Sometimes we get lucky. But only sometimes. My weekend produced two glorious blue-sky early spring days, where everyone seemed to enjoy peeling off that outer layer of thick down-filled jacket and donning a lighter spring coat. Well, except me, of course. Not having wandered in the harbour area for a while, I wanted to take a little look to see what I could see.




Yes, clearly, things are warming up. When last I went down this way, I was valiantly trying to imitate some late season cross-country skiing. Today, however, there was not a spot of snow on the piers, not even in the shaded areas. In the rest of the town, the snow was retreating at a really rapid rate with only a few patches left here and there. Just compare the café area from the shot I posted only a week ago:




The forest area was alive with the sounds of woodpeckers drumming and in the main harbour, the flocks of sea birds are being swollen daily by new arrivals and the noise and frantic activity is fascinating to watch. I find myself just as intrigued by the aural aspects of the annual spring bird migration as I am with the more obvious visual spectacle. This chorus of bird sounds only occurs once a year. During the autumn migration, the males no longer need to attract a mate or claim any territory. So there is not the long, noisy calls in the autumn, even among the seabirds who are known to be loud. Everything seems to add to the charm of the spring landscape. As well as the bird songs, we start to hear the buzzes, chirps and tics of a multitude of insects. The trees, devoid of leaves in the winter, creak and pop in the arctic winds. But during spring the sound of wind pushing through the leaf laden branches seems to rustle and hiss. And the variety of birds is increasing every day.




I'd never really paid that much attention to gulls before. Of course I knew that they are more than "just seagulls," but they are so difficult to differentiate between the species and all I really remember about them in Australia was trying to keep them from eating my fish and chips. It seems that this feeding of the gulls is becoming an increasing problem as seagulls are getting fat these days. But here I see them as individuals rather than as a huge flock and it is easier to pick out the different types. My favourites are still the pretty silver gulls and when they all take off together, wheeling around in unison it is an uplifting sight.




On Saturday we also went to see Lars-Göran's youngest daughter who has moved out from home and into her own apartment, sharing it with several other girls. It is in an area south of the city, with a good, quick connection via the underground to central Stockholm. For us though, it was easier to take the train to Älvsjö and then a bus to her suburb. Along the way, I was thinking about the name Älvsjö - made up of two Swedish words, älv meaning river and sjö meaning either lake or sea depending on the location of the sjö.

It was more the pronunciation of the word that I was pondering. I know that a few of you are looking at it, not knowing where to start. My brother-in-law uses it as his "unofficial litmus test" to see how well a foreigner can adapt to the Swedish language. He used to meet a lot of international clients through the big exhibition centre located at Älvsjö. He would meet them in the centre of the city, show them the name of the station they should ask for and then sit back and see how well they coped with attempting the name. Even though I had the added advantage of hearing the name said, I still found it impossible to say when I first came, so I have a lot of sympathy for them. My first attempts were : Alvshu, Alvsfu, Elfwhirr, Elvshu, Elvwhoo. I bet it wasn't even close to what anyone in Australia is thinking.

My attempts provoked much hilarity in my family. The Swedish "sj" sound (which resembles the whoosh of rushing wind) is something that is not found in English, so we don't quite know how to correctly lower our tongue and open our mouth at the same time in order to get that echo-ey whistling effect. All English speakers mispronounce "sj" and I used to be really paranoid about it. I tried in vain to get Lars-Göran to teach it to me, using the simple word sju (seven) to practice. It went something like this:

Me: "Sju"
Lars-Göran: "No" (snigger)
Me: "Sju"
Lars-Göran: "Nope" (trying and failing to keep a straight face)
Me: "Sju"
Lars-Göran: "Mmmm...No" (tears in eyes)
Me: "Sju"
Lars-Göran: "Not really" (openly giggling)
Me: "Sju"
Lars-Göran: "Not even close" (almost bursting with surpressed laughter)
Me: "Sju"
Lars-Göran: "No" (turning a vivid purple)
Me: "Sju"
Lars-Göran: "No" (outright laughing)
Me: "For f**ks sake! I give up!"
Lars-Göran: "Good idea."

It had an impact on my life here while we were house hunting. Several places I refused to see outright because of the name of the street (Sjödalsvagen) or the street number (Sjutton - 17). I worried that I'd never be able to ask the way to the hospital (sjukhus), to sing (sjunga), to say that that the boat was sinking (sjunka) or to talk about myself (själv). And my only request when I got a mobile number was that it contain no number seven (sju) in it. Of course, over time I got used to the sound and my pronounciation improved, except when I had to throw it into a sentence, when the tongue twisting used to trip me up. Thank goodness I never had a pressing need to say "sjuttiosju sjösjuka sjömän sköttes av sju sköna sjuksköterskor" (sevety-seven seasick sailors were nursed by seven fair nurses)!

Anyway, the visit went well and Lambi was thrilled to see Annelie.




The apartment is a large, spacious, airy, light five roomed place in a fairly quiet area very close to the underground station. The area is one that a lot of the more stuck-up and clueless expats here would say is "full of immigrants" (read: dark skinned, therefore undesirable as neighbours) without even seeing the irony of that statement. However, what I see is cultural diversity and certainly the place is well located. It was amazing to see her in this domesticated surrounding, confidently making tea and coffee, preparing lunch, watering her plants, showing us her new crockery, chatting about the window-sill herb garden she has started and getting excited that her chives were sprouting. This is the girl who never lifted a finger at home and in fact I can't ever recall seeing her wash a dish in the time I've known her!




And here she is making a home for herself and revelling in it. She was fifteen when I came and will turn twenty-one this year, so I guess it is an important growing and maturing time in one's life and why I see so much change in her. Sometimes it can be hard to equate this poised, mature, thoughtful young woman with the prickly, angry, rebellious teen I first knew. Though I still had the almost uncontrollable urge to tell her to pull up those jeans! What is it with the need to display such a generous view of one's underwear? Or am I just (heaven forbid) turning into my mother?