Flash Mobs in the City Center

I miss all the good stuff. There were a series of flash mobs in the city center this week. The first one posted took place at T-Centralen which I see, at least, ten times a week. The second in the famous NK Department Store located close by. Unfortunately, I missed it all. Though from what I read, flash mobs are a rather common occurrence here in Stockholm.

A flash mob is defined as a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse.

Twilight

It is nearly twilight time here in Northern Europe. That would be the time of year when day light is limited to a few brief hours. At the tale end, it will barely get light beyond twilight at all during the day. The days shrink until December 21st or so and then gradually get longer.

For some odd reason, I love it. There is something so relaxing about perpetual night time. A less guilt ridden excuse to give in to laziness and winter retreatism. In a word, it is snuggly. A few months long, perpetual putting your head back under the covers and hitting the snooze button. On those crazy race track American lifestyle days it is the slowness of these days that I long for but can never be replicated on American soil.

It is not anything I would want year in and year out as I need the sun to function. But to indulge in it a few years out of an entire lifetime is a guilty pleasure indeed.

Flick Your Bic

Round two at the orthodontist's office. It went well and did not cost even half as much as the last visit. No goodie bag emblazoned with his logo filled with fun little flosses, brushes and new products to try out. Nothing particularly notable. Oh yeah, I have to admit astonishment when instead of pulling out a the high-tech precision soldering tool that I am used to seeing, to get the thermoplastic material to a softened state, he pulled out a "high-tech" Bic lighter. Budget cuts, I guess.

Aye, yi, yi....carumba.

How the Sheep are Shorn

Or Taxation: How it Shrinks Economies and Initiative

At a dinner the other evening I got into a conversation with a woman who owned a company. She explained her company to me and it was in the same line of work as what I do. Later, the conversation turned to her asking if I would like to do some work for her. Initially, I thought it sounded great.

Then I thought about it further. If I were to work for this person, any income I make would be taxed at the highest income tax rate in Sweden. That would be 59 point something percent. Mind you, this is after a reduction. It was somewhere around 62 percent. For every dollar, I made, I would have to give the government 60 cents. At this point, I am working hard to see the up side. Jees, you must make a boatload of money then to be in this tax rate. Maybe, maybe not. This rate applies to around 300,000 Swedes with the very highest incomes, starting at 75,000 dollars a year. I don't know what is worse that only 300k Swedes make more than 75k a year or that they start this draconian rate at 75k. Who'd want to make more than 75k, you'd only be punished for your success.

For fun, I will also factor in the fact that Swedish employers match the employee’s withholding with a separate employer’s tax of 40 something percent. Let's also recognize that corporations do not pay taxes. They either pass them on to the consumer and they simply keep wages lower to compensate. Hence, the insane consumer prices.

Now, I go out shopping with my wage deflated forty cents on every dollar. Nearly every purchase is met with the 25% national sales tax or VAT tax! Factoring in my payroll tax, my employers contribution and my VAT taxes, I am now in the negative. In the red, over 20 percent. Wow, what a deal, where do I sign up?

These Shoes Are Made For...Fixing?

Here in Stockholm, nestled in between the Turkish pizza joints, the endless hair salons, the golden key makers, the dry cleaners and the coffee shops you will find a plethora of choices for shoe repair. It is safe to say I could walk two blocks in any direction and find a few. I didn't know people still repaired shoes but apparently they do. Enough to support several high rent Vastastan locations to boot. (no pun intended). Sometimes, the shoe repair place doubles as the key making place and triples as the dry cleaner. Not really any weirder than when the Taco Bell doubles as the Pizza Hut when you stop to think about it. Incidentally, I hate when they do that.

When I peek in the shops, business appears to be brisk. Shoes line the shelves, two by two in little black pairs. Typically, they do not appear to be shoes worth salvaging but there they sit waiting for new heels or zippers. The place down the road usually has two guys working diligently. Peering in through the window, one younger man looking to be of immigrant status, arduously cobbles away at a heel of a boot or diligently inspects the sole of an Italian leather.

Who even repairs shoes anymore? I can not even think of but one shoe repair place that I know of. It's a little ramshackle building on Main Avenue in Durango, Colorado. The business is actually second generation and run by the son of an Italian immigrant and cobbler. Naturally, he was taught the trade by his father growing up in the apartment upstairs from the shop. Durango is known for outdoor sports so I would think he sees many hiking and skiing boots, too pricey and used too little to just discard. I'd also imagine using his services is a bit of a sentimental act for locals in Durango.

