My 22.5-hour "Easter" holiday

As I worked everyday during the four days of the Easter holiday, I think I deserve to do the following in the middle of a week.

Wed 27 April

15:30 Leave office early, heading to Cityterminalen (Stockholm Central Bus Terminal)

16:00 After struggling with the ticket machine that doesn't easily accept my credit card, manage to hop on a coach to Skavsta Airport just in time.

17:30 After more than a hour of sleep, the coach finally arrives at Airport. Queue in front of the Ryanair check-in counter even though I don't have any luggage to check-in. Non-European citizens are required to have the boarding card stamped by the Ryanair staff before going to the security check point.

17:40 Have an early dinner of Ceaser's salad that I took away from Hantverkargatan 14 Specerie. Restaurants at Stockholm airports are unbearable.

18:35 A Ryanair flight to London Gatwick takes off on time. During the two hour journey, read the latest issue of Monocle magazine.

20:00 The flight arrives in Gatwick on time with fanfare (you know what I mean if you've flied with Ryanair).

20:20 After struggling with the ticket machine that doesn't accept my UK bank card, just miss Gatwick Express to London Victoria.

20:30 With a takeaway cup of Caffe Nero's caffe latte, get on board to the next Gatwick Express train.

20:35 The train departs.

21:05 The train arrives at London Victoria station.

21:10 Top-up the Oyster card and head to Oxford Circus by tube.

21:30 Arrive at my friend's 30th birthday party at Aqua Nueva Spanish restaurant. Feel overwhelmed by the atmosphere of the restaurant which my London friend says is nothing special. That is the moment I realize I've become a country-bumpkin by living in Stockholm for more than three years.

22:00 Cannot really keep up with the speed of the conversation by Londoners, realizing that I've been spoiled by Swedish people's reserved way of communication.

23:45 Leave the restaurant and head to London Bridge by tube.

Thu 28 April

00:05 Arrive at Cable nightclub, chosen as the Best Club of 2011 by Time Out magazine. Told that they don't accept a credit card. That is the moment I realize I've been spoiled by Swedish ubiquitous acceptance of credit cards.

00:15 After walking back and forth to the nearest cash point, finally get into the nightclub. The legendary drum & bass producer LTJ Bukem is on the deck at a club night named Swerve, featuring smooth drum & bass aka liquid funk.

01:00 After getting used to a London nightclub atmosphere that I totally forgot about and finishing the purification of my body with the sound of drum & bass, start dancing. Bukem's DJ play is not my kind of taste, but some tunes just make me dance.

01:55 Fabio takes over. This is the moment that I am after by flying all the way to London. And his DJ play never disappoints me. Smooth and sexy with occasional funky or reggae-ish smasher tunes, one of which just makes me dance crazy while other people seem put off by complicated rhythms.

03:15 The Swerve party still goes on after the scheduled end time of 3 am. Don't want to leave, but have to in order to catch a coach to Stansted Airport.

03:20 Get on a night bus that is supposed to go to the coach stop, which actually doesn't.

03:35 Get off the bus and hail a cab and ask if the driver knows where the coach stop is. He says, "Have you never used a cab?" Yes, London cab drivers are the only service that England can be proud of to the whole world. Nowhere in the world can you find such a reliable taxi.

03:45 Just five minutes before the departure time, arrive at the coach stop. Get on the coach. Put ear plugs and eye masks. Immediately fall asleep.

04:40 Arrive at Stansted Airport. Queue in front of the Ryanair check-in counter even though I don't have any luggage to check-in. Non-European citizens are required to have the boarding card stamped by the Ryanair staff before going to the security check point.

05:25 Buy a box of smoked salmon and crayfish salad and a bottle of freshly squeezed orange juice at Pret in the waiting lounge after passing the security check point.

05:35 Arrive at the boarding gate for the Ryanair flight to Stockholm Skavsta. Start eating my breakfast while passengers start boarding (which means the queue just moves from one gate to another gate).

05:40 Finish breakfast. Jump the queue with the Priority Q.

06:05 The flight departs on time. With ear plugs and eye masks, fall asleep immediately.

09:15 The flight arrives at Stockholm Skavsta on time with fanfare.

09:20 Get on the airport coach to central Stockholm. Put ear plugs and eye masks and fall asleep immediately.

11:00 Arrive at central Stockholm.

11:15 On the way home, stop by at Mellqvist Kaffebar to have an early lunch and whole coffee beans. Reconfirm that they serve the best coffee in Stockholm. Toasted sandwiches are also good.

12:00 Arrive at home. Take a shower.

12:30 Check my work email. Reply if necessary.

13:30 Leave home.

14:00 Arrive back in office.

Missing milk tea in breakfast

While I was living in Tokyo and London, I would almost everyday have a cup of milk tea for breakfast. This habit of mine discontinued some time during my first years of life in Stockholm. Instead I have a cup of espresso with a dash of milk (the original macchiato, I suppose) in breakfast.

