Saturday, November 8, 2008
Captain's Log; Stardate 110808.804
Hello everyone!
It has been a few weeks since I last posted something here, and I think it's due time I did so.
Life in Sweden goes on for me. The seasons are changing, the friendships which I have found here are continuing to develop, and I am still exploring this new country in which I find myself. I can't say that it isn't new to me anymore, because it still is. I feel very much in a state of liminality here, in between languages, cultures, and in a more important sense, senses of my own identity. I don't have the familiar frienships, settings, and experiences to fall back upon. In many ways, being here, away from the U.S., has forced me to remake myself, or least to reflect upon who I have made myself out to be these last 21 years of my life, and how the people I've met have done so as well.
After spending more than two months here, I've been fortunate to meet plenty of really cool people. I am one of only a few Americans here studying at the university here in Umeå, and that is both extremely refreshing and sometimes lonely. It is great because I have to go out and meet students from many different countries and become friends with them rather than just use the comfort blanket of hanging out with other American students. Plus, where would the fun be in that anyways? Humans are very much creatures of habit, no matter how much we might argue otherwise. I see it all the time here. The French students tend to group together with other French students to speak French, the German students like to find other Germans to speak German with, Spanish find other Spanish, and so on. I really can't do that here, as like I said, there are barely any Americans here. And the Americans I do know here I can't relate with. They are often shallow and just want to drink and party and are extremely pessimistic about being here. It drives me nuts because they are just reinforcing the negative stereotypes of Americans in the eyes of people from the rest of the world.
This brings me to my next observation. Being a fluent speaker of English has put me in a very privileged position here. Since everyone is from everywhere and speaks everything in terms of languages, we have to speak a 'universal' language that we will all understand. That is definitely English, and one Polish student that I've met here pointed out something that I keep thinking about. She said something along the lines of "Yeah, you might not have other Americans to talk with but everyone here speaks English, at least a little, and so you can talk to anyone. Often we Europeans can only talk and still feel totally comfortable with people from our own country, since we aren't fluent speakers of English. And when we do speak English with other people, we're often put in the position of making sure we're saying the right things, using the right grammar, etc. So sometimes the effort of the conversation goes less into getting to know someone and rather into making sure we find the right words." It makes me realize that even though I don't have the comfort blanket of other Americans here in Sweden, I have been subconsciously relying on the comfort blanket of English. I may be out of bounds by saying this, but I really believe that English is becoming 'the' international language. I know of no other language that is spoken as commonly in so many different parts of the world. That kind of realization forces me to wonder; why English? Is it because of the influence of popular American culture, for better or for worse, upon the world? Is it because of the era of British colonialism? And are we just transmitting English as a language all over the world, or are we, through it, also imposing Western cultural values, economic systems, and political ideologies? I'm very strongly inclined to believe so.
Well, on to climate! It's something that's very noticeable here. First off, it's getting quite cold, definitely earlier than WI back in the U.S. I've noticed that the shift from autumn to winter has started about a month earlier than it usually does back home, as we had our first snow on Halloween. I know that this can happen in WI and certainly has before, but it's still quite colder here in my opinion. Oh, and the sunlight. It's quite crazy to see the sun hanging halfway in the sky at 12 PM and then see it start to set at 2:30 PM. It's already completely dark by 4 PM. With such a lack of knowing when the day starts and ends concretely, the days begin to run together and sometimes I feel like I'm drifting out of time, as strange as that sounds. It's a very surreal feeling, almost like I am living on another planet. The lack of daylight makes you feel like sleeping all the time but exercise helps to keep the blood flowing and the endorphins pumping. The local sports facility, called IKSU, which is actually the largest gym in Europe (supposedly), has special UV rooms where you can get as much light and wonderful Vitamin D as you need. Wonderful, wonderful light. I don't know how the Swedes who live this far up north deal with it year after year after year. haha It must the be the summers of perpetual light!
I haven't done any significant traveling since I went to London, but I do enjoy biking around the city and exploring. Everything is so pristine here. The streets in Umeå are lined with birch trees and all of the houses are very uniform, often yellow or red, with white trim on the windows and the roofs. The roads and sidewalks are in great shape, not lined with potholes and cracks like in the U.S., probably because people actually pay the taxes to make sure that the infrastructure is kept well, well-kept.
