A cruise, apparently, is a convenient place to off yourself or your spouse: just push yourself or your wife overboard and no one will notice, said the sea captain last night at dinner.

I was astonished. Does this really happen?

"Oh, yes," said the sea captain. "It's easy, there's plenty of time when there's no one else on deck. It doesn't happen that often but it does happen. Think of the boat as a small town, people die in small towns, right?"

Well, yes. But I'm not sure how often people get murdered in small towns.

"It happens," the sea captain said. "But interestingly, on the ferries that go between Stockholm and Helsinki they almost always catch the suicides, like nine out of 10 times. It's because there are so many people around the whole time on such a short cruise. They just immediately drop down the rescue boats. Then when the boat comes into port in Helsinki, the person who was fished out is met by the police and a bill for the rescue services."

Not only have you failed at killing yourself, but you have to pay a whopping bill for having failed.

O, the ignominy.

The Swedish word for the day is självmord. It means suicide.

- by Francis S.

On Monday, on the way to Västerås for a meeting, I sat in the train with a co-worker. We inevitably got around to the subject of the Eurovision Song Contest.

"So what do you think?" she asked me. "As an American."

She had watched the show with friends, including someone's American boyfriend who had recently moved to Sweden.

"He was rolling on the floor laughing" she told me.

Yes, I said. The Eurovision Song Contest is beyond the comprehension of an American. It defies description. And even when I think I have it figured out, I am suddenly mystified all over again. For instance, while we were watching it this year, I was assured by I. the former backup singer for David Byrne that the bizarre act from Ukraine- drag queen Verka Serdyushka with a big glitter star on her head singing in German and then what sounded like "I want to see Russia goodbye" - would probably win. And sure enough, it came damn close.

No one could adequately explain to me why this would be so popular, why millions of Europeans would think "I think this is a winner!"

And I wasn't rolling on the floor laughing. I was cowering under a blanket, painfully embarrassed for a wide range of singers from every corner of Europe.

But then to make up for the ridiculous vocal experience of Saturday, on Sunday I sang Vivaldi's Gloria at Kungsholm's Church, complete with strings and oboes and a little boy soprano singing the "Domine Deus" so that I nearly wept. And these were not tears of horror or embarrassment. The singing was sublime. It is embarrassing, though, that in my dotage the strangest things can make me nearly weep. I am such a sentimental idiot.

But I have to ask myself: which makes me stupider - those cringing tears of horror of my fragile American sensibility or the foolish sentimental tears of an old fart?

The Swedish word for the day is tävling. It means contest.

- by Francis S.

After 11 hours on a plane from Stockholm to Kuala Lumpur, a couple of hours in the airport there and then two and a half hours on another plane to Hanoi, we arrived in Vietnam, a bit tired, a bit tense from anticipation and the uncertainty of how to navigate a new culture. But then C. the fashion photographer got held up at passport control: It turns out that while Swedes don't need a visa if they stay less than 15 days, Italians are a whole different ball of wax.

So they deported him back to Kuala Lumpur. And we all decided we may as well go with him. So we raced through the airport, upstairs to the departures hall, getting our boarding passes and luggage rechecked, running back through the outgoing passport control and onto the same plane that we had come in on, all faces turned to us, everyone a bit suspicious.

Two days later, after haggling with airlines and the Vietnamese embassy in Kuala Lumpur, we got on another plane and finally all made it through passport control, making our way out into the charming and noisy city that is Hanoi, its streets lined with trees and tall skinny houses that seemed to be one single narrow room stacked on top of another, and another, and another.

It took about five tries to learn the art of crossing the street, since the thousands upon thousands of honking scooters (bearing everything from whole families to double beds to four live grown pigs tightly bound in a little cage) stop for nothing, not even traffic lights. You simply have to take a breath and then a step out and slowly but surely and without stopping, walk across the street, scooters flowing all around you. It's like stepping into a river, only far scarier. But eventually you get the hang of it.