The reason is that once I leave home, I cannot have a cup of coffee that fits my taste bud in Stockholm, as I ranted some time ago on this blog. By now I know there are a couple of places that do serve my kind of coffee such as Mellqvist at Rörstrandsgatan 4 and Drop Coffee at Wollmar Yxkullsgatan 10. But these places are out of my daily way. And my workplace has an espresso machine by Nespresso, whose coffee just doesn't please my taste bud no matter how many times I try.

You might say I could stop drinking coffee then. However, I will have a withdrawal symptom unless I have at least one cup of coffee per day. To avoid suffering from bad coffee, I decided to brew espresso in the morning (with coffee beans bought at Mellqvist).

If you live in a foreign country, you need to give up several things. A cup of milk tea in breakfast is one of such things.

Flat-hunting in Stockholm ends, but continues...

I found an apartment!

In the morning, I finally managed to receive a reply from one of the landlords whom I sent a message to show my interest. He suggested viewing his flat at 7 pm. I agreed. The ad of his flat was one of those appearing around noon yesterday, and I contacted him by 1pm. It seems checking Bostad Direkt very frequently and contacting immediately after finding an apartment of interest is the key to success in viewing a flat.

But this flat is available from 1 July. I have to find a place to stay in June. What's worse, I'll be away from Stockholm between late June and early July. I may need a storage space for my belongings while I'm being away.

Asking around in my workplace reveals that Shurgard is the storage space provider of the city and that finding a weekly apartment in June may be difficult given that the Royal Wedding over the weekend of 19-20 June attracts lots of Swedes to the capital city.

Most apartments on Bostad Direkt is available from early June to late August. Finding one only for June seems difficult.

Then suddenly my cell phone rang. I thought it was someone whom I contacted. But no, she found my own ad on Bostad Direkt. Her flat was not yet advertised on Bostad Direkt. Some landlords seem to prefer contacting on their own to potential tenants rather than waiting for them to contact.

Her flat is in Södermalm, a relatively more bohemian district of Stockholm, and available from 1 June to 30 September. That's what I was looking for as the second best option. During July and August, Swedes leave Stockholm for their summer house in the country side. Rental apartment markets get even thinner. If I can stay until the end of September, I can search in September.

I decided to view her flat at 5:30 pm by canceling my schedule in the last minute.

The Södermalm apartment is located in a residential area planned rather well with lots of green space and playground for children with architectural design reminiscent of the last days of modernism (lots of geometric motif including circles). There are several supermarkets nearby. The landlady wants to rent this apartment as she stays in a summer house during the summer. She leaves quite a lot of her stuff in the apartment. So storage would be an issue. Of course no washing machine, although she told me many tenants in this apartment building own their own washing machine, making it easy to book your laundry time slot according to your own needs rather than to everybody else's needs. It's got a nice balcony. I thought I wouldn't live in this kind of modernism apartment in the middle of city center in my life if I passed this opportunity. Also the landlady speaks English very well and is a nice person. A metro line from the station 6 minutes walk away directly takes me to the workplace.

Then I went to see the other apartment at 7 pm. It's located in an area called Gullmarsplan. Compared to other suburbs, there are quite a few stores in this area although most of them are of a nondescript kind. A nine minutes walk from the metro station (which will be a bit too long during cold winter) took me to the apartment which is rather contemporary unlike others in the same area.

When I rang the door bell, a young couple came out with one more girl who turned out to be another prospective tenant viewing the flat. This couple invited all the potential tenants around the same time. A few more arrived while I was viewing. They want to lease this apartment because they bought their own and will move in early July. Since renting an apartment directly from the owner (usually the government) is very hard in Stockholm (usually you have to wait at least 2 years), many people are unwilling to give it up even if they don't need it. Thus they come into the subletting market, which is a good thing for foreigners in Stockholm. But this sounds like something really wrong.

Anyway, their idea is that the contact will end at the end of December, but if both parties agree, it will be extended. The apartment is spacious, build only 3 years ago, and very pleasant. No washing machine, of course, but since the apartment is on the ground floor, a few steps take you to the laundry room. But all the evening slots for the next 7 days were booked when I saw it.

If this apartment were available from 1 June, I would probably take it. But given the expected hassle to find a way to survive June (so I cannot focus on my job), a rather long distance to the nearest station (which matters a lot during sub-zero temperature winter), a rather depressing neighborhood, and most importantly no assurance of getting this apartment due to many competitors (whom I actually saw in my eyes), choosing this apartment over the one I saw before today seems to me too risky.

So I decided to take the apartment in Södermalm. And the landlady happily take me as her tenant.

My flat-hunting in Stockholm resumes this September...

