Skånes Djurpark

Goodness, it's been over a year since I last wrote. Probably no one reading anymore, but I need to get my anger out, so this is probably the best place to do it.

I'm in Skåne and WiseKid was up with his family for a few days. He wanted WiseKidKid2 to see how nice the forest and the grass around the house and the fresh air is. WKK ran barefoot around and around the house a zillion times (they live in an apartment building in downtown Berlin). He found some frogs and oodles of slugs (yuck), enjoyed picking and eating blueberries and raspberries right away, and studied the flowers - and of course watering them, getting your feet wet is really important if you are 3.

We decided to go to Skånes Djurpark yesterday morning, that used to be a very nice zoo that focused on fostering local animals and teaching kids all about the forest. 

The wierdness started when we checked the prices. There are different prices for every day, and it is cheaper if you buy it online, they are asking 399 SEK (around 35 €) at the door. Of course, the weekends are much more expensive than during the week, but we felt Monday was good. I don't like this "buy your tickets early for a particular date/time"-thing. It's horrible to have bought tickets and then someone is sick, or you miss a train, or the thing you were doing before is fun and you would have preferred to go an hour later. Anyway, they are to be 279 SEK a person (no discounts for children or senior citizens). But look what happens when you start adding people:

Even though the price on the calendar stays the same, they now want 299 SEK a person! Sure, that's only about 2 €, but it irritates me no end. I decided I was too tired Sunday evening and tried it again the next morning. Imagine my surprise to see that the price has now CHANGED, both in the calendar and in the basket they are now another 20 SEK more!

I gritted my teeth and paid the 319 SEK price, as WKK2 was babbling about going to see a moose today. Of course, I had to use a credit card. Must not let this valuable data point go missing!

We drove up, there were not that many cars there. They scan your license plate as you drive in and then you can pay at a station (with credit card) when you leave, or use an app. Sweden seems to have an app for everything.

WKK2 is so excited and runs way ahead of us, but Grandma is going to have words with the people at the cashier's desk. And indeed, they agree to refund me 160 SEK, that what I paid above the published price. Except that went on my credit card and has not shown up yet. The debit was taken momentarily. We'll see if it ever shows up, I demanded (and got) a receipt.

So, shall we now enjoy the park? I point to the left where the petting zoo is - and right behind it is "Shaun the Sheep Land". What on earth? Okay, at least there are some goats and sheep to pet, no rabbits or chickens or baby pigs to be seen as there used to be. We don't stay long, as WKK2 is racing up the hill to the tractors! They have an amusement park ride where two children can sit in the front, "steering", and two adults in the back. The tractors are on a track and are dragged though some cheesy figures, more than half of which don't work, WiseKid said. But the camera sure worked, and we were able to buy pictures and keychains of the event. At least the cost of the ride was part of the steep entrance fee. 

On to the next animal place, except this is now a bunch of wagons for people who want to sleep at the park. O-kaaay. The pig is at least still there, fat and bored. And there are big signs with figures from the mole book and a big button to press - and the painted animal "shits". Yes, a big hit with the kids, but not about learning about real animals! I tug the door that used to go to the building for observing the storks - locked. I peer around, no storks visible. Maybe they got angry at all the beeping and pooping?

And now there is a truly awful plastic TREE and people are taking selfies with themselves in front of the tree! I go with WKK2s mom to the seals, and yes, they are floating under the surface in very dirty water. The place seems quite run-down, although a worker is sawing away at bushes that are quite overgrown. A seal pokes his head up and has such sad eyes. I am reminded of the seals we observed in Labrador a few summers  ago, much more lively in their natural habitat. 

We continue up the hill past overgrown and decrepit pens. Yes, there is a fox walking around, but nothing else. We come to "Dinosaur Land"! Oh my, these look like the stupid dinosaurs we saw in a little amusement park we went to when WiseKid was a pre-teen and his cousins were 3-5. At least they seem to have gotten a bit of paint, some of it perhaps not intentional.

I didn't go in, but sat at what I thought was just past the exit in front of the wild cats. Except they came out above the cats and there was another dino you could take a selfie with. The booth at the "archeological dig", as many of the other booths, were closed because in Sweden school started today so be damned if any foreign tourists are here. We looked for some wolves from the viewpoint, but everything was overgrown. On to the bears - in decrepit pens, just sitting there, waiting for food. 

The place where you used to be able to pay 20 SEK to have your child ride a pony around and around is now just for children riding STICK PONIES! Pretend horses!

We pushed on, past more and more overgrown pens. We did see a wild pig in the pig stys, but there were no piglets. At least there were two eagles on a perch, but they were hard to see in the overgrown foilage. We saw some deer at a distance and finally finally finally found some moose!

You weren't allowed to feed them like we used to do, the branches for them to eat are behind a fence. I suppose too many people were giving them other stuff to eat. This was, of course, one of the reasons for coming, to see a moose, and WKK2 was very excited.

We waved at some bison on the way out, past some cabins now on the grounds of the place. WKK2 played in the water playstation (plastic) for a while, then we took the tractor ride again. The lines were not long, as there were not too many people here.

