In The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, the “babel fish” is described thusly:
“The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier, but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.”
I don’t have a babel fish. I also don’t have a great handle on Swedish or Sweden in general; my own entries weave a tale of ignorance and naivety. Yet in spending a few days here in Stockholm, I think it’s safe to say I’ve broken this whole foreign language and foreign lands thing wide open.
Here then is my Mikael Blomkvist-ian Millennium piece:
Signs of the Swedes:
Sweden is sometimes like living inside the movie Repo Man (1984). That film has a running gag about generic labels on everything. Here’s a sampling:
Now here’s a sign outside a hotel for, well, a sign:
I google translated that to make sure it wasn’t Swedish for “Conference Center” or something equally Hotel-y. But here’s what my makeshift Babel Fish says:
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To celebrate my marathon finish yesterday, I treated myself to some gelato.
It was a little pricey for two scoops – 42 kroner or USD$4.88. I miss the gloriously cheap but also deliciously rich gelatos of Düsseldorf and Rome where one euro bought a massive scoop of ice creamy goodness. But when in Rome … or in this case when in Stockholm… you pay what you pay.
What struck me though was that the gelato shoppes offered golden waffles made to order. The waffle irons had this sign on them:
The sign was ONLY in English. The Swedish apparently don’t need to be told a waffle iron is hot.
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Wrestling with a Swedish Conscience – Do You Think I Should Swear?
George McFly: Do you think I should swear?
Marty McFly: Yes, definitely, George. God dammit, swear!Back to the Future (1985)
Yesterday I mentioned my efforts to limit my public profanity… yet sometimes it needs to be shared. Here’s a daybill for a Swedish wrestling match. The tagline is… well… they take their wrestling VERY seriously.
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Nary An Aurora, IL, Map In Sight
I had hoped this was a Mike Myers inspired pop-up coffee shop, combining Wayne’s World, Coffee Talk, and Sprockets.
Sadly, it’s just a Starbucksian Swedish chain.
I sent a pic to my brother telling him as much and he said we should open one. We could serve our coffee in jumbo mugs, a la So I Married An Axe Murderer (1993)!
Speaking of ordering a large, here’s my tribute to that courtesy of a novelty ice cream cone and some bears that do not share.
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There’s an obvious meaning here… the sign is posted at the edge of the dock and thus a car careening out of control that doesn’t stop will find itself plummeting into the deep.
But I prefer to think it’s a “Missing: Superman” sign paying homage to Action Comics Number 1:
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There’s a stand up comic, and I always blank on his name, but he’s got a throwaway joke that goes something like, “so the other day I was having Chinese food, or as they call it in China, food….”
I kept flashing onto that bit as I passed signs proffering Swedish licorice…
…and my big white whale meal of Swedish Meatballs. I paid dearly for them and they were good but they weren’t “oh my god these are the best meatballs ever!” good.
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Security (For President Skroob… and BEYOND!)
In some ways, Stockholm also feels like the embodiment of Spaceballs (1987). When his daughter is kidnapped by the evil Lord Helmet, King Roland is forced to reveal the code to the outer air shield of Planet Druidia.
My door access code to Hostel Dalagatan is 9786. I have a mental block on this. For as long as I’ve known her (which means, ya know, literally my whole life), my mom has had a pneumonic device that views a series of numbers as “kinda like a countdown.” It works wonders for her and she can recall numbers way better than me. So my hostel’s access code number is sorta, kinda like a countdown and I have no doubt she’d always remember it. But me? I keep punching in the wrong code. I’ve had to save it in a scratch pad note on my phone so I can pull it up when needed… which I’d say is at least 75% of the time.
While on the subject of codes and passwords, Hostel Dalagatan has free wifi for guests. A brief word on high speed internet access in Sweden. I don’t know what the issue is but the best way I can describe it is that it’s like MegaMaid in Spaceballs — it can both suck and blow.
