My trip to the suburbs.

So this past weekend involved me finally really getting out of the central city of Stockholm and out to my coworker Joakim's place for some traditional Swedish meatballs. We went straight from work to the liquor store to get a couple bottles of red wine (you can't get anything stronger than 3.5% ABV beer at the grocery stores here, which is weird). After that we got on the subway for a ride that is almost exactly the same length as the one from Penn station to Valley Stream, about 35 minutes or so. After we got to his town, Alby, we went straight to their grocery store, where I immediately noticed the approximately 30% drop in price on most of the food. We picked up a few things and headed to his place where his girlfriend and eight year old girl were waiting for us and waved through the window.

After we got inside, his daughter Saga pranced up to the door to greet us. She was dressed in her semi-formal clothes and wearing perfume, which was cute and made me feel welcomed. After touring around Joakim's place and seeing his other three month old newborn, it became apparent that despite only being a few years older than me, he is very mature and fits perfectly into a father figure, right down to painting his eight year old's room pink and building a stage for her to sing on.

They made very sure to make me feel comfortable, took my jacket, set me up with God of War III on the PS3, and started cooking. His daughter seemed a little shy and sat far away from me on the couch, but then got her courage up and sat right next to me and tried to conjure up enough English to blow plot points in the game for me. The meal was excellent and the wine Joakim picked out went perfectly with the flavors. We had meatballs, which I had originally thought were going to be big like spaghetti and meatballs, but then I'd never had Swedish meatballs before so I didn't really know what to expect, mashed potatoes, and lingonberry jam. Also, the potatoes came to the table just peeled and cooked, we used what appeared to be a gigantic garlic press to mash them ourselves, looked like this:




After dinner, I got back to playing God of War (I hit over five played hours while I was there, eek) and they started making dessert. After a little while longer they came out with a delicious blueberry pie made with home-picked blueberries from autumn and a vanilla sauce his girlfriend made (which was much better than either of them let on, they made it sound like it got a little messed up in cooking, but it was really great). After the pie, it was back to God of War until everyone started to go to bed leaving just Joakim and me, at which time I took my leave at about 1am.

Overall, a great night!

Saturday consisted of me attempting to do my laundry, getting it all together, walking down to the laundry room and realizing I had scheduled my time slot for Wednesday and missed it. Damn. Had to reschedule for Monday, which meant a day or two of dirty clothes, oh well. Saturday night I met up with Amy and Tintin. I was attempting to get directions and literally walking back and forth along the street trying to figure out where they wanted me to go when I realized I heard an echo over the phone, looked over my shoulder and saw them standing no more than 20 feet from me. We went to a whisky bar called Akkurat which was nice and laid back. It wasn't our usual late night, but it was fun to hang out nonetheless.

So little happened Sunday that I don't even remember it at all, hopefully something more interesting will happen in the coming days.

-Brandon

Swedes love their sweets

And their soda, it would seem. There are all sorts of different sodas here, including the julmust I already talked about. Easter is coming up, so with that comes a new 'must', påskmust. I bought this today, and here I'll review it with the other ones I've had, and also tell a story from the weekend.

A lot of the soda here seems to stem from champagne in soda form, sorta like varieties on ginger ale (which they call American ginger ale here). Two like this that I've tried are Champis and Pommac, Pommac actually being from Finland. Of these two, Champis is closer to ginger ale, and Pommac is closer to actually tasting like champagne. I'd have to say Champis is better as far as soft drinks are concerned, but I still like plain old ginger ale the best.



Kinda silly looking eh?

Next up is a drink called Trocadero which looks more like a Mexican or maybe Jamaican drink to me by its name and color, but it's Swedish through and through. I've actually only had a sip of this, so I can't comment too much, but it's pretty good from what I've had, kinda like citrusy carbonated apple juice.

Finally we have the påskmust, which I'm pretty sure is exactly the same as julmust. That said, I still feel the same about it. I prefer Pepsi or Coca-Cola, but I found out what gives the must it's bitterish flavor is actually hops, so I'd imagine if you're big into beer and less into soda, you'd prefer this.

Finally there's the weekend. This past week Bonnier (the company I work at) hosted an awards ceremony for top sellers in different categories. On Saturday, one of the winners took Amy out, and I was invited along as well. We wound up going to an extremely fancy restaurant that I was way under-dressed for called "Pontus!". You can look at a menu there and see for yourself the ridiculous prices (it's about $1 to 7 kronor). Now factor in that three of us ate and had five drinks a piece and you have one hell of an expensive night. After all the mindless gorging and drinking on excellent food and cocktails was finished, we were told that the guy who made the reservation for the winner and the rest of us had also paid for the meal. Wow. After leaving here we went right back to our favorite bar, the Sixth Barrel. This time around we wandered into an area of the bar that usually has a curtain closing it off. Up there some bar patrons had brought their instruments (three violins, a cello, an acoustic guitar, and a mini saxophone) and were playing folk music with other patrons dressed in blond wigs clapping and dancing, it was a good time as usual but we left a little early as a result of drinking and eating a ton just prior.

This weekend I'm going out to the suburbs to have some traditional Swedish food and play some games with my work buddy Joakim, I'm stoked.

-Brandon

Adventures in cooking

Since I haven't had much of a key story to lead up to lately, the motivation to write a post has been somewhat lost. As a result, I've decided to write this one about the more interesting aspects of the last 11 days, some of which involve me trying very hard to cook, but don't expect one key moment or anything.

One of the more interesting stories that I forgot to mention in one of my older posts involves the first time I tried to stove/grill combo a burger. I had put the burger in the oven and was ready to take it out, so I pushed the little tab that opens the door...and it snaps off. Right at this moment, my smoke alarm goes off. Of course I panic and just start throwing things at the smoke alarm while trying to jimmy my oven open. Since then I've just been using a knife where the tab was...it works. I burnt my burger.

This past Friday involved a repeat trip to the Sixth Barrel, but first to a place called Wirströms Pub. The picture amuses me because that particular picture actually makes the place look nice, it isn't. When we got there it was pretty packed, so we grabbed a beer and headed downstairs where a VERY terrible band was playing. We decided to sit as far away from the band as possible, which wound up putting us at a giant table that could've easily fit ten, but fit us pretty nicely. The best part about this bar is that the downstairs has a very low natural ceiling that people had carved things into. Most of it was your normal I <3 U garbage, but someone decided to carve "SURPRISE COCKFACE" on it and there was a big penis drawn next to it. Made my night.

So, back to the Sixth Barrel, which was surprisingly just as awesome as the first time. We were there for maybe ten minutes before we were randomly approached and engaged in conversation with another pretty large group (we only really get chatty, friendly people at this place for whatever reason). I headed to the bathroom after a few drinks, and one of the guys from the other group was there on my way back. He stopped me right before the bar to ask me a question, which I figured had to be about Amy since he made us stop walking. He pauses for a second and goes, "...What's your favorite band? Mine is Dream Theater!" I was caught off-guard a bit, responded I don't know but Dream Theater is great I guess, and walked off to the bar. A friendly guy by the name of Marcus started talking to us about It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (pretty interesting they know it here). He tried to quote parts of the show, but he was either really drunk or really Swedish, but it hardly made sense.

Saturday involved nothing, which is probably why I didn't write a post. I did however manage to cook a steak, a one pound salmon steak, and some chorizo sausages throughout the last week, all of which turned out great! Go me!

St. Patrick's day doesn't seem as much of a holiday here as it does back home, but we decided to get a pint anyway (we being Amy and me, just assume that's who I mean always). I ran a little late and by the time I got to the bar there was a huge line, so I went next door to an Irish...maybe Irish restaurant to wait for Amy and get some food. The place was decorated really strangely. They made a sad attempt at decorating by putting up one balloon for each color on the Irish flag and some streamers. The ceiling also had what appeared to be little lights to look like stars...it really just looked terrible. The bench against the wall to sit on the far side of the table was decorated with random throw pillows. The waiter hated me I think because he barely bothered to serve us, but the food was pretty good (some sort of sausage with cheese in it and fries, yum). Urban met up with us which honestly blew my mind because I didn't really expect him to come out, but I was happy that he did. We tried to hit some Irish bars, but eventually the whole night was a bust when we realized all of the bars had gigantic, possibly 30-60 minute long lines. Not very eventful.

I feel like I've waited so long to make this post that I must've missed some things, so I think some time in April I'll make a post to hit all the stories I forgot to write about. Anyway, sorry if this post sucked.

-Brandon

Zardoz, quite possibly the best movie ever made.

This weekend found Amy and me at two of the cooler bars we've been to since coming to Stockholm, and one of the least cool. Originally, our idea was to go to Pet Sounds Bar which is an indie record label here that also has a bar. After stalling for just about ever, we realized that the bar closes at 1am and it's already 11, time for a change of plans. I scoured the net a little bit and found a place called 6:e Tunnan a.k.a. Sjätte Tunnan or "Sixth Barrel" in English.