Swedes may not be as individualistic as Americans, but they have a much, much better grasp of all of the positive nuances that the word "socialism" connotates. No one is allowed to get rich here. If someone does earn more money than another person, the State just takes that much more of it to help pay for schools, hospitals, nursing care for the elderly, to repair the physical infrastructure of towns and cities, and so on. The wealthiest are taxed the most, and even they understand why. It is for the betterment of society. For Swedes, society means solidarity, unity, and they view a progressive, strong 'society' as one where social achievement is made at the expense of the individual, not one where individual achievement is made at the expense of the society. This is the underlying ideology of what is called the Swedish 'model', in any case. Since Sweden is a Western, 'developed' nation, it of course has a free market economy, and thus elements of privitization in the fields of healthcare and education. But they don't believe in privitization of damn near everything like American society does. Americans are all about freedom of choice, even if it cripples them financially, physically, and emotionally. I am not saying I agree entirely with either the 'liberal' American system which is far from liberal, or the more socialist leanings of Sweden. I see negative aspects in both. Capitalism can and very often is heartless, and socialism is very often mindless, but Swedes seemed to have mixed the two together into a relatively humane, healthy system. At least for now. It'll be interesting to see how long it lasts.
Political discussions aside however, I've done some pretty fun stuff recently. Last weekend in the city there was this music festival called PopUp. Basically, it was 8 bands on 2 stages showcasing the best of Swedish indie pop music right now. IT WAS AMAZING!! There was this one band, Detektivbyrån, which sounded a bit like Of Montreal, but without vocals. They used accordions, xylophones, vocal harmonies, synthesizers, moogs, and everything else in the musical spectrum that you can imagine. It sounded like something out of a Wes Anderson film, and I mean that in the best way possible. This one other artist, Markus Krunegård, was really awesome. It was catchy, guitar heavy indie pop with lots of crowd interaction and I absolutely loved it. It's hard for me to describe what 'indie pop' sounds like because it's a pretty diverse genre in the sense that one can really do anything within it, as long as it has a bubbly edge that will catch your ear and make you smile, no matter what your mood. It was really cool to be able to see some real Swedish bands play.
So, lastly, I did something rather fun today. I went to a moose farm!! Haha it sounds a bit ridiculous I know, but this farm actually does exist, about 60 km west of Umeå, so more into the mainland of northern Sweden. I went with a bunch of international students on several buses, and the countryside where the farm is located was actually quite beautiful. There were rolling hills of forest and little patches of farmland with cute little yellow and red houses and cottages. We were able to touch and pet the mooses and take pictures of them. They are really docile creatures, calm and noble in their appearance and movements, but powerful. There was one little infant moose, running around pushing everyone with his head and trying to play. But he could nearly knock us over, he was so strong. It made everyone laugh and scream because sometimes people wouldn't be looking and unexpectedly he'd run up from behind and bump them in the butt. It was a really cool day. So, here are some separately posted pictures of that!
It has been a few weeks since I last posted something here, and I think it's due time I did so.
Life in Sweden goes on for me. The seasons are changing, the friendships which I have found here are continuing to develop, and I am still exploring this new country in which I find myself. I can't say that it isn't new to me anymore, because it still is. I feel very much in a state of liminality here, in between languages, cultures, and in a more important sense, senses of my own identity. I don't have the familiar frienships, settings, and experiences to fall back upon. In many ways, being here, away from the U.S., has forced me to remake myself, or least to reflect upon who I have made myself out to be these last 21 years of my life, and how the people I've met have done so as well.
After spending more than two months here, I've been fortunate to meet plenty of really cool people. I am one of only a few Americans here studying at the university here in Umeå, and that is both extremely refreshing and sometimes lonely. It is great because I have to go out and meet students from many different countries and become friends with them rather than just use the comfort blanket of hanging out with other American students. Plus, where would the fun be in that anyways? Humans are very much creatures of habit, no matter how much we might argue otherwise. I see it all the time here. The French students tend to group together with other French students to speak French, the German students like to find other Germans to speak German with, Spanish find other Spanish, and so on. I really can't do that here, as like I said, there are barely any Americans here. And the Americans I do know here I can't relate with. They are often shallow and just want to drink and party and are extremely pessimistic about being here. It drives me nuts because they are just reinforcing the negative stereotypes of Americans in the eyes of people from the rest of the world.
This brings me to my next observation. Being a fluent speaker of English has put me in a very privileged position here. Since everyone is from everywhere and speaks everything in terms of languages, we have to speak a 'universal' language that we will all understand. That is definitely English, and one Polish student that I've met here pointed out something that I keep thinking about. She said something along the lines of "Yeah, you might not have other Americans to talk with but everyone here speaks English, at least a little, and so you can talk to anyone. Often we Europeans can only talk and still feel totally comfortable with people from our own country, since we aren't fluent speakers of English. And when we do speak English with other people, we're often put in the position of making sure we're saying the right things, using the right grammar, etc. So sometimes the effort of the conversation goes less into getting to know someone and rather into making sure we find the right words." It makes me realize that even though I don't have the comfort blanket of other Americans here in Sweden, I have been subconsciously relying on the comfort blanket of English. I may be out of bounds by saying this, but I really believe that English is becoming 'the' international language. I know of no other language that is spoken as commonly in so many different parts of the world. That kind of realization forces me to wonder; why English? Is it because of the influence of popular American culture, for better or for worse, upon the world? Is it because of the era of British colonialism? And are we just transmitting English as a language all over the world, or are we, through it, also imposing Western cultural values, economic systems, and political ideologies? I'm very strongly inclined to believe so.