In the old town, it seems, there is a street for everything: shoes, spices, mirrors, paint and brushes, live fish (ugly spiny black sea cucumbers, a monstrous slimy mollusc in its shell, sea horses and most disturbing, a cage of little grey lizards) even tin boxes which are fashioned right on the sidewalk, hammered and bent and soldered into shape, a street with a racket to rival Vulcan.

Then there is the French quarter, much more orderly, with Louis Vuitton and expensive restaurants (well, expensive for Vietnam).

All in all, It seemed the Vietnamese were quite keen on selling things. Rather odd for a place called the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

About the only thing to remind one that this is actually the Socialist Republic of Vietnam are the speakers on trees, light poles, the sides of buildings, through which morning announcements are made - from my hotel, I listened as the whole city was announced to and I watched as an old woman on a terrace high up in a building several blocks away did her morning exercises. There is something vaguely Orwellian about public announcements, Orwellian and also something grade schoolish, reminding me of how the principal would make the morning announcements, and we would all pledge allegiance to the flag (have you ever tried to explain the whole pledge-allegiance-to-the-flag thing to a non-American? It leaves a very bad taste in the mouth somehow and sounds, well, kind of Orwellian. Do schoolchildren still pledge allegiance to the flag? I certainly hope not.)

There's more to this tale: three days in a junk, a week in a fancy-schmancy hotel, and a total of eight plane rides. But I'll get around to that later.

The Swedish word for the day is visum. It means visa.

- by Francis S.

You can't imagine the cacaphony of the street where they make tin boxes in the old town of Hanoi, or the incessant honking of scooter horns, or the insistence of all the people selling things everywhere.

Despite C., the fashion photographer being deported back to Malaysia when we arrived in Vietnam, we eventually made it here to learn exactly how noisy Hanoi is, but mostly in the craziest and best of ways.

The Swedish word for the day is Asien. It means Asia.

by Francis S.

The husband and I are leaving shortly on a jaunt to Vietnam with A. the TV producer, C. the fashion photographer and his daughter. A bit of Hanoi, a bit of phò, a bit at a resort somewhere (C. the fashion photographer is treating: he got paid for a job with rooms in a luxury hotel somewhere in the southern part of Vietnam on the coast for a week).

In the meantime, have you ever wondered what the husband looks like? Or what about me? Or maybe the dining room of our apartment? I've had a policy of never putting photos up here, but I do have some at my Myspace space, which I still don't fully understand the purpose of. Except that it seems like one should have photos. And you're supposed to collect friends.

See you when we get back.

The Swedish word for the day is semester, which means vacation and has surely been the word of the day before at least once, if not more than once.

- Francis S.

Today is National Eggs Benedict Day.

National as in U.S. national.

Due to the amount of work it takes not just to make Hollandaise sauce, but to poach the damn eggs, I am not celebrating by making a plate of what is basically glorified eggs and butter, a high-cholesteral orgy. No matter how much the husband loves it, I'm just not making it.

(Did you ever think how many countries are invoked in eggs benedict? The sauce is "Dutch," the muffins are "English" and the bacon is "Canadian." It's quite the international dish, namewise and in a most American way, even if it was invented in America.

The Swedish word for the day is ägg. It means egg or eggs.

- by Francis S.

It's peculiar how some things get reversed here. Like for instance, as noted in the comments of the previous post, that Swedish children dress up as witches and go begging for candy at Eastertime instead of on Hallowe'en (A. the TV producer loves to tell the story of when she was 12 and she was out dressed up as a påskkärring - Easter hag - and she saw on the other side of a copse one of her friends in regular clothes talking to a group of boys and A. suddenly realized she was way too old to be doing this, and she hid behind a rock with her little sister, whom she had forced to go with her). Also, Swedes have an early morning mass on Christmas day, rather like a sunrise service - it does actually take place before the sun rises at 9:30 or so - instead of a midnight mass, which they have on Easter instead.

So there we were, at midnight mass on Saturday night, in which they gave us candles that we lit at the end of the service when it was midnight and Easter had come. Afterwards we stood outside with our candles in the freezing cold drinking cider in little paper cups underneath huge flaming torches in front of the church, the choir singing something I didn't recognize.

