Artificial Swedener

Jag Älskar Sverige!

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Sun, 31 May 2009 22:32:00 +0000

Ahhh, I'm back from Sweden and it was SO beautiful. It's really hard for me to believe that I allowed myself to get grumpy toward the end of my stay last time. I guess I missed my husband and I got sick of the bad weather, but a springtime visit and a reunion with friends hammered home just how amazing a country it is. Right now all I feel is gratitude.

During my visit, I was too busy to blog— we wrapped up the Bonnier Publishing Program 3.0, and many long hours went into the final presentations. I'll deliver the details of the "Dragon's Den" exercise in a minute. Is the suspense killing you? Good, I'll hold off a little longer.

For our final BPP segment, we returned to Thoresta Herrgård, which is breathtakingly, obscenely beautiful in spring. It was sunny almost the whole week, the temperature a perfect 68 degrees, with eye-popping quantities of flowers blooming all over the place. Unbelievably, I forgot to bring my camera! I was so used to just snapping pics with my Swedish iPhone (I'm back to Blackberry-land—which is a really boring place—until the new 4G iPhone comes out next week) that it didn't even occur to me to throw one in my bag.

Anyway, since I don't have photos I'm going to draw some mental pictures to cement the memories. I felt extremely sentimental about leaving Sweden this time around. When I moved home in March I had the idea that I'd be back in a couple of months, but now I'm not sure when I'll be in Sweden next. And spring is the season that makes the rest of life in this country worthwhile. Seriously, you get a whole year's worth of splendor in a few short months. That sounds like a lame bargain, but the vernal beauty is so great that it sustains people through the dark winter. Right now it's the opposite of dark: the sun goes down at about 11:30 pm and starts rising around 3. The sunsets last for hours and the darkest part of night is merely the deep blue of twilight. It's just so gorgeous out that sleeping makes you feel like you're missing something. So, I accordingly made sure to dance until "dawn" on four different occasions during the week-long trip!

So, now, let me share a few mental snapshots with you:

*Upon my arrival in Stockholm, I took an early morning walk through the city and came upon a churchyard ablaze with lilacs, elderflowers and horse chestnuts. All these trees and bushes that had been dormant through the months I lived in Sweden sprung open in a frenzy of life. The lilacs were the biggest and most splendid I'd ever seen! Everywhere, 10-foot-high bushes packed full of fragrant purple and white blooms.

*Vasaparken, near my old apartment—normally empty but for a handful of children bouncing on the orange mountain, and maybe hockey players practicing on the rink, was transformed into a summer hang out spot for hundreds of sunbathers, soccer players and cafe-goers. In fact, all over the city, little parkside cafes which had been shuttered for the winter turned into all-night barbecue joints, beer gardens, and dance parties. It seems that as long as the air is warmish and no rain is falling, no one in Sweden wants to go inside, ever, except to sleep!

*Ah, Thoresta: The country inn with its rolling hills, now vibrant with foliage. It was hard to concentrate on work with those hills all around. All I wanted to do was gallop a horse across them. And the sauna by the lake: Despite my initial horror at the idea of getting naked with colleagues, I finally buckled and got into the hot house with a few of the women on my trip, who I now count as friends instead of just coworkers. We sat sweating and drinking icy beers next to the wood fire with a giant window overlooking a lake. And when things got too steamy, we leapt into the frigid 15-degree water and went for a heart-stopping swim.

*And then there was the camaraderie of hammering out our final projects and the sadness of bringing the program to an end. Huddling in the conference room all day over our computers, we felt at first like we'd never be done in time, but in the end things lined up just perfectly. I was especially in awe of some of the other teams' projects—in particular an online memorial project which initially struck me as a strange idea, but turned out to be the most convincing pitch by a longshot. And, so, who won the Dragon's Den competition? Well, it turned out not to be such a competition after all—we kind of all won. The memorial project stole the show with a heart-wrenchingly good presentation. The kids' site was the sure thing in my mind, and indeed, the dragons loved it. Both of these projects are being accepted for further examination by the R&D department. The "amazing Web site machine" is being developed as a special project by Dagens Nyheter. And the project I worked on, the fashion site, will be considered as part of a new launch by Bonnier Tidskrifter, the Swedish magazine company. But even if none of the sites we pitched actually ever launch, the interest and, well, gratitude the management team displayed made the work worthwhile. It sounds weird, but they actually seemed touched by the amount of effort we put into developing ideas for the company—it was such a refreshing and wonderful response to get from our bosses.

*A visit to the fabulous Östermalm apartment of Miss Ebba Von Sydow, who has startlingly similar taste to mine and owns several of the design pieces that I covet. For instance, we drank champagne and ate strawberries sitting on Hans Wegner butterfly chairs—my favorite chairs, ever.

*Dinner at Nedre Manilla, the historic Bonner home: This was my second visit to Manilla—the first being for the press conference for Sweden's Grand Journalism Prize. But this time was an intimate dinner for the graduates of Bonnier Publishing Program and the top management. Manilla is home to a remarkable collection of art—mostly portraits of authors published by Bonnier from the 1800s until today. Jonas and Carl Johan gave us a tour of the house, and I so enjoyed hearing all the family stories and publishing anecdotes associated with those paintings. It really made us all feel like we are somehow a part of this amazing family's history.

*This image is a bit of a collage of the beautiful people in Sweden: My colleague Madeleine, who is a dead ringer for Alicia Silverstone, done up for the farewell party in a rock-and-roll sequined tank top, a flowing salmon-colored ball skirst and tousled hair. Jonas Bonnier showing up to host the "Dragon's Den" with crazy spiked hair, flowered socks and purple shoelaces. The hoards of beautiful teenagers at the Stureplan nightclubs the week they graduated from high school.

*In fact, there's another stand-out image of those teens the day school let out: Hundreds of screaming teens bouncing to hip-hop beats and drinking beers (yes, it's legal) while crowded onto flat-bed tractor-trailer trucks. Each school had its own truck, and they all wound around the streets of downtown Stockholm, tricked out with dancefloors, sound-systems, fake trees and graduation banners, swaying with the collective joy of all these ecstatic kids who had just ended the first phase of their lives. Stupid things make me emotional—I teared up at the graduation trucks several times. They were all just so damned happy!

*And speaking of happiness, let me not forget the best day of my trip, when I rented one of the Stockholm city bikes (Remember the famous deal? $26 for the whole year!) and cruised in the sunshine around the perimeter of Djurgården, the stunning island designated as Stockholm's "central park." Words can't really do the views justice: the rolling green hills, the ancient city rising across the water, the idyllic Victorian mansions overgrown with flowering vines, the goddamned fairytale swans bobbing in the water, the horses galloping through meadows... The beauty was so magnified it seemed nearly hallucinogenic.

*And then, before I said farewell to Sweden, I took a ferry with my friend Tanja out to a tiny island in the archipelago called Sandhamn, and spent a night reveling with sailors, stumbling through the sand in very high heels, and drinking champagne on the boat of a very dumb 22-year-old reality TV star. Sandhamn is like the set of a Pippi Longstockings film, with little red and white houses set on narrow, winding dirt roads. Except it's also home to a couple of extremely good restaurants, a not-too-shabby hotel and a rollicking party scene. Oh, and it's also an official stopover on the Volvo Ocean Race: sailing's most prestigious round-the-world event.

Seriously, I wasn't ready to leave. It was sunset in the archipelago when I rode the ferry back to Stockholm: a fairyland of cottages trimmed in white, with regal sailboats and huge cascades of lilacs. Goodbye, Sweden. Goodbye, bleak roe and pickled herring and kanelbullar and köttbullar and all the other bullar. Goodbye, minimalistic home design and ridiculously stylish, 6-foot-tall blond people. Goodbye, good friends and amazing, life-changing work experience. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I will miss you so!

Hot Projects and Cool San Francisco

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:47:00 +0000

Okay, so my Swedener posts are dwindling into almost non-existence these days, as I'm back in the U.S. with scant connection to my Scandinavian sisters and brothers. (See exhibits A, B, and C in the photo at left: Swedes in Silicon Valley!) I think I will wrap up this blog in the next month or so, but as promised, I'd like to ride it out till the end of the Bonnier Publishing Program, when we find out whether any of the projects being proposed by the course participants are actually accepted for launch by the Bonnier "Dragon's Den."

If you'll remember from many posts back, we were given the task of coming up with four ideas for new Web sites that would earn money in a novel way (not impression-based advertising) and have a clear connection to Bonnier's established expertise in publishing.

Well, two weeks ago, the international group of 20 Bonnier Publishing Program participants met for an inspirational jaunt around Silicon Valley, schmoozing with venture capitalists, start-ups, social media experts, a Stanford futurist and even meeting with Google and LucasArts. It was a pretty great trip, and in between the study visits, we spent time in our project groups, working out the plans for our final presentations, which will be delivered to the Bonnier top management group (otherwise known as the "dragons") in Stockholm, in about a month.

The topics of our projects are not secret: the head of Bonnier's R&D department was present on the day we delivered our original conceptualizations way back in February. So I think it's safe to at least vaguely allude to them here (although I won't go into detail for obvious intellectual property reasons).

Idea 1: A system for creating niched search portals on the fly.
Idea 2: An innovative creative tool for pre-literate children.
Idea 3: An online memorial community for celebrating deceased loved ones.
Idea 4: A social shopping site based on visual search.

All the ideas could become viable Web sites—the hitch, of course, is in the pitch. Who will do the best job presenting a business case? Which idea will be most appealing in the current economic conditions and the specific launch market we're targeting? Which one is most relevant to Bonnier's goals for online expansion? Find out, when Megan returns to Stockholm for the Artificial Swedener finale! (Cue dramatic music... and cut.)

Squeez Bacon?!

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:45:00 +0000

I just posted on my new blog, "MeganLikesThis," about an awesome product from the company ThinkGeek... and then I came across this—ThinkGeek's most wonderful product of all. It's called Squeez Bacon, and it's got Swedish flags all over it. Now, this is not a product that I ever saw in Stockholm, but I wouldn't put it past the Swedes to invent bacon paste—they do love their tube food. (Kalle's Kaviar, anyone?)

And get a load of this blurb from the product literature: "Due to the patented electro-mechanical process by which Squeez Bacon® is rendered, it requires no preservatives or other additives. Each serving is as healthy as real bacon, and equivalent to 4 premium slices of bacon!" Jätte mumsig!

P.S.: While I wish I had devised Squeez Bacon as an elaborate April Fool's joke, it's actually real. The video below, however, is a really strange joke. It sounds like an American speaking nonsense Swedish that doesn't at all correspond to the nonsense subtitles. And... I think I saw them put Squeez Bacon on ice cream.

Awesome Scandinavian Store in the U.S.A.

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 02:54:00 +0000

I was just trolling one of my favorite design blogs when I came across an advertisement for Huset, an online shop specializing in Scandinavian clothing, accessories and house stuff. Yippee! They've got clothes by Odd Molly, Dagmar, Hunkydory, Ivana Helsinki and more. Plus, all sorts of gorgeous furniture, lighting and wallpaper by emerging designers; really cute toys for kids, stylish tableware and lines, etc. It's like a Sunday afternoon stroll through the best shopping streets in Södermalm. This makes me really happy.

New Blog!

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:43:00 +0000

Hi, friends. Today I decided to start a new blog called "Megan Likes This." It's about stuff. Neato products, articles and ideas I find in my daily travels around the Web. I posted a few things to get started, and so far it looks a little girlie, but I'm hoping I won't alienate my male friends too much by occasionally posting about jewelry and kimonos. The idea is that it will be a fairly well-rounded selection of things I find interesting—like a delicio.us feed with a literary lean. My whole career has been in men's publications, so I have a pretty good handle on what guys like to read about—but hey, it's my blog. See, I've internalized the "men's magazine voice" so much that I often feel kind of like a dude... but I sure do like me some ruffles.

The World's Stinkiest Food

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 04:57:00 +0000

So, last Friday night we had a Swedish party. Perhaps it took me a week to blog about it because the experience was so traumatic my conscious mind tried to block it. Just kidding. But look at my expression in the photo above—that's not a happy camper. Why? Sturströmming. The rotten, revolting, ammonia/ass-scented edible practical joke. But we had to try it—we had to. John opened the container of fish very slowly at a 45-degree angle as per the instructions on the shrink-wrapped can (it needed to be shrink-wrapped to keep it from bulging and potentially bursting before consumption).

The contents of the can bubbled and fizzed and a pressurized spray of the foulest-smelling substance known to man erupted into the evening air. The cat ran away in panic. And when the cat runs away from fish, something is wrong. A few seconds passed and we all said things like "Oh, it's not that bad." And then, WHAM, the stench hit us like a brick. A brick made of rotting fish flesh. John decided to triple-bag and throw the stuff out immediately, but I thought we should taste it first. Imagine driving past Three Mile Island, smelling the putrid toxic waste fumes, and then saying, "wait, stop the car, we've gotta taste that." Yeah, that was me.

But, as promised by the dear Swedes who told me so much about their odiferous delicacy and then presented me with a can at my going-away party in Stockholm, it actually didn't taste that bad. It was just very, very salty and fishy. But the garden continued to reek of the fish juice that sprayed everywhere when John opened the can. Our guests wondered if something had died in our yard. Maybe our neighbors worried that we had murdered someone and buried him under the yucca plants. John hosed down the patio the next morning.

Anyway, in addition to the sturströmming, I made three kinds of pickled herring: tomato-caper, mustard, and red wine. I also made skagen using little shrimpies mixed with herb aoli, a spoonful of yogurt and a generous amount of fresh dill. And for desert I baked "nut tops," the delightful hazelnut cookies from the Rosendal Cafe. To drink, we served Carlsberg (Danish, but close enough?) and I made aquavit by infusing vodka with anise, cardamom and cumin. I'm not sure cumin belonged in there, though—or maybe I just added too much. My friends called the spirit "challenging." And they wondered why I was wearing a schlumpy blue and yellow t-shirt that said "Sverige" (because they didn't know what "Sverige" means).

But despite just being sort of confusing to most of the guests, the party was fun. I was surprised how hard it was to find basic ingredients for making Swedish food, though. I couldn't find fresh herring or even salted herring, so I started with pre-pickled herring and soaked it to get rid of the copious amount of sugar and vinegar in the store-bought marinade, and then started over with my own sauces. I couldn't find bleak roe (or any cheap fish roe) and I also couldn't find any Swedish cheeses. Luckily, it turns out herring tastes pretty good with sharp, white cheddar and fingerling potatoes.

I did find knackebröd at a European grocery, and that made me happy. But next time I'll probably just make Swedish meatballs and call it a day. Everyone likes Swedish meatballs!

Swedish Space Tourism!

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 02:27:00 +0000

Holy crap, it turns out I'm not the only connection between New Mexico and Sweden. The other connection is... space travel! See, New Mexico is building a spaceport, where Virgin Galactic will offer trips to suborbital space for about $200,000, beginning in 2011.

According to thelocal.se (Stockholm's English-language news Web site), the Ice Hotel in Kiruna, Sweden just started selling Virgin Galactic tickets as well. Spaceport Sweden is projected to open in Kiruna in 2012, and will be the main European hub for recreational space travel.

If you haven't heard about this whole space tourism thing, well, get ready to become obsessed, like me. I've been keeping an eagle-eye on the Spaceport New Mexico project since it was first announced in 2006. Virgin mega-mogul Richard Branson came up with the idea to make rich folks pay for a joy ride into space, and hundreds have already prepaid in the U.S. (before the economic meltdown, naturally). The idea is that within a few years of the space tourism launch, there could be really quick and awesome suborbital flights from, say, L.A. to Tokyo in a just a few hours. When you go way up into suborbital space, you massively cut down the time it would ordinarily take to slice through the atmosphere and get from point A to point B.

Anyway, this Sweden thing is a new and exciting development! Well, new to me, anyway. Thelocal.se has been on the case since January '07. Anyway, the reason for the Kiruna location in way northern Sweden? So space tourists can fly through the Northern Lights. Amazing!

Home Sweet

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:10:00 +0000

Hello! I am back in Santa Fe and feeling energized after two weeks of travel. I shot two Food Detectives segments in New York (that's me with Ted Allen, above), hung out with my girlfriends, ate oysters with the parents, and hung out with grandma—mormor in case any Swedes are reading...

The whole way home I carried a reindeer skin for my mother-in-law, which most onlookers were gracious enough to assume was a fur coat—probably because I'm so fancy. And I read the first two vampire novels in the Twilight series while in transit. Over 700 pages of pure adolescent nonsense. I was irritated at the end of both books because the writer kind of gave up and stopped forming sentences worth reading, but still, the plot is addictive, and I might buy the next book just to find out what happens. (Although if anyone wants to just tell me what happens in the comments, I'd be okay with saving $20 and a few precious hours of my life.)

The weirdest thing about the journey home has been the fact that I'm seeing Sweden-related stuff everywhere. I was walking down the street in Brooklyn and passed a store called "Tjej/Kvinna" (girl/woman). I passed a billboard on the highway that said "Bättre!" ("better"—it was an SAS ad).

And then a random guy came up to me and my rowdy friends at a wine bar in Manhattan and asked if we were having a special occasion. I told him not really, but I'd just returned from seven months in Stockholm, and he busted out and started speaking Swedish to me! What are the odds? Actually, I'll tell you the odds. According to Wikipedia, there are an estimated 14 million Swedish-speaking people in the world, with about 8 million in Sweden and 4.3 million in the U.S. (4.3 million! That's huge!) There are 306 million Americans, so that means one in 71 people in the U.S. speaks Swedish. That sounds completely impossible to me, but then again, I've never been to Minnesota, where they all apparently live.

Last night, however, John met a Swedish waitress at an obscure bar in Santa Fe, which suggests that Swedes are truly everywhere. In celebration of this fact, John and I are going to have a Swedish-themed party next Friday night. We'll drink Carlsberg beer and snaps (I'm going to infuse vodka with caraway and anise to get the right effect), and try our hand at making our own pickled herring, köttbullar and Swedish cookies. I don't know what they're called, but there's a kind of cookie served at Cafe Rosendal in Stockholm that was so delicious I bought a $50 cookbook just to learn how to make them. They're mostly hazelnuts, egg whites and sugar. Mmmmm.

So, how am I finding the U.S., after living abroad for a while? Well, it's great to be home, but it's easy to see why foreigners think we're funny. Americans are fat and we don't dress well. We talk to strangers in public all the time, which is weird, and a remarkable number of us are religious and/or right-wing nut jobs. We are constantly bombarded with media and advertisements (much more so than in Sweden) to the point that we're jaded and immune to them, and many people are bizarrely obsessed with security, ie, afraid of being bombed, robbed or raped at any moment, even if they live in bumfuck New Mexico. Especially if they live in bumfuck New Mexico. But you knew all that, right? Yes, this is an absurd place. However, it's my bizarre place. The upsides are that all my loved ones are here, the sun shines all the time, there's never a shortage of things to do, and everything is on sale. As Niklas would say: U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Swedener in Helsinki

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 06:33:00 +0000

I just spent one of the weirdest weeks of my life in Finland. And I’ve changed my mind about the place completely. I was right about the grimness, but it’s also simultaneously quirky and hilarious. All around Helsinki, if you look closely, you start noticing strange details in everything. For instance, many buildings have faces in them. Not random face-like patterns in the stones that you can barely make out if you squint, but actual gargoyle faces, carved into the nooks and corners of even modern structures. And there are these silver balls everywhere, hundreds of them. They must be some sort of art installation, but it feels like God dropped a handful of oversized ball-bearings and they rolled into weird places, slightly tucked behind electrical boxes, on the edge of the harbor, on median strips, nestled up against bus stops. You’ll also notice. English signs say things like “We got beef,” “drinking district,” and “so many things of everything.” Finnish ones contain 29-character words like “rakennusautomaatiosuunnittelu.” An especially strange bathroom sign indicated stalls for both female and handicapped patrons with icons of a woman and a wheelchair-bound person peeing at the same time, their streams of urine crossing in midair!

The design here is fanciful and weird, too. In such an austere-looking city, it’s a little jarring to see colors and patterns as whimsical as those of Marimekko and Ivana Helsinki in the shop windows. My first impression of Helsinki was that it’s not like Stockholm AT ALL, in fact, it seems much more Slavic than Scandinavian. But after spending a few days exploring the city in the company of Finns, I actually think Finland has a unique character distinct from both. If I had to try to classify it (and keep in mind I’m just forming this theory based on intuition and a very small amount of input), I would say it’s a place where people are externally tough, enduring, uncomplaining and quiet, but there’s a really colorful internal world of imagination, stories, and myths. I feel like Finland is exactly the setting of all the slightly twisted fantasies of childhood: there are absolutely trolls and monsters in the woods, and they will either turn out to be friendly, or they will eat you. You can spell words any way you want—extra letters just make it more fun! And you can totally name your dolls (or your kids) things like Teemu and Tikki.

So what was I doing all week in the land of elves and psychadelia? Bonnier Publishing Program, of course. We visited an internet startup, Nokia, and a couple of Bonnier companies, and worked on our entrepreneurship projects. We have a lot of work to do before presenting our ideas in May.

I really enjoyed the visit to Nokia, but my favorite part of the trip was a dinner we had at a crazy Russian restaurant. The place was ornate with pleated satin tapestry, oriental rugs and old oil paintings, and we were served a feast that included strange specialties like pickles with honey and sour cream, bear salami, and a raspberry meringue pavlova. There was a “vodka button” on the wall, and when you pressed it, a waitress would appear with a platter of icy vodka shots for everyone. I want a vodka button in my house!

