How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

Well, we're soon off on yet another jaunt. This time to Greece, for the fourth wedding of the year. (This is why everyone should live in Europe, because you can just jaunt off like that on account of it's inexpensive to fly, you have six weeks of vacation, and it doesn't take too long to get there.)

It's funny, all these marriages all of a sudden. First it was the editor marrying his voluptuous girlfriend, now wife, in the south in Ramlösa, the place where they get the water that comes in the light blue glass bottle. A relatively small celebration, but choice.

Then it was the wedding out in the country somewhere, and we were supposed to dress formally but we didn't although I did wear a dark blue frilly tuxedo shirt made out of some kind of synthetic fabric or other. And we hung out with our friend the priest, who married us and was now marrying this other couple. She left right after the dinner, after smoking a pack or so of cigarettes with us. And then the husband's ex was there all the way from Shanghai, with his American boyfriend (strange coincidence, that). And we all got really plastered.

Then it was the wedding in the mosque where I couldn't get comfortable, sitting cross-legged on the carpet. I guess I'm getting too old. And the bride had to have her hair and arms covered despite the fact that her dress had huge see-through panels in it and the cloth she used to cover her arms and legs was completely sheer. She actually looked pretty damned fabulous. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the women covered themselves with these white scarves that are, to be generous, unflattering. That is, unless you want to look like someone poking their head painfully through a tent flap. Or maybe more like one of those people in old photographs sticking their heads through a cardboard painting of a crescent moon to become the face of the man- (or more likely woman, in this case) in- the- moon.

So now, time for the wedding in Athens that ought to be quite the thing. We leave on Wednesday morning. It will be too many people no doubt, but a reunion of sorts among the group that made the trek to the wedding in Malaysia of the friends from London - the Wallpaper editor and her husband the photographer. And then afterwards we'll go by ourselves off to one or another of the islands for some chalky- white- village- perched- above- the- water- and- maybe- a- beach time alone. Oh, yes.

And it's two-for-one day today, with a second Swedish word of the day: bröllopet. It means the wedding.

- by Francis S.