Plopp on a Train

So, for those lured in by the suggestive title: Psych!   I'm not talking poop in this post, I'm talking about candy! 

As I write this I am on a night train home from Stockholm to Gothenburg after a big business meeting. Shortly after we pulled out of the station, but after tickets were checked, I went up to the next car to use the washroom.

I've taken the train between cities a few times now, so I am starting to get a feel for the rules of first class on the train. There is a small snack and drink station free to the first class passengers.

So as I returned to my seat the conductor spotted me helping myself to a tea. I don't look like the other business commuters, so he politely began asking me something in Swedish.  I apologized for not speaking Swedish, to which he, a tall broad man in his 40's with perfectly Swedish-blond hair, very politely switched to English and continued on.

He was, of course, asking me if I sat in the first class car, and I assured him I sat in seat number 7. He didn't ask for proof, but rather took me at my word.  He then explained that in first class I was welcome to have fruits and tea or coffee, and there are magazines between the cars. Turning abruptly he leaned into his staff room grabbed something colourful, turned back and thrust it toward me with a wide and welcoming smile; a Plopp chocolate bar.

Isn't Sweden crazy?!  ;)

No reason was given, and there are never sweets on the snack bar in first class.  He simply felt like grabbing one of the staff snacks for me cause it was a nice thing to do.

Even I, as a Canadian, am unaccustomed to this sort of genuinely pleasant sort of happiness from complete strangers, especially people doing their job.   But it really is why I find it so charming here.  So many people are actually happy with their day to day lives.

Eastward Loop

I'm not going to write about my time IN Sweden today, but rather, a whole bunch about being out of Sweden for a while.  Yes, it is traveling time, but not just any sort of traveling: Business traveling!

In a few short hours I will get in a taxi to the airport to start the most epic plane escapades of my life (to date).   I start by a 6:40 AM flight Wednesday, from my homebase of Gothenburg back to my old haunt; Paris.   A quick change and I am on the long-haul flight to Shanghai, China.

After ~14 hours of flying and transfers I arrive in Shanghai; 6:50 AM Thursday...  Yup, + 1 calendar day.  Welcome to Jet Lag!

If you haven't done a lot of flying (and up until the last few years I was firmly in that group as well) you might not understand how intense jet lag can be, especially when traveling East.  Headed West, while still screwy, is easier to cope with as you are traveling with the normal movement of the sun.   This means that when you get off the plane on the other end, even on a long haul flight, your inner clock is likely not too far off and you simply feel like you've had an extra long day.

Headed East though presents you will a radical departure from your normal day/night cycle and the loss of hours from your day (or in this case days from your week).  Suddenly you find yourself struggling to stay awake mid-afternoon and waking up at ungodly hours of the morning (typically reserved for late nights on weekends, vacations and highschool).

So.... I hit Shanghai, jet lagged and due to pitch my current game project to an entire studio of people hours after stepping off the plane.   Yeah, that presentation is going to be one for the scrap book.

The upside though is that I will have a few extra days after this presentation to explore Shanghai, and you can bet that I will have my camera firmly in hand!

However, the title of this post isn't "China Bound", so lets get back to the "Loop" bit.

Sunday morning, 9:05 AM I hit the airport again (hopefully I will get to check out the mag-lev train that connects the city to the airport) and hop a flight to San Francisco via Tokyo.

It's roughly another 15 hours of flights and transfer times before I arrive in the US (and boy howdy, coming from China I bet this will be a much more thorough entry into the US than most Canadians tend to experience).  This time I arrive in San Fran at 9:15 AM...   the same damned day as when I stepped on the plane 15 hours previous.   Mmmmhm, it's going to be THAT sort of mind-fuck of a trip. 

At this point I will have roughly 24 hours to recover before I kick off 3 straight days of Marketing meetings, Executive reviews and Technology briefings.   No worries though,  I probably don't need to be sharp and a alert or anything.  NOT.

Three days of corporate grind later and I hop a Thursday afternoon flight at 2 PM bound for Gothenburg via Amsterdam.   Sixteen some odd hours later I arrive in Gothenburg at 1:30 PM...  FRIDAY.  So, ummm, where is my other 8 hours of Thursday?!?  

So..  lets recap here, if only for my own sanity:

1. Gothenburg to Shanghai: Lose a day.
2. Shanghai to San Francisco: Gain a day.
3. San Fran to Gothenburg: Lose a day.

Fuck...  I am clearly coming out behind on that one.  Oh, and DEAD TIRED.  I can only imagine how bad I am going to feel for a few weeks after all of this. 

And for those of you more visually inclined, this little junket looks like this:

 
Despite logging some serious seat time in the coming week (and a good dose of radiation to boot) I just have to look at the bright side, at least there is all the airplane food I can eat in my immediate future!  ;)

Seriously though, there is a bright side:  I get to see a couple new cities (yes, I know, I lived on the west coast for 10 years and never went to San Fran, I am a terrible person), take lots of  pictures, try some foods in Shanghai (but hopefully avoid doing the "Shanghai Shuffle") and best of all earn a metric shit ton of frequent fly miles!

