Today is Valborg Afton - Walpurgis Eve - when all of Sweden is outside lighting bonfires in the street to welcome the Spring. Supposedly, the festival of St. Walpurgis or Walburga was also the time for a traditional witches' sabbath, so people lit bonfires to keep away the witches.



Unfortunately, I feel like the witches have already had their way with me - I'm sick with a cold and a fever while the husband, that lucky dog, is out having dinner with A. the former model and aspiring producer and her boyfriend, C., the fashion photographer. They've probably lit their own bonfire somewhere up in Vasastan, in the northern part of the city.



Fortunately, tomorrow is a holiday not just for St. Walburga - it's the first of May. Which is when most of the world celebrates labor day - International Workers' Day. But there are vague communist overtones to the first of May, and so of course the United States has to have its own separate labor day to avoid any appearance of looking even the least little bit pink. It sounds so old-fashioned now.



The Swedish word for the day is vänsterpartiet. This - the Left Party - is the current name for what used to be called the communist party in Sweden.



- by Francis S.

I don't care how balmy the spring is here in Stockholm, I wish I were in New Orleans. I would pay good money to see the latest opus of Richard Read, written with his paramour, that pornstar up-and-comer Jonno D'Addario, and their buddy Flynn De Marco. Er, I would pay up to $15 at least. To be able to say you've seen a play called "Hell's Belles" is worth the price of the ticket alone.



I wish I could write campy movie parodies in the vein of Charles Ludlam and Charles Busch, I could at least entertain myself. Stockholm doesn't seem to be the place for such divine kitsch. It's really an American thing, the stuff that makes the U.S. great, the part of the States that needs protection from terrorists and the reason why George W. Bush is so bellicose with the axis of evil - you know without even asking that that damned axis of evil absolutely loathes Charles Ludlam.



The Swedish word for the day is teater. I think you don't need my help to figure out that it means theater.



- by Francis S.

It's marvelous to take a day off in the middle of the week. It makes the end of the day on Friday seem like an unexpected gift. I wish I never had to work on Wednesdays.



The Swedish word for the day is onsdagar. It means, of course, Wednesdays. (Which makes me wonder, why are days of the week proper nouns in English? Is it a holdover from German, where all nouns start with a capital letter?)



- by Francis S.

Damnation. The Stockholm bourse (link in Swedish only, sorry) has fallen for the seventh day in a row, helped along by Ericsson's announcement on Monday of its latest mammoth savings and cutback plan.



This is what happens in the stock exchanges of small countries: When big companies go down, they take the bourse with them.



We bought our Ericsson stocks after they announced the previous set of big cutbacks, when I thought the value of the stock couldn't go lower. But oh, no, they are now worth half of what we paid for them.



The Swedish word for the day is ned or ner ("ned" goes with verbs of movement, "ner" with verbs where no movement is implied). It means down.



- by Francis S.

The husband and I just made a mad dash to the SAS ticket office at Stureplan. We are the worst procrastinators about some things and we had yet to get our tickets for my beloved little brother's wedding, which is in less than a month.



The nice lady at the counter managed to squeeze us into flights to and from Chicago, but we have to leave on a Wednesday and come back on a Monday, so it'll be nearly two weeks in America.



I haven't been back since Sept. 11, and frankly I'm a little frightened. Not of terrorists, but of the rhetoric and empty but unnerving security measures. I wonder how much things have changed, or if they really haven't.



The Swedish phrase for the day is övriga frågor, which means miscellaneous questions.



- by Francis S.

My friend R., who also happens to be my favorite employee, is moving back to Finland after more than four years living in Sweden. It was a blow to learn that he was leaving, not just because the company has a hiring freeze and we can't afford to lose good project managers. It's also a blow to morale, mostly mine because I count on him to inject energy, keep us all honest, and send me 10,000 e-mails a day.



We started talking about the whole expatriate version of the you-can't-go-home-again theory, which says that after about four years outside The Fatherland, the likelihood of your being happy living back home is rather slim. Of course, moving back and forth between Finland and Sweden is rather like moving back and forth between Canada and the United States - the countries share an awful lot of culture, so the difference is less pronounced than it might be between other countries.



"I think it would be hard to go back now," I said to him.



"Maybe. I guess I'll find out," he said.



Then again, it would be hard to stay here if I weren't with the husband. Still, the idea of moving back to the States is very strange. Unnatural even, and I can hardly say why. Except that life seems too easy there. And in fact, it doesn't matter because we are not planning on leaving Sweden in the foreseeable future.



The Swedish word for the day is enkel biljett. It means one-way ticket.



- by Francis S.

Oh, and don't forget to check out Raising Hell, the new "so-called" parenting magazine by Mig, Michele and a few other parent-type people. It's all anyone'll ever need to know to raise a kid, believe you me.

- by Francis S.