We made it past the collection of stuffed toys and ice cream on the way back to the car. The machine told me it would send me a receipt for the parking fee (50 SEK) by SMS. Of course, none has appeared yet. 

Can I say something positive about the park? Yes, they have more toilets now. 

The bottom line? WiseKid was very disappointed, he wanted his kid to experience what he had enjoyed as a kid. Of course, WKK2 had a wonderful time, but it was all plastic and figures from TV shows he watches, all commercialized. I'm afraid this is the last time I've been there, I have taken adult friends there previously without a kid and they enjoyed learning about the animals. The focus now is just on earning money and having fun fun fun.

I will be informing the Konsumentombud about the situation with the price gouging, I find it unacceptable that the price charged to you is different from what is advertised. We'll see if that gets any action.

Edit: WiseKid suggests that I include what he experienced after I haggled with the cashiers to get the 160 SEK back. They had heard us speaking German and me discussing in Swedish with a German accent. Once I left, one noted to the other that she found it so silly to worry about such a "small amount of money" (note: almost 15 €!). They didn't know that WiseKid speaks Swedish, too :)

Edit 2: The refund made it back to my account four days later, so that's taken care of. I still reported them to the Konsumentombud for price gouging. I wonder how much money they have made with this "error".

But what do the tourists do?

You pretty much have to have a credit card (or two) in order to stay in Sweden anymore. They are trying hard to get rid of cash, theoretically because it might get stolen, but more likely so that the government can have more control of revenue streams. So I make it a point to withdraw cash from an ATM and pay cash for everything.

Except when I can't. 

We were in Lund, planning on eating at a nice restaurant, and pulled into one of my favorite parking places near the station. Only 12 SEK (about 1,20 €) an hour, and we were parking half an hour before you didn't have to pay anymore. So I was planning on throwing six crowns into the box. Except it looked like this:

"Only cards and telephone parking"

Although the machine states that it takes coins, there is a handwritten piece of paper taped over the coin slot. "Only cards and telephone parking," it says. Sheesh. I even have exact change handy. Okay, what's this "telephone parking" bit, what number do I call?

Well, first you have to install an app, and then:

Start the app - send an SMS with the following information:
Zone Code, Register Number, Personnr

Oops - once you have the app started, you have to sent off the code for the parking zone, the code for the machine you are standing in front of, and then your personnr. All Swedes have such a number, but tourists don't. I used to have one, as I worked in Sweden, but it has been marked no longer valid in the massive Swedish databases that Sweden appears to let IBM store in Romania and elsewhere. So I can't do anything with that number, not even pay 60 cents to park my car. And since the fines for not paying the parking fee are very steep (they start at about 1000 SEK, 100 €. I can think of better things to do with that amount of money), I don't want to walk away.

So I ended up pulling out my credit card to pay 60 cents. This is considered normal in Sweden, you don't even use your PIN number. Buying milk or a newspaper is also often just paid for by waving a card at the machine. Of course, the Swedes have never been in debt as much as they are today, probably because they use credit cards so much. If there are no coins in my pocket, I can quickly determine that I don't have money for a coffee. But with a credit card, I lose that connection with my money -- and end up paying interest to the bank, which is, of course, what they want. 

Sweden is highly dependent on tourists (9,6 % of their GNP is travel and tourism!), so perhaps they need to discover that they need to organize their society so that non-Swedes can also participate.

I just had a fight with the bank about this, they didn't want to give me a little electric box to produce the number I need to transfer funds by Internet without a personnr. 1998 I wrote an article about the "holy personnr" and it is still bad and getting worse. The bank teller wouldn't give it to me, her boss said no, too. No personnr, no box, no matter that I have money in their bank. I asked for the name of someone to complain to.

I wrote this person and included links to the appropriate EU legislation. EU citizens have the same rights as locals in ALL EU countries. That's pretty much the point of the EU! A few weeks later I got a letter apologizing and saying: of course you can get a box with your German passport.

So this past week I went back. It took some hemming and hawing, but I left with my new little box. They insisted, though, that I try it out in the bank. I said I was not comfortable using a computer that was not my own. Oh, you can be sure, it's encrypted! Sigh.

But honestly, we can navigate the system, as we have vacationed here for many years. What on earth do tourists do?

The holy personnr, part II

In 1998, after we bought the house in Sweden and I was spending my sabbatical at Malmö högskola, I wrote this article called "The Holy personnummer" about the run-around you get when you attempt to live in Sweden like a Swede, something that should be normal in the EU.

It is now 2016, and a few strange things happened in the past year. For example, some mail sent to us got returned to sender. Banks don't like stuff like that. Some mail that did get delivered had our ancient address on it. The house hasn't moved, but Hörby has experimented with four different ways of naming the place the house is located at. Suddenly the address from way back in the 90s was showing up on letters. But we had written to all of these important companies (insurance, sewage, garbage) years ago to inform them about the new street name and house number that we had. Why was this different?

Come tax time, I didn't get a tax form like I have for the past 20 years. We have to pay property tax on the house, I owe half and WiseMan owes half. He got his tax form in Germany, but mine was neither in Sweden nor in Germany. I called the Swedish tax hotline, waited for ages in the queue to be told that they would be sending me out a new one. Except it never came. I paid the tax anyway, and hoped to be done with it.

