In the first part of this short series I’ve written mostly about two very common cosmetological enhancements in use in Sweden: blond hair and orange skin. Now it’s time to peek a bit into other characteristic of mundane Swedish life.

Snuff. Banned in every other EU country, but Swedes managed to keep it. Main argument? Snuff is so tightly integrated into the culture that people can’t let snuff go. Actually banning it would probably decimate the population’s support for the EU. The threat obviously worked: EU restrictions on snuff succumb, Sweden joins the EU and population is pacified as they get to keep the snuff.

Even though I have no idea why has the EU decided to ban snus (as snuff is called around here). I actually see it as a much frendlier addiction than, for instance, cigarettes. The main reason being that everything that constitutes consumption stays most of the time between the cheeks and the gums of the user. Unlike the cigarettes where one happy face can make ten other grim. Alright, it might not pack enough vitamin C, but why doesn’t the EU then ban coffee? Or alcohol?

Anyway, whatever the reason for the ban, it sure sparked a gray market. At least in Finland catching snuff resellers every now and then makes the headlines. People buy it in Sweden and then resell it in Finland making a hefty profit. Funny enough, some of the snus producing companies will ship it to their Swedish customers living outside of Sweden. Although reliability of this service for the expatriates is spotty as packages sometimes get stuck in the customs, heavy snuff users told me.

But it is a big thing. So much so that Swedes even have a verb for it: snusa, to snuff. The act itself is a little less disgusting then the habit of chewing tobacco, which is spread mostly around the US. No spitting is involved and tobacco is packaged in tea-bag resembling tiny packets. Hence a word of warning: if you see any suspiciously small tea-bags laying around, don’t stick them into your tea-pot.

Nevertheless it’s not really tasty to see people pull those small, saliva drenched pouches out of their mouths and diligently store them in tiny containers they carry around in their pockets. But one thing I still have my mind wrapped around is this: Why in the world is one of the snuff brands called Göteborg Rapé (and contains white portion as a cherry on top)?

In the next edition we’re going to the pub.

Mladen

Ever since I have heard about the Critical Mass I wanted to take part in one of these semi-emergent rallies. The only problem was that I have never lived in a city (or was at least not aware of the event during shorter trips) where Critical Mass bike rides would happen. Until now.

In Göteborg, as they usually do in other cities too, people gather with their bikes on the evening of the last Friday each month to ride through the city streets. It’s both a happening and a movement without an organized structure. The main goal of thousands of people around the world who gather in their cities is the promotion of car free cities. By flooding the streets en masse they make up an emergent movement with both a strong political and a social message.

I don’t own a bike here in Göteborg, but this did not discourage me from at least wanting to participate in the event. So, yesterday I set out to the very heart of Göteborg’s shopping district. It was Friday evening and the city streets were bustling with people. It looked promising. But at 6 o’clock I am standing on the square where critical massers should gather. Looking around I see only one girl with a bicycle looking a bit confused. So was I. Where are all the people who want to ride their bikes instead of cars; environmentalists and citizens who want cleaner air and environment; forward looking people; supporters of sustainable development? Where are they?

After five minutes of standing around bemused I approach the girl with a bike and ask her if she is here to participate in the Critical Mass. She is and it is her first time, just like it is for me. The only difference being that a friend invited her to come, thus she soon finds out where the meeting place is. It’s right across the street and we immediately notice three other cyclists there. I mean, they could just as well be random three friends meeting up for a pint of beer.

Two more participants come with their bikes, now numbering six in total. An absolute minimum I hear. And not exactly critical mass, if you ask me. When I’ve seen Still We Ride (make sure you check the trailer), a documentary about Critical Mass in New York that ended up in a clash with nervous and overly aggressive police, there were thousands of people there. They literally flooded the city with their bikes. It really was critical mass. Likewise in San Francisco, where the movement started back in 1992.

Quite naturally, if you want to make a statement by riding your bicycle in a car centered society, you have to multiply yourself by at least several tens or hundreds to get the message across. What happened on a beautiful sunny day in Göteborg yesterday would never bring up attention of passers-by, not to mention authorities who are usually interested in assemblies of all sizes, as one can find on the Critical Mass site:

When local police learn of your ride, they may insist that you get a permit, perhaps a parade permit. Don’t do it. The point of Critical Mass is that biking is a right, not a privilege. Cars don’t need permits to ride on the streets, and neither should cyclists.

