Hootchy Kootchy and midget burlesque

Our first burlesque show in Stockholm.  Stu and I used to go to burley-q shows fairly often in the US. Like yoga classes, we'd try to go to burlesque shows whenever we were in a new city.  We just hadn't jumped on any of the few opportunities since being in Stockholm until last night, when we went with our Finnish friends.

It wasn't cheap at 180:- a pop ($26) at the Kägelbanen back bar at the beautiful Södra Teatern.   We had missed a show last month with a Vegas theme, but this one was "A Family Affair." I guess they were channeling the Addams Family. The poster was kind of creepy...

The show started about midnight. It ended at 12:45. Seriously, the most expensive and shortest burlesque show I have ever been to.  But not without merit. The MC didn't overstay his welcome, and the acts were pretty tight...we have seen some disasterous burlesque shows, and this was surprisingly well-run!  Its the Swedish way.

There was a pregnant burlesque dancer.  Yes, like in her third trimester, with a very pregnant belly in a sheer pink body suit.  And there was a little person burlesque dancer. I am not kidding. Her second act was to be wheeled out in a baby stroller and then kick her blankets off so she was wearing some red sequined two-piece number.  Very interesting.  I think.  And there was a plus-sized burlesque dancer who probably had the best act of the night, bathing in a giant champagne glass while singing Chicago showtunes.

But better perhaps than the show was the scene at Kägelbanen. We have seen more fun, more interesting burlesque acts, but we have never seen the audience get SO into it (we even went to the New York Burlesque festival and didn't see nearly as many people dressed up.)

There was over-the-top make up, pin curls, and fishnets. There were men in goth, men in tuxedos, men in drag. There were women in goth, women in ballgowns, women in drag.  There were women in their underwear, and women obviously WITHOUT any underwear.  It was insane...I loved it! It was worth going solely to see how Stockholmers pull out all the stops as an audience.  I wish I had brought a camera. I really, really wish I had brought a camera.

Must be December...

 I stole this picture from a random person's Flickr page.

I was in ÖoB  (okay, so 'getting sun' also meant stopping into the Swedish version of Big Lots for wierd things to send back to my family.)  And while I was in line, 3 (THREE) different people popped in to ask the cashier if they had saffron in stock.  Of course they'd go to ÖoB for it...its the world's most expensive spice! Might as well try to find a deal.

Countdown: 10 Days 'til Santa Lucia.  I am not attempting buns. Saffron is too expensive for my baking ineptitude. Besides, you can get them at 7-11.

Hej December!

The month rolled in gorgeous, and thankfully, after a 5-hour exam period of presentations on Tuesday, I have nearly a week off from school & schoolwork  (while Stu has a final exam on statistics on Monday!)  Let's hope it stays this sunny for a long while.

And with the beginning of December, we have enjoyed our last day of cable TV.  Quick recap: when we signed up for broadband back in August, the giant cable/internet company Comhem was offering 3 months of "large" internet + "large" TV for 99:- a month (about $13.)  So that's what we got. Which meant we had to buy a TV.   We thought it good to get one anyway to play our Wii, and so that Stu could watch his NFL sports package games on the big screen.  So I found a supremely cheap used little 20" on Blocket for 100:-. But it wasn't quite right. I know we're poor grad students, but it was fuzzy and small and we were spoiled by our giant flat-screen in the US. So I resold it (for a profit! Some kids working on window displays for the store Cheap Monday bought it for 200:-)  And we purchased a brand new, larger, prettier flat screen to play Wii on, watch football and watch our cheap cable.

But its the end of those 3 months, and this was our last week of cheap cable. We don't need to pay the normal 300:- a month to watch American TV. We haven't actually watched it that much in being here.  Don't get me wrong, its been great to actually *understand* the shows on TV, and we were getting Showtime, so that included some great movies.  But as poor grad students, its tough to rationalize all those sitcoms, especially when we should be reading about macroeconomics or museum audiences.

And for our final evening of television, we topped it off with a doozy. Or rather, a Razzie.  The ONLY thing on of even a teeny tiny bit of interest was an early 1990s Melanie Griffith & Michael Douglas movie, "Shining Through" about WWII spies.  Have any of you seen it?!?  I'm not sure why we stuck through the whole thing.  Melanie is a terrible actress, and that she talks sooooo slowly annoys the crap out of me. She is of Swedish descent, though!  Her mother was a Minnesota Swede who starred in Hitchcock's "The Birds." Oh, and Melanie wore giant shoulder pads this entire movie (even while in her bathrobe.)  Some wardrobe designer was channeling the 80s and didn't do her research on 1930s fashion.  It was really bad.