When we came up this summer there was a nasty letter waiting for me. I hadn't filed my tax return! This would cost me lots of money! I needed to file asap. This time I wrote an email, which was actually answered within two days. The bureaucrat had the following surprising information for me: Since I no longer lived in Sweden (and I haven't for 16 years) they have revoked my personnr and returned me to the old tax number they gave me when we first moved to Sweden. And so, I deduce, they just rolled back to the old address that old number had.

This was confirmed the next day by the insurance company - they update their address data every month by comparing it with the records at the tax office. So they are unable to fix my address, I have to convince the tax people of the new address in order for the insurance company to have it stored correctly.

Not that the tax office sent me any letter about this change of status, although any letter they sent would probably be addressed to the old address and get itself returned...

I just had coffee with a friend from Berlin who is also German and had lived for many years previously in Sweden. Thus, she had a personnr and still owns property here. She tried to book a Sunday-Taxi (they send these out instead of running regular busses in the rural areas here) and they wouldn't let her, because her personnr was not valid. Good thing she has nice neighbors willing to get up early Sunday to ferry her to the bus from the county seat. You are no one here without that number.

Cutting down trees

Where did July & August go? Okay, end of semester, then vacation with the princesses in Japan (which should have been worth lots of posts) and diverse other excuses for not writing. Back in Sweden, I have some time to write.
This afternoon our neighbors had some trees taken out. It should have been only 6, but it ended up being 8. WiseMan and I stood around with the neighbors watching in fascination how the process works. Here's a picture book story:

The truck has a lift arm on it with grabber pincers that grasp the tree.
Right below the pincer there is a chainsaw mounted, that cuts off the tree.

The lift arm is controlled by the truck driver with a little
remote control thingy that looks like a big Wii control.
This is an actual job that you can do
if you are good at computer games, I suppose!

Grab and saw

And lift that branch up and over the telephone wires!

Bang it on the ground to break off the branches.

And now go back for more.

This is the prize piece - a 3 meter trunk that can be sold for building wood.

All neatly packed on the truck flatbed and ready to go.

In about four hours, he was done. He then had a look at our trees, we have many old birch trees that could possibly fall on the house in a storm. I love the trees, but I also like the house. So tomorrow he's coming to take 4 trees in our front yard. To think that another neighbor spent and entire summer and fall taking down some 35 trees in his yard all by himself with a chainsaw. This is much faster - and safer.

Meeting a moose

Even though we have been traveling to Sweden for over 30 years, we have seldom seen a moose at close quarters. Twenty years ago we saw two at a distance in Färjelända, and once somewhere while we were walking in the woods one crashed through a clearing before us. We've seen moose droppings in the woods around our summer home, but mostly we have seen them in the nearby zoo (and petted noses, they have soft fur on their noses).

On the way to the airport this morning a young moose suddenly sprang out of the woods. WiseMan was driving (luckily, I had a terrible headache) and there was no car coming the opposite direction. We were able to swerve. We did hear a thump and thought that we had still hit the moose broadside, but the car behind us said that the moose had just gotten one leg underneath the car. Either the knee hit the car, or we ran over the hoof.

The moose limped off into the woods, and we pulled over. There was no damage to the car, luckily, and we were okay except for the scare. We called a friend who contacted a hunter and the police. The police called while we were at the airport to take down all the details. They send a hunter out to look for the moose and see if it is okay or needs to be put out of its misery. After everything was over a bit of shock set in. We were very lucky -- suddenly meeting a large moose can total a car.

I think I'll be happy to just visit the zoo in the future.

From the Department of Oops

WiseMan picked up a flyer at the Coop today. This is so bizarre, I have to translate it:

Important information for those of you who have the Coop 2014 calendar. Because of a printing error that crept in for the month of May we have put together an updated page that you can easily use to replace the month of May with. On the inside of this flyer you can find the month of May as it should be, just open it up and hang it up over the wrong one so that you have a calendar with the correct weekend days. Please note that the Monday after Pentecost, the 9th of June is NOT a holiday, please note this in your calendar. Midsummer day, Saturday the 21st of June, is a holiday, so please note this in your calendar as well. We are sorry for the problem and wish you all the best in 2014!

Ahem. Pentecost Monday has not been a holiday in Sweden for what, 5 years now? And they missed having the most holiest of the Swedish drinking holidays, Midsummer, marked as a holiday? On their Facebook page they note that the first of May was set on a Wednesday instead of Thursday, meaning they repeated May 2013. What did they do, outsource the printing to some cheap third world country where no one noticed anything? The motto of the year is: sustainability.

Jesus Christ, Superstar

What an evening! We had heard about the Dalby choir, Mixtum, earlier this year when we stumbled on them practicing in the Dalby church. We stayed for the concert and were fascinated by this young, vibrant choir. At the end of their Gospel concert they announced that they were repeating their performance of "Jesus Christ, Superstar" in August. We found the date and arranged to stay in order to hear the musical.

