Swedish Parker!

The last Swedish delicacy I was yet to enjoy – I had to tick it off the list before I went home, even though I knew I was in for a very painful experience.

Surströmming!!!?!

a.k.a. Rotten Herring

ROTTEN Herring…

I’ve loved every single bizarre food I’ve eaten in Sweden over the past year: Elk Burgers, Brown Cheese, Blood Pudding, “Kroppkakor”, Janssons Frestelse, Dried Reindeer, Snaps & Crawfish, Soured Milk, and caviar in a toothpaste tube, to name but a few.

But this was too much.

It’s basically fillets of fish that have been left to rot for a few months, after which they’ve been canned and allowed to continue rotting for several more.

Which ends up producing one of the most horrible odours I’ve ever experienced.

According to Wikipedia, it has a pungent, rotten-egg, rancid-butter and vinegary smell.

Personally I think they’re being generous.

The first whiff I got after opening the can was quite possibly the worst smell I’ve ever experienced. Not just food, the worst smell, from anything, that I’ve ever smelt, ever.

I wasn’t far from throwing up, and I was supposed to turn around and eat it…?

I managed to take three tiny bites, but each time I couldn’t possibly get over the horrible, horrible, horrible smell in order to tell whether or not it tasted any good.

As far as I could tell it was only partially better on the tongue than the nose.

Yet, somehow, this food is sold in supermarkets all over the country, and is considered somewhat of a traditional delight.

It’s ROTTEN FISH for christ’s sake.

And the Swedes say Vegemite tastes bad… Unbelievable…

Time for a Kräftskiva!

The beginning of every August brings with it the mighty Swedish tradition of the Kräftskiva (aka Crayfish Party).

It basically amounts to wearing funny little hats, eating loads of mini crayfish, getting drunk on schnapps and then singing a bunch of old songs in Swedish.

Good times!

Just returned from the annual footy trip to Finland.

The Stockholm Australian Football League have it every year on the infamous Viking Line cruise from Stockholm to Finland and back.

This boat is supposedly pretty dodgy at the best of times (it’s basically a floating duty free shop, which means the booze onboard is VERY cheap compared with in Stockholm), but fill it with a bunch of Aussie and Swedish AFL players, and it can ugly.

Over the past few weeks we’ve been entertained at training sessions with stories of past cruises.

About the young Aussie guy that got locked up in the hold on three out of his four trips (one particular incarceration for trying to climb the smoke-stacks on top of the ship…).

About the not-so-classy dancing and pick-up attempts on the not-so-classy dancefloor.

About the fact that you’re pretty much guaranteed to be playing the game (oh yeah, the trip is, supposedly, mainly about the annual game between Stockholm Dynamite and the Finland Icebreakers…) the next morning very, very hungover.

So with great joy we boarded the boat on Friday arvo ready to get stuck into another cultural experience.

About 15 of us made the trip, with a scarily large proportion of the group being young Aussie males. Not a good sign.

Within 10 minutes of being onboard, I was standing outside the Duty Free shop with our assistant coach/former male model, Ryan “Hollywood” Kinsgley.

He set a great example for the rest of the team by proceeding to buy three cartons of warm beer (which cost the same as three cold beers at a bar in Stureplan) and taking them up onto the sundeck for the team to enjoy.

Drinking games and a spontaneous game of Deck Footy ensued. By the time the sun had set some time after 10pm, we were all well ready to hit up the “Entertainment Floors”.

And then, from Stuey’s official match report on AussieRules.se:

“After this the players dispersed again some hitting the black jack tables and some heading to the dance floor and the band with the 3 movers and shakers [guilty] from the footy trip clearing the dance floor in a matter of minutes thanks to some magnificent dance moves and sending more beer on the floor then down their throats [after our performance the band singer said, quite sarcastically "Thanks guys, you've ruined it for everyone." lol]. This was followed up with a progression to the club where the boys were not sure of what to expect after the average age of the people getting on the boat was 63.7″

Not sure when I got to bed, but was rudely awaken at 7am being told it was time to disembark.

So with everyone fresh and in great spirits, our fearless leader Jordo thought it’d be a great idea to wander aimlessly for half an hour looking for a breakfast cafe.

We were relieved to find a nice little spot by the water, only to realise they sold nothing but dodgy sandwiches and overpriced water, and would only take Euros (which practically none of us had).

So the rest of us slept in the park nearby as we waited for the bus.

On the way to the footy ground we made a brief stop for supplies, with an impromptu game of Servo Footy breaking out while we were there.

We finally made it to the ground.

It was the first almost-full-sized ground I’d seen in over a year. The Finns were extremely well prepared, and each of them looked as though they’d had as much sleep as our entire team combined.

Hence, the game can pretty much be summed up as: Us three men short, Them not hungover.

If the dehydration wasn’t already bad enough, Finland decided to turn on the nicest day of summer. So we were running around in blazing 32 degree heat for 80 minutes.

Given our condition, it wasn’t surprising that a few men went down. Hollywood twisted his ankle, Striker almost broke his, Shane wound up with three broken ribs, and I had a corked hip so bad that Stuey took great joy in making me laugh all the way home (after realising just how much pain such an act would cause me).

So the return leg of the cruise wasn’t AS lively as the first, at least not until about midnight when the booze from the all you can eat/drink buffet had kicked in.

So another night was spent on the dodgy dancefloor, with me getting a lesson in the Russian language courtesy of three nice young girls from out that way, Stuey dancing with more energy than any of us had put into our game of footy, and young Shadow scoring Best on Ground honours for hooking up with some girl who was sharing the cruise with her mother and brother. Beautiful work.

—

Now it’s Sunday night, I haven’t had a rest in the past 10 days, and I start my six-hours-per-day, extra intensive Swedish lessons in the morning. Ouch.

Basically translates to something like “Fluorescent (or Luminous, or Glowing in the dark), Kent!”

Quite possibly the one band in Sweden that EVERYBODY knows.

…and the one that just about everybody likes as well.

They seem a bit like the Powderfinger of this country.

No matter whether you’re an Indie Douchebag or a Poppy EuroTrash Fan, it seems acceptable for anyone to like Kent.

Every young Swede knows at least a couple of their songs, and every kid my age has a bunch of random teenage memories associated with them.

It also doesn’t hurt that they only sing in Swedish, or that they carry the title of “Sveriges största rockband” (Sweden’s biggest rockband).

So for all of the above reasons, they were able to fill up an entire football ground in Stockholm last weekend (granted it wasn’t quite the M.C.G., but still, not bad for a single local band).

What really summed it up though, was the crowd.

It’s like when you go to a gig, and the fans start screaming as soon as the band plays the first few chords of their most popular track (that was me, last week, when MGMT played “Time To Pretend”).

Only with Kent, that’s EVERY song.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcQjrCvNBZM[/youtube]

This guy was the support act, he was pretty sweet. Some famous old punk rocker that now has THE raspiest voice I’ve ever heard.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omW7smvEXmU[/youtube]

Something called “Studenten” (the graduation party of Stockholm’s high schoolers).

It’s simple… hire a truck and fill it with:

- high school graduates

- music

- trees (wtf?)

- messages scrawled on sheets

- …plenty of alcohol.

Times that by 50 and have one big party, driving through the streets of Stockholm.

A very boggling sight.

Why didn’t we get to do this in Australia??

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdHlWFz7oaw[/youtube]