Dogs are allowed in Sweden. In shops and on buses. Just about everywhere except restaurants. So it was no surprise to hear strangled and asthmatic barking in the subway as our train pulled away from Central Station - dogs are allowed in the last car.

The question is, however, whether pig-dogs are allowed. Because what was making the noise was small and round and pink and white and indeed, the ugliest canine-type critter that I have ever seen. An albino pug with a few white patches on its back, the rest of it a rubbed-raw pink, its owner was visibly proud of its pathetic ugliness.

Is it possible to be so ugly as to be endearing?

The Swedish word for the day is husdjur. It means pet.

- by Francis S.

The husband and I celebrated Ascension day by ascending to the minimal, luxe and empty bar of the Nordic Light Hotel with M., the t.v. producer and L., a great friend of the husband's from the old days and a king of the Swedish fashion mafia, on account of his being about the only haute couturier in the entire country.

I say a friend from the old days because the husband and L. rarely see each other anymore. Though neither has, or would, say as much, this is no doubt on account of me.

I like L. tremendously, his voice so soft one has to lean closer to hear him, his elegant but unstuffy manners, his twinkling blue eyes. But he surely must resent me, even if he never acts in the least as if he does. I think the husband and L. were friends in some measure because they were both single, it was in part a bachelor cameraderie.

Why is it that when one pairs off, certain friends suddenly fade into the background, while others come into clear focus? It is true that most of the friends of the husband and I, but by no means all, come in pairs.

Is it because single people grow weary of hearing the word "we" all the time?

Interestingly enough, this is not the case with M., the t.v. producer. It is no doubt because he romanticizes the relationship of the husband and I all out of proportion. It would be a mistake to think the M. is not a hopeless romantic, just because he's fucked half of the most beautiful women in Stockholm aged 18 to 24.

"I love you guys," he always says grabbing us around the shoulders, especially after having had one too many sips of white tequila, served neat in a whisky glass. "You guys are my family."

And we love him, too, because he is indeed a part of our large and unwieldy but much beloved family, most of whom are not blood relations of any sort.

The Swedish word for the day is söderkis. It is a slang term for a boy who is native to the island of Södermalm, once a working-class section of the city that now likes to consider itself as Sweden's answer to Soho.

- by Francis S.

The days are drawing near when my company leaves its offices across from the royal palace. It will be a blow to leave the old town behind, to no longer be able to walk to work, to be a bit off the beaten path.

At least despite its proximity, I won't have a view of the U.S. Embassy from my new window. (Not only do I find the embassy an ugly complex of buildings, I detest the place; the Department of Motor Vehicles can't possibly hold a candle to the supercilious attitudes of the staff of the U.S. Embassy: "Uh, are you stupid or something? Because why did you think you should pick up your passport at window F and not at window A where you dropped it off originally? Yes I know you've been waiting 15 minutes while I was yammering away on the phone with a friend, and that the sign above window F says 'passport pickup' but really, how stupid can a person be?")

I will now be taking a ferry from the sluice to Djurgården, an island with museums and a zoo and ambassadors' residences and Gröna Lund, that fabulous old amusement park with ancient rides like the blåtåget - the blue train - a scary ride for 6-year-olds; I love the blåtåget. I will then walk from Djurgården into Östermalm, where stand the new offices - which are actually old military barracks.

The Swedish word for the day is vad tråkigt. It means, more or less, that's too bad.

- by Francis S.

Wow. Last week was Valborg and Första Maj. Now this week we have Kristihimmelsfärd, otherwise known as Ascension. And the week after next it's Pingst - Pentecost. That's one holiday a week, three out of four weeks.

I love this anti-religious country that has so many religious holidays. Go, Jesus, go! Thanks for dying for our sins and giving us all these great holidays.

- by Francis S.

