Tag: Sweden Page 2 of 3

Secret Mission

On December 8, 2017

I am on a secret mission, one that has me traveling alone across the Atlantic, over the top of Canada and back into the United States.

My mom is turning 70 on Sunday.

It hit me a few months ago that 70 is a special birthday, a big milestone in my mom’s life; and living in Sweden, I would probably miss it. It was also my parents 45^th wedding anniversary this summer and while I thought about them on that day, I didn’t even so much as send a card. And unfortunately, I cannot claim that it was an anomaly. I have never been very good about my parents and siblings’ birthdays. I rarely do more than a phone call or a text. My mom is known for both her generosity and her faithful memory of everyone else’s birthday, so for the first time in my adult life, I felt really sad that I would not be with her to make this birthday a big deal. She certainly deserves it.

A few weeks ago I began talking to my sister Serenity about what the family was going to do to celebrate, and within a few days my sisters, brother and sister-in-law were talking about throwing a surprise party. My brother, a creative chef and caterer with a celebrity list of clients, suggested they throw a Bermudian-themed celebration on my mom’s actual birthday, two weeks before Christmas.

That left me with a difficult decision. Flying to Oklahoma and back to Sweden and then back to Los Angeles for Christmas seemed out of the question, practically and financially. But I didn’t want to miss either the birthday or our planned Christmas trip to Los Angeles.

After much deliberation and even a few conversations with some of my new Malmö friends, I decided to fly out right before the party, surprise my mom who will think I am in Sweden, and then stay with my parents for a week before heading to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with Kip and the kids.

And while I am thrilled to be seeing my mom and my daughter who is flying in from Denver for the party, it was actually a little bit difficult to leave Malmö just as the city begins celebrating its favorite time of year – Christmas.

The decorations are everywhere, advent stars in apartment windows, electric lights hung across streets, wreaths and candles. The grocery stores are packed with interesting specialty Christmas foods that I had never seen before. There are displays of traditional hams and cheese, tubes of what looks like creamy beat salad, pastries and other Jule-time only Swedish delights. Every grocery store has a corner crammed with boxes of chocolates and stacks of thin gingerbread cookies in holiday tins and of course, bottles of Glögg. And most miraculously, all of this Christmas grocery shopping comes without the endless repeating loop of American secular Christmas songs that exhaust the most festive of Christmas shoppers before mid-December.

Making Christmas cookies in school.

Swedish Christmas drink

There have also been Christmas events around town, concerts and Christmas markets in the old town. This week there will be St. Lucia celebrations all over Scandanavia, a celebration of light coming into the darkness just as the days shorten to the very darkest of the year on the Winter Solsitice.

It is special, really sweet, and it makes me glad we are planning to stay in Sweden long enough to celebrate Christmas there next year.

This week I got together with several of my new Malmö friends, and I realized that not only am I feeling more comfortable here, but I am putting down roots in the form of friendships, the kind that allow for silly text messaging and hastily planned get togethers. Its good.

And for right now, I am really looking forward to surprising my mom. She knows about the party, which is good because I thought that it might not be entirely a pleasant surprise for her to come home to a house full of people she was not expecting. And she knows that my daughter is flying in for the weekend but as far as I know, she has no idea that I will be there. I am planning to post a picture of Sweden tomorrow on Facebook so she will think I am there Saturday morning. Haha.

The “view from my window” I posted, as I was on a layover in Los Angeles. LOL

Stay tuned…..

Internal Life

By Theresa Haynes

On November 27, 2017

In Uncategorized

Late afternoon on a damp day

November in Malmö is ending just as gray as the locals predicted. In typical Scandinavian reliability, the weather is slogging steadily into colder, damper, deeper darkness. The trees are barren and the apartment buildings look as unapologetically uniform as any sample of mid century egalitarianism ever was. It is not particularly picturesque, and if it were not for the festive Christmas decorations popping up in apartment windows and dangling across cobblestone streets, Malmö might feel completely void of color in its November drizzle.

