How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

Unlike Rome with only seven hills, San Francisco seems to be built on hundreds of them. And we walked up and down the best of em. Russian Hill, Telegraph Hill, Nob Hill, and lots of others that surely have names that we just don't know about. The husband and I are now in excellent shape. Oh, and we had a coupla mojitos with Jane, way too briefly at the top of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel.

We saw San Francisco's oldest building, we took the ferry to Tiburon, we saw some art, we even actually found a nice spot in the Castro to laze around in the sun and have a beer and then another and then lunch.

We went shopping, the husband noting that the city must be rich by the kinds of shops we saw. We bought a bunch of DVDs, and cheap t-shirts and socks.

We had lots of food: incredible breakfast, great Mexican, so-so dim sum, tasty soba noodles both hot and cold.

But, without a doubt, the high point of the whole shebang was spending an evening with Aaron and his husband. Aaron, who is a looker, and as funny and charming and vivacious and smart as his writing, and his husband just the same. The two of them brought us to a fantastic Indian restaurant (after some discussion with the cabbie) in the lower Haight. Or was it the upper Haight?

We sat upstairs and gorged ourselves and yakked.

Then, "Wow is that him?" Aaron suddenly said, under his breath, as an elegant and vaguely familiar old guy walked in and smiled at us before sitting down with a younger woman at the table behind ours.

"It is!" whispered his husband.

"Wait, no it isn't..."

But it turned out to be him after all, a fact that was confirmed when another guy showed up, nearly sending Aaron and his husband into silent fits.

"The Color Purple is about our favorite movie," Aaron's husband whispered.

"Actually, " Aaron said sotto voce, hunching over chicken tikka massala and a piece of naan bread, "this isn't the first time I've seen the, uh, younger guy at the table behind us. I was once alone in a hotel gym with him, just the two of us and no one else and he was all sweaty and wearing, well, not enough clothes. Sadly, it was not a pretty sight, no, no. He should definitely not have been wearing spandex."

We laughed.

"It's actually Harry Belafonte I'm really impressed to see," Aaron said. "He was really somebody in his day."

My own husband was unfazed by the whole celebrity sighting bit.

"You guys are crazy, " he laughed. "In Sweden, we treat famous people like everyone else."

Yeah, maybe, but it was exciting all the same to see them. Although not nearly exciting as seeing Aaron.

"Shake, shake, shake, senora," Aaron sang as we said our farewells beside a cab outside our hotel.

And now, we're back and work starts again tomorrow. My four weeks of summer vacation are over.

The Swedish word of the day is färdig. It means finished.

- by Francis S.