I shudder imagining what it would even cost to have a shoe repair here in Stockholm. I used the key makers and that was frightening enough. I have used the dry cleaners and I think it may have just been more cost effective to buy new clothes, certainly it would have been more satisfying. Looking back, it was close to $35 for a suit jacket and a pair of dress trousers. The place by my house in the US is less than $5 for the same two articles of clothing.

Thinking about it, I used a shoe repair guy once. I had these shoes I loved, a funky pair of Doc Martin knockoff type things. They were really unique. Ah man, I loved those shoes. You could wear them with anything: shorts, jeans, dresses. The buckle broke off. I thought I couldn't part with them. Even though I had bought them for seven dollars on clearance, I brought them to the shoe repair guy to get a new buckle put on. My attention span and wherewithal being what it is, I never went back to get them. Which really wasn't very nice now that I stop to think about it.

I wonder whatever happened to those little beauties? Some lucky girl, somewhere, benefited from my inaction. I do my part.

If we really get back to a place where repairing our shoes is commonplace, I don't know if that is a world I really want to live in. Yeah, I said it. Just the thought of it is depressing. Unless ofcourse, we start wearing some sort of high technology Jetson like shoes that double as something else like, maybe, some sort of space age travel apparatus.

Don't Know My Rodneys From My Stanleys

Nor do I know my Kappas from my Reeboks. Actually I have zero desire. I am talking about soccer. It is difficult to articulate my utter distain for soccer. It is deeper than just not liking a sport, it goes against the grain of something elemental in all good Americans. It is just wrong. Embracing soccer would be like adding a jar of Nutella to the pantry and putting it right next to the peanut butter.

I got into it once with a soccer coach. He was talking about David Beckham and explained to me that people do not understand that soccer is different. A player can be one of the best in the world and hardly ever score a goal. Ofcourse, I found that amusing. It put it all into perspective for me. Made sense. That is why the areas of the world that take it seriously as a sport embrace it. That about sums up their entire world view right there.

I do not have a problem with rugby. Americans, as a rule, don't play rugby. A Brit once explained the class structure of sports to me. I was told in Britain, it's a class thing. Blue collar plays soccer, white collar plays rugby. I do not know that we have class distinctions in sports. I guess raising thoroughbreds is a rich man's sport. Golf used to be an upper class sport but now it seems everyone golfs. Not so much because golf has gotten cheaper either, we have all just gotten a lot richer as much as most people like to believe otherwise.

I am glad the rest of the world has soccer. World soccer fans should be happy it doesn't catch on with anyone over the age of ten in the United States. Imagine if it was a popular as basketball or football. All of the best players in the world would come to the United States. Every soccer club in the world would become a farm team for US soccer as the best players would go for the highest dollar payday in the US, not at home. Hopefully for the good of all, Americans will never warm to it.

Wasa this?

Add Wasa bread for breakfast to things I was always adverse to but suddenly developed a liking for. I remember buying a package of it, once, a long time ago in Germany. I tasted it, concluded it tasted like cardboard and it sat in the pantry until I finally threw it away.

But, now, I like it. I have been eating it every morning for breakfast. You can load it up with some cream cheese and whatever fresh veggies you might have available and viola! A quintessential European breakfast. Not the stuff of bacon and eggs but, nonetheless, I am finally getting it.

What is funny is most Europeans, Swedes included, do not eat sandwiches for lunch but they eat the stuff of sandwiches for breakfast. The main meal is lunch. Often times, the sandwich routine is repeated again at dinner time. My husband, like many Americans, typically has sandwiches for lunch to much bewilderment of the Swedes. They insist he is not eating enough for lunch. Lunch should be a proper full out meal.

Moving on, it is not a far leap to turn the conversation as why it is that Americans tend to be so fat, because we eat our main meal at dinner hour. Um, no. Americans are so fat because we eat our main meal at every hour and because food is relatively cheap and plentiful. Oh, and because we don't move a lot. And because we recreate with food. And because we drive every where. Americans are fat for a whole host of reasons but eating dinner at dinner hour probably is not high on the list.

Sometimes the more cantankerous will push the issue further. How can your kids learn anything eating like this at lunch? If they only knew of the peanut butter and jellies, fruit snacks, Chips Ahoys and other crap our kids pile on at lunch. Some schools even patrol the kid's lunch plates looking for offenders who have not completed their entire lunches.

I do not know why sandwiches for lunch brings about such a reaction. I really don't worry myself with why they eat sandwich stuff for breakfast. Hell, I am even partaking in the Wasa.