So no more TV. Or rather, only Swedish public TV. Which may actually cost more than Comhem "Large" TV.  Instead of explaining how we now seem to owe the Swedes 2.000:-  a year for Swedish public TV we don't watch, I'll let these Americans do it: TV Fees in Sweden and TV License.  I'm going to enjoy some sun.

Glad advent!

Can one say 'Happy Advent'?

It may have been all turkeys and football on Thursday, but we also jumped full-force into Christmas this week. We had the first glögg of the season and our first Lussekatter of the year Saturday, and went to umpteen Christmas markets. And this evening, we lit our first candle for advent.

We observed a lot of Swedishy traditions in my house growing up, and we had these pretty candle holders, but lighting the advent candles was never one of our things. Its probably because we weren't a very religious household, come to think of it. But in Sweden, every window has a 4-candle holder, and I had to look it up to find out more why.  While it is definitely a religious tradition, its also a countdown to Christmas, in a way, and on the first Sunday, people light the first candle in the Advent candlestick during the evening meal. Each following Sunday until Christmas, another candle is lit, until all four candles are glowing on the 24th.

Our evening meal was popcorn and leftover pumpkin pie, so it maybe didn't have the magic it was supposed to. But in the dark, it is lovely to see all the other windows on the street with lit candles and glowing stars.

Tacksägelsedagen

aka Thanksgiving!

Because you wanted to see pictures of a turkey (I call him Stu.)

It was our first-ever time being in charge of making a large, gibblety game bird edible. We ordered the thing 2 weeks ago, but it wasn't until Monday that the grocery store told us they *might* not get our bird, so JLP & I spent Monday scouring grocery store freezers and the butcher counters. We got one, conveniently, at the turkey store in Östermalm (who knew they had a store dedicated to turkeys in a country that doesn't seems to eat them!?)  It set us back about $90, but we walked out with a giant frozen 7.3kg (thats over 16 lbs!)

We had 14 in our tiny apartment for dinner.  Someone lent extra chairs and someone brought extra forks. It started an hour and a half late because turkeys take longer to cook than the Butterball website tells you (lesson learned.) Thankfully, it was potluck. But there was all the reminders of home:

turkey, green bean & sweet potato casseroles, stuffing, jelly & fresh cranberry sauces, Coca-cola, rolls & gravy, punkin and apple pies, hooooly, we stuffed ourselves silly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the best on record. We are thankful to have gotten to spend it with some great friends, new & old, in lovely little Stockholm.

Ice, ice, Stockholm

JLP is visiting on the tail end of working the past 6 weeks in Europe, and it coincided perfectly with Thanksgiving (more on that in another post.) And it was the perfect excuse to do some touristy stuff that we hadn't gotten around to in our nearly 4 months here.

Planned are a few museums and Christmas markets, seeing the changing of the guard at the Royal Palace, of course the world's biggest Ikea (though we have done that behemoth many, many times. The store just sucks you in.) And Monday we hit up the Absolut Icebar downtown. All year, the thing is -5 c, and is entirely made of ice, imported from a river in the arctic circle. We even drank out of ice glasses.

Its not cheap, at 170:- per person (roughly $25), but you get a cocktail, which were delicious, and to borrow a funky snow cape with a hood that is stamped with the IceHotel's logo. Yeah, why anyone would want to pay to sleep in a -5c hotel is beyond me, the 30 minutes at the IceBar were enough.

JLP got much better pictures than we did, so maybe we'll have more later to share. And thats what you do in the IceBar. You take pictures. To remember (or to prove?) how much fun you had. And how cold you were. We all lost feeling in our toes. And fingers.

Picture post

Saturday was the best day we've had in weeks and weeks, not a single cloud in the sky, sunny and almost 50 degrees. I took a ton of pictures when we went out to enjoy it. Here are just a few random:

The Centaur on the Observatory hill...just to illustrate exactly how cloudless it was.

Godnatt, a mattress and bed store entrance in Östermalm. I used to pass this guy all the time, and always thought he was weird and beautiful.

The Christmas market in Gamla Stan. Would have bought glögg if I had gone to an ATM.

Yes, rapids. There were also fly fishermen AND kayakers out in that.

Norrbron with a ton of little tiny people, and the remains of an ice sculpture in Kungsträdgården.

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Cutest little kid! I think he was stuck to that trashcan.

A short movie of some musical marching Santas on Västerlänggatan, and the musical santas in color!

Yes, that is Stu's head and my incoherent squeak.