I wonder when the first bureaucracy was created? Was it in China, with all its scribes, or was it under Hammurabi with his code of laws in Babylon, or under the earliest pharoahs in Egypt? I wonder further when the first satire of bureaucracy was written? There must be a writer who pre-dates Gogol and his Dead Souls, the oldest novel that comes to mind on the subject. Because if bureaucracy has been part of human existence for thousands of years, then human beings have suffered from it for just as long.

Take the friend of my beloved little brother. His name is, uh, "George." On his driver's license it states that his sex is "female." He is not, however, female. But getting this changed is apparently a Herculean task.

"I was just reading," my beloved little brother said, "about a lawyer who had the same problem." This lawyer apparently went to the Department of Motor Vehicles, where a clerk there told him that the only way to correct the error was to fill out a form saying that he had changed his sex. Which he refused to do.

"I'm a lawyer and I'll take this to the Supreme Court if I have to," he told the clerk. The clerk said fine, but between the six years it will take for the case to get to the Supreme Court, he will have to put up with a lot of security hassles in the New America Made Safe from Terrorism.

The lawyer broke down and filled out the change-of-sex form.

My little brother was gleeful, because "George" has some, er, personal issues he hasn't quite worked out: "He would go ballistic if he had to fill out a change-of-sex form."

The Swedish word for the day is tjänsteman. It means civil servant.

- by Francis S.

Sweden is rich in square miles, poor in flowers. It's just too far north I think.

Oh, there are wildflowers and some flowering bushes like forsythia and lilac, and of course flowering fruit trees, but there don't seem to be gardens bursting with blossoms and no one seems to have vases filled with spring flowers picked from the backyard. I suspect that if people have flowers in the backyard, they're too precious to pick.

Instead, one clips bare branches from trees before they've started to bloom, sticks them in water and watches them slowly burst open over a weeks' time, perhaps. It's a lovely ascetic beauty, albeit one born of necessity more than anything else.

The Swedish word for the day is blomma. It means, of course, flower.

- by Francis S.

Today is Valborg Afton - Walpurgis Eve - when all of Sweden is outside lighting bonfires in the street to welcome the Spring. Supposedly, the festival of St. Walpurgis or Walburga was also the time for a traditional witches' sabbath, so people lit bonfires to keep away the witches.

Unfortunately, I feel like the witches have already had their way with me - I'm sick with a cold and a fever while the husband, that lucky dog, is out having dinner with A. the former model and aspiring producer and her boyfriend, C., the fashion photographer. They've probably lit their own bonfire somewhere up in Vasastan, in the northern part of the city.

Fortunately, tomorrow is a holiday not just for St. Walburga - it's the first of May. Which is when most of the world celebrates labor day - International Workers' Day. But there are vague communist overtones to the first of May, and so of course the United States has to have its own separate labor day to avoid any appearance of looking even the least little bit pink. It sounds so old-fashioned now.

The Swedish word for the day is vänsterpartiet. This - the Left Party - is the current name for what used to be called the communist party in Sweden.

- by Francis S.

I don't care how balmy the spring is here in Stockholm, I wish I were in New Orleans. I would pay good money to see the latest opus of Richard Read, written with his paramour, that pornstar up-and-comer Jonno D'Addario, and their buddy Flynn De Marco. Er, I would pay up to $15 at least. To be able to say you've seen a play called "Hell's Belles" is worth the price of the ticket alone.

I wish I could write campy movie parodies in the vein of Charles Ludlam and Charles Busch, I could at least entertain myself. Stockholm doesn't seem to be the place for such divine kitsch. It's really an American thing, the stuff that makes the U.S. great, the part of the States that needs protection from terrorists and the reason why George W. Bush is so bellicose with the axis of evil - you know without even asking that that damned axis of evil absolutely loathes Charles Ludlam.

The Swedish word for the day is teater. I think you don't need my help to figure out that it means theater.

- by Francis S.

It's marvelous to take a day off in the middle of the week. It makes the end of the day on Friday seem like an unexpected gift. I wish I never had to work on Wednesdays.