But that is just the world outside our doors. Inside is another story.

Inside our living space has never been warmer, cozier or more welcoming. Even the cars driving through the wet streets below amplify the peace inside. The Danish famously call it “hygge,” and it is a real thing. It is a winter home-life happiness in the form of evening candles, home cooked meals shared around the dining room table, books being read, guitars being played, new friends joining us for dinner and side-aching, hilarious stories shared. It is an interior happiness to match a soulful contentment, and it’s a whole new life I did not know was possible in the sun-drenched lands of Los Angeles busyness.

Christmas stars light up apartment windows all over Sweden. We got ours from IKEA, of course.

Back to School

By Theresa Haynes

On November 15, 2017

In Uncategorized

First day of Swedish class

Monday was back to school day for me, the first back to school day in as long as I can remember. I got up early, made coffee, grabbed a half-filled notebook that I last used for an online screenwriting course, grabbed my bike and rode through the crisp fall morning to class. It felt amazing. I hardly noticed that it was about 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

The class, a four-week intensive Swedish course taught daily for three hours, was everything I had hoped for; and I came home the first day with pages of notes and the first real bit of faith that I might actually learn Swedish.

The class and the instructor came highly recommend to me by two different people, a Ukrainian and a Brazilian, that I met at Hillsong, an international English speaking church in Malmö. I decided I needed something to get me going again in my language learning, so I enrolled.

The class is intense. The teacher speaks mostly in Swedish. She says something, writes it on the white board, waits eagerly through the blank stares, gives us a few clues and then sometimes just says it in English. Sometimes she doesn’t have to translate at all, and that makes the class both challenging and interesting.

After living in Sweden for several months and grasping bits and pieces of the language, I’m discovering that the class is filling in the missing pieces, the little bits of information that I needed to bring it all together.

For one thing, I have found that written and spoken Swedish can seem almost unrelated as the Swedish speaker often excludes parts of written words and seems to blur others together in phrases that sound like one sing-song muddle. When I have pointed this out to Swedish speakers they often say, “Oh, but Danish is much worse.” (There should be a Swedish word for Danish blame shifting.)

My first attempt to learn Swedish began in Malibu when I bought Rosetta Stone for Swedish and sat in the kitchen with my open laptop. At that time moving to Sweden still felt like a hypothetical possibility and I needed something to motivate me to begin the work of preparing for the move.

Rosetta Stone was a great start and I learned my first bits of vocabulary, pojken (the boy), flickan (the girl), but Rosetta Stone is built on inductive reasoning, educated guessing, and the program only took me so far. I was totally confused by the grammar until July when I met a German hiker on our trek in Abisko, in the far north of Sweden, in the arctic circle. In a rustic hikers’ cabin with no electricity or running water, over a candlelight dinner of freeze-dried stew, she mentioned that German and Swedish are very similar and that learning Swedish had not been too difficult for her. The biggest difference was that the articles were at the end of the nouns instead of the beginning, for instance “katt” and “katten” in Swedish versus “die Katz” in German. When she said that it was like a light went on. I had been struggling for weeks and had no idea why the nouns changed without warning, and I suddenly understood. I wanted to immediately trek back to civilization, boot up my computer and get back into Rosetta Stone.

I also used Duolingo, which is a fun free app that I have on my phone. But just like Rosetta Stone, it is not enough. Sometimes you just need a human instructor who can said, “yes, that is right,” or “not exactly,” or even give physical tips like how to hold your mouth when you say the vowel sounds or the very odd sound that is the word for “seven.” It is written “sju,” and sounds a bit like a lazy, “ch” and “who?” I am sure that I don’t have it right yet. It is a good thing that I have three and a half more weeks.

Kip is having a work-from-home week, much to the delight of katten. Kip sent me this while I was at class today. Our Swedish cat says, “Det är mycket bra.” It is very good.

