Oh my god, I have just returned from the most ridiculously Christmas-y experience of my life. This weekend I visited Gothenburg; the second largest city in Sweden, and it was as if Disney, Santa Claus and the Republican Party had engineered a land that is so cute and wonderfully festive that Scrooge McDuck himself would shit out a freaking tree ornament.
My old friend Kate Fussner (she appears as a supporting character in my last blog post) and I flew up to Gothenburg from Paris and were picked up at the airport in a spanking new Volvo (of course) by Kate’s father’s friends Hans and Ninny Hjalmers. Hans and Ninny, like all Swedes, speak fluent English in adorable British accents. If I could imagine Kate Fussner as a Swede, she would have come from these two. I began to suspect I was only invited to give Kate an excuse to overdose on the famous Swedish Christmas spirit.
Christmas time is of course as wonderfully Swedish as a race to an Ikea on a snowy pine tree flanked road between to equally ancient Volvo station wagons to the music of ABBA, Ace of Base or death metal (however, anyone who has ever driven or been in a Volvo station wagon knows that while racing is dangerous, Volvo station wagons are so bottom heavy that they could not possibly reach a high enough speed to make racing dangerous). In covering the five main Swedish stereotypes (sorry Saab, Ingmar Bergman and Jens Lekman), you probably didn’t notice that I left out anything food related; that’s because Americans, while the have strong images of Swedish products and culture, if pushed would probably guess Swedes only eat snow smeared with Lingonberry jam. However, the food we ate in Sweden, whether it was traditional Swedish, Thai or Turkish was without exception good to excellent.
My first day in Sweden began with our host Osa asking us if we wanted to go to the fish market. Anyone who knows me knows that asking me that question is somewhat like asking Charlie Sheen if he wants to go a whorehouse in Bogotá. We saw the coolest fish at this market, big shiny salmon, massive white flounder and a fish they called “a catfish”, that which its buck teeth and massive googly eyes was without a doubt the ugliest fish I have ever seen for sale. We then toured Gothenburg and got some lunch at a café in a 17th century dockside warehouse: I had a cheese and ham pie, because I though it sounded very Swedish. The cheese was gooey and salty, and the ham was the perfect level of smokiness. The dish somewhat resembled a quiche, and with some pesto on top it was a very hearty and delicious way to begin a day that would be marked by its total food diversity.
After the cheese and ham pie we went to Liseburg, which is the largest amusement park in Scandinavia. The place was in a beautiful 1920’s art-deco style and with millions of Christmas lights it was genuinely gorgeous (If you are wondering if we saw Ace of Base performing there, we did: Rolf was running the Ferris wheel, and I think I saw Fjlayla cleaning the bathroom). I had three awesomely Swedish things to eat at the amusement park that are pretty different than the stale popcorn and nausea from massively obese people in bathing suits tends to fill your stomach at American amusement parks. First was Glügg, which is the Swedish Christmas drink. It tastes somewhat like hot mulled wine, but is apparently made with potatoes, spices, yeast and something Ninny described as “a not as good Swedish coca-cola”. We you add raisins and almonds it was so sweet and warm you could forget that it was pitch dark out and only 4 pm. We then found a stand selling salmon. Listen up Six Flags: I want gravlax at your amusement parks too. To finish our culinary tour of Liseburg, we had reindeer ham. Kate felt more than somewhat conflicted about eating Donner or Rudolf, but I just enjoyed its salty woodsy quality.
Over the next twenty-four hours Kate and I had genuinely spicy Thai food and genuinely tasty Turkish food. Paris has a lot of poor excuses for Thai food (it’s too close to the bad Chinese food and the French cannot stand any level of spice) and Turkish food (I am recalling numerous memories of drunkenly eating grecque sandwiches with dry meat and not enough sauce blanche at 2 am and wishing I could wipe my tongue off with a napkin). While ethnic food and Swedish breakfasts (lots of cheese and a weird fish-paste in a tube that was surprisingly good) were nice, the best moment of the trip came our third night there when we joined the Hjalmers for a family dinner. The Hjalmers all speak beautiful English, are either blonde or blue eyed and are just as unbelievably friendly. Their boyfriends are friendly! Their granddaughter is friendly! God I love Sweden!
Anyway, we started the evening by baking ginger bread cookies with the family. It was somewhat like a bizarre version of my family: friendly blonde people not discussing Hitler or Alec Baldwin and celebrating Christmas. Is there a word that means scary and attractive? A yes- Maureendowd. Very Maureendowd. Anyway, the meal started with some wonderful home made Glügg. We then had an appetizer of green beans with shallot vinaigrette and cured reindeer. It was really good and I am excited to now have a reindeer and a green bean recipe (if Campbell’s soup ever makes a reindeer flavored soup I will send in the recipe). We then had seafood chowder with curry that was very hearty. Finally for dessert we had a wonderful tort with berries from the Hjamlers backyard and an ancient Swedish dessert (in English its called Beasting Pudding) that is the milk from a cow that just gave birth: it was somewhat like a panna cotta and while it wasn’t amazing it was good to taste it. The great food, good wine (Hans is a wine nerd) and all the discussion about socialized medicine (something I gather the Swedes LOVE talking about) made for a wonderful final night for our trip.
The next day we went to the airport to fly home and I had a Swedish hot dog that was so good I went back and had another. The sausage is lighter and fluffier than American Hot dogs and is served with a honey mustard sauce and little pieces of fried onion. Delicious! They should just serve hot dogs on airplanes. In any case, I really loved my time in Sweden, and I totally recommend everyone finding your own insanely friendly Swedish family to stay with. If only as soon as I flew back to Paris I didn’t start freaking out about finals…
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment