How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

They're gone. The magazine editor and his wife left this morning at 5 a.m. with god knows how many kilos worth of baggage. No plastic garbage bags full of winter coats, or cardboard boxes held together with packing tape and optimism - everything was in proper suitcases, all very First World. With the first rainfall in weeks punctuating the melancholy at seeing them leave, they jumped in the car on the first leg of their journey to America. And I went back up to the apartment, unable to sleep, reduced to reading about Al Gore growing a beard in Dagens Nyheter, boning up on America as if I were the one leaving and not them. - Francis S.