For lack of a better subject (I do struggle with photography when the evenings are so dark) I was going to take a photo of the last out of five bags of coins that I’ve worked on getting rid of. I checked both local supermarkets and both were happy to accept even quite large amounts of coins. In ICA you have to insert them into a coin slot one by one, but Coop’s machines have a funnel where you just pour whatever coins you have and it then slowly chugs through them all. Adrian often goes with me to the supermarket and he’s quite enjoyed helping me out with this.

I’ve been doing pretty well at remembering to tuck a coin baggie in my pocket when leaving the house, so we’re now down to the last bag with the smallest-denomination coins. That’s worth a celebratory photo, right?

Except Nysse was nearby. The shiny, clinky heap of coins attracted him immediately, and he decided it was now his. He lay down on top of it like Smaug on his hoard, and proceeded to defend it from me. In the first photos I took only about five coins were visible, because all the rest were hidden underneath Nysse.

When I stopped moving the coins around (because of the threat of claws) he lost interest. A hoard is much more fun when someone else actively admires it.

Autumn is coming, and the weather is getting colder.

Electricity prices are crazy this year in southern Sweden (nuclear power plants being shut down due to political decisions in the 1980s, limited transmission capacity between the north and the south, high energy prices in the rest of Europe, etc) and I’m not looking forward to our electricity bills for this cold season.

That top line, double and triple historical prices, that’s this year.

Tomorrow is election day, but advance voting stations have been open for something like two weeks already. I’ve been planning to get it done early, but kept putting it off. Now it’s done.

I am not a Swedish citizen so I only get to vote in the local elections. The county/kommun elections at least feel somewhat relevant. The regional elections on the other hand seem mostly pointless. The only services provided at the regional level is healthcare and public transport, and every single party promises more accessible healthcare and shorter queues, by magic, no hard trade-offs.

Adrian came with me to see how it all works. Their current focus area in social studies is democracy and elections and government and all that, so he wanted to see it live.

Ingrid voted herself in the School Elections, where middle and high school students across the country get to vote almost for real. Their votes are counted and the results published after the main elections, so as not to affect them. In the next election in four years’ time, she’ll be doing it for real.

On the national level there are all sorts of weird parties trying to make their voices heard. Some seem sensible but niche; some are unworldly idealists; some are lunatics (like the Swedish Communist Party); some are simply there for the joke. There is a party calling themselves Ond Kycklingpartiet, “the Evil Chicken party”.

The café next to the advance voting station was urging us to “celebrate democracy with a praline”. This was cheeky enough to work, so Adrian and I bought fancy pralines for ourselves.

After some scout activity or other – probably from a Christmas market – we have a pile of cash in the house, that we (= Eric) took upon us to deposit. The scouts got their bank transfer, but we haven’t gotten around to doing anything with the cash, because it’s such a giant hassle.

We pay for all our normal purchases by card, so the cash isn’t going to get used naturally. You might think that I could take it to a bank, but no. Swedish banks don’t work with cash any more. Cash is a valid means of payment but banks don’t like dealing with it, and apparently they are allowed to just say no.

I managed to deposit the banknotes today. There’s about a twenty ATMs in Stockholm where you can deposit banknotes, and an online map to help you find them. I located one near the office, put in my tidy piles of sorted and aligned banknotes, and that was that.

A large amount of coins on the other hand is near impossible to get rid of. There appear to be no banks – not a single one – in Stockholm that handles coins. The website of a foreign exchange chain hints that they might be able to take them off our hands – for a 15% fee. That just feels so greedy that I don’t even want to consider it. I’d rather give the money to charity.

My next hope is that one of the local supermarkets might be willing to take the coins in large enough batches to make it worth the effort of carrying them with me. (For small-denomination coins, the balance of value vs weight and volume is silly.) I know the supermarkets generally do handle cash, but even they might have limits – I’m not sure any of them would be happy to accept, say, half a kilogram of 1-krona coins in a single payment.

