I’m in my last new Swedish city, before I leave the country (I’m not really counting Malmö, as I’m only there for an hour and that’s at the train station en route to Berlin).

First of all, a short adventure with the international banking cartel and its local representatives in Sverige. I went to the station to pick up my ticket for the trip from Norrköping to Göteborg bright and early (I generally don’t sleep well if I’ve got an early departure. Monday night was no exception, with a mere two hours shut eye). I strolled up to the ticket counter with a few minutes to spare, having had my card rejected by the electronic machine (buying your ticket with the machine is cheaper, which always pisses me off cause the humans must feel so not-worthy). The card was rejected by their machine. I tried the credit card. No go. With a few minutes to spare, I tried to find a bank machine nearby (no easy task in Norrköping). No go. I call my hosts in Göteborg and explain the situation. It’s not looking good. Next train is in two hours which makes me late for the talk. I’ve got a few minutes to sort this out, so to a cab I go, to hit Norrköping’s bank circuit. Fourth one’s the charm, but I’m forced to grab the later train. I’m not entirely sure what the issue was as I was using both my German and Canadian bank cards and neither worked. Anyway, on to the train and across to Göteborg.

The talk went well, but was sparsely attended. I was glad to try out the new ping pong paper, even with a small dollop of feedback. I’m happy with the way it’s going, so we’ll see how it turns out over the next couple of weeks. A few more interviews and I think it will be ready to go. I’m feeling good about it and I like the idea of making a so-called game that much more significant. I think one or two people actually came to hear the Montreal music scene talk, but they left pleasantly surprised. Someone from one of the Stockholm dailies, who was one of the people hoping to hear about Montreal (the buzz from the Arcade Fire show a couple weeks go is still lingering), was glad to hear about ping pong in Berlin instead, actually. And if I can get the Golden Country Boys more ink, I’m happy to oblige (see Ping Pong Country).

Today I spent soaking up the Swedish sun. It’s been unbelievably bright here (the same for Helsinki by all accounts - well, according to Sirpa and Antti), so those pictures you’re looking at are not lies. Göteborg itself is pleasant enough to wander around, with just enough to do in a day. I spent a couple of hours at the City Museum, where they had an exhibit about turn-of-the-last century Göteborg, which included a series of films shot from the front of a tram in the early twentieth century (which was a global early cinema technique it looks like). Really remarkable footage (it was great to see the young kids running to catch up with the tram as it rattled through the streets. Actually, I’m only assuming it rattled as the film was silent and the narration was in Swedish. Just imagining, that’s all). They also had a small show on Göteborg’s Viking history. Göteborg was Viking Central it turns out. So plenty of runes and, um, ruins spread over three floors. There was also a small exhibit on Göteborg’s role as the short-lived home of the Svenska Ostindiska Companiet (Swedish East India Company), in the late 18th C, which led to too much porcelain in Sweden.

A brief jaunt up some hills and a good view of the city, a wander through Haga (the wooden part of town, which is all quaintified and chock a block with cafés and tourists), and back to the hotel, where I’ll do some work for a bit.

Mac OSX 10.3.8 woes: I’m sure you’ve heard the complaints by Mac users everywhere. The latest upgrade for 10.3 is a bust. I avoided the last one for similar reasons, but I thought I’d install this one as they should have sorted out the issue by now. Not so. For the past month I’ve been trying to figure out all the erratic computer behaviour (the fan that runs even when the computer is asleep; the black screen that greets me when I wake it up; not being able to launch certain applications, but not the same ones; fifteen minute boot times…). Having run some repair programs, defragging a disk, etc., I finally hit a brick wall: now I can’t access my email. I’ve rebuilt the database a number of times, with very unhappy results. So, I might be looking for your email address. Send it to me at: geoffs@cam.org if you’d like a nice, restrained response from me (and don’t worry about those evil email address harvesters/spammers. Word Press has a nice plug-in that obscures email addresses in my posts). I can use webmail for the time being, but that makes me cranky as CAM is not the most trustworthy ISP (they lost all of the mail stored on their servers a couple of months back).

Something suitable from Göteborg for you, in the shape of yet more power pop. Göteborg was, and I guess still is I’m told, a great place for musicmaking, and this is not a bad example: Björn Borg by the Göteborg Sound. Not the best I’ve put up here, but at least it’s “on theme.”

Iso G.

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I’m down to one of my last days in Norrköping. I’ve been slowly packing my things and had every intention of mailing things off today, before I realized that all the shops, including the post office, would be closed due to it being Easter Monday. Of course, I’m leaving before they open again. Sigh. I figure I shouldn’t have pitched my last remaining food either. Me hungry.

A final lecture tomorrow, in Göteborg. This one was supposed to be about the Montreal and Berlin music scenes, but I’m growing weary of the subject now, particularly as it relates to Montreal, and I thought I’d try and bang that ping pong article into something more shapely. It still looks wonky, but there’s nothing like a little fear to make things gel (or maybe that’s just the adrenaline making things look like they make sense). Stay tuned.

