Surviving the sauna in Sweden

Swedish sauna, the only place where sauna is taken more seriously is Finland, but Swedes take their sauna pretty seriously. And for an outsider it can be a pretty scary experience.

Being in a Swedish sauna is like being naked in an elevator. There are very few places where you feel comfortable resting your eyes. No body says anything, unless they have to. And everyone is nude.

You can encounter the Swedish sauna in many places, at bath houses (which are intended for families, get your mind out of the gutter), by the sea - where you are encouraged to dive in naked in the freezing cold water after your sauna, or at your friend's house.

In most swimming halls there are male and female saunas, but often even 'family saunas' for mixed gender. Kids come and go together into the sauna. There is no talk of the 'danger' of the pedophile hiding in the corner, everything is out in the open.

If you are braving a public sauna, you might be thinking - ah ha, I will just wear my swimsuit into the sauna. No. You won't. Or if you try, you might be chastised. There are often signs and aggressive old women who tell you 'Get naked or else.' Apparently wearing a bathing suit in a sauna is unhygienic. Less hygienic then a lot of naked bits on hot wood.

You are, however, supposed to bring a towel. Most people lie on their towel, naked. Me, being a prudish American, tightly bundle myself up in a towel. Please, we didn't even get naked to change for gym class in my school. I don't do nudity around strangers well. Even worse around people I kinda sorta know.

I always feel a bit like I am wandering around my own episode of Discovery Planet. 'Look at the females, lounging about in the warmth...'

I must admit I am a terrible saunaer. I know you are supposed to run directly to some cold water or something when you come out of the sauna, but I never make it. My heart rate drops and I usually end up having to lie down on the floor until I get blood flow back to my brain again. Hence the main reason why I don't sauna too much in public anymore.

If you are going for a true Swedish experience, you will have to try the sauna. And there you will learn that people come in all shapes and sizes. And that sweating amongst naked strangers is a special feeling.

Swedish music highlights

I've been listening to a bit more Swedish music lately and here are a few songs that have really stuck in my mind.... If you haven't hear them yet:

First Aid Kit

Christian Kjellvander

Veronica Maggio always manages to make me smile

Three reasons Swedes LOVE Systembolaget and why they are wrong

OK. Since I have probably already alienated 80% of my readers with my personal sob story, I am now out to alienate the rest by going after that strange phenomenon known as Systembolaget. When people talk and complain about Sweden and socialism and all of its horrors, the only thing that comes to my mind is Systembolaget. Systembolaget is the government controlled liquor store and also the only place you can buy alcohol in Sweden. It is godawful. It should be scrapped. It should be long gone. But for some reason Swedes seem to LOVE it. Here is my rebuttal of all of the common arguments as to why Systembolaget is AWESOME. Because it isn�t. Hate me if you must.

1) Systembolaget has the best assortment of alcohol EVER � If you ever start dissing on Systembolaget, you will hear this one. Systembolaget has every kind of alcohol imaginable. The rest of Europe is totally jealous of all the kinds of things you can buy at Systembolaget because they cannot buy these things in their countries. 

Obviously, you don�t buy a lot of beer. Systembolaget carries every single kind of Swedish beer ever made, but only like 8 different international beers of any given kind. It is miserable. Yes, you can order it. But who orders a few beers a week in advance, just to enjoy? My local New Jersey grocery store has a more international assortment of beer than my local Systemet. And how does the rest of the world survive? In the places I lived there were all kinds of specialty stores � the high end wine store, the cheapy 40 malt liquor shop, the beer hobbyist. And you know what? If what I wanted wasn�t there? I could order it there, too. Imagine that! As for most of the people who argue that Systembolaget has the best assortment ever, dig a little deeper. I have found most of these people still import their own wine and beer from other countries and avoid Systemet whenever possible. WHY?????

2) Systembolaget keeps alcoholism to a minimum � Sweden has a long tradition of alcoholism and Systembolaget keeps those numbers down.