It’s election year in Sweden. Election ads this year seem particularly inane. Lots of vague statements that say absolutely nothing about what that party is promising or intending to do. Some are statements of vague wishes such as “Shorter queues in healthcare” or “No young person shall become a criminal” that at least say something about the party’s priorities, though not its policies.

Others say nothing of substance at all, but just string fine words together, such as “Freedom is worth defending” or “Together we can make our Sweden better” or “The whole country is needed”. Nobody would argue against any of those statements, so what is the point?

Moderaterna (M) seem to struggle with basic grammar and Swedish language. “Fler poliser. Mer kameror. Mindre droger. Färre brott.” treats cameras as an uncountable noun, and promises “smaller drugs”. “Nu får vi ordning på brotten” promises to “bring order to crime”.

And the ad by Kristdemokraterna (KD) doesn’t even bother to promise anything, just straight up says “We’re ready to govern”. Don’t worry about our policies, we just want the power!

None of this inspires any hope, really.

Another Wednesday in the office, another reminder of there being a wider world out there, outside my own four walls. This time in the shape of a bunch of protesters blocking all traffic on Sveavägen, one of the main thoroughfares in Central Stockholm, by glueing themselves to the zebra crossing and refusing to move, thereby – in their eyes – drawing attention to climate change. In most everybody else’s eyes they were causing traffic chaos, delays and irritation, to put it mildly. I don’t really understand how they believe their methods would gain them any support or positive attention.

On the ferry to Tallinn. After two missed summers due to covid, we’re on our way to Estonia again! Eric stays at home for some peace and quiet, and to take care of Nysse.

After two years of no travelling, all of a sudden thousands and thousands of Swedes are trying to renew their passports all at the same time. This surge came as a complete surprise to the Swedish police, so the queues have been ridiculous.

I checked our passports in March for our travels this summer – four months in advance of the first trip, which I thought was plenty of time. Eric’s and Adrian’s needed renewing. The first available time for a renewal appointment was in May. In Östersund, 6 hours away from Stockholm by train. No chance of getting an appointment anywhere closer in reasonable time. People were literally writing bots to monitor the booking site for cancellations. Since the production time was supposed to be 5 to 6 weeks, that appointment in May was annoying but OK, so we went with that.

Then in early summer one of the two passport production machines in Finland broke down. Of course our passports didn’t get finished in the promised 5 to 6 weeks. Now we have less than one week to go before our trip to Estonia, and no passports.

Luckily temporary passports are a thing. They’re expensive, valid for a single trip, cannot be issued more than 72 hours in advance, and involve yet more queueing. So that’s what we spent this evening doing – arranging a temporary passport for Adrian at Arlanda airport. I’d been reading horror stories about the experience – people literally queueing overnight, or fainting in the queue due to the heat – so I was prepared for anything. Even not getting a passport at all and having to cancel the trip. But we had luck with the timing, and the queueing system has been greatly improved here, so we were in and out in half an hour, with a shiny pink passport in hand. It remains to be seen whether the real passports arrive in time for our next trip, or if we get to spend another evening queueing here.

I assumed that most of the police station would be off limits for photography but that an anonymous-looking institutional staircase would be OK.

Office day. Sunshine, lunch with colleagues. Flags waving.

The Ukrainian flag and the Swedish ones go nicely together.

It’s hard to imagine that just a few countries away there is a war going on, in the middle of modern, civilized Europe.

For the first time ever we had two end-of-school ceremonies to attend. (At first Ingrid and Adrian were in the same school, and then with covid-19 there were no ceremonies for two years.) We started at Ingrid’s and moved on to Adrian’s after a while.

The ceremony at Ingrid’s school was a “bring your own chair” affair. (At Adrian’s it’s “bring your own blanket” and only the oldest ones get chairs.)



There were a lot more parents at Adrian’s school so basically it was impossible to see anything. And the ceremony has been the same for the last 9 years – same songs, same speeches, same order – so hearing it was not very exciting either. But it’s tradition.


Going out for a buffet dinner after school is out is also a tradition.