Foreign Finland

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 12:12:00 +0000

I feel like I've been abducted by aliens. I'm in this strange, bleak place where people speak in monosyllabic grunts, but the written language uses 20 characters for every word; where the architecture is a mixture of gray, Soviet cinderblocks and modern, glass confections. Where my "sea-view" hotel looks out over a harbor filled with shipping containers and cranes, and everything is closed on Sundays. Hmmm, Finland.

I think the Eastern block and I just don't really jibe. There's nowhere in the world where I feel more foreign. There are places that should feel much more foreign to me: the Middle East, Asia or Africa, where I look really different from the natives and I don't know the customs. But these places tend to be warm, colorful, crowded and loud, and I understand that. I don't get quiet, closed, cold and gray.

Finland is technically Scandinavian, but its Russian heritage gives it a feeling wholly different from Sweden, Denmark and Norway. I'm going to dig in a little over the next five days and see if I can get to know it, but for right now, I might as well be in outer space.

Dashing Through the Snow

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 12:02:00 +0000

How many of your colleagues do you think you could convince to enter a 56-mile cross-country ski race? One? None? Well, this week the Bonnier staff in Sweden entered a team of 25 in Vasaloppet, the country’s most prestigious winter endurance race—and they’re actually out to win.

Women's and youth races have been going on since Friday, but the main Vasaloppet event (which is open to all) began this morning, and I’ve been watching it on TV in the airport, as I wait for my flight to Helsinki. With some training, I think I'd like to enter a race like this. I’ve never actually cross-country skied in my life, but the idea appeals to me, and I think I’d pick it up pretty quickly. I’d much rather use skis as transportation than as a way to break my neck sliding downhill.

Anyway, back to the Vasaloppet. It’s actually redundant to say “the” Vasaloppet, because the “-et” at the end of Vasalopp means “the.” But in English it sounds weird to leave it out. Anyway, some members of the Bonnier team are Vasaloppet veterans. Jonas Eriksson, VP of Bonnier Entertainment and his boss Torsten Larsson, head of Bonnier Broadcasting, Entertainment, and the evening newspaper Expressen, are ski-racing experts, with years of events under their belts. For Larsson, Vasaloppet is just a training race—he’s using it to prepare for his annual crosscountry ski-traverse of Greenland.

But Vasaloppet is a pretty big deal: over 44,000 people entered this year, if you count the smaller races as well as the 56-mile event. That’s bigger than the New York Marathon, which limits entries to 37,000. (To be fair, it’s not really accurate to compare them, since Vasaloppet send competitors out in flights over the course of four days. But still, 44,000 people is five percent of the Swedish population.)

The first Vasaloppet happened in 1922, when a newspaper editor named Anders Pers decided it would be fun to put together a race that roughly followed king Gustav Vasa’s “flight on skis from Mora towards Norway in 1521” (quoting vasaloppet.se on that one—the description doesn't make it clear whether he was fleeing or rushing to attack, although I suspect it was the latter). The first race was sponsored by Dagens Nyheter, Sweden's biggest daily paper, owned by Bonnier, but these days it’s sponsored by deeper pockets like IBM and Volkswagen.

By tomorrow, we should know whether the Bonnier team won the race. I would be kind of surprised—even though we’ve got some experienced racers, it sounds like there’s a whole lot of competition. But, you never know!

Annnnnd Blastoff!

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:16:00 +0000

The last two days have been action-packed. We launched the new bonnier.com into the loving arms of both the Swedish media (they liked it!) and our own staff (a couple of the old people bitched about the change, but whatever). I yawned wrong and threw out my back again, which proves I'm actually 87 years old. And I said goodbye to both Bonnier HQ and my little apartment in Stockholm.

My last day at the office was extremely touching and sweet—the information department took me out to lunch at a yummy Korean restaurant, and then I had a great discussion with Jonas about how my time in Sweden went. In the afternoon, there was a little reception with champagne, fresh-juice cocktails and tea sandwiches where everyone wished me well, and Niklas gave a poignant and hilarious goodbye speech in which he poked fun at me, himself, the Swedish language and our office culture, and I just barely avoided crying. They sent me off with a Swedish care package full of funny stuff like stinky fermented herring, a giant hockey jersey, Absoult vodka and a folk-art horse, and my friends at Bonnier Media University gave me a very stylish necklace as a going-away gift. I didn't expect such a warm farewell—it really was special. I don't know what I could do to thank everyone for giving me such an amazing experience in Sweden. I know I complained a bit during the rough winter months, but I'm very grateful for my time here, and—what do you know—now that it's light out again, I don't want to leave!

As for the Web site, the launch went off with only a minor hitch (we ran a script that broke something and took a few hours to fix), and is now in the talented hands of my job-rotation successor, Ganda Suthivarakom, who, I am convinced, is the ideal person to be in charge of the next phase. I'll continue to act as an admin of the social network, and probably will need to do some sit-downs in the coming months with different teams to show them how to use it for their individual business and editorial needs.

And the next thing I knew, it was the weekend. Last night I had another toast and a nice dinner with our partners on the Web project, River Cresco and the Drupal team, Chas. Today, I mostly chilled out and went to a naprapath to have my back treated. Ganda, Niklas and I went for a walk in the snow and ended the mellow afternoon with coffee at Niklas and Janeatte's house. (Apologies for probably misspelling her name.) I'm really going to miss my Swedish friends, and I haven't yet properly said goodbye to all of them. But I think I'll do a round of hugs and phone calls next Thursday, when I stop in Stockholm for one more day on the way back to the U.S.

For now, it's time to shift gears and get ready for the next installment of the Bonnier Publishing Program, which happens in Finland over the next three days. I am really excited about our business idea. If you'll remember from a bunch of posts back, part of the program consists of conceiving and pitching a new digial project, and I think the one my team has come up with is both creative and viable. This week, we'll dig a bit more into the revenue model and begin to turn our concept into a presentation.

The next order of business: What's to become of artificialswedener.com? Well, I think I'll keep posting periodically, at least until the Bonnier Publishing Program ends in May. Right now there are a lot of loose ends I'd like to tie up. For instance, what insights about the U.S. will I have upon re-entry, now that I'm coming from a Swedish perspective? What will it be like to tour San Francisco in April (the next BPP segment) with a bunch of Scandinavians? Will our business plan turn into a reality? Am I going home to a Mad Max-style, economic-crisis wasteland? Stay tuned to find out!

Fibinacci Food Loop

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:12:00 +0000

Today I had the slightly psychadelic experience of eating a meal cooked according to recipes I made up, as interpreted by the test kitchen of a food magazine. If you read this blog back in December, you might remember that I prepared a giant meal during the holidays and served it to my friends and inlaws, while directing a photo shoot of the whole thing for Sweden's Allt Om Mat (All About Food) magazine. Well, today was the day the magazine tested the recipes to see if they actually taste good, and they invited me (and Niklas and Ganda) to come and eat the food. It was really interesting to see how my recipes were interpreted not just by another person but by a person of another culture. They tasted great, and because the cook had the photos from the shoot to work with, she could tell what everything was supposed to look like. There were some subtle differences, but everything was really yummy and it was exciting to see ideas that I made up executed by someone else. The soup was thinner and less spicy, but still really smoky and flavorful, for instance. I put a generous squeeze of lime and some avocado slices into it and it was divine. The empanadas were thicker and sweeter than I made them, but still delightfully rich and flaky. And the pecan pie didn't look like my pie at all—she used a modern cylindrical pie dish instead of the old-fashioned American kind—but it tasted fantastic, especially with the chipotle ice cream on top. All small, interesting differences that added up to food that was just as tasty, but with a slightly new twist.