Random Saturday Road Trip through Skåne

By Theresa Haynes

On November 12, 2017

In Uncategorized

Mid afternoon light on the Eastern shore in November.

This morning we woke up late, sleeping like teenagers on a Saturday morning. The sun woke me up, breaking through the cloud cover for the first time in days, shining through the heavy curtains.

“Wake up! The sun is shining!”

It was 10 a.m. and with the curtains thrown back the light poured, I mean, poured, into the bedroom like warm liquid joy.

Within an hour we were talking about getting in the car and getting out, seeing a little bit more of Skåne County. Coffee and showers and cat chores later, we were on the road, just as the clouds were beginning to reconvene. We headed North and East anyway, toward the Baltic Sea.

With a car, or a train, it is possible to escape the city in just a few minutes. Malmö stops abruptly and expansive farm fields takes its place. Modern wind turbines dot the fields, alongside the stout remnants of traditional windmills that once dominated the windy landscape. And when the farmland stops, thick Swedish woods gather around lakes and cabins. Then the woods gives way to orderly little small towns with modern cottages and red tiled roofs and Volvos parked out front, and then the whole pattern repeats itself.

River picked the music, his 90s Spotify playlist, and everything out the window began to look familiar, like little bits of Wisconsin, West Virginia or Pennsylvania, the places I spent time in the 90s.

We saw several apple stands, and I lamented that we had not brought cash, until we passed a self-serve, Swish payment apple stand. We turned around and bought a bag. That would not have happened in California!

This requires a moment of recognition for my US readers. In Sweden, an almost cashless society, there is an electronic money exchange system that works with smart phones. You just open an app, type in a phone number and money amount, and your payment is made. It is as fast as swiping your card and signing a receipt. And the beauty of this apple stand experience is that it was also self-serve. The farmer, based on traditional Swedish culture values and modern technology, set his bags of apples in front of his apple orchards with a Swish payment sign. In a small way it represents the best of Swedish culture – cutting-edge technology, local-grown produce, self-service and an expectation of honesty. Amazing!

We drove until we found a national park along the sea. We walked to the water, watched a family in winter coats and hats running along the sand, two little girls walking out in the waves in their snow boots, laughing when the waves chased them back into the shore. It looked so much like kids in Malibu in winter, wanting to be in the waves that are too cold to swim in.

When the sun went down, around 4, we began heading back home, promising ourselves to do it again. It’s good to get out.

Darkness is Coming

By Theresa Haynes

On November 6, 2017

In Uncategorized

The tree is almost bare by November 6.

I don’t know why people who have lived here a long time, Swedes and expats alike, feel the need to tell us that the winter is coming and that it is going to be bad, very bad. I think we know. We would not have moved here without doing that research.

I know that we are from California, but we are not unaware of what snow looks like or how to wear wool socks. In fact, the last time I went to Costco I stocked up on new wool socks. They are waiting for me, unopened in the closet. I think we are mentally prepared for a little chilly weather.

But it’s not the cold, I’ve heard.

It’s the darkness.

The first time somebody told me that, they said it with such ominousness that I thought it was a joke. Be afraid, very afraid. Darkness is a real thing. But then I kept hearing the same comment, “Be prepared. It’s not the cold, or even the wind and rain. It’s the darkness.”

We had a nasty summer here. Numerous people assured me that it was the worst summer in 100 years here. It rained constantly, and I thought it was a tragic waste of 17-hour days to have cold rain blotting out the sun. It really felt like extra-long January days in southern California. I wore my light weight jacket almost every day.

So when people talked about the coming winter darkness, I thought it was a bit of an exaggeration. How can it be worse than rainy summer days?

I understood that the days would be short, very short. I had images of poor little school children walking to school in the dark, crunching snow under their boots, coming home in the dark. I lived for a year in Wisconsin. I am familiar with the concept of winter.

But by late October when the beautiful autumn leaves were just past their peak, I began to understand what my Swedish friends meant by darkness.

