I can see on everyone's faces, feel it in the air: the promise of summer is almost too much to bear. April and May have been heaven-sent, sunny and warm and full of pale green leaves. But will the summer live up to this glorious spring? It's rumored that June and July will be hellishly cold and damp.



I would never have imagined living in a country where the collective national psyche is so dependent on the weather. Where one is forced to throw oneself into a warm and sunny day as if jumping from a high cliff into the unknown, where the ten lesser months of the year are mere preparation for a tenuous summer that could possibly never come.



Me, I'm as nervous as the next guy that today will be the end of the balminess, as the husband and I wander around the city, buying presents for the upcoming trip to the States for my beloved little brother's wedding to my friend the Rebel.



I'm sick of worrying about the weather, especially when it's this perfect. Perhaps this means I really am becoming a Swede.



The Swedish word for the day is sommaren. It means the summer.



- by Francis S.

Dogs are allowed in Sweden. In shops and on buses. Just about everywhere except restaurants. So it was no surprise to hear strangled and asthmatic barking in the subway as our train pulled away from Central Station - dogs are allowed in the last car.



The question is, however, whether pig-dogs are allowed. Because what was making the noise was small and round and pink and white and indeed, the ugliest canine-type critter that I have ever seen. An albino pug with a few white patches on its back, the rest of it a rubbed-raw pink, its owner was visibly proud of its pathetic ugliness.



Is it possible to be so ugly as to be endearing?



The Swedish word for the day is husdjur. It means pet.



- by Francis S.

The husband and I celebrated Ascension day by ascending to the minimal, luxe and empty bar of the Nordic Light Hotel with M., the t.v. producer and L., a great friend of the husband's from the old days and a king of the Swedish fashion mafia, on account of his being about the only haute couturier in the entire country.



I say a friend from the old days because the husband and L. rarely see each other anymore. Though neither has, or would, say as much, this is no doubt on account of me.



I like L. tremendously, his voice so soft one has to lean closer to hear him, his elegant but unstuffy manners, his twinkling blue eyes. But he surely must resent me, even if he never acts in the least as if he does. I think the husband and L. were friends in some measure because they were both single, it was in part a bachelor cameraderie.



Why is it that when one pairs off, certain friends suddenly fade into the background, while others come into clear focus? It is true that most of the friends of the husband and I, but by no means all, come in pairs.



Is it because single people grow weary of hearing the word "we" all the time?



Interestingly enough, this is not the case with M., the t.v. producer. It is no doubt because he romanticizes the relationship of the husband and I all out of proportion. It would be a mistake to think the M. is not a hopeless romantic, just because he's fucked half of the most beautiful women in Stockholm aged 18 to 24.



"I love you guys," he always says grabbing us around the shoulders, especially after having had one too many sips of white tequila, served neat in a whisky glass. "You guys are my family."



And we love him, too, because he is indeed a part of our large and unwieldy but much beloved family, most of whom are not blood relations of any sort.



The Swedish word for the day is söderkis. It is a slang term for a boy who is native to the island of Södermalm, once a working-class section of the city that now likes to consider itself as Sweden's answer to Soho.



- by Francis S.

The days are drawing near when my company leaves its offices across from the royal palace. It will be a blow to leave the old town behind, to no longer be able to walk to work, to be a bit off the beaten path.



At least despite its proximity, I won't have a view of the U.S. Embassy from my new window. (Not only do I find the embassy an ugly complex of buildings, I detest the place; the Department of Motor Vehicles can't possibly hold a candle to the supercilious attitudes of the staff of the U.S. Embassy: "Uh, are you stupid or something? Because why did you think you should pick up your passport at window F and not at window A where you dropped it off originally? Yes I know you've been waiting 15 minutes while I was yammering away on the phone with a friend, and that the sign above window F says 'passport pickup' but really, how stupid can a person be?")



I will now be taking a ferry from the sluice to Djurgården, an island with museums and a zoo and ambassadors' residences and Gröna Lund, that fabulous old amusement park with ancient rides like the blåtåget - the blue train - a scary ride for 6-year-olds; I love the blåtåget. I will then walk from Djurgården into Östermalm, where stand the new offices - which are actually old military barracks.



The Swedish word for the day is vad tråkigt. It means, more or less, that's too bad.



- by Francis S.

Wow. Last week was Valborg and Första Maj. Now this week we have Kristihimmelsfärd, otherwise known as Ascension. And the week after next it's Pingst - Pentecost. That's one holiday a week, three out of four weeks.



I love this anti-religious country that has so many religious holidays. Go, Jesus, go! Thanks for dying for our sins and giving us all these great holidays.



- by Francis S.

I wonder when the first bureaucracy was created? Was it in China, with all its scribes, or was it under Hammurabi with his code of laws in Babylon, or under the earliest pharoahs in Egypt? I wonder further when the first satire of bureaucracy was written? There must be a writer who pre-dates Gogol and his Dead Souls, the oldest novel that comes to mind on the subject. Because if bureaucracy has been part of human existence for thousands of years, then human beings have suffered from it for just as long.



Take the friend of my beloved little brother. His name is, uh, "George." On his driver's license it states that his sex is "female." He is not, however, female. But getting this changed is apparently a Herculean task.



"I was just reading," my beloved little brother said, "about a lawyer who had the same problem." This lawyer apparently went to the Department of Motor Vehicles, where a clerk there told him that the only way to correct the error was to fill out a form saying that he had changed his sex. Which he refused to do.



"I'm a lawyer and I'll take this to the Supreme Court if I have to," he told the clerk. The clerk said fine, but between the six years it will take for the case to get to the Supreme Court, he will have to put up with a lot of security hassles in the New America Made Safe from Terrorism.



The lawyer broke down and filled out the change-of-sex form.



My little brother was gleeful, because "George" has some, er, personal issues he hasn't quite worked out: "He would go ballistic if he had to fill out a change-of-sex form."



The Swedish word for the day is tjänsteman. It means civil servant.



- by Francis S.

Sweden is rich in square miles, poor in flowers. It's just too far north I think.



Oh, there are wildflowers and some flowering bushes like forsythia and lilac, and of course flowering fruit trees, but there don't seem to be gardens bursting with blossoms and no one seems to have vases filled with spring flowers picked from the backyard. I suspect that if people have flowers in the backyard, they're too precious to pick.



Instead, one clips bare branches from trees before they've started to bloom, sticks them in water and watches them slowly burst open over a weeks' time, perhaps. It's a lovely ascetic beauty, albeit one born of necessity more than anything else.



The Swedish word for the day is blomma. It means, of course, flower.



- by Francis S.