The Swedish word for the day is onsdagar. It means, of course, Wednesdays. (Which makes me wonder, why are days of the week proper nouns in English? Is it a holdover from German, where all nouns start with a capital letter?)

- by Francis S.

Damnation. The Stockholm bourse (link in Swedish only, sorry) has fallen for the seventh day in a row, helped along by Ericsson's announcement on Monday of its latest mammoth savings and cutback plan.

This is what happens in the stock exchanges of small countries: When big companies go down, they take the bourse with them.

We bought our Ericsson stocks after they announced the previous set of big cutbacks, when I thought the value of the stock couldn't go lower. But oh, no, they are now worth half of what we paid for them.

The Swedish word for the day is ned or ner ("ned" goes with verbs of movement, "ner" with verbs where no movement is implied). It means down.

- by Francis S.

The husband and I just made a mad dash to the SAS ticket office at Stureplan. We are the worst procrastinators about some things and we had yet to get our tickets for my beloved little brother's wedding, which is in less than a month.

The nice lady at the counter managed to squeeze us into flights to and from Chicago, but we have to leave on a Wednesday and come back on a Monday, so it'll be nearly two weeks in America.

I haven't been back since Sept. 11, and frankly I'm a little frightened. Not of terrorists, but of the rhetoric and empty but unnerving security measures. I wonder how much things have changed, or if they really haven't.

The Swedish phrase for the day is övriga frågor, which means miscellaneous questions.

- by Francis S.

My friend R., who also happens to be my favorite employee, is moving back to Finland after more than four years living in Sweden. It was a blow to learn that he was leaving, not just because the company has a hiring freeze and we can't afford to lose good project managers. It's also a blow to morale, mostly mine because I count on him to inject energy, keep us all honest, and send me 10,000 e-mails a day.

We started talking about the whole expatriate version of the you-can't-go-home-again theory, which says that after about four years outside The Fatherland, the likelihood of your being happy living back home is rather slim. Of course, moving back and forth between Finland and Sweden is rather like moving back and forth between Canada and the United States - the countries share an awful lot of culture, so the difference is less pronounced than it might be between other countries.

"I think it would be hard to go back now," I said to him.

"Maybe. I guess I'll find out," he said.

Then again, it would be hard to stay here if I weren't with the husband. Still, the idea of moving back to the States is very strange. Unnatural even, and I can hardly say why. Except that life seems too easy there. And in fact, it doesn't matter because we are not planning on leaving Sweden in the foreseeable future.

The Swedish word for the day is enkel biljett. It means one-way ticket.

- by Francis S.

Oh, and don't forget to check out Raising Hell, the new "so-called" parenting magazine by Mig, Michele and a few other parent-type people. It's all anyone'll ever need to know to raise a kid, believe you me.

- by Francis S.

My beloved little brother has asked me to sing a song at his wedding... something to get people to stop chit-chatting in the hall and move into the room where the ceremony will take place. I've decided to do it in Swedish, singing a summer song called "Uti Vår Hage."

Uti vår hage där växa blåbär,
Kom, hjärtansfröjd!
Vill du mig något så träffas vi där.
Kom, liljor och aqvileja,
Kom, rosor och salivia.
Kom ljuva krusmynta,
Kom, hjärtansfröjd!

Which means something like:

Out in the meadow, where blueberries grow,
Come, heart's desire!
If you want to tell me something,
then meet me there.
Come, lilies and aqvileja (I have no idea what it is)
Come, roses and salvia,
Come sweet mint,
Come heart's desire!
(It's lovely and poetic and vaguely sad in Swedish; my translation leaves something to be desired unfortunately.)

- by Francis S.

I'm a writer. I came to Europe to write a novel, which turned into a series of vaguely autobiographical interconnected short stories. Then, after saying I could never become an expatriate, I ended up staying on this continent but leaving the novel behind, not even trying to get the finished bits published.