This give you a sense that Systembolaget keeps track of the alcohol you consume or limits it in any way. It doesn�t. The only thing they can do is not sell you stuff when you are very drunk. One of the symptoms of alcoholism is �you constantly think about alcohol, where you can get it, and how you can get it.� Since moving to Sweden, I can tell you I think a lot more about alcohol, because I can�t just run down to the corner store and pick up a six pack when I need one. I need to think about when I can get it and how I am going to get there. I overbuy for parties, keep some in storage, because I find going to Systembolaget to be a real pain. Also, I am one of those people that believes alcoholism is a disease, you can�t stop people who want to drink. They will find a way.

3) Systembolaget makes drinking safer � Because they are the sole provider of alcohol and they are very strict about checking drinking age, systembolaget makes drinking safer.

Yeah right. When was the last time you saw adults sitting around drinking moonshine in the US?  I have never seen it. And in my eyes, moonshine is pretty dangerous stuff. Done wrong it can lead to blindness and disease. But in Sweden, I have seen everyone from teenagers to 60 year old men drink this stuff. Why? Because a bottle of vodka will set you back 30 dollars for a cheap bottle. To me, this is dangerous and stupid.

And Now Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Thank you for joining me on my sojourn of sorrow. While things are tough, I have been spending a lot of time watching crappy TV shows. Most of you have probably seen Allt f�r Sverige by now, but if you haven't you should! It is a bit in Swedish, but mostly English. The premise is absurd (The contestants compete to find out about their Swedish heritage) - I couldn't imagine anyone being like 'Haha you lose, you don't get to know about your family' Spoiler alert - everyone gets to learn about their family.

I wish I could tell you 'I don't usually watch reality TV because it is crap, but I made an exception for this' but that would be a lie. I love Project Runway and have watched way too many seasons of ANTM to be proud of. So Allt f�r Sverige was an easy sell for me.

Check out the first episode here.

Enjoy!

Stupid, Crazy and Grateful � Part 2 of a sad story

As I said before, this and my last post are not in my usual Surviving in Sweden vein. They are highly personal and depressing. They are also a bit graphic. This is part two of the story of my miscarriage. There are some cultural observations here, but mostly this post is for me � not my regular readers. It is a way for me to process what happened.

The Day after finding we were no longer pregnant

Stupid

It was a tragedy of a morning, which went a bit like this:

The Swede � Have you seen Little Swede�s socks?

Me: (bursts into tears) I don�t know!

The Swede � Would you like a cup of tea?

Me: (bursts into tears) I don�t know!

We sit down to breakfast and the Swede bursts into tears.

This is when I should have canceled my trip. But I didn�t.

Stupid

I got on the train to go on my business trip at 9:45 Sunday morning. I just didn�t want to cancel. I was so excited about this project. I got up at 7:00 and worked until I left. This was so I didn�t have to think about the ticking time bomb in my uterus. I was afraid it would go off at any time, but I hoped it would wait until our appointment on Tuesday.

Grateful for an �untypical� Swede

I tried to do some work on the train. I read through my material, set about planning the agenda. The girl sitting next to me started asking me questions. Turns out she was a Masters student in my field. She had a thick Swedish dialect I couldn�t place and spoke a mile a minute. I maybe caught every 3 word she said, but I was just happy to have someone to listen to and focus on. She rattled on for about two hours. When it appeared she might stop, I coaxed her on. I have never been so grateful for such a talkative person.

But the highlight? The man across from us who leaned over and asked if I was from Blekinge because it sounded like I had a Blengingske accent. Score for being able to speak awesome Swedish in a crisis. Usually I get Gotland, so this was a compliment!

Crazy

When I arrived, my brother and sister in law were waiting. I threw my miscarriage story at them as soon as I saw them. I hadn�t told anyone. They hadn�t known I was pregnant. The Swede swore he had told them. My crazy side started to come out. The one that keeps talking even after the brain has shut down. I am so glad my brother and sister in law are such good people.

Grateful

We spent the night having a nice family night with family games and a great dinner. I cannot say how grateful I was for the distraction.

Somewhere in the afternoon the bleeding stopped. I am so grateful I had the ultrasound the night before and knew what to expect. If I hadn�t, I might have thought everything was OK. And what came next would have been even more traumatic.