Flat-hunting in Stockholm continues... (2)

Before going to work, I checked Bostad Direkt to see if any new apartment is listed.

I found two. Both in the city center. One is small but no specified date for contract termination. The other is slightly larger and quite expensive with 1 August as the termination date. I called both of them. No answer.

Around 5:30 pm, I checked Bostad Direkt again. A few more new apartments of my interest in suburbs. I called one which will be available from 1 July until 31 December. (So I would need to find a place to live in June as I have to leave my current apartment by the end of this month...) I was told there were already a few people coming to view the apartment. So I was waitlisted. Unbelievable. The ad was uploaded sometime during the day today. So I have to keep watching on Bostad Direkt even during my working hours?

I called another one which is available from 1 June to 31 August. I managed to get an appointment to view the flat on Wednesday morning. The idea is just to secure where to live during the summer and to continue searching for another apartment from Sepember or even from August, as the rent of this apartment is not very expensive.

Coming home and eating dinner, I checked Bostad Direkt again. One more apartment of my interest in a suburb available from 1 June to 31 June next year (but without washing machines, of course). No telephone number is uploaded as a contact. So I sent email.

I will keep you updated about my flat-hunting in Stockholm, to show you how difficult it is. Watch this space.

Flat-hunting in Stockholm continues...

I haven't found any apartment of my interest on Bostad Direkt since the last post. I guess it's about time to compromise.

Forget about using my own washing machine.

Forget about living in my favorite area of Stockholm.

Forget about staying in the same apartment for next 12 months.

As long as I can stay at least for next 4 months and I can go to work with just one change of trains, I should be happy.

This yields two apartments of my interest.

I called one place. It's already taken. The other one didn't pick up the phone.

Flat-hunting in Stockholm

The worst thing about living in Stockholm is to rent an apartment. I'm currently renting an apartment from a Swede who was abroad for a year. He's back in the city now, and about two months ago, he asked me to leave by the end of this month.

I really don't want to move out from my current neighborhood called Hammarby sjöstad. Apartments in the city center are expensive and small. Other Stockholm suburbs are unpleasantly purely residential (no street life at all). But the only apartment listing website for non-Swedish speakers, Bostad Direkt, shows only a couple of apartments in this area during the last 1 month and a half. When I called them up, they were already taken.

Accepting the reality that I have to leave this neighborhood, I started searching for apartments in other areas by struggling with a poorly-designed search function of Bostad Direkt (it's de facto a monopoly, no incentive to improve their website). I want to stay at a new apartment at least for a year. But most apartments are only available during the summer time when apparently Swedish owners go abroad for summer vacations. Even if it's available for 12 months or longer, they usually come without washing machines due to the stupid norm of using the laundry room collectively in an apartment building, which is really unacceptable to me (and no Swede sympathizes with me on this). 

I found a couple of places. One is actually a house in Nacka, an eastern suburb. I called the owner up and he told me the address of the place. I searched it on the online map. It was in the middle of a forest. I also searched it on the public transport journey planner. The nearest bus stop is 1km away. No way.

Another place is in Älvsjö (pronounced "elf-ho"). I went to see it yesterday. Älvsjö is located 10 minutes away from Stockholm Central station by the commuter train. Once I got off the train, I realized this area is a countryside. A small supermarket, a couple of depressing newsstands, a couple of depressing pizzeria, a Chinese restaurant serving sushi (which very often happens in Stockholm), and a barber. (This set of urban amenity is actually better than other suburbs.) Otherwise, they are houses with lots of green. No apartment building here. If you love nature, maybe this is an ideal place to live given the proximity to the city center. But I don't really appreciate nature.

The apartment was actually a set of rooms in one of these rural houses. The owner of the house seems to mis-classify it on Bostad Direkt. It's the basement with small windows and with worn-out furniture. I have to pass this opportunity. Otherwise I will kill myself.

Another place is in Bromma, a western suburb of Stockholm. This place is available only until the end of October. But I have to compromise. I can search again in autumn. I called the owner, and she asked me to call her back in the morning today. I did. She told me she would call me back in 10 minutes. one hour has passed by now. She didn't call me back. I checked Bostad Direct again. Her advertisement disappeared. Why doesn't she just tell me it's already taken?

Another place is in Vällingby (pronounced ve-ling-bu), another western suburb which is actually rather attractive the last time I visited there for the Massagotti cafe. I called the owner up. She didn't speak English at all.

Now I exhausted the list of apartments of my interest. I'm not sure if I find one until the end of this month.