Rebellious and rightfully so. But obviously the residents of Göteborg are very content. But I was dissillusioned. Especially when I got so pumped up for this event amongst other things reading the following:

Remember that CM is supposed to be a celebration of cycling, not your opportunity to see how much inconvenience you can cause to others. It’s about asserting our right to the road, not denying others their right to the road.

Check the Critical Mass Web site for a ride in your town. Join the ride and spread the word. If there are no Critical Mass rides in your town yet, be the innitiator. Here’s a few how-to tips. And don’t forget about the bicycle safety.

Ride on.

Mladen

Whoever was in Helsinki last Friday had a chance to attend a special edition mass, a heavy metal mass, to be precise. The Nordic countries of Finland, Sweden and Norway have over the years fostered very diverse heavy metal scenes. Norway brought up a satanist who was burning down old wooden churches, Finnish heavy band Lordi won the whiny Eurovision contest and I shouldn’t forget to mention a Finnish urban legend about a grandma ordering The Children Christmas Songs CD through a catalogue sales, but received The Children of Bodom CD instead.

Grandma probably complained for receiving a CD she didn’t ask for. However, I can imagine that in the near future such mistakes might even be appreciated as they open a new avenue for older music lovers. Besides, the North is breeding a new generation of grandmas. From what follows it seems that The Children of Bodom might not be that far from The Children of Christmas anymore.

A few heavy metal blokes from Finland came up with an idea of holding a heavy metal mass–in a church, evangelic lutheran Church or Finnish state Church. According to the information on their Metallimessu website they thought it was about time to take over the J.S.Bach’s monopoly in Church music. They were not the first ones to think so.

Already in the 1960’s there have been talks in the Finnish Church whether the guitar should be allowed to be used during the service. And it was. But since the 1980’s pop and rock music have become a standard installment during some of the services. Not much later even gospel style music was approved by the Finnish Church as an aid in delivering the mass.

In times when many popular music movements often resemble religious movements, I think that Christian heavy metal masses were only a step away from those offered by The Church of Elvis. Which is not at all surprising as religious services today are a non-divisible hodgepodge of business, personal guidance, childcare, education and religion. And as Finnish Church lost the record amount of followers in 2006, the embrace of the long standing no-no music in Christian circles became inevitable.

On the other hand, heavy metal music is now more popular than ever. Long hair, black shirts and chains have conjuncted with our everyday. Everyone can name at least a few heavy metal bands as they take main stages of popular concerts around Europe. Why not harness the popularity of heavy metal for a church service? The organizers of the Metallimessu addressed that question exactly. After all, music itself is neutral, it is the words that carry the meaning, they maintain. Could have they chosen a better place to win over their and Church fans than the Helsinki’s Tuomiokirkko cathedral? Hardly.

Suits me. I just can’t wait to hear Laibach perform God is God and their other gems in a cathedral. You name it and I’ll go. Although they probably would have to alter their lyrics a little bit, at least for now.

Mladen

Finland is getting ready for the parliamentary elections this coming March. I have to admit that I haven’t been following very closely politicians’ promises and debates, but there is one particular event that has cought my attention.

Jaro Koikkalainen might not ring any bells to you, however, Koikkalainen came up with an very ingenious way of campaigning for his seat in the parliament. All the major Finnish political parties go with the good ol’ newspaper add, poster, billboard combination, and most have even thrown in a blog (as is fashionable nowadays). A rather regular marketing campaign, one might say. But not for Koikkalainen.

The Central Party candidate Koikkalainen is campaigning on a tight budget with only 2,000€ to spare. It’s not really like he could go shopping for a marketing agency with this budget. Instead he collects questions from interested citizens and then once a week makes a vlog where he personally replies to the citizens’ questions and posts it on YouTube where it is available to the whole nation, and the rest of the Internet population.

Mr. Koikkalainen is not a major player in Finnish politics and he might not even have much chances for getting a seat in the Finnish eduskunta, but it is not hard to imagine many big fish politicians following suit and begin campaigning in a similar fashion. I call it campaigning on Google’s googol€ budget. Clever.