The place was given as "Dalby Quarry". We had never been there, but the newspaper said a) bring your own food, b) come early, and c) don't expect toilets or wheel-chair accessibility. So we arranged with friends to be there between 3 and 4 pm, the concert was not to begin until 6pm. They came by bike, we passed them in the car and waved. And then discovered: we were late.

The parking place was filled to overflowing, cars were already parking along the roadside. We drove on and managed to find a little parking place a good bit down next to a ladder for climbing the fence. Sooooo, we parked and lugged the picnic up the ladder and down again, up the next ladder and down again, and then were were at the quarry. It is breathtakingly beautiful! It is said to be 11 meters deep, the water looked cold and blue, and the quarry was very wide, so there were lots of places to sit. We lugged the stuff on towards the stage, and discovered we could have just walked along the highway instead of through the fields. You live and learn.

We found a nice place in the back - all the picnic places towards the stage were already taken. It turned out to be great - since there were only brambles behind us, we could stand up and had a great view of the stage.

The dress rehearsal was in full swing, and I began singing along. When I was a teenager back in the 70s our church choir put on the musical. Although I have not sung it since, I discovered that I still knew the words! We had a picnic and were then able to talk for a while until the concert started. People kept streaming in, filling every last nook and cranny, there must have been 2000 people there.

The acoustics were fabulous - one could hear all around the quarry. And the professional singers in the main roles, as well as the choir, sang so well that the audience was enchanted. I'm not sure much of the audience knew the story (despite Sweden being very Lutheran). Our friends kept asking me where in the program we were, I had to bite my tongue not to say: Isn't it obvious? That's the Last Supper ....

When they got to part where Mary Magdalene anointed Jesus' feet with expensive nard, I suddenly realized that I had completely missed this in my sermon a few weeks ago! There we have Judas, bitching at Mary for "wasting" the nard, it could have been sold and the money used to feed the poor. Jesus tells Judas off, noting that there will always be poor people. Judas' words come back to haunt him, as when he is agonizing over the blood money he was given for betraying Jesus, the choir sings softly: You could give the money to the poor.

Somehow I was also really experiencing the music, seeing structures in the songs, picking up melodies from previous songs, making them fit the next scene, and then it all coming together for the finale: Jesus Christ, Superstar. The choir was clapping, and then the entire audience joined in, exuberantly clapping in time to the music.

The local newspaper has reported online with a few pictures, have a look at this wonderful setting. And now, I must see if I can still get a recording of JCS. I need to hear it all again!

Julotta

The Swedes have this quaint custom of having a Christmas service in the wee hours of Christmas morning, called Julotta. It was scheduled in the village church this year for a rather civil 9 am, so since I was actually awake at 7.30, I decided to get a quick cup of coffee, get my boots on, and trudge down through the Christmas Slush.

Actually, the slush was gone from the streets, except for the odd, treacherous bit of ice. It was just beginning to get light out, not even the birds were awake. I did meet a couple picking up Maj-Britt, a former missionary to Africa who is the village genealogist, as I passed her place. "God fortsättning!", a good continuing of the Christmas season, they wished me.

The church was ablaze with candlelight! The custodian, Eva, had probably been there for the last hour or so, lighting over 120 candles inside.

I've often been in the church where only 4-5 people were attending, but this morning there was a good crowd. We sang some old Christmas carols, and a young woman sang and played the flute. The preacher was hoarse, in addition to speaking the local dialect, so I didn't understand much of what he was saying. Maj-Britt gave me a hug and the best of wishes for the coming year, I wished her continued good health. All the others just kind of eye the stranger, if you haven't lived here for most of your life, you are a stranger.

Heading home, the sun had come up, although the sky was still very grey. The birds were making quite a noise, almost as if it was spring!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The Trough

There's a handicrafts fair once a year in our little village in Sweden. People from the area sell the stuff they make during the long winter evenings. Most of it is kind of kitschy, but I usually buy honey and jam. It's really the best honey in the world. A few years ago I bought a round cement trough from a little girl who apparently made cement things with her dad. She had some nice blue tiles on it, so I thought I would put it on my little terrace garden.

I did, and it looks nice when I clean it up and fill it with clean water, but just a day or so later it is filled with leaves, so I've just been ignoring it. It is kind of grown over anyway.

The past few days have been marvelous summer weather here, so I've been eating breakfast outside. But since I am alone, I am rather quiet. And I have been getting company. There is a squirrel (actually, I saw two of them together today) that apparently owns the place. I watch them climbing up the trees and across the telephone pole wires and across the lawn.

One is suddenly on my terrace, looking around for danger. I don't move, but he senses me. So instead of going straight for the water, he sneaks around a large bush in the corner. He checks that I haven't moved, then runs to the trough and takes a long drink. He checks again that the coast is clear, and then makes a mad dash to the closest tree, looking back to see if I am following.

So I'm glad I bought the trough, I've seen a frog enjoying it, too. And I now have my camera at the table. Maybe I'll get a chance to take a closeup.

Update: Here he is!

Good thing he left the berry for me!