It is not that the days are short or that winter clouds block the precious bit of sunshine that dares to rise. The “problem” is that the sun, on the sunniest of days, simply does not climb very high above the horizon. Last week, the last time the clouds were thin enough to see the partially masked sun, I could see that at noon it looked like the sun was at a 45 degree angle from the horizon. And that was October.

It is going to get dark by late December.

But….

I refuse to give in to fear.

Light always shines brightly in the darkness. I look forward to experiencing how Swedish people light up their world on the darkest of winter days. It sounds cliche, but it is a serious hope. Sweden may have long, dark winters, but they are not cold, depressed people. They are a people of generosity and hospitality, Fika and great baking, music and design, technology breakthroughs and political stability. I believe there is something bright here, and I will have patience to discover it.

: Going

: Going

: Going

: Gone

Live, Love and Carry Proper ID

By Theresa Haynes

On October 27, 2017

In Uncategorized

I left my son at the security check at the Copenhagen airport today and it was so much harder than I thought it would be. He is headed back to Los Angeles, on a nonstop flight that we booked back in July, back when the parting tears were fresh and my husband and I wondered if we had been wrong to drag a 15-year-old away from his best friends.

But this morning, as we stood there, and he let me hug him and kiss him in public, I suddenly felt panicked. He was getting ready to walk through the security gate and disappear and I would not be able to follow. If he needed me, I would not be able to help him.

I walked away, forced myself to breathe, told myself to stop being silly. I would have LOVED going on a trip like that when I was 15. My parents let me go on a trip to Venezuela when I was 16, and it was life changing in all the good ways.

Besides, I am proud of my son. And I love his friends. They are all great kids with great moms who have eagerly agreed to pick River up from the airport and drive him around LA. I want him to have this opportunity. He is so excited about going to LA to visit his friends. I am excited for him.

But my heart froze.

Twenty minutes went by and he did not call to tell me he was at the gate. I went to the airport Starbucks because there are no Starbucks in Malmö or anywhere I have been in Sweden, and I had told him I would stay in the airport until he boarded the plane. Ten more minutes passed, still no call.

I called, left a message, decided to buy my train ticket back to Malmö, kill a little more time before I went back home to the emptier apartment.

This is how it is going to be. This is the future.

While we were walking through the terminal to the security gate, River had almost sounded hesitant.

“I’m used to associating travel with us, with our whole family,” he said. “It’s different to be just me.”

It was as if that reality had just occurred to him for the first time after weeks of planning, anticipating, dreaming about going to visit friends.

Yeah, that is part of this whole international thing. If Dad and I are going to live outside of the US, you are going to have to travel to us sometimes. It’s good.

I thought about my daughter in college in Colorado. I went with her to college for move-in. I wanted her to feel established in college before she felt alone, but I know the next time she flies to see us she will be coming on her own too.

Scattered.

It is part of adventures, paths diverge, converge, diverge again. There is always something new, somebody new. The best travelers love and let go and move on to love more.

Family is different though.

I miss my parents. I miss my daughter. I miss my friends, the ones I know I could still call despite a 9-hour time difference and say, “Can you pray for me? I’m feeling like a wreck today.”

River is on a plane to visit those kinds of friends this week. It’s good. It’s really good.

After what seemed like an eternity, and exactly half of my Starbucks, he called. They were holding him at passport check, not letting him leave Denmark. His plane was boarding and he could not leave.

I freaked out.

It was exactly what I worried about. He needed me and I could not come to him.

What is the problem? You have your passport? You have your Swedish ID card? He didn’t know. He just had to wait, and so did I.

I knew I couldn’t go back to Malmö until it was resolved. What if he didn’t make his flight? Would we be able to get him on another flight to LA? What about our trip tomorrow? Kip and I were planning to go to Madeira. We had plane tickets and hotels booked. We were only planning for it to be the two of us.