It was fun seeing the photos they chose for the magazine, as well. The got a lot of shots of Keira and her kids, as well as a few of John and me, and a couple of my inlaws, Penny and Gary. I don't think they'll be able to use all of them, but I'll curious to find out what makes the cut. Speaking of photos, isn't the picture above kind of great? The geek in me hopes someone will use the recipes in the magazine to cook the food and then take a picture of it next to a print-out of this photo. Then I'm pretty sure the universe will get sucked into a black-hole and my head will explode.

The Final Countdown

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:10:00 +0000

Normal people let themselves breathe, space activities out sensibly, pause to reflect. Not Megan! I've been in an insane whirlwind of preparation for two big things this week: launching the new Bonnier.com site (and the associated BonFire social network, which is a giant project in its own right), plus...moving back to the U.S.!

I know, I know, I haven't really talked about exactly when I was leaving Sweden and what I'd do when I get back. Those are messy questions. I'll share my schedule, just so you can see what a lunatic I am: Friday is my last full workday in the Bonnier office. Then, I go to Helsinki this Sunday through next Wednesday, for the Bonnier Publishing Program. Thursday the 5th, I return to Stockholm for a one-day stopover (There no direct flights from Helsinki and I could use miles to upgrade to first-class for the flight home from Stockholm). Friday the 6th, I fly from Stockholm to New York to party for an evening with my girlfriends in Manhattan. Then I fly to Baltimore on March 7th (again, because there were no direct flights from Stockholm, so since I had to go through Newark anyway, I decided to make it fun). From there, I'll drive out to the Eastern Shore of Maryland to visit my parents and grandma for a few days. Then I'll drive to Annapolis, Maryland on March 10th for a business lunch with the Bonnier's V.P. of digital media, who lives in Washington, DC but is meeting me halfway. Then I have to fly BACK to New York to shoot two segments of the T.V. show Food Detectives on March 11th. (I think way back in maybe my first post I mentioned that I occasionally guest-host a show on the Food Network. Well, the show got picked up for a second season and I'll be back in the States just in time for their last week of filming.)

From there, I fly back to Santa Fe on March 12, where I will take a week off, for the love of god! Well, sort of. Because the new social network will be in beta, I'm sure there will be a lot of questions and bug reports from our beta testers, so I'll work on that, but I'll mainly try to just be a human being again for a little while, and then swing back into full action on March 23.

What "full action" means is not 100% clear, however. I have responsibilities in a few different places within the Bonnier company: at my alma mater, PopSci, at Bonnier AB, continuing to work on the new Web site, and also with the digital department at Bonnier in the U.S., which, under the leadership of a new boss, is getting a facelift.

But back to the here and now in Stockholm. Today I packed up all my belongings, so I could ship them home and only travel with one suitcase. Kind of key, since I have to make stops in a bunch of places before landing back in New Mexico. This way my stuff will already be at the house when I get there. And holy crap, I have a lot of stuff. I had four humongo suitcases when I came over here and I of course did some shopping over the past seven months, to boot. Niklas said one of the things he'll miss about me is that I wear a different outfit to work every day. Sweet, maybe, but crazy. What can I say? I love fashion. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to do a final sweep of the social network, and also get ready for the DHL man to grab my boxes.....

The Princess and the Chairman

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:28:00 +0000

Big news in Sweden today: Princess Victoria is going to marry a commoner! She and her gym-owner boyfriend Daniel Westling got formally engaged in a ceremony today in Stockholm. Westling had been shacking up with the princess in Drottningholms castle for a couple of years, and cynics say the wedding is more or less engineered to provide a little cheer and good publicity for Sweden to distract people from the recession. Not that Swedes are feeling all that woeful anyway, compared to Americans. But a royal wedding is always good fun and there hasn't been one in Sweden since Silvia and Gustav married in the seventies.

In other news, I snapped a photo today of Bonnier Chairman Carl-Johan Bonnier sitting with my friend Sofia at her desk. This is such a great example of how gorgeously unhierarchical Sweden is. This guy is the big boss of an international media company and he's sitting knee-to-knee with a freelance designer, at her desk, helping her with a project. What a country! Can you imagine Si Newhouse doing that?? He's like Oz in sweatpants. I'm pretty sure only Anna Wintour gets to speak to him directly—normal folk would need to speak to his underling's underling, after making an appointment three months in advance.

Equal, But Better

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 12:19:00 +0000

Strandvägen, Stockholm's poshest residential street

Something I've been pondering a lot lately is the weird juxtaposition in Sweden between equality and status. Sweden has perhaps the world's best social services, which ensure that everyone gets fair pay, ample vacation, amazing maternity (and paternity) benefits, free childcare, free education, free health care and free elder care—all factors that serve to level the socio-economic playing field. And there seems to be a national desire to belong, rather than a desire to compete. Unlike Americans, who always say they want to be "the best" at things, Swedes tend to express the desire to do the best they can. They even say that they're happy to fall in the middle of the spectrum, which is something that an American would never say.

One Swedish friend of mine went to university in the U.S. and told one of her professors that she would be happy to achieve average grades. She was being modest, of course, because she's very smart, but she was expressing herself in a Swedish way, without being boastful or overstating her abilities, so she was shocked when her professor reprimanded her and told she needed to aim higher.

I've encountered this Swedish-American communication difference a lot since I've been here, especially since I'm a very outspoken communicator even by American standards. We're taught in the U.S. that we should strive to be the best. That you should aim as high as possible, and then even if you don't reach your target, you'll still land somewhere pretty lofty. But Swedes are taught to be realistic. Aim for where you want to be, and if your aim is realistic, you'll get there—and by the way, you're probably average; most of us are.

The funny thing about the Swedish way is that even though they openly emphasize averageness, they are quietly obsessed with status. This is a very human thing, of course—all human cultures have important markers of status. But especially in Stockholm, there's definitively the right address, the right handbag, the right last name, the right way to hold your fork, the right outfit to get into the right nightclub, even the right way to accent vowels when you speak. The more "right" things you do, the higher your status becomes.

One very chic Swedish lady recently joked to me that her idea of heaven would be to wake up with the last name "Bonnier." And I said, "Um, why don't you just change your last name to Bonnier, then?" In the U.S. of course, you can change your name to anything you want. I could just go to the department of records and request that my name be changed to Megan Bonnier, and no one except Bonnier employees would bat an eye.

You can't change your name in Sweden because then anyone might potentially take a noble last name, and historically that would have been confusing and insulting to the monarchy. In the 18th or even 19th century, plopping "von" in front of your name would have landed you in jail (or worse), and it's still not legal today. In the U.S. if I changed my name to Megan von Miller, everyone would just think I was an ass.

And then it hit me—maybe all these little status things in Sweden are vestiges of living under a king and queen. In a monarchy, all the plebians can be as equal as the day is long, but the nobility is elevated to another, higher level. Now that the monarchy in Sweden serves mostly a symbolic function, all the symbolic markers of exclusivity can be shared by the public—as long as they have the money or the access. No one can deny that it feels great to be on the inside of the velvet rope. When the playing field is leveled, status becomes all the more appealing.

