How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

Swedes, in characteristic modest fashion, are too quick to say that Stockholm isn't really a big city. In my book, if it has a subway, it's a big city. And like Tinka, I belong in the city. I am a city boy. Which is not surprising, given my status as a homosexual. It's more comfortable for us homo types in a city, in general terms.

But though I grew up in the suburbs, I've nearly aways wanted to live in a city, even if when I was eight, that meant thinking that it would be fun to have an apartment uptown in the business district of the Chicago suburb I grew up in.

Now the husband, he has always lived in Stockholm, in the very apartment we live in now. He is suddenly making noises about buying a great big house in the country somewhere. I don't know how serious he is, but he says that he doesn't know what it's like to live outside the city and he thinks he might like it.

I have my doubts.

"I guess you never talked about this before you got married," said A., the former model and aspiring producer.

Why do I love the city so much and what is it that makes someone a city person anyway?

The Swedish word for the day is, of course, storstad. It means metropolis.

- by Francis S.