Gah!

Hiiiiiii.........

I can't even apologize anymore. I guess maybe I feel like nothing blog-worthy is going on with me right now? How much does that sound like something out of Cosmopolitan?

So, let's see. Tuesday I turned down the opportunity to bastu, which was a mistake, but a remediable one...or would be if I used real English words. But bastu is the ever-present sauna, and I don't know why I said no, but it might have had something to do with how awkward I felt asking my older male boss, "What am I supposed to wear?" and then realizing just how American that made me sound, and felt compelled to add, "....or....not...wear?", which didn't make me sound Swedish, or even Continental, but really just like I considered not wearing clothing around my male coworkers something that I Assumed Happened Here.

But I DID take them up on a beer after work, which was just lovely, and was actually two beers. It had been incredibly beautiful until they hopped in the sauna, at which point it started raining. So instead of going to the place next to the bridge where Djurgården meets Östermalm, we took the ferry from Djurgården to Gamla Stan to go to their "usual haunt", which I guess is the third of fourth "usual haunt" they've had in the past few years, due to New Hipper Management issues. Having eaten barely anything that day, I felt it better, for all our sakes, to go home and fix that.

ON THE WAY (and let me remind you, although they were Lite, I have had two beers), a very handsome boy (ugh, man? When DOES a boy become a man?) asked me to take his picture in front of the Palace (castle? I'm so full of self-doubt today). Obviously I had been trying to walk far enough behind him that I didn't seem creepy, but, I mean, if he approaches me....and I took it, made some really funny joke by asking him, "Oh, did you want your shoes in the picture, hah, hah!", he took the specific shoe mention too seriously, but then he thanked me and started talking about the weather, I gave him back the camera and like RAN AWAY. Why? Let's just all pretend he was probably a rapist-murderer, not an American on Vacation Alone, wishing some other American, who has a month's worth of experiences in Stockholm, would show him her favorite place to eat!

So...that was great.

The rest of the week has been work, work, work. In a good way. I'm still Lead Detective on the Case of the Missing Buttons, but I only have like 3 or 4 left to figure out! And then, and then, and then. Many other parts ahead. I feel...almost disingenous, or fake when I keep saying, "I think it's going really well", as if that's all I can say about it, but I'm just so thankful that it's working like I hoped that I want to repeat it.

I also did get to see the Pre- Pre- Opening of the Titanic Exhibit just down the kaj from the Vasamuseet, but....seriously, it's an audio tour. There are NO SIGNS, PLACARDS, OR ANY OTHER FORM OF ID. Ok, there are little ID tags, but the whole point is that the audio tour guides you through a big exhibit of items....and guess what language our guide gave the 40 Swedes a tour in? He said something in Swedish about using the audio guides, but, you know, I didn't know what he was saying. I figured out that the exhibit, which is a travelling one, is heavily focused on the Swedish passengers (surprise!) of the Titanic...whom, after Americans and Brits, were the most numerous of all Citizenships. Who knew? Not me, until I went though the exhibit (and my friend told me that's what the guy had said). And it was good. But Titanic, still? I guess this is a new take, but....I wouldn't know, since it was all I could do to stare at the many different types of collars the Edwardian Men had on in the huge portraits on the wall, which was not such misery. Speaking of clothing, they also had a reproduction of a Typical First Class Passenger Cabin, complete with...everything I guess. Including clothing that, unless I am mistaken, someone had made, new, for the exhibit. Now, I know you would want the clothing to look new, since it's supposed to be Present Day, but...eh...I don't know. Details, details.

Otherwise, I've been helping the guys on Vega to prepare the boat for sailing, which starts Monday! They're just wonderful, hilarious, talented, diesel-fuel manly, darling, handsomer than Adonis, really......aaaand reading this. They asked me to write about how I really feel about them, and I DO adore them, so why not be gratuitous? But by "helping" I obviously mean putting together IKEA furniture, painting the hard-to-reach areas in the head with linseed oil paint and providing them with rib-tickling stories, as well as music from the iPhone, stealing cookies to bring for when they send me to "put the kettle on" (hey...wait a minute), and teaching them important English words that not only they, but many other Swedes have never heard before, like "gross". WHAT. We all know that I MIGHT overuse that word, which is totally gross, but they've heard so many other ridiculous words, how has that not come over here? We did have a hilarious conversation yesterday about "painting our oars" which they mistook for "painting our horse", and I mistook their mistaking as "painting our whores"...buuuuut it doesn't translate well to blogger. You had to be there, I guess...and have ever heard English with a Swedish accent... But I just wanted to put that down in the ol' memory books. They're taking the boat back to their town for the month of June, which I consider rather rude, and I will miss them!

But only until I GO TO MARSEILLE! And then to Amsterdam! But about Marseille!!! I'm so excited to have finally capitalized on going to other countries While I'm Here, which is what EVERYONE told me to do, as though I hadn't realized that all these countries share borders. Although that's hardly fair, they were helping; and the irony is that Sweden is not actually that close to that many countries, or at least not as close as, say, Switzerland is to so many places that aren't Estonia. And Ryan Air has very few flights out of Stockholm...and they don't fly out of Arlanda, the main airport, but instead one where I will have to walk 30 minutes to get to the bus that will drive 1.5 hours or something to get to the airport. F you, RyanAir. My ticket wasn't even that cheap. But I will spare you the lamenting already exercised by so many New York Times travel writers, and say, YAY, MARSEILLE! If anyone would like to meet me there, I would probably not say no. And, barring prohibitively expensive plane tickets and full-time jobs, who wouldn't want to spend four days with me in the South of France? I can't believe I'm actually going, because America is just do different. I really wouldn't try to rally the troops to go to, say, the Pennsylvania coast, which is probably the same distance away (probably not, it's probably not far enough, but the coast further down gets kinda nice, huh? I don't know, I've never been, people in America don't fly like that, yo).

Anyway, I'm now obsessed with Halloumi, and had a halloumi and serrano salad, which was, unfortunately, as delicious as it sounds, but also as salty.

OH also, I saw Real Swedes playing Kubb today for the first time...and I've been here a month. Everyone assured me a hundred times over that lots of people play it...but I guess I've just never walked through the most central of Stockholm parks on a perfect Friday evening, which for them is like American mid-afternoon, since even at 1800 they still have FOUR MORE HOURS OF LIGHT AND KUBB. I really wanted to take a picture but I want to keep the creepshow factor to a serious minimum, and although one of my favorite parts of the iPhone is that no one knows what you're doing, you could be doing SO MANY THINGS, if you've been staring at a group of people, smiling, while walking by, then stop, turn around, and pretend to...what, check your text messages while holding the phone perfectly vertically? I guess I just need more practice.

Oh, and today was the first day the boat was open to the public, which doesn't bother me so much in the daytime, even though there are now a million people eating lunch with Johan and me on the deck. After work, though, I can't lie and say I'm happy to have a ton of foreigners (hah) walking around my house. I've been pretty much the only one here for just long enough that it's a little frustrating. Or maybe it's just the teenagers (than whom I am so much older (hey, crazy proper English, where have you been, good to see you!)) who give me the once over as I'm reading some dumb book in English in some really random spot, since all my Spots were taken today until 1830 or so. Still feeling lucky to live here, just feeling a little more 80 years old about it, apparently--damn kids!

My not-yet-friend that I was supposed to hang out with tomorrow has come down with something or other, so I'm pretty much set on going to Vaxholm, which is a boatride much like the one I took around the archipelago (skärgård)...except it keeps going a little further, and will drop me off on Vaxholm, which is a historically important island in the archipelago for many reasons I don't remember but am sure I will learn tomorrow on my way out there, and will certainly recount for you.

Bon voyage, et bon nuit tout le monde!