Sure enough, Anders did have to work pretty much the entire weekend, which was kind of good actually, because it gave me a chance to kind of… land a little bit. Decompress, process, whatever you want to call it… actually on Saturday, you could just call it “sleep”, or more accurately “snore and drool a little, pretty much face down in a cup of coffee”.
I got up when Anders left for work, and spent a little time mooching around the apartment, putting away some things, looking out the window at the gorgeous sunny day, and looking forward to doing a little solo exploring. I made some coffee, sat on the couch, and… woke up about 5 hours later, dazed, confused, and somehow, sleepier than when I dozed off. Literally feeling like I had been drugged, I stumbled into the shower, made myself get dressed and somehow made it to a little park near the apartment that Anders had showed me the day before. I had a flask of coffee with me, so I sat on the grass, enjoying the fresh air and… woke up about 5 hours later. People of Stockholm: if I ruined your Saturday afternoon with the snoring and the drooling, I can only apologize. (For the record, I don’t actually think I snore, at least, I hope if I do it’s sweet little lady snores and not monster power drill snores.)
So that was pretty much Saturday. On Sunday I was woken by thunder and lightening to find Anders already gone. Not wanting to waste another day unconscious, I decided that I would spend the rainy afternoon by going to a movie, as Anders had explained that American movies are shown in English with subtitles (in other countries they are dubbed, which I think must be kind of bizarre for people who have only heard Brad Pitt or whoever speaking German or whatever. And what about the actor who is like “I’m Brad Pitt, in German”?) This is apparently the reason that Swedish people are so good at English, and a lot of them have a kind of American accent when they speak Swedish… at least, according to Anders it’s an American accent, according to this American, it’s still pretty Swedish, but more understandable to me than most Brits, so I guess that’s what he means.
Pretty much every movie showing was indeed American, and I opted for Silver Linings Playbook which I had never got around to seeing. Determined to start my time as a Stockholm resident right, I had looked up the phrase for “one ticket please” (“en biljett tack”), rehearsed about a thousand times, though when I came to say it to the cashier kind of forgot that it would probably entice him to respond in Swedish, which he did. For some weird reason, I didn’t want to resort to “sorry, can you speak English?” right away, and figured what could he be saying that was so essential to comprehend about a movie ticket transaction, so I just kind of nodded vaguely and handed over the money. He gave me my ticket, so I figured that it had all been successful, and went into the theater feeling pretty pleased with myself.
It was pretty empty, so I found a nice center seat and settled down to wait for the movie to start… until suddenly I was confronted by a couple of pretty grouchy Swedes seeming to have a problem with me. Deciding that nodding vaguely and handing over money probably wouldn’t help this time, I apologized and asked if they could repeat in English, which they did – turns out I was in their seats. I guess in Sweden you get assigned seats in the movies, who knew? I looked at my ticket again and discovered that I did have an assigned seat, in fact, presumably that’s what the cashier guy had been asking me about, and as I hadn’t responded he had stuck me in the front row right off to the left. Nice.
I went and took my seat, but by the time the movie started, there was literally only me and the grouchy couple in the entire theater, so I could have moved to a better seat but was too afraid of being yelled at again, so I got a crick in my neck.
July 23, 2013 at 11:28 pm
Laughed aloud at your first attempt at conversation! But you are brave-barely acclimatised and you are trying to speak the lingo.
August 6, 2013 at 7:20 am
Been there done that 🙂 at least next time you’ll know to ask for good seat! Do they have a seating chart where you can point and say that one?
Our movies have subtitles too – you’ll get used to them very quickly, and miss them when you go ‘home’ 🙂 Finland has the added bonus of having Finnish AND Swedish!
August 14, 2013 at 10:24 pm
Somehow I missed this when it got posted. Great story! But the ticket guy should have thought to put you somewhere central, considering most seats were available. Russia has assigned ticket too, I actually like it – I book (and pick a seat) online and then when it’s a hot new release I dont have to get there 3 hrs early.