I sometimes get the urge to write fiction again - it plagues me when I'm trying to fall asleep on a Sunday night - but mostly my job takes up whatever writing desire I have. Oh, and then there's this journal. Which I sometimes blame for my not writing fiction anymore.

But the truth is that my life is perfectly satisfying without the extra writing - it's too full to fit in the fictional, I suppose. Yet I'm sometimes a wee bit jealous of my friends who've written successful novels or books of poetry. I still tell myself that I'll go back to it, one day.

The Swedish word for the day is författare. It means writer.

- by Francis S.

K. left this morning, flying back to Boston through Reykjavik as she always does. I helped her drag her heavy bag down the five flights of stairs and into a taxi.

"See you in two weeks," she said, and I kissed her on the cheek and she was gone.

Then I felt guilty for not spending the rest of the day outside in the balmy spring, even if we did at least eat a late lunch at a table outside a cafe with M., the t.v. producer. It's amazing how the guilt induced by my mother - "how can you kids waste the day inside watching t.v.? Get out, now!" - still lasts to this day.

But really, what's so great about the outside anyway, especially when you have a reasonably good book to read and a delightfully deep and comfortable sofa to lie on?

The Swedish word for the day is deckare. It means detective story.

- by Francis S.

Today, one of the women who coordinates the translations of magazines at our office asked me about a particular sentence she wanted to make sure was correct.

"In Swedish, they use the phrase 'business ethics and morals,'" she said. "And they translated it that way, but then the American editor changed it to just 'business ethics.'"

Yes, I said, the American editor was right. We Americans don't talk about business having morals. Businesses are generally amoral at best, and immoral in most cases. They have codes of conduct - ethics - imposed on them by the law. But morals, no. They basically do what they can get away with.

Swedish companies, on the other hand, are expected to not only obey codes of conduct, but to know the difference between right and wrong; they are expected to act in the best interests of everyone and not just in their own interests. Whether they do or not is another question, but society expects it of them.

I wonder how long Sweden can hold out against the tide of Americanization on this particular issue.

The Swedish word for the day is beteende. It means behavior.

- by Francis S.

I've got that damned nicotene monkey on my back again. Drooling in my hair and breathing down my neck, it's an ugly sight.

It's the stress. And of course K. is a terrible influence. She goes cigarette crazy whenever she's here. She keeps sending me monosyllabic e-mails (her desk is on the floor above mine) such as "cig?" or my personal favorite, "fag?"

The Swedish word for the day is apa. It means monkey.

- by Francis S.

My beloved little brother is getting married on May 19. The invitation came yesterday. He met the bride at my wedding here in Stockholm, in fact - she's my friend the Rebel, the chemistry PhD slash patent lawyer (why is it all my friends can only be described in long phrases that by rights should require hyphens?). I would never have imagined when I met her over dinner some six years ago at a restaurant in Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. - I had recently split up after 13 years with my ex, she'd recently split up with her husband, the asshole - that not only would we hit it off so well, but that in late May 2002 she would be related to me, at least by law. It makes me grin from ear to ear.

I'm going to go with the Swedish tradition of never-ending speeches and get all sentimental while still trying to embarrass both of them. I think.

The Swedish word for the day is hjärta. It means heart.

- by Francis S.

The days are getting longer, and walking home from work with the husband, we decided to take the Katarina Hissen - the old elevator by Slussen that takes one up to the heights of Södermalm and on into Mosebacke Torg. At 8:15, the sun had just made it below the horizon and turned the sky all rosy blue, the various towers of the city - the German Church, The Knight's Church, the city hall - all burnished and rightfully proud of themselves. (Oh, but I love the pathetic fallacy.)

"Sweet boy," the husband said. He calls me sweet boy because I call him that. I've never told him that it seems hardly fitting to call me sweet boy, with my gray hair and grizzled old face. Not that that would stop him.

The Swedish word for the day is skymningen. It means the dusk.

- by Francis S.