Steppin' Out in Stockholm

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 11:32:00 +0000

I recently declared that I would go out every single night during my last two weeks in Stockholm. It's getting a little expensive, actually, so I might not be able to go out every night, but I've had a really fun week, despite working a ton on the Web site.

Last night I went out with my friends/colleagues Ganda and Tanja and we had cocktails, danced and enjoyed the powdery snow falling over the city. It was kind of magical, actually. Enjoying night spots surrounded by beautiful people, glittering snow, chic decor, the historical grandeur of Bern's... I snapped some photos with my iPhone just to try to capture the ambience.

First we went to a dining club called Collage, near Stureplan, where we lucked out and got a banquette table at a prime spot so we could watch all the pretty people while we drank our cocktails. We got there at about 11:30 which is very early for Stockholm, so the vibe was mellow, friendly and just-crowded-enough. The hanging our was great, but the dancing was pretty bad at Collage—even by 1 am they were playing Top 40 pop music (which was fun, mind you) and the dance floor was sparse.

So, we left while the people coming from the clubs that close at 1 am were piling in and went to Berns. Berns is a hotel and event space that spans a few different buildings, including two concert halls and a Chinese restaurant, and any number of shows, parties or musical styles could be going on there on a given night. But it was fantastic last night.

On the bottom floor there was a guest-list-only party playing very cheesy techno music, which we didn't at all mind not being invited to. Instead we had drinks in the Asiatisk hall, which is a gorgeous old ballroom with enormous chandeliers and a lot of red and gold—the fading glamor of the last century, which is so great to see preserved amidst all the austere modern decor around Stockholm. Then we headed upstairs to an extremely fun but not very environmentally correct dance party being held on a balcony under heat lamps (remember I said it was snowing?).

The DJ was playing old-school hip-hop from when I was in junior high and the dance floor was jam-packed with the most diverse group of people I've seen in Sweden yet. And, wow, when you cross other ethnicities with Swedish stock, you get ridiculous beauty. Some of the people I talked to were Swedes of Brazilian and Zimbabwean heritage, and there were a bunch of middle-eastern people as well. It was so fun and unpretentious—definitely the best going-out experience I've had in this city.

Johnny B. Svensson

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:10:00 +0000

For four days last week, I was married in Sweden. I mean, technically I've been married the whole time, but I actually experienced Stockholm with my husband last week, which was fantastic. Let me tell you, that boy can eat some pickled herring. I've never seen anything like it. He has a palate for pungent flavors, which sort of makes me wish he was here during stinky rotten fish season, or whatever the time of year is called when people eat sturströmming—herring that ferments for up to a year in bulging cans (hello, when cans bulge that's a bad thing) that reek of vinegar, rotten eggs and rancid butter when opened. Yummy! Anyway, I kind of wish John had gotten a chance to taste sturströmming, because I think he might be one of the few humans on earth who would actually like it.

Besides eighty-sixing every herring dish in Stockholm, John also spruced up his wardrobe at Filippa K (pictured above), sang "Sommartider" in shockingly good Swedish during karaoke night (pictured below), and partied with me on the cheesy Birka Paradise boat on Valentine's Day. And then someone stole his debit card number and cleared our bank account of a big chunk of money, which wasn't cool at all. We're involved in an ATM fraud investigation right now and hopefully it'll be okay, but it was definitely a jarring ending to our strange long weekend. Whaddya know, it turns out Stockholm is edgy after all!

Launch That!

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 20:46:00 +0000

Well, I'm now down to the final 17 days of life in Scandinavia. I move out of my apartment on February 27th so Ganda can move in, and then I make stops in Helsinki, New York and Maryland before heading back to Santa Fe. The end is bittersweet, as endings often are. I'm ready to go home, but I'm so happy that our new Web site is about to launch. It's in great shape and I think it will really do good things for Bonnier in terms of creating a new brand position that emphasizes openness and an emphasis on people. If the site helps a single employee get a new perspective on her job and suddenly realize she works for a cool, progressive company, my time in Sweden will have been well-spent.

Lately I've mainly been spending time at work, but I did take a couple days off last week to hang out with John during his all-too-brief visit. I'll write more about that in my next post, because I'd like to keep this one short and sweet. Why? So you can watch this video tour of the new Bonnier.com site. I look like a complete dork, but that's the price I'm willing to pay to spread the gospel. Enjoy!

ABBA SingStar. Oh, My Aching Head...

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 09:49:00 +0000

Wow, my posts are becoming few and far between these days. Remember when I used to post a couple times a day sometimes? Well, that was before work got crazy-busy. Now I come home from work and... keep working. But I'm excited about the payoff. I unveiled the new Bonnier Web site for a couple of select audiences on Friday, and I'm going to continue giving presentations about it all next week, until John comes to town and whisks me off on a romantic adventure. (That is what you're going to do, right, honey?)

Anyway, I am thrilled that I'll soon be able to go home feeling like I accomplished my mission for being here. Not that I was ever in doubt about that, but I would have been seriously bummed if something had gone wrong and the project had fallen through or been drastically off-deadline. People in our company are so used to Web launches being delayed indefinitely that no one really believed we'd actually get a site live in February, so I feel good about showing them that it's possible to execute a plan on time and on budget. Time to raise our standards, folks!

Other than working 12-14 hour days all last week, the main things I did were to go to a bar on Friday night and make friends with some random people (an Estonian, a Dutch guy and an Italian) who were here for the big international furniture show this weekend, and go with my friend Maria to a party last night. I'm trying to decide whether to go to the furniture show myself today, but I don't have much momentum—indeed, what I've got is a very sedentary form of inertia—because I'm massively hung over this morning.

Last night's party was at the home of a nice couple named Helen and Tomas (sorry if I butchered the spellings, guys). They hosted a pair of "troubadours" who are doing something called The Living Room Tour, which entails playing only for parties in people's homes. Kind of a fun idea. The music was okay, but the main feature was apparently that their lyrics are very funny, and I didn't understand most of what they were saying, so I didn't get the full effect. Plus, one of the musicians told Maria to shut up when she was translating a joke to me, which I thought was kind of funny, but not very nice, considering there were only like 30 of us sitting there. Maybe they play in people's living rooms because those are the only audiences likely to give them silent, rapt attention.

Anyway, after the troubadours, we had a dance party complete with disco ball, and played SingStar on the PS3. (Kudos to the hosts for such a sweet party set-up! I wonder whether that disco ball is always in their living room?) I bought Guitar Hero for John, which I thought covered our musical videogame needs, but SingStar is really, really fun. I think we're going to have to get that one, too. The best part is that you can sing at the same time as someone else, and the game shows you who's singing the song better. So it's simultaneously a duet and a duel. The second best part is that there's a SingStar ABBA edition. You guessed it—nuthin' but ABBA songs. My my, how can I resist you? The above image of ABBA clad in gold foil against a Swedish flag is perhaps my new favorite photo of all time, by the way. Can I get that in extra-large poster size, please?

Anyway, last night we were drinking boxed white wine for like five hours while all the singing and dancing was going on, and today I think I have sulfite poisoning. But I have the feeling I'm the only person in the world who would attribute her throbbing head to wine sulfites rather than, um, just a massive amount of alcohol. What a dork.

Perfect Stockholm Saturday

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:11:00 +0000

Yesterday I had such a great day. In the morning I went on a run around Kungsholmen (the island right below the one I live on) on a beautiful trail I'd never used before. I wish I had discovered it earlier, because it meanders beside the water most of the way, passing all these sweet little cafes and swimming spots which are probably supercharming in warm weather.

