Dreamhack

Dreamhack started in the 90’s with a couple of friends setting up a local network at their school so that they could play computer games together. Now, it is the world’s largest computer festival with over 13 000 visitors and takes place four times/year. They compete for prizes totaling around $35,000 in different games like Starcraft and Counter-Strike, as well as the admiration of thousands of screaming teenage fans. 

A package arrived...

From Scotland!

DN debatt

Have anything you want to say? A controversial opinion backed up by new or old research? DN Debatt is the way to get it delivered to the masses. DN is best described as the Swedish NYT and their opinion pages are legendary. Here (if the Gods and/or the editors of DN are benevolent) you can publish your thoughts and have the cultural and political elite go after you like a pack of rabid dogs. Some claim that unless a thought or idea has been published here, it does not really exist. They are wrong, of course, but not by much. If your Swedish is up to code, you can check it out at dn.se/debatt

So sleepy

View from Lakrits´ dog hotel!

Went to check out Lakrits' hotel and it looks amazing. He is going to love it there. The separation will probably be harder on me- especially since it costs more than our plane tickets! :)

Daniel Westling

This “man of the people” married the Swedish crown princess in 2010 and now they are keeping busy making little baby princes and princesses. He grew up in the small town of Ockelbo in northern Sweden and opened up a gym in Stockholm, where he met his future wife. Strangely enough he seems to have been bred for the sole purpose of becoming royalty. 

There are no scandals in his past, no youthful indiscretions or old friends that want to make a buck by telling that story about how he got super drunk and tried to tip a cow. Believe me, media have tried to dig up dirt on this guy, but he seems bullet proof. This has lead many of us to suspect he is in fact a robot. He also kind of looks like Boxer-Robert (See “Boxer-Robert”).

Dansband

Ah, the smell of way too much cologne mixed with sweat, snuff (see “Snus”), moonshine (see “Hembränt”) and over-confidence. This youthful (not really) craze became popular in the 1970’s and is still going strong. Basically, it consists of a band playing songs inspired by country, pop swing and jazz, anything that can be made into a danceable tune. If you haven’t listened to the Baseballs dandsband version of Rihanna’s Umbrella you don’t know the true meaning of the word “remix”. There are a couple of other words I would like to use for it too, but there are way too many people who enjoy this stuff. 

There is no individual dancing, like those darn youngsters and their “disco”, instead everybody pairs up and tries to find their next sexual partner by doing it laterally in a foxtrot/wales type of dance. One heads-up for women trying to these dances – the man always leads. You just follow. It might be hard in the beginning, but if you stick with it you will find yourself starting to obey them outside of the dance floor, too, and you will be a much happier person! How to identify a dansband band: They usually have names with x, å, ä, ö and z.

Lakrits likes the ferry

That's right- I have driving gloves!

Nice sunset

Boat race, every Thursday

CSN, Centrala Studiestödsnämnden (National Board of Student Aid)

Besides SJ, CSN is probably the government agency that most people like to complain about. Unlike in the US it is free to go to university here but you still have to pay for your living expenses and for that the government gives you a grant and a loan. CSN is in charge of making sure everybody gets their money, and repays them to the state after they stop studying. That is not the way to be popular. There are so many loopholes and rules regulating the grants and the loans that it can sometime seem like an impenetrable jungle. You are, for example, only allowed to make a certain amount of money before you get cut off from having a loan.

The communication between CSN and other government entities seems to take place through encrypted messages in bottles, so sometimes information doesn’t get from one place to the other. Getting through on their helpline can be almost impossible, their web site is tricky to understand and their policies are arbitrary at best. That said, the hatred towards CSN can sometimes seem a tad bit exaggerated. After all they are providing a valuable service and compared to most other countries we are blessed. Just remember those words and use them as a mantra when you are put in a two-hour phone queue and then disconnected. Read more about student aid at CSN’s own website. 

Charterresor (Charter trips)

For those among you who enjoy traveling to exotic warm places but would like to avoid anything even slightly authentic or meet anybody from that country, charter trips are for you. You buy a package from a travel agency that gives you a flight, a hotel and (usually) the bus ride between the airport and the place where you are staying. They also organize different events at the hotel, like ABBA-night, and they have childcare pretty much 24/7 so that you can relax by the pool. The staff is usually 100% Scandinavian and so are the guides, if you were ever to venture out from the gated community in which the tourists are held. More and more people also elect to add “all-inclusive” to their trip which means that you eat every meal at the hotel, your kids get unlimited ice cream and you get unlimited drinks. For some this is the epitome of vacation. Just letting go and having your every need catered to. For others it is a nightmare. 

But even the latter category might be persuaded to go on a charter trip because of the low price. If you wait until the last minute and are not picky about where you want to go, you can get the whole package for just a couple of hundred bucks. The charter trip experience was famously captured in the “Sällskapsresan” movie series (look under S). Want to browse some last-minute charter trips? There are many websites that show all the different travel companies’ latest offers, one of them is sistaminuten.se. 

Carolina Gynning

Reality TV-star, actress, singer, artist, model, TV show host, author (really), Nobel winning chemist (not really). Gynning has done practically everything you can with your fifteen minutes and more. Once known for being a blonde bimbo who had sex in front of the cameras on Big Brother, she is now known for being a media savvy brunette who once had sex in front of the cameras on Big Brother. Recently reached international stardom (eeh?) when she told the press she had once rejected a pimp trying to recruit her for sexy times with Tiger Woods. Want to know more? Check out this article from the Daily Mail.

Camilla Henemark

 

La Camilla in her heyday 

Another wonderfully vivacious sex symbol! She was huge in the 1990’s as a singer in the pop group Army of Lovers, but nobody remembers that now. Instead, she became a household name (as in your grandmother couldn’t stop talking about her, yet kept referring to her as “that Camilla person with the big titties) when she talked to the press about her affair with the king. Yeah, that’s right, the KING the king. As in the royal guy everybody loves. Read more about this under “Kungen”.