The weekend in Stockholm was a good one. Lots of fun with the ACSIS crew and some of their friends. Friday was the big night out, with me getting my act together enough to do some Swede-Mex hybrid cooking. Yup, you read right. I found a good Swedish vegetarian cookbook which had some great recipes. A bit nouvelle cuisine-ish, but the goat-cheese and potato quesadillas, with a more traditional black bean soup, made people very happy. I wish I could have done up some of my Thai food to really impress, but we’ll save that for another visit (and when the price of lemon grass goes down). I’ll settle for their sated smiles.

Helene had just come back from Sydney and she and Kyrre brought over some Laphroaig, which, while Scottish in origin, means “hangover” in Australian, I think. Properly sorted for Scotch, we headed out for the night to Mondo, a club complex in Södermalm. I’m not sure about Swedish clubs, this being the first and only one I’d been to, but there was something strange about the layout. The floor we were on, which was one of a few I’m told, was a small bar attached to a large concert room. The small bar was cramped and had no discernible dance floor. But you can’t stop the dance. We were transfixed by the lanky, lacy lady doing some impossibly “sexy” moves next to us. In Swedish social taxonomy, I’m told this particular species lives mainly in the suburbs, but ventures out on weekends for fun and frolicking.

Saturday was a bit of a blur, save for the trip out to Vasastaden, to have a lovely night out with that part of the ACSIS crew who felt reasonably together by then. And we finished the night with a visit, once again, to Mondo (hey it was near home). I resisted, but was eventually coaxed in, as Ann knew the main MC that night and we could get in gratis. He was doing some rapping over d’n'b, which was just too blisteringly loud for me and the sound system too as it shut down after 5 minutes. I wanted to engage Linda, a friend of Ann’s, in a bit more of a debate about the virtues of house over d’n'b, but the silence cut that short. We’ll continue it another day I hope, but I know and you know that house and all its permutations wins for sheer dance pleasure. The smaller room was the better room that night. It was some hip-hop and a touch of ragga which got the place hopping. No one was not dancing.

I took a bit of time out to do some tiny, tiny record shopping at Pet Sounds, which is in SoFo. Someone had dumped a massive, massive Elvis collection off. I was looking for some of his country records and I found two of them for mere pennies. And the clerk was nice enough to recommend some Swedish electropop, for which I’m grateful. And you should be, too. From Ada, and their album, Blondie, here’s their cover of Everything But the Girl’s “Each and Everyone,” which has always been a favourite from their early years.

Iso G.

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A brief jaunt up to Stockholm for the Easter Weekend (”Påsk” in Swedish), before I head out to Göteborg for my last guest lecture in Sweden. They seem keen on observing Good Friday here, so my trip around town tomorrow will be restricted to the sidewalk from what I can tell. But the evening promises party goodness. Or some I’m told.

I’m staying at Johan and Hillevi’s apartment in Södermalm. It’s a nice, quiet place and they’ve dotted it with handy post-it notes (”Don’t pull the blind all the way down. Leave about 20cm from the bottom” On the blind of course. It’s like my own little Easter Egg hunt.). But I’ve access to a full kitchen here, so I’ve indulged myself at the local specialty shop and got some fresh pesto and pasta. And I’m savouring the sweet, lovely bitterness of chinotto.

I’m writing, though, to put two little holiday moments together: one pagan, the other Christian (with vague pagan overtones), both involving witches.

Moment one: After a few weeks in Berlin, in my place in Prenzlauerberg, barely moved in, it was time for Hallowe’en. Most of you probably know it really doesn’t have much of a profile outside of North America, or at least it doesn’t take place on the same scale (the same can be said for Valentine’s Day as well). That’s slowly changing (same for VD). I had just settled down to a meal at my new place when the buzzer rang. I was a little hesitant to answer as my German was non-existent (it’s not much better now, but I think I can follow certain conversations). I had completely forgotten it was Hallowe’en, in part because there were absolutely no signs it was going to happen (no party posters, no stores decked out in naff costumes), and in part due to my living on St. Laurent in Montreal, where you never got kids coming by looking for candy (just junkies on days other than Hallowe’en. See below for break-in mention). I was also afraid to open the door because only a week earlier, two weeks after arriving in Berlin, and after a confusing “conversation” which consisted of me making furiously grand hand signals regarding where a neighbour’s parcel should go, I had been told by the Deutsche postwoman to “Learn Deutsche, Scheize!”. Sucking up my pride, I opened the door, only to be surprised by three young boys, dressed as cowboys, who promptly broke into the German Hallowe’en song, whatever that is. I smiled, horrified at the thought that I had nothing to give them. Thinking, grinning, thinking, grinning. Telling their mother I don’t speak German, the crestfallen boys were about to leave when I realized I did have candy. Right, then, back to my sweet tooth: I have a thing for Finnish salmiakki, which is salted licorice with a twist. It’s flavoured with ammonium chloride, which gives it an extra punch. I’m fond of the boxes, too, which please my Finno-design fetish. So I had a batch, which being selfish, I was hesitant to give up. But I did. Only later did I realize that to the untrained, unassuming, sugar-seeking, palate, this probably tasted like poison.