Anyway, the view was still great and no weird precipitation was falling out of the sky, which made it all the better. The trail winds around City Hall, so I took a detour through the courtyard, with it's amazing arches and vaults, and found a wedding photographer shooting portraits of a bride and groom there. The sun actually peeked out for a little bit and lit up Södermalm across the water, giving the neighborhoods and boats kind of a hallelujah quality.

It was fuh-rEEzing cold, though, and I couldn't feel my hands by the time I got back to my own neighboorhood, so I stopped and had a latte and did some people-watching in a really sweet little cafe. People here always look so elegant. I mean, sometimes you see people wearing athletic clothing, but no one ever looks schlubby. Even just to go out for a coffee, Swedes tend to look very put-together. I, on the other hand, seem to have two modes: dressed up and decidedly NOT dressed up. I've been trying to stay a little closer to the mean lately, but I find it actually takes some effort. Just throwing on jeans and a cute top and a sweater doesn't really do the trick for me, somehow. Maybe I'm just inherently messy or something, but I actually have to do my hair and throw on some cute shoes and accessories as well, or I look like I just rolled out of bed (and not in the good way).

Oh yeah, another thing I saw on my run was a couple of people emerging from the water after scuba diving! I was dumbfounded. They must have been on some sort of research mission, testing the water or doing underwater archeology work (I like to make my conjectures as mysterious as possible).

Later in the day, I met up with a couple of girlfriends to see the movie Mammoth and have dinner at this yummy Asian place/nightclub called Ljundgrens. The movie was good, but not as good as I was expecting. On a scale of 1 to 5, we all gave it a 3.5. The thing is, it needed an edit.

You get invested in the characters because Michelle Williams and Gael Garcia Bernal are really good actors and the little girl who plays their daughter is adorable and bright. There are several parallel plotlines all constructed to tug at your heart, which works, but then toward the end, the director throws in a couple of scenes that are tangential to the plot and just kind of push the message over the edge.

The movie is about work/life balance—how we should prioritize our families versus our jobs. But after the theme has been hit home by all the film's primary characters, we really don't need to be hit over the head with it by the revelation that the secondary characters are dealing with the same issues. My humble opinion is that if a couple of unnecessary scenes get cut, this movie could be a success on the international market, but without a visit to the cutting room, sophisticated audiences might be a little annoyed that it's so unsubtle. It still moved me, though. Michelle Williams was particularly convincing and Bernal's character was so sweet that I liked him even when maybe I shouldn't have. But then again, I think he's superhot, so that might have tainted my judgement. A lot of critics in Sweden are comparing the film to Babel, which also starred Bernal and which I think got so-so ratings in the U.S.? I can't remember. I should also mention that about a quarter of the movie was in Tagalog with Swedish subtitles. I was very proud of myself for being able to read along!

After the movie, we had a great meal at Ljundgrens. I had a very modern and innovative sashimi plate that was to die for. And we had really good ginger cocktails made with fresh ginger juice. Almost healthy, but with vodka.

One more random item of business: I've been using a reusable shopping bag from Envirosax that my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas just about every single day, and I wanted to mention it here because I think everyone should have one! It's made from fine-gauge polyester, like a parachute, and folds into a tiny cylinder (like a little sleeping bag) that weighs nothing and fits into your purse or briefcase, so you always have a bag on hand if you decide to make a quick stop at the store. They also come in 5-bag pouches so you're prepared for a bigger shopping trip. I think this is fantastic for urban dwellers who might spontaneously decide to buy a few things as they walk past a store—now we can be effortlessly prepared instead of using a plastic bag or lugging around normal cloth shopping bags, which take up a lot of space. Bonus: Envirosax are printed with very stylish graphic designs, too, if you care. Buy one here!

25 Random Things (part two)

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:54:00 +0000

Yesterday I started writing a list of 25 things that mean something to me when I think about Sweden, but I ran out of steam at number 17. What can I say, it was a long day. Anyway, here are a few more random things, to round out the quarter-century.

18. I can't wait to pay low prices for magazines again. They've got a real racket going on in Scandinavia. Here, magazines are actually worth something, as opposed to being given away in order to boost up the rate base for advertisers. I applaud the business model, but as a consumer, it blows. Yesterday I bought two magazines and spent over $20. And I've heard a yearly subscription to Science Illustration costs around $100. Oh, darling U.S.A. with your $7 magazine subscriptions and collapsing publishing industry....

19. I've been puzzled by the Stockholm accent since I moved here. Not everyone has it. Most people speak Swedish without the inflection I'm about to describe, but there's a certain "posh" Swedish accent in which the speaker puts the vowels "e," "i" and "y" in the back of her throat in a really strange way that I can't imitate. I really wish I knew the history of that linguistic tendency, because it's super weird.

20. Swedish staircases would be a risk-management liability in the U.S. I may have mentioned this in another blog post a long time ago, but I guess that means I just really care about the issue! Instead of having landings every 7 to 13 stairs in order to create room for an upward turn (I only know that's the norm in the U.S. because I used to run up stairs for exercise a lot), the whole thing just twists treacherously in an upward spiral, with no room to walk on the inside of the twist, and no banister. There's not much room to pass if there's another person coming, which is a bad thing considering the fact that Swedes don't really give each other the right-of-way to pass at all. I wouldn't want my grandma to have to navigate a crowded Swedish staircase.

21. The best experience I had during my stay in Sweden was the first weekend I was here, when I went to Torekov to visit Kai and Randa. It is really freaking beautiful in Skåne in the summertime. The cows grazing on the beach are still one of my favorite mental images of picturesque, pristine Sweden.

22. I really love my job here. It's so exciting to be in the head office and learn about the ideas and projects that are influencing the whole company. It could just be that my timing is especially good: there's a lot of fresh energy here and a lot of big changes happening when it comes to the corporate philosophy. I really believe in the branding and communications work I'm doing, and it has been amazing to have the freedom to build a new Web site and social network based on best practices and research rather than on arcane, publishing-industry enterprise standards, which is what we used to have to deal with.

23. Jonas Bonnier is a cool cat. He presents himself very modestly and endearingly when he addresses the entire staff, but he's also a shrewd businessman with very good intuition about people. I'm not too keen on authority, which means I only want to follow people I respect and believe have something to teach me, so it means a lot to have company leadership I can get behind. This feels like kind of a banner year in that regard, what with learning that Bonnier is a company whose values I share AND getting an intelligent new U.S. president.

24. I was really lucky to actually make some good friends here in Sweden. I mean, I'm pretty outgoing, but it really would have sucked if I had come here and not liked my coworkers. And making friends outside of work happened just through the sheer luck of mutual acquaintances. I don't think I would have been able to get through the winter months without my new girlfriends!

25. I'm really excited to go see the movie Mammut (Mammoth) tomorrow night, which I think will be a big international release. For my American friends who haven't heard of it, it's a new film by the Swedish director Lukas Moodysson, but it's in English and stars Michelle Williams and Gael Garcia Bernal—two of my favorite actors. It's already speculated that it will go to Sundance this year. Here's the trailer:

25 Random Things (part one)

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:52:00 +0000

Inspired by the viral Facebook notes thing where you're supposed to list 25 interesting things about yourself, I decided to write my 25 random things about Sweden. I only have about a month left here in the land of Svea, and I'm feeling a little bittersweet about it. On the one hand, I'm going to miss my friends and my exciting job and the cool restaurants and bars, and the pretty green spaces, and on the other hand, I'm ready to get the eff up out of this miserable weather. Ah, but Sweden, you're so naive and safe and gentle. I'll miss you.

