tend to go on and on...Dude, show the American games!

André Pops is ruining my game! (photo: Folkbladet.nu)

Yeah, so obviously Sweden is going to concentrate on their own teams. And they have shown the Swedish women's soccer team but I knew the team wasn't going to go far (they squeaked through the qualifying matches and lost to France in the Quarter Finals.) But the US women, they are so worth watching!

One day when I turned on the TV to watch the US game, old André just talked and talked with a couple of other windbags and then finally they said, ..."and now we will show you the second half of the US game."

Argh! Agony!

I surfed over to NBC's website in the US to see if I could see the highlights. Bingo! They have lots of highlight videos. So I clicked "Play" and then I got a message that said the videos could only be watched in the USA.

Double agony!

Then I finally cottoned onto the fact that Swedish TV (SVT Play) is showing the games on their website. Even the US games. Hallelujah!

Now I am living in bliss as the US team just beat New Zealand in the Quarter Finals. Whahoo!


My favorite player? 

Well, since you asked...It's been Abby Wambaugh for a long time. Go, Abby, go!

Abby Wambaugh fights North Korea for the ball (photo: Yahoo Sports)

Favorite coach? 

Of course it's Pia Sundhage, the US women's coach. She is admirably calm and collected on the sidelines...never screaming...always looking like she just plain old enjoys soccer. And where is she from?

Why, Sweden, of course!