Sugar-Crazed in Stockholm

In the United States, everyone thinks I'm weird for enjoying licorice. Here in Sweden, however, licorice has similar status as chocolate and my moderate affinity for it has been allowed to grow into a full-blown obsession. Yesterday, I hit an all time low when I visited a shop called Lakritsroten (licorice root in Swedish), which had every form of licorice known to man: licorice powder, chocolate covered licorice, licorice honey, salt licorice, licorice caramel, and more varieties of plain licorice than I knew existed. There were also samples, which were not closely watched, and I may have grazed a little too much (but who knew mint-covered licorice balls would be so good?!). To make up for it, I spent almost $20 on a grand total of 3 things: a raspberry-filled licorice stick, a large log of licorice caramel covered in chocolate and dotted with dried raspberries, and a small jar of licorice honey. Okay, so it was an extremely frivolous purchase, but I regret nothing and will certainly be returning in the near future.
I have been quite surprised by the general dessert/sugar obsession here in Sweden. Walking down the street, you'd think everyone here must eat extremely healthy and exercise daily because most people are quite athletic looking. For the most part, that seems to be true, but at the same time, everyone seems to make an exception for dessert.
The candy and pastry selections in the grocery stores are truly impressive, and they are clearly not neglected. There are also bins of candy and snack foods (mainly assorted chocolate and licorice, but also things like wasabi nuts and violet gummies) at every grocery store, even the tiniest ones, and no matter when you go, there will always be at least one person filling up a bag. I can understand why licorice is not so popular in the U.S., but it is completely mystifying to me that these bins have not caught on like they have here in Sweden. This afternoon, after biking and exploring all day, I was feeling hangry, but also desperate for food that would not make me want to cry upon seeing the price. I went to the grocery store in hopes that inspiration would strike and indeed it did. Not only do the bins have candy, they also have assorted dried fruits, banana chips, trail mix, and fascinating things like sour cream and dill cashews. This way, I can delude myself into thinking I have a decently healthy snack when half of my bag is fruit and nuts and the other half is chocolate and licorice.
Fika is another major outlet for the dessert obsession. If you're going to have a mid-afternoon coffee break, it only seems natural that you should have a nice pastry to go along with the coffee. And the Swedish pastries are truly under-rated. Many of them feature cinnamon and cardamom, almost everything has coarse, white sugar sprinkled on top (I even saw it on a grocery store croissant), plus there is always a healthy amount of butter and oftentimes custard. There are also the extremely common and very creatively named chokladbolls (chocolate balls), which really are just coconut-covered, espresso-spiked balls of chocolate that are like a cross between a truffle and a very dense brownie. Even the gas station pastries are quite edible, so if you don't want to spend $5 on a dainty little thing from one of the many wonderful coffee shops and bakeries, there are always good options.
Believe it or not, this was actually meant to be a short post before bed. Let's just say, I am a little excited about how well Sweden caters to my dessert preferences. Also, I may or may not have eaten a freakish amount of candy today, so the sugar might be making me a bit hyper. Good thing I bike a lot?

Wales Pictures, Finally

            I realized that I never actually posted many pictures of Wales while I was there, mainly due to the painfully slow and somewhat capricious Internet connection. The Internet is great, here, though, so I figure I'll post a few pictures I took on one of my runs.
            Full of endless green hills checkered with pastures full of grazing sheep, quaint little cottages with wild gardens, and endless rows of flourishing food crops, all outlined by dense hedges with the most beautiful blackberries I have ever seen scattered throughout, the Welsh countryside offers an unbelievable setting for running.

It does have its quirks, though: the road (which I mistook for a walking trail the first time I saw it) is just wide enough for the occasional car to pass through, though it is frequented by bikers, walkers, runners, people on horseback, tractors, milk trucks, sheep dogs, and large herds of cattle. The rain here can come without warning and leave you drenched and shivering, only for a cheerful, unapologetic sun to come out – often before it even stops raining – to dry your dripping clothes (rinse and repeat, endlessly and often). And those hills, my god. There are no words to describe the agony of plodding for a half mile up a steep hill, believing that it will level out just around the bend, only to find that it continues for another half mile.

            It finally occurred to me that I could take pictures of those spectacular views with my phone (which I have been carrying anyway, wrapped tightly in a waterproof bag, because I don’t trust myself to not get lost on these roads). So there you go, pictures of farm animals and clouds and hills.

I was surprised by how environmentally conscious the Welsh are; wind turbines are all over the place, as are solar panels.

The sheep will stare at you until you leave. It's a little unnerving.

Have I mentioned that there are a lot of sheep?

The cows will also stare - and moo loudly - at you.

I made a friend! Mostly he just wanted food, though.

These guys were in the driveway when I got back. Like I said, the sheep do like to stare...

A Very Scattered Introduction to Sweden

I spent a long time trying to come up with a cohesive topic for my first post about Sweden, but every time I start to write about one topic, I somehow take a wrong turn midway through and end up on a completely unrelated topic. In the Welsh countryside, life moves forward in a steady, comfortable rhythm, but now I’m back to the colorful blur that is city life, and everything is so new and shiny, and my thoughts are still moving in an excited whir that makes focusing on anything for too long surprisingly difficult. So this post is just going to be a bulleted list of observations and perhaps next time I’ll be settled enough to not sound like a kindergartener after consuming way too much sugar.

