My new home

I have a new home! \o/ I have unpacked all my stuff and found two flatmates, both of whom are a bit younger than me (I'm 36; they're 21 and 22) but I have good feelings about them so far. (My mom said "so, you've decided to have kids after all?" Ha ha, Mom. They are adults, thank you very much.)

Here is the view from my window: ( Read more... )

Isn't it lovely? We're high up on a hill and you can mostly only see trees--it's like we're not in the city at all. Well, we're in the suburbs, so I guess it's not the city center anyway. (If you're an American, "suburb" does not have the same connotations in Sweden as in the US--it's not a sprawl of one-family houses, but mostly multi-story apartment buildings. People with money live in the city center, poorer people in the suburbs. Except for the rich suburbs with villas, which also exist.) I am actually relieved to be living in a rental apartment again instead of an old quirky worn-down house. These are houses from 60's and 70's, from Sweden's so-called "million program" which was a social democratic project of building a million new homes in ten years. Which succeeded, and they're all very rationally planned, and down in the communal yard there are things like a bar to hang your rug over while you beat the dust out of it. Which I used today! \o/ People like my mom kind of wrinkle their nose at these apartment houses, though, because she thinks they are ugly and also poorer people live in them.

Also today I went to swim in a local lake with an acquaintance who lives in one of the houses you can see out the window. It's good to have a neighbor whom I know already! And I tried the local pizzeria and found it good.

Recent reading

Trollvinter by Tove Jansson [Moominland Midwinter]
I can't remember if I actually read the Moomin books as a kid. Possibly not, or at least not all of them? In any case, I loved this one! The writing, the characters and their interactions, the setting, it's pretty great. Recommended.

Stop, thief! The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance by Peter Linebaugh
I felt like reading some non-fiction, and went to the university library to find some of the non-fiction on my books-to-check-out list. I'm interested in the themes in this one, but it's a bit uneven, in the way of a collection of essays which were not originally intended to be published together. I skipped some essays, and others repeated themselves a bit. Still, there was lots of interesting historical stuff here.

Incidentally, Sweden has a commons left which is gone (I think?) in many other countries: the "allemansrätt" (=all-man's-right) which says that anyone has the right to walk, pick berries and mushrooms, and camp for a night (though not hunt) on anyone's land, as long as you don't litter or trample down crops or whatever, and as long as you're not in someone's actual backyard.

Sveriges historia by Annika Elmqvist and Pål Rydberg [History of Sweden]
Inspired by the book above, I wanted to freshen up on Swedish history. This is a history of Sweden in comic book form, which I've had in my bookcase forever, and I've probably read it at some point years ago. It has a "people's history" perspective and a lot of it is about the power balance between the ruling classes and the people, going back and forth.