My typical Saturday morning issue in Stockholm

Japanese rice runs out. I won't be able to have dinner at home tonight. (I usually eat steamed Japanese rice for dinner at home). But I have to work today. What time does the Japanese food store close on Saturday? (Check its website.) Oh, 3 pm. But I don't think I'll be done with my work well before 3 pm today. What time does the store open today? Nine. Okay, but carrying a 5 kg bag of Japanese rice from the store to the workplace is not very pleasant. Oh, I also need to buy Japanese sake (which I use for cooking, not for drinking). What time does Systembolaget close? (Since alcohol sale in the private sector is prohibited, the Japanese food store does not sell Japanese sake. In case you haven't learned this yet, Systembolaget is the state alcohol sale monopoly in Sweden.) Damn, 3 pm. What time does it open? Ten. If I visit the Japanese food store first before 10 pm, then I have to carry the 5 kg bag of rice from there to Systembolaget... Then, carrying a 1.5 litter glass bottle of Japanese sake in addition to the 5 kg bag of rice from the store to the workplace is really unpleasant. Plus I will arrive at the workplace well after 10 am, which is not what I really want to do. I cannot do all these tomorrow, because both stores close all day on Sunday. By the way, I also have to think about where to have lunch today, because there is no place to eat over the weekend in the area where my workplace is located. And I still need to wear a coat for going out even in late April.

What should I do? Buying a car is an option, but I'd rather spend such an amount of money on the weekend breaks from Stockholm to visit London, Paris, Berlin, etc.


I didn't have this issue when I was studying for PhD in London, if I look back, because
(1) the Japanese food store was open until 8 pm, even on Saturday (and on Sunday),
(2) this Japanese food store also sells Japanese sake, and
(3) I can buy a rather tasty Indian curry ready meal at a supermarket near my school.

Restaurant J

To be fair to the Stockholm dining scene, I should write something here on this blog when I do encounter good foods.

With my colleagues, I have an Easter dinner at Restaurant J tonight. Although the Easter menu itself doesn't sound very tantalizing (some of us indeed went for the usual menu instead), the actual dishes are very good.

According to the English menu, the starter is "smoked salmon served with spring salad and egg". This doesn't sound very tempting. But the Swedish menu says a bit more: varmrökt lax på vårsallad med kokt ägg, which means hot-smoked (not cold-smoked) salmon on spring salad with boiled egg (not just egg). The actual dish is even more. The hot-smoked salmon is actually a chunk (rather than slices) of smoked salmon fillet with a pleasant smell of smoke. Some of the leaves in spring salad taste earthy in a good way, making me feel spring (which hasn't come yet in Stockholm). And the creamy greenish dressing sauce (which is not mentioned in the menu at all) is properly done. I'm pleasantly surprised.

Then the main dish is "herb and lemon filled roast lamb served with garlic sauce, vegetables ragout and new potatoes" in the English menu. The Swedish menu says the garlic sauce is actually roasted garlic sauce. This sounds better, because when roasted, garlic tastes different, and raw garlic sauce reminds me of the one on kebab meal at one of the lunch places at my workplace (which is of course pretty bad). And the lamb and vegetables ragout that is actually served is more sophisticated than I expected. In other words, it tastes very good. The lamb is served in a French style rather than in an English style, and the vegetable ragout is not a collection of dices of vegetables (which I don't really like because of the rough texture) but white asparaguses or something (I'm not really sure what it is, but if it tastes fine, it's fine). And new potatoes. Even though I'm fed up with potatoes that always come with the main dish in Sweden, eating new potatoes is a very refreshing experience. I love them.

The dessert is citronfromage in Swedish. Lemon cheese? No, in Swedish, citronfromage means lemon mousse for whatever reason. And, very unusually for even good restaurants in Stockholm, this dessert is great, if not superb. The texture is right. The degree of sourness is right. Not too sweet and the right amount.

I learn one thing. It is essential to learn Swedish words for restaurant menus, because the English version (if available) doesn't precisely translate the original menu, which may make your choice wrong. If I didn't know that the smoked salmon was not the usual smoked salmon or that garlic sauce is actually roasted garlic sauce, I would have gone for other dishes. (Even the Swedish version of the menu of Restaurant J says too little about the dish, though.)

And that's what I have been doing: learning Swedish words often used in the menu. I browse the menu of a good restaurant in Stockholm online and translate each term by using not only tyda.se (the online Swedish-English dictionary) but also the Swedish wikipedia (and then clicking the link to the English version for the same item) and Google. Google helps me to find out a recipe for a particular dish in Swedish, and then I can translate it with Google Translate to see what kind of dish a particular Swedish term refers to.

The result is this. I'm still learning, but it seems to start paying off.

Oh, the price of the Easter 3 course meal is 360 krona (about 36 euro). It's not cheap, but this is the price to motivate Swedish chefs to cook properly.

