It's not all meatballs and herring

I like to eat. I'm quite sure that I am not alone in this, but really, what's better than a delicious meal after a long day of class, and, um, sitting around. True to Swedish fashion, I consider it a crime to not at least attempt to represent all the food groups, and though I fail, I console myself by reminding myself that I tried.

Having grown up with a German mother, I know how to cook. While the rest of my friends ate cheaply by devouring fast food, I ate cheaply by cooking. Mostly Italian food, because I am addicted to pasta. Which is cheap.

This has changed with my move. 10 years of living away from Sweden have not changed my appreciation for Swedish food. Although I can't admit to liking herring, I will devour gravad lax (pickled salmon), meatballs with lingonsylt, blodpudding (congealed pork blood pudding), blodkorv (also congealed pork blood, but more solid and shaped like a sausage), falukorv (also sausage), and all the things they come with. Unfortunately, these things are not readily available in Southern California. We tried. We found a German buther willing to cut a ham in something resembling the traditional Swedish Christmas ham. An intricate shopping list was developed for my dad so that he could buy food when in Sweden. Things like Herrgårds ost (a mild cheese), skinkost (spreadable cheese with ham), bilar (candy... delicious, delicious candy) but still.

The point is, suddenly all the foods that I could never really get, are suddenly totally and utterly available. Did I mention the leverpastej? Liver in a spreadable form for my breakfast sandwich!

Last week, I went on my weekly grocery run to ICA, this time accompanied by a friend. Because I am taking a class meant for immigrants, she is Greek. Note that this class is way too easy for me, and my classmates give me many dirty looks. Whoops. Anyway, as we're walking through the store, we're talking, and I am grabbing things off the shelf.

I was standing by the yoghurt, debating which flavor combination I wanted this week (Swedish people, we love our yoghurt. There are approximately four thousand combinations, give or take a few), when my friend E looks at me and says "How the HELL do you know what you want to buy? You glance at a shelf, you grab something, and you are on your way. Every purchase for me is murder. Say I want to buy ketchup. I will find the ketchup, learn that there are 27 different kinds, and I will spend half an hour looking at all of them, trying to pick one."

I was taken aback. I had not even realized. How did I know what I wanted? The food was speaking to me. I was only 9 when I moved away from Sweden, and I had only lived there for 3 years; before that, I had lived in Germany and Poland, though before that I was born in Sweden.... I mean, really. I should have no business knowing what brands existed in Sweden, or what to buy. Yet I did.

I'm still trying to figure that one out. In the meantime, I am going to go enjoy some Sarek tunnbröd with a generous slathering of leverpastej.

Blowing people's minds.

So my landlords are renovating. The ceiling in the family room was sagging, and a collapse seemed imminent, so they called the proper people and now the construction guys are in the house every weekday from about 8 am. Which is not so bad on school days, because I wake up at 7:30, but less fun on days I don't have school, and apparently all of the hammering must be done before 9 am.

But I digress.

There's two of them, one of them is an older Swedish native guy, and one of them is from somewhere else and does not speak Swedish well, but, just like everyone else, he has a good handle on English, and so he usually addresses me in English once he figured out that I spoke it fluently.

The other guy, the native, always talks to me in Swedish, but always looked at me funny whenever I responded to him. Keep in mind, I was born here, and though I lived in a few other countries, I moved back here for first through third grade, and since my father is born and raised in the country, we ALWAYS spoke Swedish at home, even when we moved to the US when I was 9. Additionally, I always begged my dad to bring me books back when he went for business trips.

So even though I was out of the country for over 10 years, I still speak Swedish fluently, and have only a slight accent, usually when I am drunk.

On one day last week, they had some issues getting the windows open. Being the only one home, I dutifully attempted to help them, even though I had never tried to open the windows myself. After several minutes of confused pushing and pulling and some creative swearing, we got the windows open.

The guy then looked at me and said "Wait... I thought you were an American or something."

"Well... I lived there, sure." (because even though I spent half my life in the US, I still don't consider myself American)

"Then how come you speak Swedish so well?"

In hindsight, instead of responding the way I did (which was my explaining my roots) I should have just said

"Well, I've been living here for 6 weeks already!"