In true Swedish fashion, we'd discreetly spiked our cider with little bottles of vodka that someone had handed out at the dinner we'd been to before we went to church, passing one on to our friend the priest, who had been one of the two priests leading the service.

"Usch, that's strong!" she said. "I hope no one can smell it on me."

Then she went and changed into her fancy black dress with the clerical collar, and her fancy black stack-heeled Mary Janes.

I asked her why she didn't wear the shoes during the service. Do vestments and stylish stack-heeled Mary Janes not match? Do stack-heeled Mary Janes send the wrong message? Does God not like stack-heeled Mary Janes, do they make Jesus weep?

"Too dangerous," she said. Those vestments encourage tripping apparently, and high heels only increase the risk. No one wants to end up unintentionally on their knees on those stone floors or worse, while dispensing communion wine accidentally smash the chalice into some poor woman's mouth and chip a tooth.

The Swedish word for the day is bön. It means prayer, and shouldn't be confused with böna, which is a bean.

- by Francis S.

Outside on the steps of the St. John Church up in the park, a bunch of children were dressed in white frocks or knickers, as if it were a hundred years ago, and the few women with them were wearing rather plain long blue dresses with matching short fitted jackets, and straw boaters with blue ribbons. I watched them as I walked past the gravestones and the scilla (which has come earlier than I remember it ever coming to Stockholm), not coming closer to ask why they were dressed so. A movie? Some kind of party? Strange, that.

As usual, they had let us out of the office early on Maundy Thursday, to get a headstart on the four-day-weekend that is Easter here. We were planning on going out to the archipelago, but the husband has a nasty sinus infection and so we will stay in and recover from last weekend. Which was about as full as it gets.

First, there was my birthday surprise, which turned out to be a dinner of meze with A. the TV producer, C. the fashion photographer and C.'s son and daugher as well as the daughter's boyfriend, the sea captain and the children's book author, the French Basque and her boyfriend the Belgian, plus M. was here from London. A. remembered that I had wished long ago for the Annie Liebovitz book, A Photographer's Life 1990-2005, and I also got Amy Sedaris' ever so helpful hostess book I Like You and a pair of oh-so-very-modish Prada sunglasses from the husband (plus flowers at the office that all the girls ooh-ed and aah-ed over, and causing my boss to say something along the lines of "all men should have a husband" - which was written up as one of the quotes of the week in the catty little employee weekly newspaper.)

Strangely, on my way to having a diversionary drink with A. the TV producer, a gaggle of American teenagers were streaming into my office building as I was coming out, and I couldn't resist asking if they were from my hometown. The woman I asked was aghast: "Oh my God, yes! Are you from there? Do we sound like we're from there?" she said. I explained how I knew they were there, and then asked if the daughter of my friend was there. Someone went and got her, and so we met, through sheer coincidence.

Then on Friday, we went to see Mats Ek's staging of Strindberg's A Dream Play at the Royal Dramatic Theater, but the performance was cancelled due to the lead being sick. We went ahead and saw what they offered instead, which was The Dance of Death, another cheery offering from Strindberg. It was grim, and you definitely see how Ingmar Bergman comes out of the tradition of Strindberg, but it was so very modern, the poisonous relationships, the absurdity. I'm still not really able to fit this into the Swedish national character however, Swedes just don't seem that dark and tortured to me. Sure, they have their winter sides, kind of grey and mumbly, but mostly they're rather matter-of-fact and far more social than they think they are.

On Saturday, we had a huge dinner party - 32 people - here in our apartment, a birthday party for our friend the priest, who turned 40 a couple of weeks ago. Out went the dining room table and into the back hall, in went three round tables that the policeman and I hauled up the stairs and wheeled into the apartment, and then the 32 chairs. There was ironing of table cloths and laying down of place settings and getting up of bouquets and finding utensils for the caterers, and after dinner the rolling of tables and hauling of chairs into the little back spare room, so we could have a space to dance, which we duly did.

There is something to be said for having a party where one is not the host: You can speak with whoever strikes your fancy and worry about the little things instead of the big things, and you never end up feeling like you had 32 small conversations but never really managed to speak to anyone.

It exhausts me just to write all this (it's taken me two days).