Sixth Barrel is a medieval bar situated in the old town of Stockholm, Gamla Stan. Originally, I just wanted to go to get some delicious mead, but this place was really a find. As we descended the stairs into the underground cavern that houses this place it became immediately obvious that it was a good choice. The crowd pretty much entirely consisted of young laid back people, lots of piercings and tattoos and the like. The place was lit only by candle, which was hard to get used to at first, but after being down there for a bit it really grew on me. We drank mead, and it was tasty and strong. After finding an open table and hanging out for a bit, a group of four kids (20 year olds or so) joined us, two of which were fresh back from a trip to Thailand, bags and all. The six of us had a great night, full of laughs and pointed out cultural differences such as the nod and smile of America and how the same thing is basically saying "ja, absolut" to everything here. This place is definitely my favorite bar in Stockholm, possibly my favorite bar period....very possibly. Ah, it should also be pointed out that the four fellows we met here originally walked up speaking Swedish and I just said, "Yeah, sure." He replied, "...You speak Swedish?" I replied, "Nope, but I don't really need to in this situation." After that the rest of the conversation flowed pretty easily.

We hit Pet Sounds the next night. Compared to the surprising hit of Sixth Barrel, it had a lot to live up to...and didn't quite, but it was still a pretty nice place. We wandered downstairs to notice a very bizarre movie playing in the background. After seeing it without sound, I absolutely have to watch Zardoz at some point back home. You HAVE to watch the trailer, it'll blow your mind. Also, check out the lead actor...he's come a long way!

After having our minds blown totally out of our skulls by Zardoz, we went back upstairs to hang out until close at 1am. Amy wound up meeting someone while in line at the bathroom, and we joined him and his friend to another bar after closing...which turned out to be a somewhat upscale-ish bar that we'd been to before and didn't really prefer. We hung out a bit before leaving, but hey, six friends in one weekend, go us!

Today (Monday) we went to see a movie because Amy had scored some free tickets from someone at work. We saw Alice in Wonderland in 3D which I think is actually pretty underrated from the reviews so far, definitely worth it if you're into that sort of thing.

No pictures this week...actually how about this one from Zardoz:



The only thing I have to say about that is...ja...absolut.

-Brandon

Tunnbrödsrulle

I'll get to the title later (SUSPENSE). So really I should've written this a while ago since it's about last weekend, but I've been lazy so...yep. Saturday night started out with a little get together at a place called The Bishops Arms who have apparently decided to have the ugliest, slowest loading site in the history of the internet. I decided to spend far too much on a beer here because I found out they have Rogue Dead Guy Ale. It was worth it. Oh, I met Amy, Linnea, and Linnea's boyfriend Nils here.

We proceeded on from here to a place called The Liffey in Galma Stan. They forced you to order in English at this bar, which was funny, but other than that it was overcrowded and a general pain in the ass. We met several new faces there and though I'm sure they have fun Swedish spellings, I will spell there names Americanized in this blog. 'MERICA! We met Emily, her boyfriend Mark, molestery Mark (yup, a fitting name Amy dubbed), and a British fellow by the name of Tom who will hereon be known as Tintin for reasons I'll go into later.

Everyone pretty much dispersed after this bar except Tintin, Amy, and me. We proceeded onwards closer to where Amy lives to some bar in a place called Odenplan; Tintin busted his ass rotten on the ice on the way. After drinking even more here, Tintin proceeded to tell us how he looks like Tintin because of his hairstyle, and was upset that we didn't know who Tintin is (should we?). Tintin also mentioned that we are pilots (to pick up girls). When I responded, "Do I look like a pilot?" because I had a hoodie and a t-shirt, he countered with, "...You're a co-pilot then!" No piloting of any kind was had, and I left at stupid late and got home even later to my retarded American friends who coaxed me into staying up until past six in the morning. It should be noted that I tried to get a tunnbrödsrulle on my way home this night, but there was a huge line at four something when I got back to my place!

So, Sunday rolls around and I wake up well into the afternoon. I had one thing on my mind to accomplish: tunnbrödsrulle. This is a tunnbrödsrulle:



Let's cover this. A hot dog, with a bunch of mashed potatoes, all the ingredients for a salad, mustard, curry ketchup, and shrimp salad. It's pretty obvious that this thing was INCREDIBLE HOLY GOD! Best drunk food ever! I went into instant food coma bliss upon finishing it, mmmm. By the way, that word is HARD to say, and I thought I had it down, but right when I said it the guy behind the counter started speaking English to me, so I guess not :(. Here's a YouTube clip of Anthony Bourdain eating one on his show No Reservations when he was in Sweden (it's at about 6:30):



-Brandon