Wedding in Sevilla

Föräldraförsäkring (Parent Leave)

 

People always ask us if we intend to have children here, or go back to Sweden. I tell them about the föräldraförsäkring and they just go “ahh.... So in Sweden then, I guess?”

Basically it gives all new parents (the mom or the dad) the chance to stay home for a year and some months after giving birth, getting paid to make sure their infant grows up to be a good little socialist (just kidding!). Currently, two months are “individual”, meaning that if either the mom or the dad doesn’t want to stay home at all those days are lost. It is a pretty remarkable deal compared to what parents get in the rest of the world, I realized after moving abroad. One day I was riding the bus in Minneapolis, talking to a very pregnant bus driver and she told me she only had two weeks of vacation, so she was going to keep on driving right up to the second her water broke. Stories like that are hard for Swedish women to comprehend.

The big political showdown right now is whether more days should be individualized or not. The dads are still not taking out nearly as much as fifty percent of the time, leading to women being absent from the work force for a longer then their male counterparts. That in turn means that they are left behind when it comes to raises and other salary increases. The left-wing parties are generally positive towards a more individualized föräldraförsäkring, whereas the right wing/liberals want the families to decide for themselves who stays home.

Fucking Åmål (Show Me Love)

A 1998 movie about growing up gay in a small town (Åmål), the story focuses on two teenage girls who fall in love and what they have to do in order to be together. It was highly influential and most people can still quote extensively from it.

If you want to know what it was like to grow up as a teenager in a small town in Sweden where there is nothing to do but drink and play around with a moped, I would recommend it. Shit, even if you have no interest in that what so ever, watch it for the great soundtrack, implied female masturbation and late 1990’s fashion (hint: plaid shirts). Right now it seems as though the entire movie is on YouTube, with English subtitles.

Friggebod

This type of small cottage is named after the 1970’s minister Birgit Friggebod, who made it legal to build an additional building, no more than 10 square meters, on your land without having to get any kind of permit. Today that has been increased to 15 square meters.

This lead to an explosion in different friggebod-designs and many play around with it, trying out ways to use the small space as efficiently as possible. Some use it as a guest room; others build one for their children to play in. They can be a smaller copy of the main house, or pimped out with über-modern green architecture. It should come as no surprise to you that there are ready-to-be-assembled kits for those who lack the sufficient skills to design and build one from scratch. After all, this is the land of IKEA.

Fredrik Reinfeldt

He is Sweden’s prime minister. There are plenty of books and Wikipedia entries explaining this man and his background, so please consult those for an accurate description of his politics.

Together again

Gävle, Thursday