But I'm charging my batteries. I think I have just about enough energy to give the windows their annual spring soaping, rinsing and wiping clean.

The Swedish word for the day is påskafton, which is Easter eve, more commonly known by us religious types as Holy Saturday.

- by Francis S.

The thing up here in the far north about the winter darkness is that it's like a drug, making me feel all bleary and numbed with sleep, as if my eyes are permanently gummed nearly shut. Oh, it took years for the darkness to do this to me, but now it's done. When the light finally reappears in full force, it's like the antidote. Suddenly, when those morning rays sneak their way into our bedroom before 6 a.m., it's like I've got the sun running through my veins, and I just can't sleep. It's kind of an all or nothing thing. Life is just lopsided here in Sweden, and you can see it on everyone's face as you pass them in the street. And to make it all the more intense, March is acting like May. No wonder we're all so squirrelly.

In other news, the chorale and orchestra of my alma mater, Highland Park High School, is playing one show only tomorrow night at St. Katherine's church here in Stockholm. Who would've imagined it? The daughter of one of my longest-standing friends is singing, but I can't go on account of tomorrow is my birthday and the husband is acting mightly peculiar as if he has something up his sleeve, saying he doesn't want to go to the concert, and "Why can't we have a nice romantic evening at home?"

I am most suspicious. More squirrelly behavior, if you ask me.

The Swedish word for the day is ekorre, natch. It means squirrel.

- by Francis S.

It's nice to see that the Episcopal Church in the U.S. is sticking to its guns and not letting the Anglican Communion bully it into capitulating to conservative churches that think great big homos like me are evil sinners who will burn in hell and have no place in the church.

Instead of having to apologize in future centuries for being on the side of hate, it will be able to say it did the right thing.

The Swedish word for the day is vårdagjämning. It means vernal equinox.

- by Francis S.

I, too, was reading a book, while I ate delicious rum-babas and little tarts filled with worm-castles of chestnut purée topped with caps of whipped cream. I have called the meal tea, but what I was drinking was not tea but chocolate. When I poured out, I held the pot high in the air, so that my cup, when filled, should be covered in a rich froth of bubbles.

The book I was reading was Tolstoy's Resurrection. Although I did not quite understand some parts of it, it gave me intense pleasure to read it while I ate the rich cakes and drank the frothy chocolate. I thought it a noble and terrible story, but I was worried and mystified by the words "illegitimate child" which had occurred several times lately. What sort of child could this be? Clearly a child that brought trouble and difficulty. Could it have some terrible disease, or was it a special sort of imbecile?

from Denton Welch's short story "When I was Thirteen"

Ever since I first read the story from which this is excerpted, nearly 20 years ago, Denton Welch's description of a stay at a hotel in the Swiss alps in the 1930s has been my idea of what a ski trip to Switzerland should be. Full of rum-babas, tarts with chestnut purée and hot chocolate. And maybe a little skiing.

Tomorrow I'll find out.

I'm not a very good at it, but I love to ski.

I hope I don't break any bones.

The Swedish verb of the day is att åka skidor. It means to ski.

- by Francis S.

What happens when you take something humble and prosaic, like, say, pea soup, and then add a heaping glass or two of something flashy and crowd-pleasing, like champagne?

It becomes something the Swedes call crème ninon, introduced to them by Tore Wretman, a legendary Swedish chef and restaurant owner who died a few years ago and who supposedly brought crème ninon to Sweden from France, although a little cursory googling finds 100,000 or so links in Swedish and only four links in French - wait, make that three, because one of those links is obviously in Finnish, not French. So perhaps crème ninon is only a Swede's idea of French food: take a Swedish classic (traditionally served on Thursdays, don't ask me why), add a French cliché and voilà, you have haute cuisine. But you know what? Who cares about authenticity, because when you add champagne to pureed pea soup, it goes all foamy and rich, and it becomes something sublime with startling depth, something greater than the sum of the parts (well, it's perhaps a bit disingenuous to claim that something with champagne in it is greater than champagne itself).

