Geoff Stahl
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.