Sweden's Easter

The traditional Easter week in Sweden lasts from Thursday to Monday, and kicks off with a trick or treat-like candy hunt. Children dress up as påskkärringar (Easter witches) with long skirts, headscarves, painted red cheeks and freckles and go from house to house wishing people happy Easter. They get sweets in return for a drawing or song. Legend has it that the witches fly to Blåkulla (Blue mountain) the same night to meet the devil. (From SWEDEN.SE, the official gateway to Sweden)

I didn't know this even though this is the third Easter in Sweden. For the past two years, I lived in a foreign student colony hard to be accessed from anywhere in Stockholm (so there's no Swedish child around at all).

Children just showed up at my apartment today. As I hate candies, I don't have any. When I tried to give them some cookies (from Japan) as a compromise, they didn't accept them and went away.

Swedish children are very strict to the rule.

And perhaps the best example of the fact that I'm not part of the Swedish society at all (sigh).

Götgatan Stories

Yet another uninspiring cafe in Stockholm.

As always, the decor is great. Located on the ground floor of the Skrapan shopping center, Götgatan Stories has got a high-ceiling with ceiling to floor glass windows facing the busy Götgatan street. Coffee cups are colored either with chocolate brown or with maya blue.

And as always, coffee and food is disappointing. Machiato tastes okay but with that weird sourness that always comes with coffee in Sweden. The food that I order is toast with chili prawns and saffron aioli (about 7.8 euro). The term chili in the menu in Stockholm usually suggests something wrong. But I feel a bit adventurous today. And I get disappointed. First few bites are all right. It's interesting. But it's quite large a portion, served with, for some reason, balsamic vinegar that doesn't really match the whole concept of this toast, which is not really crispy. Accompanying salad includes the disgustingly-colored red beets (a very typical salad ingredient in Sweden) and, for some reason, pickled Chinese cabbage which is so out of place. As is often the case in "creative" dishes in Stockholm, it's colourful (red beets, saffron yellow, and balsamic brown) without thinking much about the right combination of tastes.

As I start feeling ill (it's oily in addition to strange tastes), I decide not to finish eating the dish even though I rarely do so.

Souperb

Souperb is a ready-meal provider in Sweden. As its name suggests, it tries to offer superb soup. But they also produce some non-soup ready meals.

Last Saturday, I had to go to office to get some work done. On Saturdays, there are no restaurants open around my workplace. I had to buy some ready meal at a kiosk next to the nearest station, even though I know ready meals in Sweden taste pretty bad.

I happened to find Souperb's Wallenbergare med Potatismos, which looked rather nice. And it tasted better than I expected, even though green peas got some wrong taste for some reason.

Slightly encouraged by this experience, today I finally tried one of Souperb's offers that I've always avoided ever since I moved to Sweden: Sweet Beef Tokyo. (Remember I am from Tokyo.) I looked at it, and I had to leave the kiosk once, because it didn't look really right. But I didn't want to end up with meatballs again, which is the only decent lunch dish around my workplace. I took courage to buy one and had it for lunch today.

It's worse than I expected. Remember my expectation wasn't that high. I've never had something like this in Tokyo. One thing that's completely wrong is red chili. We Japanese never ever put chili into what Souperb calls sweet beef. Plus, umami is completely absent. (If you don't know what umami is, look it up on Wikipedia.)

Here's the real recipe for what Souperb calls sweet beef. It seems the sources of the trouble are finely chopped onions and leeks (so they lose the texture; in Japan, onions and leeks are only sliced for this dish so you can enjoy the soft but still crunchy texture) and, most importantly, the failure to simmer beef in Japanese sake or white wine and to add mirin to the sweet soy sauce. Japanese sake or mirin is hard to obtain in Sweden. But why don't they even use white wine? Perhaps they prefer drinking it.

Using the name of Tokyo for this ready meal is derogatory to the superb dining culture of Japan's capital. (I'm serious.)

Souperb also offers Hot Chicken Bangkok, but I wouldn't try, especially because Thai foods in Stockholm, which is quite popular, almost always get something wrong.

mjölkchoklad-pannacotta med blodapelsin

Do you think it's a good idea to mix the tastes of milk chocolate and bloody orange? I don't think so, but a pâtissier at my neighborhood organic supermarket does when he or she makes panna cotta. I'm not very impressed. Each portion (milk chocolate panna cotta and bloody orange jelly, respectively) tastes good. But when they both are put into my mouth, it tastes awkward. Bloody orange may work well with the bitterness of dark chocolate, but not with the sweetness of milk chocolate.

The Wikipedia entry on Swedish cuisine characterizes it as "contrasting flavours; such as the traditional dish of meatballs and gravy with tart, pungent lingonberry jam (slightly similar in taste to cranberry sauce)." It's nothing wrong with contrasting flavours. It could work like magic. But not always, of course. And, for some reason, Swedish choices of contrasting flavours rarely result in magic to my taste...

Cafes in Stockholm

I planned to write something good about Stockholm today. Unfortunately, the Swedish capital made me unhappy again today. So I have to write something negative about Stockholm (again).