•         Fika is more than just a coffee break, it is an all-important, religiously followed time to sit, drink coffee, have a good conversation, and not think about work. One of my Swedish co-workers joked that he only came to work so that he could have break from fika. At any given time, you can find people sitting in the comfy chairs in the lunch room enjoying their fika. My department also has an organized fika every other week, in which one person brings food, and everybody – from the department chair to the lowly interns – sits at a long table for as long as the food and conversation last, no matter how long that may be. It’s surprisingly intimate and very inclusive – even as the brand new intern sitting at a table full of professors and PhD students, I felt completely at ease.
•         Hierarchies work differently here. They exist, certainly, and titles and responsibilities are the same, but they don’t cause quite the separation that is normal in their American counterparts. I am the only undergraduate working full-time in my department, and by far the least knowledgeable person, but nobody seems to care. At fika last week, I ended up spending an hour talking to the department chair about American politics and it didn’t feel any different than talking to an old friend about it (internally, I was still panicking and slightly fan-girling, of course, but I seemed to be the only one who thought anything of the massive difference in status).
•         In contrast to the American emphasis on individualism and things like “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” and “taking the road less travelled,” Swedes greatly value inclusion and working together for the betterment of the group. Here, everyone – rich or poor, full-blooded Swedish or newly immigrated – goes to public school together until college. Getting held back a grade does not happen; the class simply waits for everyone to catch up. On my first day of work, the professor for whom I’m working took me around the very large department and introduced me to every single person. My picture and some information about me will also be sent around so that everyone knows who I am and why I’m here. It’s not special treatment; it’s just how it works here. Everyone is included, no one is alienated, and I have to say, it is a really nice way for things to work. I’ve worked in much smaller departments for a much longer time, but one week in, I already feel more like a part of this group than I have any other.

This is the Part Where I Get Overly Sentimental

I know a nostalgic memory when I see one, and this place is full of them. Picking the first blueberries of the season, my back warmed by a defiant sun reaching through fast moving clouds; driving down the coast road at sunset, discussing Brexit and sheep herding and the science behind plant breeding and the way autumn colors each of our homes; walking up the hill to the clearing with the best view after a rainstorm and finding the fullest, brightest rainbow I have ever seen crowning the valley below; herding a couple hundred reluctant sheep, just the host and me - not quite enough people for the job - through two huge, green pastures into a new field and watching them, finally, stream through the gate of their new home.

I know already that hindsight will color this place in a far more blissful light than it should. Even before this, I’ve had a bad habit of, on late nights of cramming for exams and anxious mornings before a big presentation, fantasizing about abandoning “the real world” and living on a quaint little organic farm, somewhere hilly and green and near the ocean. And from my point of view, as someone transient and detached from the inner workings of it all, this appears to be every bit that fantasy.

But it is not an accurate picture. My hours are 9 to 5 with a long lunch, my food is provided by a generous host who always offers seconds, and my income is an afterthought, with plenty to fall back on. An organic farmer’s well-being is a little more tenuous, a little less assured. The past few years have been particularly difficult because the climate here is indeed changing and the month-long dry spells that allowed farmers to sow their seeds in the spring have diminished to a handful of dry days scattered over the season, far too few to allow many outdoor crops to do well. This year was the first ever that the ground was too wet to be weeded using a machine, which meant that those seemingly never-ending rows of potatoes had to be weeded by hand. For now, with a small army of WWOOFers, the weeding isn’t so bad, but the host does not have WWOOFers here in the winter – the short days are too depressing and the caravans too cold, she said – and the work is carried out by just the host and her son, for the most part.

And luck, no matter how well-kept and organized the farm, always has its say. The first time I went to the other farm to help with the sheep, we were greeted by the sight of three lying dead in the field. We paced around, checking on the rest of the flock and trying to understand what had happened, what had gone wrong. With a look of distress, anger, pity, confusion the host examined the dead sheep, each one’s side torn open, and wondered aloud how people could be so careless, letting their dogs out at night with no consideration for what they might do. The next day, three more were dead, and another two the next.

It was unheard of, she said, to lose this many in such a short time. They had done everything right – checked on the sheep often, lined the hedges with electric fences, given them enough grass and space and water – and, still, eight dead in three days. The killings stopped just as suddenly as they started; perhaps the dog had come and gone with guests at the neighboring vacation cottages. One of the other WWOOFers developed a morbid fascination with the whole thing and pestered the host with awful questions – how much money did you lose on those sheep? Do you think the birds got to them before or after they died? – until she finally snapped that it’s better to not think about these things, that farming can be difficult and sad and stressful, and it is no coincidence that its suicide rate is one of the highest of any profession in this country.

I do not mean to paint such a grim picture. On a day-to-day basis, everyone here seems quite happy to with the work. The host spends many mornings cheerfully sorting and packing eggs, listening to the BBC or chatting with the WWOOFer helping her. Her son spends much of his day speeding around the farm on a four-wheeler, laughing as the dogs chase after him. The difficulty lies in the fact that this work is not a job, but their life. They do not work set hours here; they start as early as they need to and end when everything is done, about 15 hours oftentimes, stopping only for meals and sleep. Vacations, or even days off, are rare – the farm won’t run itself – and the closest I’ve seen either of them get to taking a break is when they sit and drink their tea after lunch while reading the Farmers Guardian.

Tomorrow I leave the farm. It will be a whirlwind of planes, trains, and automobiles, with a short jaunt in London, an overnight stay in an airport hotel room, and an 8 am flight on Sunday that will take me, finally, to Stockholm. I am happy to finally be going, but I also dread leaving far more than I had expected. I keep wondering if I will ever be back, but all things considered – the remoteness of the farm, the cost of travel, the difficulty of simply having the time to come – I think, perhaps, that the future holds only nostalgic memories of this place and nothing more.