Moment Two: Moment One was brought back to me tonight, when the doorbell rang. I thought I might have had CNN Europe up too loud and that the Aussie announcer hammering on about the Wacko Jacko trial might have been too much for the neighbour (hell, it was too much for me). I hesitated again. I opened the door (which is a complicated four-lock affair, with a gate) and lo and behold, another trinity of young children, this time done up as mice and cats. I certainly have no Swedish to muster up on the spot, so I smiled and somewhat nervously explained that I was housesitting for Johan and Hillevi. Thankfully one of them spoke English and understood what I was saying. They handed me a home-made card and I think I was expected to give them something in return. This time, nothing at hand. Sheepish grinning, no thinking. And what would a Swedish child want with Finnish licorice anyway? (From what I now know, they were meant to be the Eastser Hags, which is part of an old Swedish superstition involving witches flying off to the imaginary Blåkulla on the Thursday before Easter weekend, to do their dirty deeds with the devil. The modern result is that children in costume, dressed like those legendary hags - or mice or cats, from what I could tell, give a neighbour an Easter letter, in the hopes that they’ll get a treat in return. Sorry they lost out with me. Doing my best to play the part of Euro-Grinch. )

Next time the bell rings, I’m staying put. Although that might be one less blog entry, when I think about it.

I found a great comp. of Swedish girl groups from 1960-1999. It’s full of some solid music, most of it in Swedish, some of it female hair metal. Here are two bands who sound somewhat like their Anglo sisters (you guess which ones), but different enough: Elegi and Fega Påhopp.

Iso G.

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I like to look at that calendar on the right there and be reminded of the last time I posted something. Nearly a week since I chimed in on things Swedish. By the look of things, I’m averaging a post nearly every five days or so, which seems a healthy approach to this blogging thing.

I fine-tuned the site a bit on the weekend, and added a new header up top. I went with black this time as I couldn’t match various colours very well. I hope you can still read it.

I spent a quiet weekend just puttering around Norrköping, but managed to get in my last Saturday night out in town. Andreas had told me about a pub nearby which catered to “older” university students. They hardly broke twenty eight, it seemed to me. I also got to experience the breakdown in Swedish social etiquette, which was explained to me as Swedes being all shy and reserved when sober, but becoming arrogant and pushy when drunk. As I had just re-twisted my ankle, I wasn’t up for any pitched battle for elbow room, so after a very expensive scotch, I ambled home, up the icy hills.

Sunday, Keith and I were invited to dinner and a tour of the area around Norrköping. That included a trip to Söderköping, which as you might well guess, is south of Norrköping. Söderköping was the summer getaway place for the wealthy Swedish industrialists in the 19th and early 20th century (”-köping” means “market,” by the way). The place where I’m staying in Norrköping is next to the neighbourhood where they built their estates (modest estates, that is). Söderköping is beautifully set on the Göta Canal, which runs right through Sweden (it was built, unfortunately, at just about the same time that the national railway line was, so it became less crucial to trade and more important for travel, which is its primary function today). It no doubt looks more remarkable when it’s warm and green out.

While walking along the frozen canal, conversation inevitably turned to Canada. Now one subject which has come up repeatedly in Sweden, Finland and Germany has been multiculturalism. If there’s one thing that fascinates Europeans, it’s the perception that Canada has a phenomenal ethnic diversity that “works.” The northern Europeans seem particularly hung up on the subject. This, I suspect, has to do with the various restrictions on immigration found in each country. Germany’s immigration policies are quite undefined in fact, and there’s a belief that Finland’s are the most restrictive in the EU (which is the Swedish view, although immigrants do in fact make up less than 2% of the population in Finland). Sweden’s policies are much laxer in comparison, but that doesn’t necessarily make it the chosen destination for immigrants (it was favoured by Greeks in the 60s and 70s, where it was seen as socially progressive. This is evident even in Norrköping, where there are a dozen Greek restaurants). Both Finland and Sweden saw their immigrant population swell in the 70s, 80s and 90s, as political refugees sought asylum (more preferring to settle in Sweden, but many, including Chileans, Vietnamese, Somalis, Iraqis, Turks and Yugoslavs, chose Finland). In Finland, that rapid influx of immigrants has led to a number of national debates (this process of immigration was meant in a way to counter the massive out-migration that was occuring during much of the twentieth century), which I think explains why Canada’s “social experiment” looms large in the Finnish national imaginary.

This discussion soon turned to distinctions between the US and Canada, particularly why each is perceived to be so different. I can pretty much sense where any conversation which begins this way is going to head: straight to Bowling for Columbine, and “that scene.” The moment I hear the title, I know exactly what comes next. In fact, I’ve finished the sentence three times alone in Sweden. I find it so curious that this is the scene which really stands out for them (though, that does seem to be its point in the film). It is true that I rarely locked my door in Montreal, while at home at my place on St. Laurent. Of course, I was robbed twice while I slept or showered upstairs, so that broke that habit. But it seems to be the one cliché which is pan-European. Apparently, this used to be the case in Sweden, but no more. After reading my first Hanning Mankell novel, I can see that even rural life has been marked now by its own imagery of violence and crime, so that explains that change.