The Subbotnik

When we came up to the cabin last week, there was a sign on the information board: "Clean-up Day. Saturday, July 28. 10.00. Decided on at yearly meeting. Everyone shows up. The board."

Well, I've seen more polite invitations for me to donate free work coming from students. They couldn't have sent an email around, informing people? Asking what day would be best? Maybe saying "please?"

The night before was the Olympics opening gala, and so I didn't get to bed until 2 am. I crawled out of bed and made some coffee at 9, and heard that they were already at work. I ignored them until the dot of 10, got out my work gloves and ambled over.

There were a good dozen people here, some with trimmers clearing out the bush, and the rest raking everything together. Two guys were using a chain saw to saw through some of the larger bits of wood. I greeted the folks I knew, and dove in.

Ten minutes later it was break time, since they had already started well before. At least the board had organized cold beer and water. It was nice to chat with some of the neighbors, ones from the other end of the colony that we haven't seen in years. The German spoke shyly to me - "I think I saw you on TV last year." Yup. And the new neighbors asked if they had heard me in Swedish radio just the day after I had introduced myself to them. Yes again, I had been up to give a talk and a bunch of interviews, had sort of a blitz of Swedish media, radio, TV, and newspaper. My!

After about half an hour the bossy, nosy wife of the board speaker (she is the vice speaker, keeps it all in the family) came around to check on who all showed up. She came up to me to ask me who I was - I've only had this house for about 16 years and she bitched *bitterly* about the shenanigans of our son for years. Guess I'm not as famous as I thought :) I told her, and she excused herself for not working, she just had an operation. I think she should have stayed home and rested.

Anyway, had a nice chat with the neighbors on both sides, and got a big bear hug from the Italian guy who was happy to see me, as I always stop to chat with him when I see him in his garden. On the dot of 11 I excused myself, said that I had an appointment, and hurried home to change. As I drove out, they were all standing around, talking. Must be good for getting to know your neighbors, although I know a number of people who didn't go because they hated the rude tone of the sign.

My appointment? Running through the "loppis", the flea markets, looking for a new office chair. Got a great one with armrests for 100 SEK, that's about 12 €, with the euro being so low against the krona. But still a great bargain.

The title of this article, Subbotnik? Go look it up in the Wikipedia.

Never forget Utøya

A year ago today a lone gunman first created a diversion in downtown Oslo to occupy the police, and then went out to the island of Utøya, where the social-democratic youth were holding a political summer camp. There he shot dead 69 people.

Norway has not let itself become a police state. They value their freedoms so much, that they have just carried on, and put the murderer on the stand as they would any other murderer. They did not ramp up "security" (okay, they already have cameras all over the place), they did not do what the murderer wanted, to force the "foreign elements" out of Norway. They remained unshaken.

Today, many cities in Scandinavia are holding memorial services. The Oslo service was broadcast on Swedish TV, I listened to the premier, Jens Stoltenberg, give an excellent speech. July, normaly one of the lightest and happiest months in Norway, will retain a black spot, July 22. "We are aware of those who are in mourning, who are hard put to deal with day-to-day life. We are there, and we will reach out, and speak with you."

In Lund a small group of young people gathered in front of city hall on the large square around a red flag: "We will never forget Utøya. We will not let ourselves be conquered". They had storm candles and red roses, and just stood in silence. Passersby stopped, and joined in for a few minutes, before carrying on.

In the woods without a car

I've tried it before, heading up to the cabin for just a night or two with the train and having the neighbors pick me up from the train station 8 km away. It works, because I can get enough food for 2 days in one bag.

But this time I'm up for 4 days, so it was the question whether it is doable for longer. The result: with good neighbors, it works!

I took a suitcase up with me - clothes, books, some food just in case, stuff that needs lugged up, and that was my downfall. It took forever to get the suitcase back from EasyJet, and I missed the last through train by a minute. Normally the DSB is always late ....

So I waited for the next one along in 20 minutes, and got off in Lund to wait 30 minutes for the next small train to take me one town down where I could wait another 20 minutes for the next train to take me on, getting me there just before midnight. Then I got lucky - I spied the express bus - leaving in 10 minutes for the other county seat that is just as far away from the cabin as the one that has the train station. Even being a bus, it was 25 minutes earlier at this regional town that the train would have been at the other one. I gave my neighbor a half liter of brandy I had picked up at the airport, making him very glad to drive me anytime I need a lift!

The neighbors lent me their car in the afternoon so I could get supplies. And then I didn't need to go anywhere - I'm working and writing this weekend! This is my very favorite place hackspace for writing:

Yes, the lilacs are still in bloom here.
And these are from my garden!

Tomorrow I'll be heading for church - they actually organize a pick-up service inside the county. So I chose one of the services, an open air service on the beach, and called the telephone number. Someone will be picking me up a half an hour before the service, I am really looking forward to seeing how this works!

Now, time to watch the Eurovision Song Contest.....

Easter Moon

WiseYoungMan willingly drove us to the airport in order to have the car to himself this weekend. Lots of luck with those gas prices, they hit 1,70 € a liter this week, that's $ 8.40 / gallon for the Statesiders. We took the El Cheapo Express to Copenhagen and hired a car.