After two years and a half have passed since I moved here, I still haven't found my favorite cafe in this city. There are several that came close to the throne, but there's always something wrong with them.

Mocco in Östermalm, the poshest area of Stockholm, serves decent, if not excellent, toast called Barcelona and offers high-ceiling, minimalistic and stylish decor to a good mixture of trend-conscious people. But their coffee is absolutely disgusting, and it sometimes gets very crowded and noisy.

Caffe Nero in Vasastan serves coffee that's okay, if not excellent, and delicious panini, if a bit too oily. Tatao Ando-ish concrete-surfaced counters and relaxing black-leather chairs at the back of the cafe are nice. Their pasta is not impressive, though. And it gets packed during lunchtime.

Cafe Spoon in Hammerby sjöstad, my neighborhood, offers wooden, minimalist interior with the view of waterway from its patio. It serves okay foods with Caffe Monteriva (Swedish espresso brand)'s coffee which is too sour to me.

Kaffebar in Södermalm serves an excellent toast topped with Västerbotten cheese (a Swedish specialty). But, with only a few seats in a large space, they are aiming to be an Italian coffee bar (meaning you are supposed to gulp a shot of espresso quick while you are standing) and they also serve Caffe Monteriva (Swedish espresso brand)'s coffee which is too sour to me.

Sosta Espresso Bar, supposedly serving the best espresso in the city, does serve good coffee, but they don't have any seats. Their focaccia is not particularly fantastic.

Blå Lotus, which I visited last Saturday, is very nicely presented with three rooms in different themes: the largest green room at the entrance, the blue room with gold-rimmed mirrors on the wall, and the red room with Chinese lamps and decoration. Their signature(?) sandwich cake Shiva looks perfect with melting cheese, roasted tomatoes, garlic puree... But something is missing in its taste. (Perhaps butter?) As I sensed an inspiration from India in this place, I ordered chai rather than coffee. It was great that they didn't serve a cup of warm water with a chai teabag. But they pour foamed milk onto spice-infused black tea that's kept on a hot plate. Chai should be made by boiling milk, not water, with tea leaves and spice, shouldn't it? The mixture of spice is good, though. However, the place is very busy in the Saturday afternoon. I waited 15 minutes to place an order at the counter, and then sat on a small table for one person at the narrow corner of the blue room.

So the quest for my favorite cafe in Stockholm still continues. And today I went to Gildas rum, the best cafe in Stockholm according to Spotted by Locals. It was half past three in the Saturday afternoon. So I imagined the place wouldn't be too crowded. I was wrong. I couldn't find any chairs to sit down.

I also visited other cafes in the same area known as Sofo, the supposedly hippest area of Stockholm: Svart Kaffe, which plays dubstep (for the first time I hear that in Stockholm), and Cafe Oye, the Chilean cafe. Both places are packed with no seat left. Both of them are also tiny places. Even if I get seated, I wouldn't feel very comfortable.

The problem is not the absence of good cafes in this city, it seems. There appear to be good ones. But those good places are easily packed either because everyone follows the suit once they hear a good reputation or because there are very few good cafes in the first place. In other words, there is no hidden-gem kind of cafe in this city. Good places are known to everybody. Spacious cafes tend to serve bad foods and bad coffee for some reason. Many cafes are stylishly decorated, but the appearance does not reflect the quality of food and coffee at all in this city.

The only way to enjoy those small, (hopefully) decent cafes is to wake up early over the weekend, which I hate to do, especially during the winter when going out is such a hassle: making sure I wear clothes warm enough and struggling to walk either on the uneven surface of snow or on the slippery ice. My legs hurt after 30 minutes of walking on the snow as I'm not grown up in snowy winter. (Not many people in Europe know it rarely snows in Tokyo, my hometown, by the way. If you look at the globe, it's obvious, however. Tokyo is about as north as Athens.)

And my final complaint is there is no proper tea salon as I prefer black tea to coffee. No one in Stockholm seems to know you need absolutely boiling water to infuse black tea properly. And black tea per se is not very popular here; people drink Earl Grey or other flavored tea. Flavored tea usually uses the low quality tea leaves, and I hate it.

Thai royal family

According to Fabio on his BBC Radio 1 show broadcast last night, the princess of Thailand loves drum & bass, my favorite music genre.

The prince of Thailand is known to be a big fan of X Japan, my favorite rock group from Japan.

If I were invited to a Thai royal family banquet, I would have a great time, it seems.

One thing that I don't like about Stockholm

Today I'm reminded of one reason for why Stockholm has made my life difficult.

