My new addiction here is definitely the mustard. I don’t know what exactly makes it so incredible and
so addictive, but I can’t resist it. And its strange, because I never liked mustard before 
It is called Senap here, and is sold even in the Farmacies Swedes put it in any kind of product - mayonese, salads, on bread with cheese. Feels a bit like the usage of the Bulgarian cheese - it goes on everything. And it really makes the food irresistible.
I start wondering about combining Bulgarian cheese with Swedish mustard Must be nice
One of the things to which I can’t really get used here are the doors. You would ask maybe what is so weird about them? At first place, they weight a lot. They weight so much, that if you are not prepared to push with all your force and strenght, you have no chances to get in or out of the place. And it does not depend on whether you are at home or outside - everywhere they weight the same.
However, it becomes more interesting if you are in the University or other public building. In order to get yourself out, you would first you need to find a switch with the picture of a key, located nearby the door and press it. Next you need to either push heavily the door, which usually won’t help you because it will be even heavier than usually, or you need to find a second button - a big gray switch which should be located also somewhere around the door, but not near the one with the key. After pressing it too, the door will magically open. And to be more fun, every time the switches will be placed in different positions and locations around the door.
I don’t really get it
A few days ago I was introduced to the very traditional Swedish christmasy sweets -
the Saffron buns. To me they feel quite weird - tending to be sweet, but not exactly, and tasting very strongly like saffron (what a surprise :-)). I am still wondering if the taste of Saffron buns is an acquired taste or not, and trying every day to see if I will finally aqcuire it. For now, after about 5 days of eating them, I still can’t really determine whether I like them or not, so I guess I need to keep trying more
I was somewhat surprised to discover that Swedes have a special day to decorate their homes, offices and all sorts of buildings around - the fourth Sunday before Christmas, a.k.a. Advent which happened to be yesterday.
Until now, the city was slowly entering into Christmas mood - with growing number of lights, decorations and Christmas trees placed here and there. But suddenly, in just two days, every window got its own set of seven candles, every balcony got covered with lighting-blinking-shining things, and crowds of people attacked the stores in search for more decorations, traditional flowers, cookies, etc.
To me, the concept of having a scheduled day to put the decorations on is rather weird since we don’t have any similar collective acting in Bulgaria. In Sofia, the decorations will start appearing around the beginning of December, but you would never see this total and absolute appearance of candles, lights and so on on every window in the city. We would keep wondering about where the Christmas spirit is, and realise the approach of the 25th mainly by the rush on the streets, and the enormous amounts of people shopping.
I was also a bit amazed by the secondary effects of this decoration rush in Sweden - the suddenly appeared competion among the neighbours to see whose balcony will be nicest and whose window will be best. People will be walking around commenting on types of combinations, designs and appearance, and keeping spending all their weekends in IKEA to shop for more and more stuff to decorate their homes.
Well, we also fell victims of this rush, so yesterday we got our Christmas tree I hope it will survive for a few weeks, thanks to the (weird to me) conveniently practical base for the tree, costing 30 euros (!) and allowing you to water the pine and extend its life with some more days.
On Thursday evening I spotted a short announcement about the “Noises Off” theatre play performed in English in a small theater in the outskirts of Gothenburg. Without thinking much, we booked 2 tickets for yesterday’s show, which was also the last one. After the initial enthusiasm about doing the booking and going to an English-speaking show (I am still quite bad in Swedish), I was invaded by doubts and concerns if it would be worth going actually - because it appeared to be an amateur theathre, located in the industrial area of Mölndal (at the end of Gothenburg) and having only 5-6 performances in total… Jonas firmly believed that the performance will be great, but I was getting more and more concerned, and by the time we arrived I was convinced that we will be probably the only ones, together with the relatives of the actors. However, it ended up being a *really* great performance, in an incredibly warm and nice atmosphere, completely professional and very very funny. In the intermission there were served free coffee and tea, and all the atmosphere was very informal. I have to admit, that I haven’t been laughing so much during a theatre play for quite a long time! We liked it so much, that in the end we subscribed to join the Gothenburg Drama Group and participate in their theater activities
Since quite a long time I was considering to start a blog. Maybe 2-3 years already. However, being a very lazy person does not help, so all my attempts to start a web log were ending with setting up a newer and newer gallery with images from my travels but nothing else. These galleries also remained quite out-dated because I hate dealing with the sorting-resizing-labeling-uploading, etc.
So, how I suddenly overcame the lazyness and made this blog?
Well, I moved to Sweden. Yes, from the “sunny, green, messy and noisy Bulgaria” I ended up in the “dark, cold, silent Sweden”. From the big, rushing, 2 million people sized Sofia to the four times smaller Gothenburg. Without having a clear idea what exactly I will be doing here, but just following my heart and my weird thoughts about doing something which could bring me closer to my “eventually-happening-in-the-future-strange-PhD”. Hm!?
And well, I have to say that I don’t regret it at all. Since the very first day here I am being constantly amazed. Amazed by the people, the surroundings, the light, the life and everything. I am still amazed that there is something amazing to discover almost every day. Some things are nice and funny, others are rather “cultural shocks”.
But they are all quite different from everything that I was promised to suffer from in the Nordic world, so I finally decided to share my amazement from discovering the world of the Scandinavians which, surprisingly for many, does not look to me neither as dark, nor as organised, not as cold as it is believed to be.