Need I say more?

.......


Of course, some of you may be wondering why I am even bothering to write all this up.  Well, the simple fact of the matter is that right now, at the moment of writing it is 2:24 AM.  I am staying up all night prior to the first leg of the trip in hopes of sleeping all the way to Shanghai and mitigating the jet lag.  However...  I don't have a lot to keep me occupied and keep me from taking "just a short nap", which we all know how THAT would end.


Catch you on the flip side,  ;)


--James.

Jan the Taxi Man

Today I met a friendly gentleman named Jan, who picked me up in his taxi.

Not Jan, but just as friendly!

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I was out today rushing to get my application for a Chinese VISA submitted in time to travel for next Wednesday (which is another story for another time), and after I completed this task Jan picked me up to take me back to my office.

It took two days to fill out all the paperwork.

Being that I had settled all my work for the VISA application I was already in a much more relaxed and happy state of mind, as I had been rushing to arrange all the paperwork and flights over the last two days and it was finally all settled.  Stepping into Jan's taxi only helped make me even happier and more relaxed, as Jan turned out too be a friendly old gentleman who was more than happy to chat with me in English about all manner of things.

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The very fact I am able to hold conversations with random people I meet here is still a novelty, and will likely be so for a long time to come, but in this case it was the comfortable and hospitable nature of the conversation that makes it stand out so much more than usual.

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Over the course of the drive we talked about my recent arrival here in Göteborg and that I planned to stay permanently.  He asked what the first work in Swedish I learned was, and in typical Canadian fashion I had to admit it was  "Tack".  Leave it to a Canadain to learn all the courteous words first.  ;)

Before revealing that tack was my first Swedish word, Jan had guessed that it would have been "Skål", but realized immediately by the confusion on my face I did not yet know what it meant. He explained that skål means "Cheers" in English, and pantomimed toasting a drink to the empty passenger's seat beside him as we drove down the road.  

He quickly followed it by saying "The British also say 'Down the.... Latch?' Is that right?  Latch?"  I corrected him that it was "Hatch", not latch.  Of course he was immediately curious; "what does this mean, hatch?", and I explained what a hatch was and how it related to having a drink.  He was genuinely happy to have learned this little fact and chatted for a moment about how he always thought it was latch, but never understood what that was supposed to mean.

Shortly after Jan changed the subject and we began talking about the Vasa Ski Race that happens every march.  He then proceeded to describe both the race, a 90km cross country race that tens of thousands participate in, as well as educating me  that Vasa was a Swedish king from the middle ages. 

Shortly there after we arrived at my office.  I thanked Jan for the ride and wished him well and stepped out of his taxi.  Chasing after me as I exited the cab was Jan's earnest words "Take care! I really hope you enjoy being in Sweden!"

That I do.  :)

'Hej' is my favorite Swedish word.

I haven't been here very long, but I've been here long enough to have already developed an appreciation for the Swedish language.  It is a language filled with a lot of crazy and downright funny words to an anglophone like me.

Really?!?  It doesn't strike me as THAT sort of establishment...

Despite the ones that make me chuckle (and there are many), it's actually a different word that I really like;  'Hej'.  Pronounced simply 'Hey', it is an informal greeting used commonly in day to day life here.  I know to most of you this seems like is makes it anything but special, but let me tell you why I like it so much.

First it is the simple fact that it sounds exactly the same as any Canadian would greet a friend.  It's familiarity is comforting.

Second, and more personally profound, is they way it is said.  I have yet to wander into a store or up to ask a stranger a question and not be greeted with a warm and friendly 'Hej'.  To most of you (and by this I mean my fellow Canadians) this is something you probably don't even realize how much you take for granted, and likely don't understand why I am bothering to write about it.  However, after having spent a fair deal of time elsewhere in the world, is amazing to me how deeply this sort of casual friendliness really colours your view of a place.

Sweden is an amazing place, full of all sorts of things I would never find anywhere back in Canada.  Yet it's the little things like a smile and a 'Hej' from a stranger, the sort of thing you find practically EVERYWHERE back home, that make this place wonderful to me.

:)

6 Days!!

A couple days after arriving we went to the local Tax Office to apply for our Personnummers (shockingly it translates to "Person Numbers").   You can't do anything of any real significance in Sweden without one, so once we sorted out the apartment it was job one.

We met our relocation Agent, Åsa, that morning outside the tax office and prepared ourselves for bureaucratic hell.  It's not that we've actually experienced any during any of our dealings with the Swedish government, but it was really a conditioned response after a few years of dealing with the French immigration system.

Immediately we were struck by the differences in styles.  Nowhere to be found was the line hundreds long and three or four wide waiting to get in.  Instead it was like entering a bank, if it were the most helpful bank in the world.