When I work hard, I don't feel like cooking on my own. However, there is essentially no decent, budget quick eatery in Stockholm. All those sushi places are no-nos to me because they are not Japanese sushi but Swedish sushi. (In case you don't know, Stockholm has a sushi restaurant literally at every street corner; and they tend to fall in the budget category for some reason.) Good restaurants are all pricey and not the kind of place to visit alone. Supermarkets do not help because they sell mediocre ready meals. The ICA supermarket's "Bombay curry" ready meal is pretty bad, for example. Swedes do not really understand the concept of curry. It's not just the mixture of colorful spice and creamy sauce.

Eating mediocre foods depresses me, especially when I am tired. As a result, I've started to avoid working hard and to hate Stockholm.

In London, I didn't face this problem because there were some (if not many) decent, budget eateries. I frequented the Brazilian delicatessen next to Tottenham Court Road station (which, sadly, no longer exists due to the expansion of the station) in the evening when I was very busy writing up my job market paper. Supermarkets sold rather delicious Indian curry ready meals. I would buy at least two packs of Indian curry a week and eat them when I had to work till late.

A partial solution to this is to ask my parents and friends in Tokyo to send me packets of Japanese curry ready meal. They are vacuum-packed. But sending a packet from Japan to Sweden is quite expensive. I cannot resort to this option very often.

What should I do? After more than 2 years have passed since I moved here, I still don't know the solution.

Someone who's not really a considerate person would say, "Have a girlfriend who is a good cook or a good companion to fancy restaurants." If things were that easy, I wouldn't complain here.

Moving within Stockholm

There are three ways of finding a place to live in Stockholm (and other cities in Sweden): buy a place to live, make a queue for renting an apartment directly from the owner, and find someone who wants to sublet his or her apartment.

From what I hear from Swedes, the government encourages people to follow the first option. The supply of apartments for rent is severely discouraged due to the rent regulation. Rent is set according to the average cost of building an apartment in the area, nothing to do with demand for apartments.

The second option, making a queue, is infeasible for foreigners like myself. Those with their Swedish social security number or personnummer (everyone living in Sweden, Swedish nationals or not, must have one) can put themselves in a queue by paying 275 Swedish krona per year (about 26 euro), which by the way includes 25 percent VAT tax. Among those who are interested in a particular apartment for rent, the first 30 in the queue are allowed to have a look, and among those who do want to rent this apartment, the first in the queue is chosen as the tenant. On average, it takes five years to rent an apartment this way. Unless your Swedish parents put you in the queue long before you actually need to rent an apartment, it is impossible to find a place to live this way.

The last option, and effectively the only one for foreigners, is usually offered by Swedish tenants who need to go abroad for a certain period of time. It's unusual that such Swedes will stay abroad for more than a year. Therefore, the subletting contract usually lasts at most one year. So you need to move around Stockholm once in every year.

It seems like there is a political philosophy in Sweden which says that renting an apartment creates income inequality, which is nothing but evil. It is so anachronistic in the age of people moving around globally.

Anyway, the last option is what I took last weekend. There is an online real estate agency specializing in subletting, Bostad Direkt. (There appear to be many others of this kind, but only this one, it seems, has an English version of the list). The list of apartments for sublet can be viewed for free. But to find out the contact detail, you need to pay nearly 700 krona (67 euro) for the subscription lasting 45 days. I wanted to move in to an area called Hammarby Sjöstad. I've been browsing the list of apartments for sublet in this area since January, and couldn't find any with a reasonable amount of rent and a reasonable amount of contract duration (ie. at least 1 year) until early April. The first apartment that I saw was an excellent one. But the tenant, a Peruvian who broke up with his Swedish girlfriend a year ago and that is why he is subletting this spacious apartment, suddenly became out of reach on the day we would sign the contract. The second apartment that I saw is perfect but the fact that it lacks a bathtub. During the long, cold winter in Stockholm, taking a bath makes a lot of difference to someone from a country of bath culture. But there's no other option. I need to leave from my current apartment this August (because it's also a sublet), and there is absolutely no guarantee that I will find another apartment in this area by August. I may end up in a suburb of Stockholm where there is only one supermarket and nothing else (which is more or less true for all the suburbs in Stockholm). So I took this apartment in which I can stay until July 1st next year.

Since the contract with my previous apartment requires a 60-day advance notice of termination, I end up paying 2 months of rent for the apartment which I do not live in. And moving my stuff by truck costs about 2400 krona. Packing (and unpacking) all of my belongings and cleaning the apartment to leave costs two weeks. And all this will be repeated every year.

That's life in Stockholm.

Day of an Assistant Professor (33)

After doing laundry, buying an iPod Classic and foods in the city center, and cleaning the bathroom, I go to my office, working on the climate change project for three hours in the evening.

Two things about myself

I discovered two things about myself.