Mladen

Whether you live in a Western society or not, you probably couldn’t have escaped the term information society, or even better, the knowledge society. Of course not, those are buzzwords. If you want your country too look good both nationally or internationally politicians and businessmen will be talking about their populations living in an information and/or even knowledge society today. With what they just want to say how advanced they are. Being one of the model countries in many ways, I’m sure Swedish politicians and businessmen are doing the same around the world. Maybe they should, but their society is very much still a paper-based I-don’t-know-how-to-help-you knowledge and information society.

Buzzwords aside. Whatever they want to call it, I say it’s first and foremost an overly paper-counter-clerk trio bureaucratic society. From educational institutions to Internet providing services and libraries, public transportation and banks (not to mention the state itself), you cannot do anything, absolutely anything useful without your arm being twisted. It is a country where the Swedish personal number and not the king, as many like to believe, rules.

A personal number? Yes, it’s a several digit number by which you are recognized wherever you go; it is your personal trace and I think pretty much every adult knows what I am talking about. So what, you get that once and from then on your life is a breeze. Yeah right, as if it was easy to get the Swedish one. The taxation office that is in charge of giving out these personal numbers, has a selective eye, as it turns out.

But it took a week of meandering from door to door before I have even reached the local taxation office. Everyone on the way (some of them I’ve mentioned above) knew only that they need a personal number from me, none where does one fetch one. Until I stumbled upon the wise one.

After a week of trying to sort out things that need to be sorted out when moving to a new country, I came across an official (I don’t remember where exactly it happened as I’ve seen a few too many) who actually even knew where I can get this elusive number. To keep a long story short the visit to the tax office looked like this: I provide them all the information about myself they need before assigning the number, return to the counter where stiff official looks at me carefully, walks away, comes back, and finally utters that they will give me the number once I find a job. But I’m here to study and need the number for who knows how many things? Find a job first! There you go. Maybe I should just make one up.

That’s only the regular life part of the Swedish information/knowledge society. The other one is school related. And I don’t know anymore which one is more, both hilarious and obnoxious at the same time. At Valand School of Fine Arts where I have been accepted to study, I have been repeatedly met with blank stares and who-are-you questions. In spite of the fact that Valand is a small school with only about 60 students, the most frequent reply to my “But, your school has accepted me into one of the programs”, is “I haven’t heard anything about you before.” And that’s after talking to the administrative personnel of the school where I have been accepted and after I have presented a letter of acceptance they have issued just a few weeks ago. Not enough?

No, the administrator also wants to see the proof that I am a student at the university from which I am coming. Luckily I have that too, I think to myself. She leaves the room to take copies of both documents. Upon her return I feel triumphal as things are finally moving somewhere, yet my joy is met with “I can’t register you.” Why? What else do you need? My Swedish personal number? You name it, I’ll produce it. All I get in reply is: “There’s nothing you can do. I don’t know you and I didn’t expect you.” As if I wouldn’t have already noticed myself that I cannot do anything. I briskly leave the office after I am handed a university reference number on a heart-shaped red Post-it note. Am I in a Buñuel movie?

Have I mentioned bureaucratic obstacles somewhere already, or is this just an elaborate practical joke?

Before I register with the Göteborg University I cannot use any of the supposedly many university services, from student health care and other benefits students in Sweden are entitled to, all the way to their libraries, Internet connections and information systems. While without the Swedish personal number, the Swedish taxation office refuses to give me, I can’t do anything else. My hands are tied.

It feels weird. Sure Göteborg University has excellent premises, a variety of courses, at 5,500 they sure employ a lot of people, all of which is nice, but it is definitely a pain in the ass to even get a schedule for your courses. I should start counting how often I’ve been told to visit Mrs. Nextdoor, tomorrow, of course.

Coming from a much more efficient system put up by the Finnish society, I’m slowly beginning to loose my patience here. Have you seen the super-cheesy movie The Terminal? Well, I feel exactly like Mr. Viktor Navorski felt like when his light-green form has been rejected for the n-th time. In my case it hopefully won’t take nine months to sort things out before I can begin a living a bureaucracy free life in Sweden. Or am I asking for utopia?

Mladen