I walked back to security. They said, no. Of course they could not let me through to passport check. I waited for a while longer and then decided to walk back to the airline check in. I found a helpful clerk who called the gate, told them the situation. Maybe they could hold the plane…. maybe. Somehow I doubted they would hold a fully booked, nonstop flight to LA for a 15-year-old who could not convince police that he was legally living in Sweden. I was not even sure why the Denmark police cared.

Finally, River called. He was getting on the plane. It was ok. Just a misunderstanding. He would call later, when he got to LA.

In the wave of relief that passed over me I remembered that this was exactly what international travel is all about — the unexpected, the freak-out-moments, the unknown. Its why so many people don’t ever leave their comfort zones, let alone the US. I’m ok with being the one sweating in security line while the plane is boarding. I’m just not used to watching my young adult son navigate it alone.

Alone. I felt his absence.

I want my son to have an adventure-filled life. I want him to explore, to dream big, to climb high mountains. I want him to reach his full potential with nothing holding him back, not even me.

I took the commuter train back to Sweden, watched the water flowing under the Øresund Bridge, and thought about all the days ahead of us, all of us. Paths together, paths apart. Paths. Like the rhythm of a commuter train.

The bridge ended. We stopped in Hyllie, just over the border in Sweden and border control officers boarded the train. A young blond woman in a lime green reflective vest, an official Border Security uniform, stopped at my train seat when I showed her my US Passport.

Where is your proof of residency?

I showed her my identity card, just like the one my son showed passport control in Copenhagen.

That is not a residency permit.

But I have one. I have a Swedish personal number. I have a bank account and an apartment. Do you know how difficult it is to get a personal number and a bank account, obviously, I could not have gotten any of that without legal residency.

No, I need proof of legal residency, a card.

Maybe she meant the little red card we got when we arrived and were photographed and fingerprinted at the migration office?

I waited while she conversed with a group of her green vested colleagues who had gathered to determine my fate. The train stood still.

After a few long minutes they came to a consensus. She let me know my mistake and let me go with a shrug, a typical Swedish chastisement. I muttered something to the Swedish passenger next to me who responded something polite about immigrants, and I nodded. I know, it’s not personal, its just the system.

I got off the train at my regular stop, walked the few short blocks back to the apartment, enjoying the crisp fall air and thinking about my own trip to Madeira the next day. I might not pack my heavy jacket. But I’ll be sure to bring that residency card.

Live, love, let go and carry proper identification.

Just a few of my dear California friends on our last night together.

A Little Bit of California for Breakfast

On October 18, 2017

In Uncategorized

When we arrived in Malmö in June, I felt like I had survived a decluttering marathon. We had lived in our Malibu house for six years. Our kids had literally grown up there, as evidenced by the pencil scratched benchmarks on the kitchen doorway and the two closets full of toys in my son’s bedroom. Sorting through our accumulation of life was not easy.

We had amassed six years of stuff, the usual clothes and books, tools and toys, furniture. But there was also a pile of stuff the kids had also grown out of — books and toys, stuffed animals that used to be friends, games we never got around to playing. I knew it would be silly to ship most of it to Sweden, and just as silly to let it sit in storage. But it was not easy to let it go. I felt like I was letting go of my kids’ childhood, which, to be honest, I needed to do. Healthy mothers nurture and equip and release their young adults to their full potential without making them feel guilty for growing up. I know this. I want that for myself and my teenagers.

So in the weeks leading up to our move I gave my friends most of the books, games, dishes and random things that I thought they might want. We sold other things on Craigslist, but on the day before we left California there was still a car load full of donations to go to the thrift store.

The whole process was emotional and exhausting, and in the end, rushed. So much so that I had several moments during the three-month interim period between our moving-out day and our moving-in day that I could not remember if a particular item was in the anticipated shipment or if we had given it away.

Even so we ended up bringing things we did not need, and we gave away a few that we had to repurchase in Sweden. Already I have looked around for at least one book that I wish I had kept. But really, most of our material possessions needed to go. It is good to move on when you move on.

We accidentally packed rocks.