As for me, I was introduced to crème ninon by A. the TV producer's mother, who stuffed us last night full of what seemed to be endless courses all based in one way or another on champagne, managing to work into the meal oysters on the half shell, caviar, and strawberries.

I think I'm still full.

The Swedish word for the day is ärtsoppa, which is pea soup.

- by Francis S.

Do you ever wake up in the morning and everything looks like a stage set? Those heavy black floor to ceiling curtains that cover the entire bedroom wall look like they're about to open up to a vast audience, ready to applaud at the sight of the artfully unmade bed, as if Nora or the Countess Almaviva or Prior Walter were about to enter stage right, from the doors of the study?

Actually, I didn't wake up feeling this way, it was probably the fact that I got up and started reading a book about illustrations and stage sets that got me thinking this way, that the bathroom at the end of the dim hall, the door ajar and the light on, looked so very carefully lit when I got up to take a piss.

And then sitting down at the piano, it felt like a performance and I played reasonably well to the imaginary public, because really the Goldberg Varations, well maybe two-thirds of them, aren't nearly as hard as you think they are. And my favorite, the final quodlibet, is positively easy.

Isn't that a great word, quodlibet? According to my dictionary, a quodlibet is "1. a subtle or elaborate argument or point of debate, usually on a theological or scholastic subject. 2. Music. a humorous composition consisting of two or more independent and harmonically complementary melodies, usually quotations of well-known tunes, played or sung together in a polyphonic arrangement."

And now, to leave you with some food for thought, a little Bush Administration slash fiction, courtesy of Anthony. I hope it doesn't upset your stomach.

The Swedish word for the day is scenen. It means the stage.

- by Francis S.

On Sunday, we went to a small party for the release of a music video, with A., the TV producer and C., the fashion photographer and the sea captain and the children's book author.

I'm mostly a classical music kind of guy, but the video really tickled my fancy, it's so silly and little-kiddly.

And that's not the only way I'm going all pop culture. Like, uh, I'm following in my 13-year-old nephew's footsteps and I got me a myspace space. Even though as far as I can see, myspace is even more about just being popular than blogs are. And the layouts of myspace spaces give me a headache. And it's just extra work because I have another bloody blog there, as if I weren't being totally derelict in keeping this blog up. I don't really see the point of myspace, exactly.

Feh.

I suspect that going all pop culture isn't what it's cracked up to be.

The Swedish phrase for the day is aj, mina ögon!. It means ouch, my eyes!

- by Francis S.

Last week, a woman was discovered to be keeping 11 swans in her 30-square-meter apartment in Stockholm. The neighbors had called to complain about the smell, and the police broke in to find what first appeared to be two swans and eventually turned out to be 11. The swans seemed to be in relatively good health, although several had been rather severely injured long ago. The woman just liked swans, apparently, despite their reputation for being vicious and strong.

The question all Stockholmers – well, at least all the editors in my section of the office – have been asking themselves, is: How the hell did she capture 11 swans and get them in her apartment without anyone noticing? Or without getting bitten? And what would you say if you encountered your 67-year-old widowed neighbor in the elevator with a snapping, sopping swan?

Tonight, we're going to Dansens Hus to see the Cullberg Ballet in a 40th anniversary performance. The company is perhaps most famous for its performances of Swan Lake, with both men and women as awkward muscular swans, and a few Oedipal moments that seem to be the signature of choreographer Mats Ek.

I wonder if someone would consider choreography for a Swan Apartment ballet for the Cullberg? I would pay good money to see that.

The Swedish word for the day is svanfångster. This word doesn't translate very well, I would use the phrase bagged swans, although apparently it refers more literally to a catch, in the fishing sense of the word. And no doubt someone will comment giving me a precise and obscure Swedish word that means "bagged swans," but hey, I'm doing the best I can.

- by Francis S.

Shields said gays across the U.S. should connect with their congressman. He noted the Williams Institute’s finding that each congressional district now has at least 6,500 gay residents.

from an article in the Washington Blade online

At least 6,500 seems like a pretty sizeable number to me.

Interestingly, according to U.S. Census data analyzed by Gary Gates at the Williams Institute, conservative little New Hampshire, at 6.6 percent has the highest proportion of gays and lesbians of any state.

The Swedish word for the day is befolkning. It means population.

- by Francis S.

Stockholm has, at long last, been covered in snow for nearly a week, and the cold is hopefully killing all kinds of nasty bugs and viruses and bacteria that would otherwise plague us. I have a great fondness for snow and its power for making everything fresh again. Snow is no doubt comforting to me just because I grew up with lots of it. Maybe that's why I love Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale so very much, a book that gives winter its romantic due.

Strangely, in a peculiar literary mapping game I just hit upon, Robertson Davies appears to be the closest author to Mark Helprin, according to the taste of readers. Not two authors that I would ever put together. But then, I've never read anything else by Mark Helprin, and I have no idea who I would put him next to.

Now that was a forced transition if there ever was one.

The Swedish word for the day is klantigt. It means clumsy.

- by Francis S.

The thing about Stockholm is that people really know how to dress stylishly. And the thing about Stockholm is that men and women alike are thin and handsome and clothes fit them well, so they wear well-fitted clothes (well-fitted clothes were something the husband and I couldn't seem to find when we went shopping after Christmas in Chicago: all the clothes were so boxy and oversized, making me think that Chicagoans are either box-shaped and oversized, or fitted clothes are just not the fashion there.)

But the thing about Stockholm is that everyone dresses alike, which means right now it seems the streets are filled with men wearing tightly fitted trench-coats and trench-style coats, double-breasted with great big lapels, and very tight trousers with slightly pointy leather boots with very soft and flat soles.

It's a very mod look, and I like it. But with everyone wearing it, it's like a uniform. And I hate the idea of everyone looking alike, no matter how good the look is.

But what to do. Do you give in and wear it?

The Swedish word for the day is likadant. It means the same.

- by Francis S.

When I arrived for my massage, I was surprised to see the popstar waiting for my husband, who appeared shortly after I arrived, pouring himself down the stairs, all flippy-floppy after his massage, his face creased with lines from lying face down, his eyes smeary as if he'd been asleep. Later, after my own massage, all three of us left together, the husband and I to take the bus and the popstar heading to the subway.

"This is my year of low consumption," she said. "I'm going to consume less all year. Take the car as little as possible."

As she headed down the subway at Östermalmstorg, I thought to myself that only in Stockholm could someone like her take the subway for a year and not worry about being harrassed by fans every train ride she took.

As for me, this is going to be my year of consuming broccoli. And getting more exercise.

The Swedish word for the day is löfte. It means promise or resolution, in the sense of a New Year's resolution.

- by Francis S.

As we returned from Christmas in the Midwest, on the plane from Chicago to Stockholm I suddenly noticed that it was Dec. 29 (Central European Time, it was still only Dec. 28 in Illinois). Which meant that it was eight years to the day since I'd moved to Sweden. Strange to be on a plane again and remembering it all: my worldly possessions travelling separately in a container somewhere between Washington, DC and Stockholm, the excitement I felt, (I wasn't even scared, which astonishes me), the nearly overwhelming lust and love for the man who would become my husband, who was waiting for me at Arlanda airport. I had arrived some five hours later than expected, since my flight from Reyjavik to Stockholm had been cancelled and I had to go through Copenhagen instead, making it three flights in all to get here. I remember talking at Keflavik airport in Iceland to an American woman who had lived in Sweden fro 15 years, which seemed like forever.

At New Year's, the mother of the popstar asked me: "Will you die here?"

And then she smiled, embarrassed a little that she had put it that way.

My favorite Finn, who was part of the conversation, hummed a bit of the Swedish national anthem, which ends with the phrase "I want to live and die in the North."

I could only answer, well, yes, probably.

It's strange to think I will never leave, but it becomes less and less likely that I will abandon Sweden as the years pass.

And fifteen years seems like no time at all anymore.

Still stranger is to think of growing old and dying here. Will the husband and I end up in an old people's home, together or separately? Will I revert to English in my dotage? Who will come to visit me? And who will put flowers on my grave?

The Swedish word for the day is alltid. It means always.

- by Francis S.