Immediately upon entering the lobby of the office we are greeted by a kiosk staffed by 4 different people, all of whom speak different languages and are there to help and direct you to where you need to be and get you the paperwork you'll need when you get there.  It was like walking into bizarro world... on opposite day: everything made perfect sense and was super easy and orderly.

We took a number an started to fill out the paperwork while we waited.  Before we could even finish the few pages of question-boxes our number had been called.  Åsa took us over to the both and began explaining to the woman on the other side of the desk (a desk, mind you, with chairs for everyone to sit down at, and without 2-inch security glass between us...  again, so un-bizarre!) Anna, our situation.

Anna was calm, courteous and smiled while she happily walked us through the process, in English, about what she needed from us, and even helped us look up the exact apartment number for our new place (as Sweden has recently implemented a new address system, so it's not easy to know what the exact address for an old place like ours would be).    It took her all of five minutes to find this information using her computer, a task that would have likely been impossible in France and would have had us turned away abrupty, and she was happy to help us with it. 

Within 20 minutes of having first set foot in the Tax Office, our application was registered and we were back out on the street, minds still reeling from the simplicity and ease of it all.   But it didn't stop there.

As we wrapped up in the Tax Office Anna informed the three of us that it would likely take two to four weeks to receive our Person Numbers.  We received ours in 6 days.

SIX DAYS.

In six days we have made more process than we did in two years with the French Immigration service (if you can even be so generous as to call it a "service").   We had registered as residents with the government and were officially recognized as such, along with all the benefits that come alone with the status.

Mind.  Blown.   Great work Sweden!  :)

... oh, and to top it off, a Person Number is largely composed of your birthday, in a YYMMDD-XXXX format.  So all you really have to learn to remember is a four digit code and the rest comes naturally.  What a shockingly good system.    After having my Person Number for just a little over 24 hours I already have it memorized.

Gothenburg - Week 1

A little more than a week has passed since we first landed in Sweden, and it feels like it's been a whole lot long than that! 

Despite how long it's felt though, it's been a largely positive week, even from the moment we arrived.  Two friendly older gentleman running the Swedish border control examined our newly minted UT cards (akin to an American Green Card), and we expected to get grilled.   Instead they chatted us up, me about my job in videogames, and Aja about her blue hair and how one one them once had blue hair in his younger years.

You know you're somewhere new when you don't recognize any of your pocket change

Once we officially set foot on Swedish soil it was a whirlwind of events.  The good news is that we have survived, found an apartment and got all of out things delivered all within the course of the first few days of arriving.  This was shockingly fast, and honestly, really just damn lucky timing.

Our new apartment is in an old building right in the heart of Gothenburg, and literally a one minute walk from my new office.   We have more space than back in Paris, about 50% more, which is nice, and the commute is unbeatable.  However, the new place isn't without it's drawback either.

The place is a few hundred years old, so there is tons of character, but not all of it good.   All the floors are slanted towards the rear of the apartment...  and not just slightly either.  It's a noticeable slant, as though the building is too cool to stand up straight and would rather just lean against the building next to it and look like a badboy.

Just like James Dean, our place is too cool to stand up straight

But despite the angled floors, it's still a great place to live.  We are on the top floor (a whopping 2 floors up), and directly below us is one of my co-workers (who is graciously lending us wi-fi access for a couple weeks, and is how I am able to post this inaugural post).  The only other apartment in our section of the building is home to a friendly American who is the niece of our landlord, and all-around a helpful sort of fellow (he lent us the chair I am currently sitting on, as we only have one chair until we get our first paycheque and can afford to get more furniture). 

So obviously we already feel pretty welcome in our little abode,  but even beyond the wall of our little Swedish retreat the city has been a wonderful place to explore thus far. 

Being in the heart of the city, we are in a very nice area.  Unlike many North American cities where the downtown core is the worst part of the city, the opposite is quite true here.   Our street is a cozy side-street, cobblestones and all.  Vehicle traffic is rare on the street surrounding our house, save for morning delivery vans stocking the numerous interesting boutiques.   Rather it is foot traffic, cute shops and places to grab a bite to eat all around.

Found at the bakery downstairs from the new apartment: a bread lobster!

And lets not forget the people.  The atmosphere here is very familiar to a Canadian city, casual and relaxed, with people happy to help you if you need directions.  It's been very easy for us to explore and poke around without fear of being out of place, as everyone is very relaxed and happy to help where they can.   There is rarely a language barrier and never any sense of being looked down on because we only speak English.

It's very refreshing.

I've also been happily snapping pictures with my work phone, which they were kind enough to provide me without even being asked.  While I feel like a bit of a hipster, instagram has been my main outlet for photos.  I will likely continue this trend for the near future, as my crushing workload currently prevents me from doing any serious sight-seeing or photography. 

In the mean time you lot are all stuck with vaguely hipster photos.  I promise I will do my best to keep the hipster level to a minimum.  :)

Well time to pass out,  the jetlag still has a few more days before it's completely passed.