I’m slowly getting myself ready to leave Sweden. It’s about ten days off but I’m going to Stockholm on the weekend and then to Göteborg for a lecture next Tuesday, then back to Stockholm, then back to Norrköping then to Malmö for the planned train trip to Berlin. “Planned” because I haven’t bought my ticket yet. You may recall that Germania Express neglected to tell me that they don’t fly on the date I had actually paid for. After much furious faxing and emailing, I decided I would take the paltry refund (less than half of what I paid, and the bastards made me pay the bank transfer fee) and put that towards another ticket. Unfortunately, by that time one-way tickets to Berlin were upwards of 6oo Euro. So I thought perhaps the train might be the best route. Should be an interesting trip, not least because I have to get from Stockholm to Norrköping to Malmö in one day. All told, that’s about eighteen hours of rail travel. I’ll be feeling that, in part because I can’t sleep on moving vehicles. Unless I’m driving.

The thought of hitting the road again, and doing it via a long rail trip through winter landscapes, reminded me of a trip to Moose Factory I had made as a child on the Polar Bear Express. My friend Remco had recently done the same trip and found this song on a little 7-inch at a souvenir shop. Listen and shiver with glee.

Iso G.

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I’m trying to figure out my blog layout so it ceases to look like shit on Firefox and IE. Looks great to my eyes on Safari, but once you open it in other browsers, hacks/plug-ins, graphics, fonts, and colours all fall to pieces. So much for my desired subtlety.

Gave a lecture in Norrköping on Tuesday which went well. I and Keith Kahn-Harris, also a visiting post-doc here, did our scene thing, which proved to complement each other very neatly. We’ll have to agree to disagree on many things, however, which is probably a good way to keep the debate alive. No doubt we’ll be having this conversation again.

I spent yesterday in Karlstad, soaking up another Swedish city (well it was damp). Karlstad was a pleasant enough experience, but I really didn’t have time to get a feel for it, which is unfortunate. The people who organized the talk (Robert, Vanessa and Karin) were great hosts and made everything come together very smoothly. The lecture was well received and I had some good questions, some of which slid into Montreal anecdotes (even a Cirque de Soleil question!), but I’m okay with that. I also got to play Rational Youth, who, I found out some years ago, had an afterlife in Sweden. Tracey, the singer/songwriter, spent a few years here, working and living. No hits that anyone could name, but a useful bit of trivia given the circumstance.

It was good to talk to Robert over a few beers, an ex-pat Canadian, and get a sense of his time here in Sweden (and Scandavia generally). Perhaps some possible project connections in the future? From what both he and some of the students said, the department is currently undergoing some faculty shuffling, so there was a little bit of anxiety in the air. One day I’ll tell you dire second-hand stories about academic life in Finland and Germany, which might put these minor organizational adjustments into better perspective. Sad but true, all of them.

I also managed to squeeze in a quick visit to the Värmlands Museum, which had a tiny exhibit on Swedish modern art. Lots of landscapes, as you can imagine, even for modern art.

I’m enjoying Swedish Rail on these brief jaunts, which is as efficient as one might expect (most of the time - a little snow, of which there’s been plenty lately, and things get out of whack soon enough). I’m grateful for most of my easygoing treks on European railways and I’ll gladly join the chorus of North Americans who will sing their praises. (Of course, that’s not forgetting the continuing saga of British Rail, the sad story of the little engines that couldn’t, and which is not really a part of European rail after all so hardly worth mentioning. My favourite joke regarding Prince Harry’s donning of the swastika at a party a few months back? At least now maybe the trains will run on time.) I’ve spent a bit too much time idling in Stockholm Central, though, which lacks the grandeur or charm of other European, or even North American, big city rail stations. I quite like the layout of Helsinki station, in contrast, as you can see all the trains coming and going, with the all the rail lines abutting the station platform in neat, orderlt fashion. Looked at from that vantage point, the lines appear to trail off into infinity, which seems like an appropriately romantic hangover from rail’s early promise of conquering space and time. Sometimes you just miss the drama of transport.

Stockholm Central is more labyrinthine, chaotic, and grey-toned, with an unmistakable air of drab functionality. On the one hand, it clearly has no aspirations to serve as a shrine to the glories of rail travel (it has the look and feel of a bus terminal, actually). On the other hand, it’s much larger than Helsinki Station and can therefore easily accommodate, in fact encourage, the kind of ad hoc social life you might find at malls elsewhere. There are plenty of roving tribes of young people and they make up much of the ambient noise of the place, which adds a coat of energetic conviviality to its layers of blandness. At the very least, this takes your mind off the grounded pigeons and crippled birds with their gnarled feet and broken wings.

In keeping with the oddball winter weather all across Europe, here’s a quiet seasonal piece from Isan, “Snowdrops and Flox.”. And because I’m the boss here, a dose of Can Con, in the wintry shape of Hank Snow and “Snowbird.”

Iso G.

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I put the posts on hold for a few days as I was heading over to Helsinki to surprise Sirpa as well as DJ at a friend’s dissertation party. I didn’t want to give anything away.