Well, on to climate! It's something that's very noticeable here. First off, it's getting quite cold, definitely earlier than WI back in the U.S. I've noticed that the shift from autumn to winter has started about a month earlier than it usually does back home, as we had our first snow on Halloween. I know that this can happen in WI and certainly has before, but it's still quite colder here in my opinion. Oh, and the sunlight. It's quite crazy to see the sun hanging halfway in the sky at 12 PM and then see it start to set at 2:30 PM. It's already completely dark by 4 PM. With such a lack of knowing when the day starts and ends concretely, the days begin to run together and sometimes I feel like I'm drifting out of time, as strange as that sounds. It's a very surreal feeling, almost like I am living on another planet. The lack of daylight makes you feel like sleeping all the time but exercise helps to keep the blood flowing and the endorphins pumping. The local sports facility, called IKSU, which is actually the largest gym in Europe (supposedly), has special UV rooms where you can get as much light and wonderful Vitamin D as you need. Wonderful, wonderful light. I don't know how the Swedes who live this far up north deal with it year after year after year. haha It must the be the summers of perpetual light!
I haven't done any significant traveling since I went to London, but I do enjoy biking around the city and exploring. Everything is so pristine here. The streets in Umeå are lined with birch trees and all of the houses are very uniform, often yellow or red, with white trim on the windows and the roofs. The roads and sidewalks are in great shape, not lined with potholes and cracks like in the U.S., probably because people actually pay the taxes to make sure that the infrastructure is kept well, well-kept.
Swedes may not be as individualistic as Americans, but they have a much, much better grasp of all of the positive nuances that the word "socialism" connotates. No one is allowed to get rich here. If someone does earn more money than another person, the State just takes that much more of it to help pay for schools, hospitals, nursing care for the elderly, to repair the physical infrastructure of towns and cities, and so on. The wealthiest are taxed the most, and even they understand why. It is for the betterment of society. For Swedes, society means solidarity, unity, and they view a progressive, strong 'society' as one where social achievement is made at the expense of the individual, not one where individual achievement is made at the expense of the society. This is the underlying ideology of what is called the Swedish 'model', in any case. Since Sweden is a Western, 'developed' nation, it of course has a free market economy, and thus elements of privitization in the fields of healthcare and education. But they don't believe in privitization of damn near everything like American society does. Americans are all about freedom of choice, even if it cripples them financially, physically, and emotionally. I am not saying I agree entirely with either the 'liberal' American system which is far from liberal, or the more socialist leanings of Sweden. I see negative aspects in both. Capitalism can and very often is heartless, and socialism is very often mindless, but Swedes seemed to have mixed the two together into a relatively humane, healthy system. At least for now. It'll be interesting to see how long it lasts.
Political discussions aside however, I've done some pretty fun stuff recently. Last weekend in the city there was this music festival called PopUp. Basically, it was 8 bands on 2 stages showcasing the best of Swedish indie pop music right now. IT WAS AMAZING!! There was this one band, Detektivbyrån, which sounded a bit like Of Montreal, but without vocals. They used accordions, xylophones, vocal harmonies, synthesizers, moogs, and everything else in the musical spectrum that you can imagine. It sounded like something out of a Wes Anderson film, and I mean that in the best way possible. This one other artist, Markus Krunegård, was really awesome. It was catchy, guitar heavy indie pop with lots of crowd interaction and I absolutely loved it. It's hard for me to describe what 'indie pop' sounds like because it's a pretty diverse genre in the sense that one can really do anything within it, as long as it has a bubbly edge that will catch your ear and make you smile, no matter what your mood. It was really cool to be able to see some real Swedish bands play.
So, lastly, I did something rather fun today. I went to a moose farm!! Haha it sounds a bit ridiculous I know, but this farm actually does exist, about 60 km west of Umeå, so more into the mainland of northern Sweden. I went with a bunch of international students on several buses, and the countryside where the farm is located was actually quite beautiful. There were rolling hills of forest and little patches of farmland with cute little yellow and red houses and cottages. We were able to touch and pet the mooses and take pictures of them. They are really docile creatures, calm and noble in their appearance and movements, but powerful. There was one little infant moose, running around pushing everyone with his head and trying to play. But he could nearly knock us over, he was so strong. It made everyone laugh and scream because sometimes people wouldn't be looking and unexpectedly he'd run up from behind and bump them in the butt. It was a really cool day. So, here are some separately posted pictures of that!
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