We booked the smallest one, but ended up getting a brand new Citroën C4 for the weekend. Oh my, what a nice car! There are so many buttons and displays and places to stow stuff and a really great steering wheel.

So here I am, driving up from the tunnel between Denmark and Sweden, onto the bridge. The radio is playing Abba as we cross the boarder, and the full moon, with a colorful halo, is lighting a large patch of very calm sea. It is so peaceful!

The Easter Moon loses its halo in Sweden, and there are stars galore out tonight. Need to enjoy them, there's a snow front coming.....

Dalby

On our way to Genarp the other day our friend pointed out the Dalby church. "You've been to see that, of course." Uh, no. We've never actually been this way. Is it nice? Well, it's the oldest stone church around here and there used to be a bishop there and it has a great view and ...

So picking up another friend after work in Lund today, we suggested driving out to Dalby. We had packed a picnic coffee time just in case (we are sooooo Swedish), as we had tried to find a cafe in Dalby using both Google and the Lund web site. Google suggested that the nearest cafes were actually in Lund, and the Lund city web site is a navigational maze with unhelpful search function. It is not made for tourists, but for people with an intricate knowledge of the structures of the city government.

So we headed out for an adventure. Dalby sits up on a hill with a very wonderful view - we could see clear to Malmö! The church is really fascinating - it looks big on the outside but is actually quite small on the inside, as it has bits and pieces tacked on all over the place that are not really part of the sanctuary. We dragged open the inner massive wood doors - and discovered the organist practicing. What a wonderful way to explore a church, with great music being played!

We headed back out into the lovely, sunny afternoon and joked about now exploring beautiful downtown Dalby. We just headed out - and landed at a coffee and tea shop across from a restaurant. There were even a few shops around - there was, indeed, a downtown. The coffee and tea shop had a few chairs outside, so we hoped to get a cup of coffee and climbed up the steep stairs.

Inside "Bönor och Blad" (Beans and Leaves) there were all sorts of foreign and Swedish delicatessen foods, tons of licorice, great cheeses - and a truffles collection to melt a chocolate lover's heart. We hemmed and hawed about what we would be having when the owner pointed out that she had cookies too and that there was a garden if we would like to sit out in the sun.

A garden? We checked it out: green stuff, sun, chairs, tables. Yes! We ordered coffee and goodies and sat out in the sun. Every now and then an airplane flew over, but other than that - it was lovely.

After coffee we shopped at the local Konsum and then drove on to the nearby national park. We pulled out the picnick stuff and headed off down the trail. I was worried that I didn't have my hiking boots on, but this was the trail for wheelchair-bound people - 1.20 m wide planking all around. After a bit there were some seats and a little table, bathed in sun. We sat down, broke out the cheese and crackers and coffee, and declared this the loveliest place to be right now - until the mosquitoes chased us away.

We drove back to Lund and walked around, finding nothing interesting, other than groups of foreign students walking by in droves trying to figure out the town. Dalby wins today, hands down.

Walpurgis Night

I'm in Sweden over the weekend, trying to get a paper finished that was promised to a journal weeks ago. But I just don't seem to be able to write in Berlin. I have to be in Sweden, fuss around in the garden, and then write, write, write, usually with the fire going and a nice glass of red wine on my desk.

I came up by train just for a longish weekend, having no appointments for some reason the past Friday. The night train is again running, I used to take it 12 years ago when I had my sabbatical in Malmö and would go home to Berlin with WiseKid every other week. It's great - you get on at 10.30 pm in Berlin, and get off in Malmö at 8 am. The other way you get on at 9.30 pm and get into Berlin at 6 am - just perfect for people like me who can sleep in trains. A neighbor picked me up at the station, so I don't need a car.

Anyway, tonight is Walpurgis Night. In Germany this is the night the witches fly to the Blocksberg and do their thing. Here in Sweden this is one of the high holy drinking days (the others being New Year's, Midsommer, and the Friday after Payday every month). There is all sorts of rituals involved in this holiday, besides just drinking.

I saw on the notice board that there was going to be a family evening down at the community center, so I walked down in the early evening. First they sang all sorts of spring songs, accompanied by piano, accordion, and guitar. Then there was a play. I recognized the chairman of the church board, the chairman of the community center, and the woman who hands out the hymnals in church. She was actually very funny, playing "Uncle Eric". They spoke Skånska, the local dialect, which I can in general understand if I concentrate, but not with two kids screaming just behind me. I gave up and read my magazine.

Then there was coffee and cinnamon buns. I went up the the pianist, who speaks German and I have known for many years. She was happy to see me and introduced me to all sorts of people - and brought me up to speed on the gossip of the last 4-5 years, I had only seen her a few times recently.

As it was getting dark we followed the marschaller, little torchpots set out to show us the way to the bonfire. The local boys men had apparently been collecting branches for quite some time, they had quite a collection piled up on a field a good ways from all the buildings. They doused the pile with gasoline, made the kids stand back, and set a propane torch.