It was a great trip, but not without incident. First off, on the way to the railway station (the ride from Norrköping to Stockholm is just over an hour), I managed to sprain my ankle, in painful irony, getting out of the way of a guy on crutches. Next was losing my ticket for the express train to the airport, having to pay for it again, finding my receipt, which had slipped between the seat cushion in the same way I can imagine my ticket did, and trying to use that to prove I bought it and being told I couldn’t. Final mistake was grabbing my camera to try and get some nice images from the plane, where I was sitting in a prime location, just ahead of the wing, and it was a glorious sunny day, only to realize my battery was dead.

So that trifecta of insult and injury out of the way in swift succession, my daypass from fate in hand, I was in the clear and ready to start the surprise visit, albeit with a limp.

I managed, with Antti and Vivi’s help, to pretty much keep my trip a secret. Sirpa was indeed surprised as it was just about the last thing she was expecting (although with her active imagination, she had thought it a distinct possibility). We celebrated our reunion as we often do, with a good meal. I can say, without reservation, that Helsinki has provided me with the best vegetarian meals I’ve ever had. That’s probably a surprise to most people, but it’s a very simple and delicious fact. While there are plenty of game meats prepared in umpteenth ways there, they haven’t limited their options when it comes to kasvisruoka (vegetarian) meals. So we began our weekend in great culinary style, at one of Helsinki’s little bistros (okay, the food wasn’t amazing, but we had the place to ourselves and they did a nice ratatouille w/sesame-coated tofu and fresh asparagus. Sirpa did the fish thing, which was more than passable by her reckoning).

Friday was spent with me heading to my favourite DVD shop in Kallio, the working class area of Helsinki (and one of Sirpa’s former haunts). It’s really an amazing place and you can find all sorts of rare Russian schlock (Soviet disaster movies!) and the odd Finnish gem, which, if you’re lucky, has subtitles. I bought a few bios of Finnish pop stars (Badding, Irwin Goodman) and a few other B-movie gems.

Sirpa attended the dissertation defense, which seemed to go off without a hitch. I hope to see an English one in the late Spring (I missed this one because the content would have been lost on me, and as they can run for up to three hours, I decided my time was better spent getting ready for the evening’s danceathon, which is just a nice way to say “record shopping”).

From what I’ve heard, the whole affair is very formal and quite old school, and thus very different from the North American/Anglo version of things. But the difference starts prior to the defense. Before you can properly defend, you have to have your dissertation published. This can be quite an ordeal; that is, finding a publisher, deciding the layout, etc. And it certainly puts a spin on the typical NA defense, which now seems like a pre-editorial meeting, where what your dissertation should look like as a book is often the (barely concealed) subtext of the defense. (I’m taking note of the different kinds of, and approaches to, professionalization in both contexts)

The actual defense begins much like it would in NA, with a short introduction from the defendant. There are three people present: the defendant, the opponent and a representative of the university (much like a pro-dean, in this case it was the vice-rector - who can really dance up a storm, it turns out). Let me clarify that: there are more than three people present as this is a proper public event. All Ph.D defenses are advertised in Helsingin Sanomat, the city paper, and anyone interested is welcome to attend. The audience can therefore be quite big, up to 200 people apparently.

After that brief intro, the opponent can begin to ask questions, which can take any form, literally. Now, from Sirpa and others, I’ve heard some horror stories about how the opponent might choose to use this forum as a way to vent some sort of personal vendetta against a discipline or an individual (and I can see, then, the advantage of having a committee, where the wonky questions can be balanced out by more reasonable ones and personality conflicts can be better kept in check). Vivi’s, by all accounts, went very smoothly. I’m hoping I can report back with a better sense of things from the front lines in June.

Friday night was the big dance party, Club Defense, which took place in a very nice wine cellar in the centre of Helsinki. But not before a good dose of Finnish post-defense social protocol, meaning more speeches. They really do love to talk, those Finns (contrary to any stereotype you might have heard about their taciturn nature). While listening to what at times sounded like Finnish rambling (which indeed it was, I found out later), I was busy trying to read the cues which might indicate they were heading for a conclusion, but to no avail. I just had to keep drinking to speed the proceedings up (thanks to Antti and Vivi for the free wine). Once those ended, we got down to a little electro, some old favourites (international, the 80s were), and a generous helping of Finnish pop (with just a hint of schlager to keep the wrinklies happy). The evening was a success and Vivi got the party she deserved.

Saturday both Sirpa and I did our penance for the previous night’s debauchery, so things got off to a slow start. I’ve introduced Sirpa to the joys of grilled cheese and fried potatoes as a hangover helper, so once we dragged ourselves out of bed, I got to cooking. Later we went our separate ways, as I headed to meet my friend and former colleague, Janne, at the Helsinki Railway Pullman Bar, where he returned my Kids in the Hall DVD set. He liked what he saw, and was particularly fond of the Head Crusher. Just doing my bit to still play the ambassador of all things Canuck (actually I used the DVD for my course on Canadian Cultural Studies at the University of Helsinki, where to my surprise, the students really laughed at the Kids’ skits).