My cell phone has free international texts and data roaming. But Sweden’s cell coverage (for my partner carrier at least) is at best spotty aband in truth almost nonexistent. So I had hoped the WiFi would be decent… it is not. Slow, erratic, and … twitchy? It’s a frustrating experience when all I want to do is get walking directions to the ABBA Museum.
But I digress. The WiFi password for the hostel is “hostelguest2013.” I assume therefore they’ve offered internet since 2013… and perhaps it’s slow in part due to every backpacker who has ever stayed here jumping on for free wifi at any given moment, clogging the bandwidth pipeline. That or it’s just crappy wifi.
Whilst at the Nobel Museum, I was offered free wifi there as well. From the ticket receipt, the password was “nobel123.” Geniuses came up with this passcode. I have to wonder what the combination is to their luggage.
A brief note on the Nobel Museum: in the main hallway I came across this desktop Mac.
Presumably it was running all the video and interactive displays in the place. I’m no rocket scientist but I might have put such a mission critical piece of equipment in, oh, say a non-public accessible location.
I can’t self-nominate for a Nobel Prize but I would think this might be worthy. Sadly, if I were nominated I bet I’d lose out to “The Don’t Touch Sign” that has provided exemplary service. Sigh. The Nobel Prize Committee is so political these days…
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You Belong In A Museum – But Which One?
I made a mistake. I thought the line for the famed VasaMusset was long because they had just opened. I therefore got out of line and andered to other parts of the museum row, scoping out potential visits, only to return and see the line had only grew worse as the day wore on. I skipped it.
Instead I visited the Nordic Musset. This museum was originally founded as a tribute to all Nordic nations but mostly (and now ONLY) Sweden. In the atrium, the looming Swedish King statue sits atop a slogan that translates, if I’m not mistaken, as “Be Swedish.” So, ya know, Make Sweden Great Again I guess.
Every single time I went the wrong way through the exhibits. I tried to course correct and backtrack but every move I made inevitably wound up still being wrong. It really was an IKEA-ian experience, even though in the home furnishings throughout the past half millennium exhibit there’s not one reference to Ikea. What the bork is that?!
To be honest, I thought this was an exhibit on the history of VIMMERN or DALKARN faucets. Turns out those are light fixtures bent to illuminate the items in the cases.
The above items are parts of the indigenous Nordic peoples, these days known as the Sambi.
Turns out another universal sets of words involve horrific treatment of indigenous cultures by encroaching settlers.
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ABBA The Flamethrower!
In the end, the admission was too dear. And besides, I got all I needed from the outside.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Swedish Spaceballs merchandising juggernaut that is the ABBA Museum.
ABBA The knit hat!
ABBA Monopoly!
At first I thought this was a book about ABBA written by Carl Sagan.
ABBA The Christmas bauble!
ABBA The lip balm!
ABBA The Teenage Pocket Case – NB – I have no idea what that means.
ABBA The Clogs!
ABBA The Kimono!
ABBA the rain poncho!
ABBA The Museum Water!
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Skal!
The Spirits Museum offers exhibits on the history and culture of alcohol in Sweden … plus it has an onsite bar for tastings and, well, more than tastings.
The admission to the museum was 120 kroner; the tasting was 130. I decided to skip the exhibits and go for the, uh, more intoxicating options.
The spirits were bitter I thought, improving as I went along. The punsch (as they say on the placard, yes, that’s how it’s spelled) was almost a dessert wine sweetness. Not the best use of USD15 equivalency as I was running low on kroner but…
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Is This The Most Reasonable Admission?
After my clown encounter yesterday I thought I’d at least see what Grona Lund was like. The admission fee was an incredibly reasonable 115 kroner… yet I still opted to save my money. After all, I snagged some shots on the outside looking in… including a twofer with the I assume park mascots.
And this advert may be the most accurate depiction of a patron on one of those crazy carnival thrill rides. Icarus, as we all know from mythology, flew too high toward the sun and it all went to kaput sky, er, kaputsky.
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And so tomorrow I say “adjö” to Sweden and set sail for home.
Hopefully at ludicrous speed!