With a whoosh the flame jumped to the sky, sending sparks all over the place. The kids squealed with joy and began dancing around the fire as the adults poured some alcoholic refreshments and started singing. The pianist introduced me to more people, and we had attempted to have some conversation, although the blood alcohol level was quickly rising, precluding most rational thought.

As the flames died down more brush was put on, the flame thrower used again, and then the kids got out long sticks to grill hot dogs and marshmellows - I believe these customs are imported from Hollywood and not handed down from the Vikings, but one never knows.

All along the hillside you could see bonfires blazing. I remember the first time I saw this, I thought Sweden was under attack!

It was cold, so I said my goodbyes and trudged home and made my own fire - in the fireplace.

But this is me, really!

I had an errand to do at my Swedish bank today. I always dread these, because there is usually some problem involved with my lack of a proper Swedish personnr, personal identification number. Swedish programmers use it as a primary key for everything, so those who don't have them (like tourists) run into lots of problems.

We have had a bank account here in Sweden for the past 13 years. One has to pay one's bills somehow! This bank was nice enough to open an account for us years ago when we were standing there with our pockets full of cash that we had brought for the down payment on our house and we wanted to put it into a bank account. Without a personnr two banks refused us before we were able to bank it, but that is a long, old, other story.

Our bank uses Internet banking, so I can pay bills online using a PIN generator. The PIN generator is a piece of security theater - it always generates the same number for the challenge number put in. The login numbers are always chosen from a small group of numbers, and once you are in and have set up some bank transfers, the number for the signing the transfers is just the sum of the amounts in SEK. If I pay a bill for 250 SEK I always have to use 0002 5000 as the challenge. Duh. It would be trivial to set up a trojan to always fill up amount to transfer to a specific sum for which I already know the code.

The little box that generates the PIN was getting old - cover cracked, keys don't respond, display fading. I wanted a new one. Should be simple, shouldn't it?

No. We are in Sweden. They have to make sure that it is me. The young man at the desk gets his boss. She knows me. She's had to deal with every bank problem I have had in the past few years. We move off to another counter.

- May I have your ID?

Sure. I hand over my German identity card. She frowns as she scans it. Look, lady, you've done this before. We don't have a personnr in Germany in general use. Yet.

- If you need my personnr, here it is.

I scribble it on a scrap of paper. She lights up, types it in, frowns. Hmm. It is not in the database. Of course not. The Swedish government only has active personnr in their database. I am marked as having moved to a foreign country, so I am inactive.

- I need more identification, she says.

Let's see. I have my credit card, issued from this institution. I have the old PIN generator that has a number on it. I have the bank book that I got when we opened the account. It is in my husband's name, because at that time he was the only German citizen, I was an American.

It dawns on me. I was an American when I got the PIN generator. Now I am German. So I am not longer the me they have in their database. Identity is quite a hard problem, it seems, not just for teenagers!

She gets out paper forms. We make photocopies of my ID card. No fingerprints, though. She frowns at her computer screen again. I make small talk, about me being a professor from Germany and all. She asks in what field. I say computer science. She jokingly offers for me to come around and help her make this thing behave. I would love to!

She finally finds another form, prints it out, I sign that I am me (!), and we carry on. She first "destroys" the old one by pressing in the magic code "88888888". I wonder what would happen if I purchased something for 888 888,88 SEK? That would have invalidated my generator.

The new PIN generator is a one-time pad generator. It has to be initialized with the bank page when I log in. There is a button that has three different functions. There is an instruction booklet to accompany it.

I just tried it - it actually works, although it is not intuitive. It writes "APPLI" at you. That means "application". And you choose 1 to log in with the one-time code, 2 if you need an answer code. I wonder what 3, 4 and 5 do .... The instruction booklet is very good about telling you to choose a good PIN. 1234, 4321, and 7777 are bad. And your last 4 digits to your personnr are also not a good idea. I wonder how many Swedes do that? I would guess more than 10% use these 4 digits as their PINs. But this is just conjecture, no way to know unless one asks them.

Everything is public in Sweden

Our neighbors in Sweden are selling their house, so we checked the web page, curious people that we are. And we found this information about the neighborhood:

• 34% are between 50 and 64 years old (they don't say what the radius is here, but they must be hiding some young'uns somewhere)
• Half are married (presumably not to the other half)
• 25% are couples with no children living at home
• About a third live in nice-sized houses built before 1931
• People are interested in hunting, fishing, and mucking about in the garden
• They still read the morning papers and subscribe to car magazines and house/home/gardening postilles.
  

They missed how often we cut the grass and what the average height of the grass is.

Can't call Telia? Well, call Telia.

We got rid of our landline in Sweden, just have prepaid mobiles and a mobile Internet flatrate. We got the quarterly bill for the flatrate, and they have a 200 SEK (20 €!!) charge for using it in Germany.

Now, I don't use it in Germany. I wanted to see the data on when this was supposed to have been, so I went to the web page and tried to log in.

• The password and user name I have noted don't work.
• My personnr doesn't work. Sweden still has a problem with using this as a key for all databases and to look up address information, because the programmers think that personnr are things all human beings have. Wrong. Only Swedes living in Sweden or foreigners who have a permit to live there that have been there over a year have them.
• Even thought the web site says that you can use the bill number, it says that there is no such bill with this number.