Number one. I like reading a text that describes what's going on in very detail. I realized this when I was reading "Collectors" by Raymond Carver. I rarely read a novel in English because I need to look up words in dictionary several times per page (expressions like "lift up" when you are laying on the sofa and "put out his hand" when someone meets up someone else are the kind of English phrases I don't perfectly understand). But this short novel came with a Japanese book on translation from English to Japanese written by Haruki Murakami, who did a lot of translation of English novels for Japanese readers. So I had an opportunity to read it (along with Haruki Murakami's translation into Japanese). And I found myself enjoying reading it when a sentence describes people's movement or landscape in a bit too much detail. I did know this when I read Haruki Murakami's novels in Japanese whose sentences are also too much in detail with tons of adjectives (and most of them are dropped when his novels are translated into English). But I didn't know this would work for English novels until today.

Number two. I like watching a video with good sound that is rather difficult to understand. Today I went out to the area around Industricentralen, a former residential building for factory workers located in north-western Stockholm (off the beaten track for tourists), which now houses a cluster of contemporary art galleries. I needed to refresh myself by facing hard-to-understand pieces of contemporary art. More than 90 percent of contemporary art works are rubbish (and they often use rubbish as ingredients, by the way). It's important to visit a cluster of galleries. Then you will encounter at least one not-too-bad piece of art. This time, Galleri Flach+Thulin did a job to me with Twan Janssen's 20-minute video installation entitled "The Stockholm Syndrom". While all the other visitors left within five minutes, I sat down on a chair (provided by the gallery) to watch the film all the way. It's an abstract one created by computer graphics. It just keeps on showing white stuff whose shapes and movements are inspired from clouds, water waves, smokes, and the like. This continues for 20 minutes with abstract music of repetitive kind composed by Jasper TX. It's not too bad at all. Much more enjoyable than normal movies, television programs, or music videos from uninspiring rock and hip hop musicians. I do not watch films or TV, but this is not because I don't like videos as a means of expression. I do like videos that are not easy to understand (like this one that I wrote about before or the one that I saw at the List Visual Arts Center at MIT).

The End

A great nightclub in London was closed for good today. The End nightclub, located in a few minute walk to the south of the British Museum, has been praised by many DJs and clubbers as one of the best nightclubs in London. Indeed, the quality of its sound system and the acoustic is one of the best among many clubs that I've been to in my life. During my five-year life in London, I've been there many times, especially for its Wednesday night party called Swerve, hosted by my favorite drum & bass DJ Fabio. That was the party I always went to when I was exhausted from my life as a PhD student. That was the place where I was always sure that I would feel happy and healed by great sound, especially deep and loud bass.

I wanted to fly to London for the final Swerve party last Wednesday, where Fabio would be on the deck for more than four hours, but my job obligations as an assistant professor forced me to give it up. After coming home last night from a drum & bass party held in a club in Stockholm which didn't have good acoustic or the sound system capable of pumping out proper bass sound, the most crucial element for drum & bass music, I terribly miss The End.

Another place in which I can feel happy for sure, which is an absolute rarity for me, is gone.

Ill Flava

For the first time since I moved to Stockholm, I go to a nightclub featuring drum & bass. Since last September, Bysis (Hornsgatan 82, 5 min walk from Mariatorget tube station) has been hosting the drum & bass party Ill Flava every Saturday. I finally manage to have an opportunity to check it out.

Arriving at the venue shortly after 11 pm, there are only 3 English-looking guys sitting at a table at the back. The music is not drum & bass but lounge-ish breakbeat. A couple arrive just before 11:30 after which the entrance fee of 60 krona is imposed. The 3 guys leave the venue. The DJ starts spinning drum & bass beats. Several more punters (half male half female) come to the venue, sit at the table, and leave without dancing ever by midnight. The couple starts dancing. By the time I leave the venue around 1 am, no one else comes to the venue.

Horrible. Is it because tonight is too cold (below zero degree)? Is it because everyone is tired of celebrating Halloween last night? (Young Swedes do celebrate Halloween, perhaps as a pretext for drinking.)

Compared to London nightclubs, the quality of sound systems is not excellent, probably not ideal for bass-intensive drum & bass music. But it's reasonably decent for this size of a nightclub. The illumination system is quite good. The DJ is actually good at mixing different tunes in a smooth way. The venue interior is cozy.

I guess what's lacking in this party is advertisement. The venue is not located in a happening area during the night. Unless you aim for this particular party, people won't show up. Perhaps it needs an additional attraction. Fabric, London's nightclub that has been supporting drum & bass after its demise in the late 1990s, attracts punters by its maze-like structure and an incredibly good sound system. It certainly contributes to the survival of drum & bass by exposing to drum & bass those people who otherwise would not even know what it is.

Anyway, during the past one year or so, I have been appallingly demotivated about work and life. A nightclub atmosphere with my favorite drum & bass music playing makes me feel down to earth, probably for the first time ever since I came to Stockholm, and allows me to think hard about what motivated me in the past and what makes my life happy.

And I find it tonight.