But even so, there are a few items, really just a few, that I have been very happy to have with us in our new apartment life in Malmö. The Vitamix is near the top of that list.

We had to get a huge transformer to make sure we did not burn out the Vitamix engine on the 230 volts piping through our electric outlets here, and after blowing a few power fuses, we have worked out a system to make it run in our Swedish kitchen. It works pretty well.

This morning I got up, despite the persistent October grey, and went for a run. When I came home I made an awesome blueberry, banana, almond smoothie. It was perfect, the true breakfast of champions, not unlike so many Malibu post-run breakfast smoothies. And as I ran the Vitamix I thought about how this transcontinental move is all about that process– simplifying, moving out into the unknown and living this next part of life well. But in the end a familiar purple smoothie just makes it all sweeter and a little easier to swallow.

Möllevångstorget

On October 18, 2017

In Uncategorized

Möllevångstorget_2017-2 Möllevångstorget, a cobblestone square characterized by The Honor of Work, a giant statue of men and at least one woman holding up a giant rock embossed with the image of an industrialized city, is its own center of Malmö.

A hundred years ago, this square, surrounded by new factories and recently urbanized residents, was the birthplace of the Labor Movement in Sweden. You could even say Swedish socialism has its roots here. Today it is still a working class neighborhood, a multicultural hub, a living testament to the extent of immigration in Malmö, a place you can Google on YouTube and see a pandemonium of illegal fireworks from last New Years Eve.

I go there to buy cheap fruits and vegetables, and I love it.

IMG_5588 - Copy

A couple of weeks ago I braved the unknown and rode my bike to Möllevångstorget on a quest to find the farmers market. When I got there I was shocked by how much cheaper the vegetables and fruit were there than in the regular Swedish grocery stores. They were even cheaper than produce in US grocery stores.

In southern California going to the farmers market is a wonderful experience, but it is hardly cheaper than shopping in the national chain grocery stores. Last time I went to the farmer’s market in Santa Monica, I don’t think $10 bought more than a handful of apples and a couple of avocados, maybe a head of lettuce.

No she is not Sweden’s first female prime minister. The 100kr bill celebrates this classic Hollywood movie star who was born in Stockholm.

Today I spent 100 kroner, currently worth about $12 and got 2 onions, 6 potatoes, 8 lemons, 4 tangerines, 3 apples, 3 avocados, a bag of green beans, a bunch of bananas, 30 eggs and a giant head of lettuce. I don’t think it is all organic, and given the state of sunshine in Sweden, probably not all local either. I have yet to see a banana farm in Skåne. But it is fresh produce, whole foods, and a whole lot better than frozen pizzas.

When we visited Malmö for the first time last April, the hotel desk clerk told us not to go past a neighborhood called Davidshall. He specifically said not to go to this farmer’s market, so in my mind it was on the “no go” list.

It should not have been.

Möllevång is a colorful place at the crossroads of busy bicycle paths where more people commute on two wheels than four. Traditionally ethnic Swedes and more recent immigrants mingle in the farmer’s market. Most of the vendors converse in Arabic to their clients in hijabs, Swedish to everyone else. I like it because I have to remember my basic numbers in Swedish as the vendors often do not speak English.

The neighborhood surrounding Möllevångstorget is an “ethnic” food lover’s cornucopia. Restaurants from every Asian and Middle Eastern variety crowd the streets leading up to, and surrounding, the square. Indian, Lebanese, Persian, Chinese, Vietnamese are all well represented there. Last week we had Thai, not exactly like our beloved Thai Town in East Hollywood, but not bad for northern Europe. I would go back.

Like so many hipster neighborhoods in US cities, Möllevångstorget also has the atmosphere of a community on the verge of a vibrant economic upswing. I get the feeling that younger Swedish workers live there, ignoring the graffiti and double locking their bikes. One of our single Swedish neighbors told me she plans to buy an apartment near Möllevångstorget next year. And I can understand why. It is affordable and it feels alive. It is easily one of my favorite Malmö surprises.