Fume.

There is a telephone number, so I try and call via Skype. First attempt - hangs up. Second attempt: Please press 8 for English. Great! I press 8. It continues in Swedish.... I hang up, try again. Press 8 for English, it continues in Swedish. What do I want? I try to ask for what I want in Swedish. Pardon? I repeat. "I'm sorry, I can't understand you, please call back." Click.

Fume.

I dig around until I find a service E-Mail. I try and explain my problem and ask them to call me on my Tele2 pre-paid (since the call is only free from Telia pre-paids). I write that I cannot reach their toll-free number.

I get an email saying that they have received my letter. Good. 2 days later I get an automatically generated letter (this takes 2 days??). "Please call our toll-free number for more information!"

So now I have to find a telephone booth in order to clear this up. Normally you spend 20 minutes in the queue, I normally just let it say "Don't hang up" while I do something else. Imagine spending 20 minutes on hold in a telephone booth.

But Telia dismantled the telephone booth in our village. So I shall have to drive 30 kilometers to the next Telia store. Wanna bet they tell me to call the toll-free number?

Pirate Party in Sweden

There is an interesting debate article in the Swedish national newspaper Dagens Nyheter this morning about the Pirate Party written by the party leader, Rick Falkvinge. He explains what the problem with information policy today is and why it is necessary to have a political actor who understands the problems and possibilities in today's information soceity.

I had a discussion with my hosts about that over the breakfast table, they - and many of the discussion articles on the page - think that the Pirate Party is the same as the Pirate Bay, which was a file-sharing site. The party was founded as an answer to the shutting down of the site on the grounds that it was doing illegal stuff like letting people download intellectual property without paying for it.

We have had fights like this every time a new technology starts. Remember Betamax? And the fight with the networks? Sony vs. Universal Studios. Having a video recorder meant that you could tape a TV show and replay it at your leisure without having to pay the TV stations or the movie people again! Universal Studios took Betamax's creator, Sony, to court, and guess what: the Supreme Court found that even if there are illegal things that can be done with the technology, there are also many legal things that can be done with it. It's the people who misuse the technology, not the technology itself. And it is fair use to make copies and watch them some other time.

And gee, remember when old Gutenberg figured out how to make cheap books? That meant that people could learn to read and think for themselves, without having a priest or a politician tell them what to think. Bad news for the ruling class.

We now have the "Information Society" upon us. This is rapidly and radically changing the way that many things work - some for the better, some for the worse. Many companies and very many politicians do not understand how information technology works. They have very vague - and often wrong - notions about the underlying technology and what can happen if certain data is compiled and cross-referenced.

Too many people with knowledge of information technology have little or no interest in politics, and so they have left them to their own devices. Suddenly we discover that there are infringements being imposed on us that violate our basic rights. Sometimes we find information being kept on us that violates our privacy. And many times we discover that we are being asked to pay again and again for things that the taxpayer has already paid for, or we are expected to pay horrendus sums for things just so that the "distributors" (which are no longer needed) can make enough money to keep them in luxury goods.

Just as with Betamax, there are many legal uses for file-sharing and other technologies. For example, we can use them to enable Open Access, Open Source, and Open Content. There wouldn't be a Wikipedia without it!

It is time for people with technological knowledge to go public. To go political. Sure, this tends to be guys. I've been in computing since over 35 years, and I am often the only woman in the room. We have to get more women into technology, so that also more women can work politically with an understanding of how technology affects the world.

The Swedish Pirate Party has grown very fast and has over 50.000 members, making it the third largest party, according to their own web site and the Swedish Wikipedia. They will be standing for seats in the national and local government of Sweden in the elections next year. I hope that by then they manage to make it clear to the citizens of Sweden that they are not just about scoring free films and music, but that they are trying to bring an information technology perspective to politics.

Ladybug invasion

I had heard about some sort of ladybug invasion in Denmark and the south of Sweden, but hadn't seen more than the occasional one. So today, when in Malmö, I first just brushed one out of my hair, and then followed the little guy who landed near me with my camera.

I headed out towards the beach at Västra Hamnen (a very nice looking beach), and wondered what all the flying things were. Then it crunched under my feet and I looked down - ladybugs, everywhere there were ladybugs.

Resolutely I marched on, passing drinks that had been abandoned to the bugs. Thick swarms of bugs. I found a nice place to sit behind two nice-looking young men, and had a seat. And realized that I had bugs crawling all over me.

I swatted them away, but then one bit me. Ouch! I didn't realize they bit. It got worse and worse, it appeared that you had to get into the water to escape them, and there was no wading here, it was jump-off-the-pier-into-deep-cold-water. So after about 5 minutes I got up and left, crunching ladybugs as I went. I briefly considered a drink at the bar, but there were swarms of them there, too. Strange that people were still sitting there, trying to enjoy a drink.

At the bus stop I found this nice piece of dropped red pepper - with ladybugs feasting on it. The bus had quite a few as well, as they came in attached to people's clothes. I wasn't until I got out downtown that the ladybugs were gone. For now.