25 Random Things:

1. I love the orange bouncy mountain at Vasaparken, and I go there to jump on the trampoline sometimes when no one's looking.

2. The Stockholm canal boats have the most boring audio tour I've ever heard.

3. Finding an adorable new shop filled with a well-edited selection of super design-y things is a more regular occurance in Sweden than anywhere else I've ever been.

4. Cloudberries. Even the name is magical.

5. People in Stockholm have incredibly lousy public etiquette. I can't even count the number of times someone has refused to let me pass on the sidewalk, let a door slam in my face or jumped ahead of me to get on a bus or subway car. It really is infuriating, even to other Swedes. Maybe Stockholm needs that lady who tried to teach the Chinese manners prior to the last Olympics....

6. Vete-Katten, and Bonnier's relentless sponsorship of their business: So wrong, yet so right.

7. Aw, Niklas. I'm gonna miss my buddy. And his wife and kids. By the next time I see Elton, he will probably be able to say something other than the gruff, Viking-like "Där!"

8. It's probably a bad idea to go naming names. Then I'd have to name all the people I've met and will miss in Sweden. But if you've read this blog before, you may notice that Niklas is one of the few characters that I actually name. That was a little stylistic thing I was trying to do, like in the Peanuts, where all the non-children just say "wah-wah-wah-wah-wah."

9. I'm really sick of my apartment. It's kind of crappy to begin with, and I've spent way too much time in it by myself.

10. God, I love Djurgården. If I had long evenings filled with daylight, I would just spend all my time there.

11. I am very jealous of Ganda, who gets to fill the next spot in the job rotation after I leave, and will be here for the very best possible span of seasons.

12. I wish I had gone out and partied more in Stockholm. I may have missed the true essence of the city because I never really did any big nights out on the town. I'm not really hanging with the right demographic for that, unfortunately, since most of my friends have small kids. Hopefully when John comes to town, we'll have at least one late night at the clubs.

13. On Friday, February 13th, while John's here, I'm getting a group of people together to sing karaoke at a place that's stumbling distance from my house. I have a long-standing bet with my boss in New York about whether I can get Jonas Bonnier to sing karaoke with me. We'll see what happens!

14. I wanted to go up and see the north of Sweden, but I never got around to it. I think it would be better in the summer. There's an indigenous people who live there called the Sami, who are analogous to America's Eskimos, since they continue to live in the traditional way of their ancestors. They breed reindeer, make all their own tools, clothes and homes, and speak an ancient language. I'd really like to meet some Sami someday.

15. I also meant to kayak around Stockholm's canals and then skate on the frozen-over canals, but both seemed kind of sketchy for a foreigner to do alone (okay, it's not about being a foreigner—I have an appalling sense of direction), so I never got to go. Dang, I'm a loser!

16. Speaking of water, Sweden's is so clean you can just carbonate it and serve it as a soft drink. We have a faucet at the Bonnier building that dispenses seltzer water. Amazing!

17. Dang, it's tough coming up with 25 things! Plus, I'm still at the office a couple hours after everyone else has gone for the day, so I think i'll come back with things 18 through 25 tomorrow.

Open Letter To Swedish Girls Who Think T-Shirts Are Dresses

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:06:00 +0000

Dear girl-going-up-the-stairs-of-the-Tunnelbana-in-front-of-me,

Yes I snapped a photo of your butt with my iPhone and yes that was creepy, but I needed to blog about you, so hear me out.

You are not wearing a dress. That's a t-shirt. It's made of sheer white jersey cotton and it barely covers your ass. You're supposed to wear it over jeans, not translucent black stockings. I can see your thong, and I don't want to see your thong. The fact that you keep tugging at it means you subconsciously know this isn't your best fashion idea and you're feeling insecure. It doesn't matter if all the other 20-year-old girls in Stockholm are doing it. They look stupid and insecure, too.

Remember when Britney Spears wore that tunic with no pants? She thought it was a dress, which made everyone realize she was having a nervous breakdown. Don't be like that, okay?

Love,

Megan

Sales and Semlor

noreply@blogger.com (Artificial Swedener) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:08:00 +0000

I realized the other day that I haven't really been utilizing all of Stockholm's resources lately. Namely, it's been a long time since I've gone out and just walked around town, which is the main weekend pastime here. So yesterday after a killer kettlebell class (my hands are getting ripped to shreds from all the swinging and snatching) I walked downtown to check out the scene. To my great joy and mild apprehension—gulp—I discovered that every shop in town has deeply discounted its merchandise to make room for the spring collections. Signs everywhere read 70% off! Slut rea! Realization! Final sale! Translation: the city is my Century 21. So, I did a small amount of damage. I picked up a fantastic cropped leather jacket from superhip Swedish designer Whyred, a corset belt and daringly draped turquoise jersey dress from Malin Berger and a pair of sexy but highly walkable black knee boots from Kenzo. *Long, low whistle.*

Aaaaand I might have also stopped into a salon and had my hair dyed red. My mom and husband are not thrilled about this because they "like me better blonde," but I feel like I look more interesting with a little bit of colorful pop, especially when I'm here in Sweden, surrounded by towheads. Plus, my dad, grandma, aunt and cousin are all redheads, so I feel like I have genetic carrot top cred.

While walking around town I also noticed an interesting foodie/cultural thing: There's a new seasonal pastry on the scene called "semla" (plural: semlor) and it's apparently very, very Swedish and important. There are coffee shops and konditori (pastry shops) on every block in Stockholm, and right now each one holds displays of this round yeast bun flavored with cardamom and filled with cream and almond paste. They were traditionally made for Fat Tuesday, as a way of using up all the rich ingredients prior to the pre-Easter fast, but these days they're served as early as possible, because people can't get enough of them. So now instead of just one fat day, there's basically fat January, February and March. I sat down to lunch at my usual salad place yesterday and people were queued up around the corner buying semlor. I sat there picking at a plate of greens while watching people stuff these huge cream buns into their faces and I just about died with jealousy, but managed to get out of there without eating one. Then I continued to be tortured by semlor calling out to me from every shop window in town: "Megan! Eat me!" I knew I wouldn't be able to fight the good fight forever and I'd have to taste one, so I was super psyched when I saw a gorgeous display of miniature semlor in a shop window on the way to work this morning. I got to experience the deliciousness in a golf ball-sized portion, which was exciting to my palate but not overly treacherous for my hips. It really is a nice flavor combo: the buns are soft and yeasty like dinner rolls, and kicked up with a touch of cardamom. The cream is barely sweetened, and a thin layer of marzipan provides a sugary bit of texture and rich almond flavor.

According to Niklas, the endless font of random historical knowledge, an 18th century king named Adolf something or other died after gorging himself on 14 semlor in one sitting. I assume this was after a full meal or something. Modern-day eating champions would scoff at such a poor performance. He was probably poisoned.

I was hoping to leave you with a video on how to make semlor, but a quick YouTube search yielded much stranger stuff. A Rammstein song set entirely to one unmoving image of a single semla and this little gem. They're singing about how the semla comes to cheer us up when it's dark and the weather is bad!