Saturday, June 27, 2015

Last Uppsala Meetup

Last night I attended my last meetup of the Uppsala Socialites until next spring. The meeting was held at Buddy's Irish Pub in downtown Uppsala as usual, and attracted about twelve people. There were several nationalities represented including a smattering of Swedes. I was sitting near a Londoner, a guy from Hong Kong by way of 17 years in Britain, an Australian, another American, and two Swedes.

One guy showed up a short while after I arrived. He was tall, looked me in the eye, gave a firm handshake, and introduced himself in a strong British accent. I was convinced that he was a Brit at first but, as it turns out, he is actually Swedish and went to school in Britain for several years. He said his name is Christian (another reason I thought he was British), he has a degree in engineering and is working on a masters at Uppsala University. His real passion though, it seems, is singing and going to the opera. He recited the entire plot of Richard Strauss' opera Salome and knew that it was based on a play by Oscar Wilde (I didn't). I saw Seattle Opera perform it long ago, but my most vivid memory of that day is a couple of guys in the audience getting into a fight (the money quote being "You can't say that about my wife!") with Speight Jenkins coming on the scene to break it up.

On the subject of opera, I mentioned that we had visited the Drottningholm Court Theater, loved the fact that it was still authentically 18th century, and bemoaned the fact that no performances will occur there until well after we are gone. Christian said that there is another theater almost as authentic as Drottningholm Court that has performances throughout the year. Called Confidencen, it is near Ulriksdal Palace, one of the royal residences which is located between Uppsala and Stockholm. Next year we will do our best to attend a performance there in true 18th century style.

Another thing I learned last night is that the woman from London, who I have seen several times now at the meetups, writes a blog called "The Swenglish Life" about her impressions of life in Sweden. I haven't had a chance to peruse it much yet, but I plan to follow it in the future.

The guy from Hong Kong and I discussed the work demands of Swedish companies as compared to those in Hong Kong and the US. It seems, unsurprisingly, that Hong Kong and the US have more in common than either does with Sweden. The Swedes are not generally forced to work more than forty hours per week, while in HK and the US, long hours with no additional pay are often expected as are short vacations, few holidays, and no maternity leave.

Another important milestone yesterday was that I gave back the bass I was renting. The guy who rented it to me has three basses(!) but says his wife will only let him keep two. And so it goes, the poor fella. In spite of this unreasonable loss of one third of his bass collection, he told me I can rent one of his two remaining basses again next year when we come back to Uppsala.

On a political note, in spite of the unfavorable comparisons I have been making between the US and Sweden, I am proud of our country today for allowing whoever wants to get married to in fact do so, and for deciding that allowing millions of people to keep their health coverage is A-OK. Baby steps, people

Only one more day in beautiful Uppsala! We are sad.

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