Crazy

I went to bed at about 10:30. At 3:30 it started. Me, the ultimate �hold on while I Google that� had never bothered to Google what an 11 week miscarriage might look like until 3:30 in the morning. In the middle of one. I tried to be as quiet as a mouse.

 And then it went down. Me. Alone. So much blood.

Grateful

I thought I would have some warning cramps, I thought it would hurt. I am grateful there was no pain.

I am grateful I didn�t pass out � there was so much blood at once.

I am grateful for technology. And that when I sent The Swede a text message at 4 am I got an answer right away.

I am grateful for the blood, so I couldn�t see anything when I thought �I wonder if that was . .�

Stupid

It was over by 5, but I couldn�t know that. I was too busy reading war stories on the internet. I was too afraid it might happen again. All of that blood. At work. On the train. I hadn�t felt any pain. Could it really be over?

I canceled my work appointment.

Grateful

I am grateful that when I told my Brother in Law what happened he said all of the perfect things to say, all while apologizing for not really knowing what to say.

I am grateful that my sister in law helped me get back to the train station to catch an early train home.

I am grateful that I made the trip without any more trauma. And I am astounded that my later train was canceled and I got my money back for that trip, too.

Safe

I got home at 4:30 the next day. 12 hours after the worst of my experience.

I fell to pieces.

Grateful

I am grateful I had a safe place to fall.

I am grateful for the family that was waiting for me. 

Sad times � miscarriage in Sweden part 1

OK a warning here first � unlike most of my posts this one is extremely personal and rather graphic. But I need to write this, and well, it is a Swedish experience.  It�s long.

So this was a post I didn�t expect to write. I had expected to tell you all about my pregnancy a few weeks ago. But for some reason or other I always found something else to write about. And now here I am.  So here is some insight into medical care in Sweden and, well, my personal sphere.

It started on Thursday. I had a bit of spotting red blood. I had a bit with my last pregnancy due to burst blood vessel. It stopped as soon as it started. I thought nothing of it. On Friday morning, it happened again. This time I called the midwife, because I had a big business trip planned for Sunday-Monday and I wanted to make sure nothing was wrong and I could travel without concerns. The midwife said it was normal. The bleeding stopped at noon.

Saturday morning it started again. And this time it kept going. We spent the day with family and it was nice to have the distraction, but I couldn�t stop thinking about it. And worrying about my upcoming trip. If something was going to happen with this pregnancy I wanted to be at home.

I started getting nervous as the bleeding increased and I made the Swede leave early so I could call the hospital.

My biggest issue with Swedish medicine since I moved here are the gatekeepers. The people you call at the hospital who tell you whether or not you can go in or not. I mean, yes you can always go to the emergency room, but you are supposed to call and get a special time unless it is an actual serious emergency. This time was no different. They told me it wasn�t an emergency, since it was only mild bleeding, they wanted me to wait until Monday. I mentioned I might be out of town on Monday and that was my concern. In the past I have threatened the gatekeepers (I will just go to the ER, I�ve told them, and that is stupid. Give me a time) or I have played super nice (please could I just maybe have a quick time), but this time I cried. And it was totally authentic. I was scared.

Come in, she finally said. But she also said �The doctor hates just doing checks during emergency hours, so you might have a long wait.�

I didn�t care. I needed to know what was going on.

I got to the gynecological emergency room at 5 pm. At 6:20 they told me the doctors would be switching shifts and it might be awhile. At 6:40 the nurses ran out saying there was an emergency surgery and it would be at least 2 hours. I went home and had dinner.

I came back at 8:30. There was a woman there with twins two weeks old. The grandmother mother told me she was raising them on her own. The woman was called ahead of me, and I was glad. She needed it more than me. As they left the waiting room the grandmother turned to me and said �Sometimes things don�t turn out the way you hoped.� I had the feeling that if my life were a TV show, this would be the name of the current episode. I suddenly realized there was a good chance I was going to be getting bad news.

At 10:00 pm they called me into a patient room and said the doctor would see me soon. I waited for 20 minutes in this room before they called and said that the doctor got called away on another emergency. It would be awhile.

