I went to brunch at Hickory Street Bar and Grille with friends from the Atheist Community of Austin and Center for Inquiry last Sunday. One of my table neighbors was from Sweden. He pointed out the glaring gender imbalance in the room. Out of 25 people at brunch, only 3 were women. He asked me if I had thoughts why there are so few women at atheist ( Read more... )

( A net for children to climb in Skansen. )

More things I've seen in Sweden that are unusual in little ways ( Read more... )

I was standing with A at a bus stop in Stockholm near her home, when a neighbor walked up to her. They exchanged these words: "moron" -- "moron", and went on to have an ordinary conversation. I had to suppress a chuckle. Yes, I realized "moron" must mean morning in Swedish, but it was still funny. (Actually it's spelled "morgon", but the g is ( Read more... )

It's good to have friends who have itchy shutter-fingers. I'm talking about A and J who I visited in Stockholm. Like me, A is tempted to take pictures in forbidden places. ;-) Curiously, in Sweden, airports are not off-limits for photography! J said it's because airports are not military objects. The latter are off-limits, everything else is not ( Read more... )

On my last night in Stockholm, we hit the bars with my friend A and her husband J. We did it at my request: I wanted to get a glimpse of Stockholm's night life. None of us are aware of the city's hippest spots, so my glimpse is far from complete, but it was still interesting. I tried absinthe. It smells nice -- kind of like mint or licorice -- but ( Read more... )

Stockholm is bone-freezing cold. And rainy. My friend and I, since we both love long walks, walked around downtown, visited the Royal Castle and Skansen, a historical / ethnographic theme park. But that's common tourist stuff. More unusally, perhaps, I got to visit The Tackiest House In Sweden. It belongs to a certain electronic music composer and ( Read more... )

I am now in Stockholm, Sweden, visiting a Lithuanian friend who's been living there for more than a decade with her Swedish husband and children. She is a fellow science fiction fan and one of the co-publishers of the science fiction fanzine we've been publishing for 12 years now, despite being so far apart geographically. I'll be here until Sunday ( Read more... )