Pippin is curious, always curious.

Fika is a Word that Means Coffee

On October 11, 2017

In Uncategorized

Fika is a word that means coffee.

But fika is a Swedish word that means more than just coffee. It also means coffee break; as in stop what you are doing, relax, drink coffee and talk to a friend. Of course, coffee alone is not really fika. Fika needs carbs like nachos need cheese. So Fika culture is all about baked goods, cinnamon rolls, carrot cake, chocolate-coconut balls, even an open-faced sandwich of local cheese and cucumber will do in a pinch.

Last week Sweden celebrated Kanelbullens Dag. Cinnamon bun day. It is a real thing, every October 4^th. The local grocery store had a huge display of fresh cinnamon rolls, 5 for 25 kroners, about $3. I bought a bag of them for a very happy teenager just coming home from school.

And that is Fika at its best, mid-afternoon, mom and son, talking in the kitchen. How was your day?

Its easily one of my favorite Swedish delights.

Today I Mailed a Letter

By Theresa Haynes

On October 11, 2017

In Uncategorized

“Theresa Mailed a Letter.”

That title reminds me more of a children’s book than an adult expat’s blog. But the thing is, I am kind of like a child here. Someone on one of my social media groups said it best when another member was complaining about the difficulty of finding work here without knowing Swedish. He said, “Look, basically you are like a four-year-old until you learn their language. “

And he is right. I have to ask for everything, in English, and hope that the clerk will be happy to oblige me in my ignorance. Luckily for me, right now, Swedish people seem to really enjoy speaking in English. English is taught universally in schools, so speaking English well is a mark of education, prestige. The only non-English speakers are older Swedes and immigrants from non-English speaking countries. And even then, older Swedes often understand English but are shy about using it.

I understand that too. I am picking up new words every day, especially written words, but I am a little terrified of having to actually use them. It is not helpful to my long-term learning that everyone is so quick to put me out of my misery and converse in English.

One small advantage that I have is that I look like I should speak Swedish, so often clerks speak to me in Swedish first and I make it a game to see how far I can go without admitting that I have no idea what they have just said. There have been many times that I have interacted with a cashier, never saying a word, only understanding half of what he said, and he never knew it. I am pretty good with nonverbal cues, and it is amazing how far that goes.

Hi.

Is this all you want?

Great. Put your credit card there.

Sign there.

Take that stuff you just bought.

See you later.

Tack!

But some basic adult life tasks require more than just language acquisition skills. Simply being able to speak the same language is not enough. Customs and etiquette are different. In fact, the whole government system of health care and schools and registration is just a little bit different here. A small task that I took for granted at home can seem like a mini crisis here, like mailing a registration form to a government office.

So let’s break it down.

The first step is to translate the form. That is not too difficult with Google Translate, but even if Google Translate fails, I can always call the government office, wait on hold forever while thinking about my American mobile phone bill’s international calling plan. Once I have the form filled, I have to get to a post office and mail it.

And here is complication number two. It has been explained to me that Sweden does not have post offices any more. They don’t use checks either, so if you need to make a payment that is a whole different set of hoops beginning with trips to the migration office and the tax office, then fingerprinting and official ID photographs, culminating in several in-person, appointment-only visits to the bank before you can make an electronic payment. It literally takes weeks, if not months, before you can electronically send someone money, a big problem for newcomers in an almost cashless society.

But assuming that all I need to do is mail the form, I have found that it works to smile and ask people in English, “Excuse me, how do I mail a letter?”

And if they are heartless and under 30 they look at you like you are a 4-year-old.

Duh. Put a stamp on it and put it in one of the yellow boxes that are everywhere.

But where do I get a stamp if there are no post offices?

You can buy them at grocery stores, office supply stores. You know, the same places that you can buy stamps in the US.

Oh, of course. I can do that.

And they are right. It is really easy. Even a 4-year-old could do it.