Cribs: Stockholm

After two long months, we finally got an apartment! We are located on an island called Lidingö immediately east of Stockholm. The landlord actually said we could have the apartment a month ago, but it took another month for the rental association to approve us. We are living in what is called a "bostadsrätt", which is a building where people buy membership in the building association to give them the right to live there. Because you are buying a portion of the building, and not a particular apartment, you do not technically own the apartment you live in, which means the building association actually retains the rights to determine who can and can't live there.

To get to work from our new apartment, Kevin takes a small local train that goes around the south side of Lidingö to Stockholm, then takes the subway from there to where he works. There are a few restaurants and a hardware store within walking distance, and we can take the train or a bus to the next little village to go grocery shopping. It seems to be a great apartment in a good area, so it all turned out well in the end.

The Melody Festival

A perennial Swedish television event is the Melody Festival (Melodifestivalen). It is a six part live television event where a wide range of individual singers and bands compete to win the title of best song. The contestants play their songs live on the air and are voted on over the phone by the viewers at home, similar to how people vote for American Idol in the US.

The quality of the contestants range from un-listenable to sad to great, and the types of music is on a spectrum from dance pop to singer-songwriter to rock power ballads. The lyrics are mostly in English (because they want to eventually compete on a world stage) but about a quarter of the songs are in Swedish.

The absolute worst song was "Give Me a Spaniard" ("Ge mig en spanjor"):

Since the beginning of the event five weeks ago, we have watched most of the shows at our friends' houses, which makes the bad singers bearable and even funny. At first, we watched it purely as a way to observe a Swedish cultural event, but I have to admit that now I actually am looking forward to the finale next weekend.

Who's going to win? I am rooting for The Moniker, who is completely weird and silly, which is why I like it:

But probably the most typical type of song is this by Danny: