Sunday Morning Yellow Sky

This is what Sundays should be like. Exploring an open-air flea market and discovering hidden, inexpensive treasures. Stuffing your face at a munchy brunch buffet. Going for a long walk out in the fresh, windy weather. Coming home to take a bubble bath and enjoy a delicious meal your significant other made you. Perfection!





During my walk, I had a less pleasant experience. When I'm out walking, I usually go where my nose is pointing. It's a great way to discover new places. But today, I suddenly found myself in a rather shady neighbourhood. The buildings were ugly, there was garbage on the streets (and we're talking Sweden here - there's no garbage on the streets). I should have realised I was heading in the wrong direction when I saw a fence with nails on top of it, five centimeters from each other, covering the whole top of the fence. And sign after sign with the text "neighbours against crime". Nothing happened to me, but I felt highly uncomfortable, and I could feel some hostile looks on me. It was one of those places where you can just smell the hopelessness, despair and hatred.

I guess I was faced with the other side of the "folkhem", and reminded that despite the pretty parks and such, this is a big city with the problems of a big city. And of course Malmö is world-famous for social problems in certain areas, often associated with immigration. But as I got out of the shady area, I soon arrived at Möllevången (which I stubbornly misspelled in my last post) and realised something. Möllan is an immigrant district, with lots of foreigners and exotic stores. But it's also one of the liveliest, most exciting areas in Malmö. The atmosphere there is very friendly, I've never felt threatened of uncomfortable there. It feels like the immigrants and original population have blended and formed a genuine community. It was clearly visible during the Möllevångfestival, and I heard that that's what the festival was actually founded for - learning to know each other by partying together, basically. Sounds like a brilliant concept! It would be great to see more initiatives like that, in Finland as well. Embracing diversity instead of fearing it.

Speaking of fear, I'm so hooked on Lost again I can't believe it. Before coming to Sweden, I was watching season 5. Allan has never really watched the series, so together we started watching from the beginning. I thought it might be boring, but it's almost just as exciting, and it's fascinating to look for stuff I didn't get on the first round. Lost is some great storytelling!

So let's push play. Bye.

-Karoliina

There Goes the Neighbourhood

Yay, weekend! And a great way to start it was Möllevågnsfestivalen, a festival "from the people, to the people". It takes place in the district of Möllevågnen, a very colourful and lively district with lots of exotic little shops and cool cafés and restaurants. Yes, it's what some might refer to as "multicultural", but in the bestest way.

From what I've gathered, the festival is run and organized by volunteers, and anybody can participate. There's performances of all sorts, street markets, yard sales, free yoga lessons, a wonderful mix of everything the district has to offer. I read about a fashion show by local designers, and at the street market you could buy unique clothing, jewelry etc. made by people living in Möllevågnen, or Möllan like it's usually called. When I was checking their website earlier, I noticed there was a "wish list", a list of smaller and bigger stuff they hoped people would donate or borrow to make the festival possible. So it really is from the people!

At the counter of the restaurant where we ate, I saw a piece of paper asking people to sign up for volunteering at the festival. There was one name, with no phone number or adress, and in the "what would you like to do" column they'd written "have fun, get drunk". But I suppose that's a one-off, since the festival seemed pretty big and well-organized.

They advertise these as best pizza in town. Hell yeah!

I bought these at the street market, at the incredibly
pretty booth you can see above.

This is some actual street culture, all the people coming together to offer each other a unique experience. Walking by a booth after booth of the most imaginative creations, looking at the colourful mix of people, I kept wondering if something like this would be possible in Finland. Claiming the streets for two days, turning a part of a city into a festival. Would be worth trying, anyway!

Now that I got started on posting pretty pictures, I might as well post a few from last weekend. On Saturday, me and Allan visited my colleague from work. The evening started with a great dinner and ended, well, after maaany glasses of wine, champagne, beer and, to make sure we go overboard, whisky. But let's not get into that, let's look at the pretty table Sari-Anna made instead.



On Sunday, after some very painful and hungover cooking and cleaning, we had our Icelandic friends over for tortillas. How grown-up is that?! Instead of watching MTV munching chips and dip, we were making our own guacamole. Oh but trust me, we've had those other types of Sundays as well.


I don't know if Monday is becoming a movie night or something, last week we went to see Sex and the City 2, and this Monday we saw When you're strange, a documentary about The Doors. It was pretty entertaining, loads of archive material - and Johnny Depp as the narrator! Still, it didn't really offer anything new, and I felt like there wasn't much depth to it. But there are worse ways to spend a Monday night than looking at Jim Morrison and listening to Johnny Depp's voice for 90 minutes, so I'm not complaining.