Sirpa and I then headed to our favourite restaurant, Elite (seen above), which is thankfully just around the corner from the apartment. Dinner is just a pretext for dessert here, but the dinners are usually winners, so we’ll suffer through them gladly. I’m fond of this place for its decor (it was built in 1932 and has a very Deco flare) as well its social ambience. It’s very popular with Helsinki’s cultural elite (you can see actors and directors here, as well as university rectors, pop singers, etc.), and while it edges towards the upper reaches of “moderately priced,” it still avoids having the air of exclusivity (which distinguishes it from our Thursday night choice). You can see plenty of scruffy young people too, just out for a drink or a dessert. It really strikes me as a uniquely charming place in Helsinki. I think it also gives some insight into Finnish celebrity culture, whereby well-known stars have no trouble mingling in public places, “keepin’ it real,” in other words. Stars remain firmly embedded in the quotidian, and don’t really seem to cultivate that celebrity aura which might otherwise lift them out of the everyday (that’s not true for everyone of course, but it does seem to be the norm and not the exception). I don’t think it’s really tolerated, in fact. Sort of a Finnish, domesticated, version of Australia’s “tall poppy syndrome.”

We rounded out our Deco-flavoured dinner with a visit on Sunday to the Design Museum, which had a show on Art Deco, with plenty of Finnish examples (Saarinen, anyone?). I used to be quite fond of Deco, but I think I’ve tired of much of it as of late, preferring only some examples of industrial design and a few armoirs here and there. I have become a bit of a Finno-phile when it comes to design though, having acquired a few Marimekko shirts and a small collection of Iittala glasses and mugs.

And then my return, which was a tedious nine hours of transit time. A one-hour flight delay, complete with screaming child behind me, a comedy of errors which involved trying to put a curtain up between business and economy class, which delayed us for another twenty minutes (there were only two people in business class) and gave me a case of air rage before we were even in the air, a snowstorm in Stockholm, a missed train connection (due to the late flight), and a mistake by a Swedish rail employee that put me on the longest possible route to Norrköping, got me back here at 12:45, tired and hungry.

It’s good to be back. Now to work on tomorrow and Wednesday’s lectures.

Musically, the night was all over the place, but I had to play something with a little local flavour (and I stress “local”). Here’s Eini and her version of a disco classic, which went down quite well.

Iso G.

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If you received any email from me last autumn/winter, there was a good chance at least one of them was sent to you from the Automaten Bar. A small, non-descript, place at the junction of Alte Schönhauser Str. and Weinmeister Str., the Automaten Bar existed for approximately three years, closing in the Fall of 2004. Not unlike a number of the places I’ve described here, it was yet another place where one could become a member by paying a small fee. For about 35 Euros/yr, you got 24/7 high-speed or wireless access (now, consider that having high-speed access at home runs you anywhere between 40-60 Euros/mth, and you can see the appeal).

Using a swipecard you gained access to a tiny crevice of place, where you might be the only person or one of a dozen (which was about its maximum capacity). Once inside, you’d find one wall of vending machines for which you had to get a separate currency (which came courtesy a change machine - which is more than you’ll see in any laundromat here). From there, you had your choice of beer, soft drinks, bootleg CDs, art projects, etc. (I preferred the salty sesame sticks and the Club Maté, an energy soda flavoured with good does of maté - I have my friend Colin S. to thank for introducing me to the maté ritual).

On the other wall, you’d seek a bar with stools, which allowed you to perch behind the two-way mirror from where you could see out but no one could see in. The place itself was wired with webcams inside, and out, so you could watch you and your fellow surfers, or you could be watched remotely through the Automaten Bar website, or you could watch the pedestrian traffic outside. It was all about surfing: the net, the street, other people, yourself. It was a very clever, unselfconscious, recursive, feedback loop of specular and social pleasures. Or, at least, that’s what I got out of it.

On a typical day, it was populated by web and/or graphic designers, musicians, programmers, video artists, and tourists (you could get in just by knocking, although this was not officically encouraged). That they were designers or musicians was borne out by the wall of apple-pulsating G4s you inevitably confronted each time you came in (gender-wise, it was mainly boys, but there were a good number of women who hung out there, too). There were regulars and there were passersby, and the two mixed occasionally. It was always curious to watch two laptop musos feel each other out, to figure out their place in Berlin’s Great Chain of Being (”Hey you’re doing something with Shitkatapult? Do you know so-and-so?” — the accent was often American).

Wednesday nights were usually reserved for performances. Not just music, but video shows, lectures, all loosely curated, but thoughtful and usually worth sitting in on. You were also allowed to plug into the sound system and play your own music (I was once subjected to minor abuse by a member of the collective who ran it, as I was playing a Japanese verison of Michael Jackson’s “ABC.” “Please play electronic music only,” he admonished).