Did I mention they only had one doctor on duty?

I sat in the waiting room and watched a terrible but distracting TV show. The Suits. Oh it was everything I hate in a TV show. Too many lawyers. Too many men. Pretty, vapid but supposedly intelligent women. Bleh. But it distracted me.

At 10:45 the nurse came out and said they had another emergency surgery, but the doctor was going to try to run upstairs in-between surgeries and look at me. If she didn�t arrive in 30 minutes it would probably be another two hours.

Thankfully the doctor arrived at 11:00pm and did the ultrasound.

I knew immediately by the look on her face.

�Unfortunately, I am not looking at a normal 11 week pregnancy,� she said. �This pregnancy ended weeks ago. �

But I had known this already. Strangely, I would say I knew this the moment the grandmother of the twins spoke to me.

I asked her about the trip, she said it was within Sweden and I could go to a hospital anywhere.  I might be bleeding lightly for awhile or it could start to get heavier. I could come in on Tuesday and get some pills, Cytotec, to start things along. She didn�t advise against going. We talked a bit about the pills and I said fine. We made plans for me to pick them up.

The whole thing took about 15 minutes. I even cracked a poor joke about being able to at least have a drink.

When I got outside I had just missed the bus (note: the swede was home with little Swede) so I walked home. I needed the air and I was in shock.

I didn�t know what to do. Should I go on my business trip? Should I risk canceling and losing one of my most exciting clients for my new company?      To be continued�..

Is Feminism Actually Good For Men, Too? Learning from Swedish feminism

I think it is fair to say that Feminism in English is a word with many different connotations, most of them not very positive. Many younger women have had a hard time taking on this word to describe themselves because it has been connected with radicalism, an idea that women�s rights supercede everything, and that feminists are ugly women who don�t shave and hate men.

I know, I know, this is a silly picture and an untrue one. But even Madonna, when asked in an interview if she was a feminist, responded that she was a humanist.

The opposite is true in Sweden. Everyone and their mother seems to self identify as a feminist. OK, maybe not everyone, but a majority of the political parties on the right and left consider themselves inline with feminist ideals. And despite these feminist friendly overtones, a Feminist party was started a few years back whose main focus was feminism.

In Sweden, Feminism doesn�t seem to have the same negative baggage as it does in the US. Maybe it is because, according to many studies, Sweden is the most gender equal country in the world, or the most �feminized� country in the world, depending on the study.

It�s hard to say why, but the truth is, Sweden�s feminist policies have been pretty good for the menfolk as well. Here are a few things I believe men have gained from the feminist movement in Sweden.

1) Paternity leave � Swedish fathers are eligible for over 400 days of paid paternity leave (a majority of those days at 80% salary). Many Americans I know complain that maternity leave is sexist so there shouldn�t be any. Here in Sweden they took that away by making it available for every parent. Great solution I think! Fathers have the same rights to parental leave as mothers.

2) Joint custody � In divorces joint custody is always awarded unless there is proof of serious problems � abuse, drugs, etc. from the other parent. And single custody is a rare bird indeed. While I sometimes question the common practice of children switching homes every week to live with both parents, many families seem to make this work well.

3) No alimony � In Swedish divorce you don�t have to pay alimony unless in specific cases where there is extreme discrepencies and an agreement where one party wouldn�t work for the sake of the other party. Stay at home Moms or Full time wives are rare here, so in most cases there is no alimony.

4) Men can be capable of taking care of children too � Unlike the US where many people believe a man playing with a child is a predator, in Sweden you often see men taking care of their children early in the afternoon. I know many men at work who leave at 4:30 saying �Sorry I can�t stay, I have daycare pick up� and everyone nods.  No one makes a comment about you leaving your children with your husband (I swear I got this in the US once when I ran into someone while out �Where is little Swede?� �Oh, home with Pappa� �What? And you are OK with that?� �Um yeah, I�m actually happy to have some time on my own.�)

So there are many plusses for both men and women in a gender equal society. It isn�t all bad if you let the ladies have a few things they need, it could end up there is something in it for you, too.