Today, I have precisely one month left of my time here. It seems way too little, and thinking of my departure is just breaking my heart. But then again, a month is a long time, and last winter me and Allan would have given anything to spend a month together. So instead of mourning about my time running out, I should enjoy it.

...

In fact, I think I'll turn off the computer and do just that.

-Karoliina

In the land of smørrebrød

Man it's hot. Absolutely suffocating. I do like summer, but this endless heat seems to drain all my energy. And it's really been record-breaking hot, in the neighbouring city Lund they measured the highest temperature since 1753. But I suppose I have to try and enjoy it while I can...

And so we spent last weekend in equally hot Denmark. It was a great trip, I got to meet Allan's mother as well as one of his oldest and bestest friends. Allan's mother is a very sweet lady, the kind of woman who asks if you want a few simple sandwiches and then loads the table with everything from fish filets to meatballs to tons of different types of cheese. (The Danes do like their sandwiches, or smørrebrød, and living with a Dane, I've realised that there's so much more you can put on a sandwich than cheese and ham.) It's a shame we don't share a language, but we found means of communicating combining Danish, Swedish, a little translation help and lots of hand gestures. But maybe I should start learning some Danish. Or learn to speak and understand it, written Danish I can somewhat grasp but the pronunciation... Blimey.

Anyways, we spent Saturday at Allan's mom's place in Ejby, then hopped on a train to Fredericia where we met Allan's old friend from high school and his wife. Wonderful people, and a really nice evening that consisted of eating well, having drinks and going to the beach to play with their two dogs.

View from a bridge, approaching Fredericia.

Zenia's munchy food.

Teh beach.

Janus and Zenia.

Instant friendship with Nemo and Fenris.

Long live Denmark.

Graveyards don't need to be gloomy.

Denmark was great, and we're planning on doing some more travelling there in August. This week in Sweden has been quite active. On Monday we went to see Sex and the City 2 (he volunteered, I swear!) which was quite boring actually. I love the series, and compared to that, the movies seem like candy floss. Very cute and pretty but nothing really in it. Tuesday was a special night, we had dinner with Allison who was also an exchange student in Malmö in 2005 and is now travelling Europe with her friend and sisters. With my Icelandic friend who also lives in Malmö, it was like a mini-reunion.

Allison is wearing the white t-shirt, Smári is the guy in
the back and Allan is the hairy one.

There was lots of reminiscing, we had some fantastic times back in the good old 2005. There's actually going to be a bigger reunion in late August, I really hope it won't be just me and Smári who show up.

Apart from movies and dinners, we've spent time treasure-hunting at flea markets and decorating the apartment. We've both been busy with work as well, and I've gotten to drive around in Skåne some more. I'm starting to know the area better and better!

Now it's time to go make some decadent sandwiches. Trevlig helg allihopa!

-Karoliina

Points and Views

Oopsie, it's been quite a while. Days just go by so fast. I guess it's a good sign, my life here has really fallen into place. I've been here a bit over a month now, but in a way it feels like I've been here forever. I feel like I belong here. And it's not that I don't like my life back in Finland - on the contrary - but it's also been a good opportunity to sit back and think about my life and what I want to do with it. I've always felt that new situations are the best way to learn about yourself, it's like your personality's being shaken up like a snow globe and you can see different parts of yourself from a new angle.

There's also a downside to getting too comfortable with my new everyday life, the risk of not making the most of my precious time here. You know how you never really visit the sights and other interesting places in your hometown cause you can do it anytime? It's the same effect, feeling like I've got all the time in the world so "let's just stay home tonight". And that's great of course, especially since it's something we don't usually get to do, but I try to make sure we get out and explore. My job sees to that as well, and this week I've visited a couple of big summer events outside Malmö. It means I also got to drive around Skåne, and it's so beautiful out there! I really wish I could take pictures while driving (but don't worry, mom, I won't!).

Speaking of pictures, here's some random shots around the city. Malmö is a great place to be in the summer.




This weekend, however, we're getting out of Malmö and travelling deep into the Danish countryside to visit Allan's mother. She lives on the island of Funen, and I'm looking forward to the train trip across (what I hope to be) beautiful landscapes. But mostly I'm looking forward to getting there, since I'll be meeting Allan's mother for the first time. We don't really share a language, but I'm sure that things will go just fine. It'll also be great to see my boyfriend's childhood, well, hoods.

Here's some of our hoods in Malmö, two views from our balcony. But first, the greatest vase I've ever seen (and it's mine now). Have a great weekend, stay in bed and drink champagne if you want to!




-Karoliina