In the few conversations I had with people associated with the Automaten, it was apparent this was yet another important node in Berlin’s local/global network (in fact, some of the people who set it up were affiliated with another important network, a group of anarchic open-sourcers and radio fiends called Bootlab, which had lately been headquartered in the old pneumatic mail–Rohrpost–building - which if you need to know was part of a network of pneumatic delivery that existed up until 1976. More here). It was a resource on many levels, not the least of which was finding out where some good work or projects might be had, a watering hole (where you could find decent coffee, beer and always Club Maté), and a place to crash (there was one guy who seemed to be spending many summer nights there). In terms of working, a number of the people who frequented the Automaten Bar were living from contract to contract, multi-tasking their way towards something resembling a “flexible career,” so this was one place where you could not only renew friendships but also search for job prospects (Angela McRobbie might call this a version of “incubation”), and thereby build up the network and at the same time affirm its continuing usefulness as one solution to Berlin’s chronic employment problems (I would add to McRobbie’s terminology, then, “insulation”).

If post-War/Wall Berlin was a city of fragments, it is clear that much has been done to transform it into a city of bits, strung together through what Andreas Wittel calls “network sociality.” Again, I don’ t want to let a hard-to-resist turn-of-phrase give a false impression. Berlin is not a cutting edge cyber city, although it does have aspirations to be something along those lines. The various infrastructures needed to make this possible seem to be working against one another, or maturing at very different rates (you’ve got a well-developed soft/social infrastructure, but the hard/material infrastructures seem held together by spit and bubblegum, and are only being haltingly upgraded). The rhetoric and reality remain two distinct realms which broach one another only occasionally. What is interesting, or most compelling from my point of view, about this transformation in Berlin is the way in which the spirit of communalism (so much a part of Berlin’s pre- and post-Wall social life) and individualism (now a much more visible social fact - just wander through Mitte and portions of Prenzlauerberg and you’ll see evidence of it everywhere) fit side by side, in that uneasy union of DIY ethos and neo-liberal, laissez-faire entrepreneurialism which has been such a centrepiece of post-Wall Berlin. Automaten Bar, and those that fraternized there, showed up that ambivalence in provocative ways.

Nowadays, it’s an underwear shop.

I’m going to be a bit cheeky with the music today and go a somewhat obvious route, but here are two I like. And at least they’re electronic: 1, 2.

Iso G.

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A shortie today (well, I never know once I start writing).

I’ve been out of Montreal for almost two years now and I’ve been noticing some curious changes to my everyday speech. This is quite interesting because I spend so much of my time alone in whatever place I happen to be, where I’m often immersed in languages other than English. Sometimes I treat them like white noise, that kind of sound which actually allows you to withdraw into your own space a little more, to concentrate without the distraction of hearing small talk, carving out an inward-directed nook for contemplation (or even intimate conversation) in the dense thicket of ambient sounds. Like you do in a café, for example. That’s not a bad thing. In fact, I rather enjoy the sense of solitude and, in a way, the privacy that being in a foreign public place can sometimes impose.

When I do talk to people, I’m aware that I’m developing something called Euro-English (not my term). It seems that this affects native English speakers who spend alot of time in non-English speaking contexts. I’ve been in Berlin, where a passing knowledge of German has allowed me to sometimes follow a conversation but rarely enter it. I was in Helsinki in the Fall, where I did about three weeks of Finnish lessons before I had to give them up (a combination of them overlapping with work and my impatience with starting from ground zero). Of course, having a Finnish girlfriend helps and it’s amazing what you can pick up from subtitled TV. Now I’m in Sweden, where my cursory knowledge of German has allowed me some glimpses into its not-so-distant linguistic cousin. I’m not here long enough to pick up anything other than a few words like the basic pleasantries. I can’t really do restaurant-Swedish the same way I can do restaurant-German. But I have tried restaurant-Finnish, much to Sirpa’s delight. And I should say that Sirpa is a wonderful and patient language teacher. She’s always impressed with the fact that I have an uncanny knack for being able to spell just about any Finnish word I hear. In part because Finnish is so phonetic and I’ve concentrated so hard on the different sounds of “ä” and “ö” and “y” as well as how to move my mouth, tongue and jaw properly. (What I’ve always loved about speaking the paltry Finnish I can speak is how it feels in my mouth.)

But this is not about learning a language. It’s more about the changes in your everyday speech. Those moments of parole where you clearly sense you’re deviating from the langue, where rule and utterance don’t jive and you know it. It’s not like I’m losing my English; rather, it’s just being modified, quietly and incremently, but it’s becoming audible to me. I think because I find myself in academic settings, the majority of the people I’m socializing with are quite comfortable with English. But you have a tendency not to speak in that shorthand kind of way. Literally, contractions have disappeared from my spoken English and my prepositions have been, well, rearranged (this is just one of those viral errors you pick up casually from hearing Finnish, where preopositions are often translated differently. It’s not unlike that moment when you realized you’re picking up your students’ grammatical tics). And my beloved “Eh” has been gathering dust in the recesses of my speech palette as of late (I do like to truck it out in those moments where I feel it appropriate to perform my Canadian-ness).

I like being self-conscious about language, particularly such a hegemonic one as English. What an anglo might otherwise take to be quite irritating, that is the interrupted flow of second-nature speech, can actually prompt a temporary form of self-othering, which makes you more aware of your difference and gives you a slight, and I emphasize the word “slight,” sense of what non-English speakers have to deal with in a foreign language context.

A song, then, about language. More powerpop to the people.

Iso G.

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I’ve been trying to get some writing done the last few days, which has meant silence on the blog. Much of my energy has been focused on turning my ping pong thoughts into something more substantial. Writing never comes easily to me (I always think I overwrite), but blogging keeps things flowing, which is a good thing. It’s like calisthenics for me. Helps me limber up. I don’t think I’m alone in this. I’m looking forward to getting back to Berlin and doing some proper interviews about ping pong. And playing some ping pong myself. And drinking some German beer. And eating some German bread. And worrying about my waistline (I had an American friend who tried out the Atkins diet while in Berlin. You’d do well with just eating meat there of course, but cutting out what are Germany’s two best home-grown treats seems more like self-imposed torture. It didn’t last long).

I’ve been pondering the nature of Finnish/Swedish relations a little bit, in part through conversations with Johan and Sirpa, who of course, are team captains in my little Scandic-Nordic world. The image above just about says it all: that’s a table hockey game, with Sweden versus Finland. This is found in the ACSIS lounge. I had to ask one of the graduate students here (a Norwegian) about the choice of teams. He said this is what he grew up with (in Norway?), the great Nordic rivals. Someone else chimed in and said, of course, that in the 50s and 60s, it was the Soviets. And in the 70s? Canada.

The Finland versus Sweden debate is usually revived by me at various points. It was more an issue in Finland, of course, which puts it in line with other kinds of “national identity as negative relation” (Canada versus US, New Zealand versus Australia), where the country living in the shadow has to do all the anxious work of constructing difference from the position of the subordinate. And this is always a point of ironized pride. Of course, the issue of national identity, as it appeared to me as an outsider with only a cursory sense of history, is a complex beast in Finland. Given its geopolitics, that’s understandable. Unlike Canada or New Zealand, though, they have the advantage of a distinct language which makes national differentiation much easier (you know the drill here: Finnish is part of the Finno-Ugric family of languages; Swedish is North Germanic. Finnish has absorbed both German and Swedish into its vocabulary of course, which has to do with the influence on industry and culture that each had respectively). When it comes to culture and representations of Finnishness, that’s a bit trickier (Finland is of course an officially bilingual country: Finnish and Swedish. The Swedish population is just over 5% of Finland, many of them living near the country’s Western border — and where have we heard that kind of number before?).

Notably, the perceptions (read: stereotypes) that Finns and Swedes have about one another are curious indeed. A typical Swedish stereotype is that all the rummies in Stockholm are Finnish. A Finnish stereotype is that all Swedish men are gay. But what I’ve discovered, purely by accident, is that they share one self-image which is a point of national pride: their “inferiority complex,” their “averageness,” their “shyness.” Of course, the Finns that I’ve talked to are always a little surprised that the Swedes have this view of themselves, but it’s there nonetheless.

I’m thinking about this for a number of reasons:

– Sirpa’s visit to Stockholm necessarily brings these things to the forefront. There’s nothing like a personal connection to place the issue of national difference into the everyday.

– a recent story about how, during the Cold War, the Swedish gov’t was going to secretly place mines in Finnish territorial waters to act as a buffer between themselves and the Soviet Union (the belief being that the Finns were not strong enough to fend off an attack and/or that the Finnish gov’t was in bed with the Soviets and therefore had to be kept in the dark about it).

– it seems that Hollywood is getting in on making the Winter War (between Finland and the Soviets in 1939-1940) a proper cinematic spectacle. The packaging and commodifying of what is already a national myth for a global audience.

– a talk at ACSIS this week about industrial design and why this year is chosen as the year of design in Sweden. I noted that the Finns seem to be so much better at marketing their industrial design as a new national tradition (just walk down the commercial strip Esplanadi in Helsinki, lined as it is with Marimekko and Iittala shops - it’s Design Alley, really). Of course, the Swedes have Ikea, which, even though it is mass-produced “Swedishness,” has a totally different connotation of quality and affordability in Europe than it does in North America.

– the tendency for both Swedes and Finns to describe, in English, many things as “boring” (i.e.: “this snow is boring”). The Swedish word is tråkigt; the Finnish is tylsä. I’m rather fond of their translation and I like that they use both use it. Snow can indeed be boring.

– a few weeks ago, I was on one my anthropological digs in the local video shop when I came across the recently-released Muppets Show DVD. The figure front and centre on the box? The Swedish Chef, of course. Now, they subtitle their foreign films and tv here, so I’m curious how exactly that phrase we uttered so often as kids, “orshky borshky,” comes across. I’m almost tempted to buy it. (I like these kinds of issues - in Germany, where they dub their films, one can ask how Marlene Dietrich’s exotic “German-ness” might be conveyed in her Hollywood-era films.)

Coming from Canada, where the issue of national idenity is our identity, it’s been refreshing to see how this plays out in other contexts.

As a nod to cross-cultural connections, here’s a version of, well, you’ll know the song. This is done by Lasse Martenson, a Finnish-Swede, or a Swedish-Finn. Never sure of the order.

Iso G.

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