Alcohol

I've been back from London for almost a week now. It was a bit depressing that when I left England the sky was blue with no clouds, and I then landed in Västerås to some quite depressing weather. Thankfully now it seems to be back to sunny weather here.

Today is the most important day of the year - Eurovision! I'm looking forward to it, but disappointed that Finland is not in the final because I always vote for them on principle. I'm having a small party tonight, and that meant that today it was time for my very first trip to Systembolaget! Systembolaget is the Swedish alcohol retailer, very similar to Alko in Finland. Although Sweden does not have the same restrictions as Finland in terms of only being able to buy alcohol during certain hours, it is more strict in that only light beer can be sold in supermarkets, so to buy full strength beer you need to go to Systembolaget. I don't have alcohol in the house that often, and even then I don't mind having lighter beer, so it's never come up to go to Systembolaget before.

The opening hours are a bit annoying - at weekends it's between 10am and 3pm. I was only buying a few drinks, but everyone else seemed to have baskets absolutely full of drinks. As the hours are inconvenient, and maybe it's not open on Sundays, I suppose people need to stock up.

Supermarkets usually just sell a basic range of domestic beers, and I was impressed by the variety in Systembolaget, with drinks from a lot of different countries. I went for Belgian fruit beer, and English Brewdog beer.

That brings me nicely to the next alcohol related point. My colleague and I have been a couple of times this week to the Brewdog bar in Fridhemsplan. Brewdog is one of my favourite bars in London, so I was very happy when I found out there was a bar here too. It's certainly not disappointed me - I can buy my favourite beer, it looks a lot like the bar in Camden, which I didn't have a chance to go to last week, and is generally quite comfortable. It's another of those little pockets of English in Stockholm - the staff are English and Swedish, depending on who you speak to they may automatically speak in either Swedish or English, the menu etc is in English, and I had a very nice chat with one of their staff who turned out to be from Norwich. As it's already one of my favourite bars in London I think it has now automatically become one of my favourite bars in Stockholm.

And to end on a European theme because it's Eurovision day - my workplace has the flags of the member states in our auditorium, and I noticed that the flags of the UK, Finland, and Sweden were conveniently grouped together. So yesterday, at the end of a very busy week, I could be found fannying around with the flags of the three countries that are most significant for me. Enjoy!

Eating my way through Stockholm

I've now been here for a week, and I realise that I've pretty much devoted myself to eating my way through Stockholm. I've been spending a lot of time with Heli, my friend from Finland, this week, and thankfully we're both pretty into food.
This week we made two visits to Vapiano, which is extremely popular in Stockholm, but with only one restaurant in London. I first visited Vapiano when I was last visiting Heli in June, and was very happy to visit again. The concept is kind of unusual, as you order your food directly from the chef, which means you can have some control over seasoning etc. The downside is that this means your food might be ready at separate times. We found this when we went to the restaurant in Gamla Stan - Heli had to queue for about 40 minutes for risotto, I ordered a pizza and had completely finished it by the time she sat down with her food. Kind of defeats the object of going out for a meal together. This wasn't a problem when we've visited the restaurant in Östermalm previously. I also found that the pizza in Gamla Stan wasn't cooked as well as in Östermalm, so I'm not sure if I'd go back to that particular restaurant. Generally I really like Vapiano, the food is good and the prices are very reasonable too.
There is another Italian restaurant in Gamla Stan that we went to both times I visited Stockholm in the past, called Michelangelo, which I really do recommend. I've never actually had pasta there, but the pizzas I've eaten have always been really good. Again, the prices are really reasonable, and the atmosphere there is very nice.
Yesterday we had a lovely lunch at Sushi Hjorthagen, very close to where Heli lives and across the street from Ropsten station. This also marked the first occasion that I ordered something completely in Swedish and the other person spoke back to me only in Swedish. I assume I have a very foreign accent, as Swedish people tend to start speaking to me in English even when I am speaking Swedish. Yesterday an Irish man I met advised me to just persevere and speak Swedish even when they speak English, so I think I'm not the only person who has experienced this. The sushi was delicious and beautifully presented - they also had a number of vegetarian options, which is a big positive for me. As it was a small, local restaurant in a residential area I wondered whether the quality would be that good, but I was really impressed and would definitely visit again. It was a lovely, sunny afternoon, so sitting out on the terrace of the restaurant was great, and the area was really peaceful.
Last night we intended to go to the nacho buffet at Hellströms. Everyone I meet seems to have heard of this, even if they haven't been there. We visited when I was last in Stockholm, and it's amazing that you can get all you can eat food for only 20kr. That's unimaginable in London, 20kr is approximately £1.72! It would cost you more to buy the ingredients and make the food at home! Even better is that beer is only 29kr, and this is the weekend price, throughout the rest of the week it's only 24kr! Definitely the cheapest drinks I've seen in Stockholm. The buffet is from 4-7pm, unfortunately this time we turned up a bit too late and there was no food left. In terms of value for money I can't think of anything better. There's always next Friday...
As an alternative we went to Opal in Söderhallarna, which we've visited before just for drinks. I like that they have shiny silver sofas and some tables that look like a glitterball cut in half. Opal mainly offers burgers, I had the vegetarian halloumi burger and it was pretty good, very filling. It was almost 200kr, quite expensive for what it actually was, and definitely more than you'd pay for something similar in London. Although people often say Stockholm is very expensive I find that the cost of living is roughly the same as London, with some differences. Alcohol generally costs slightly more, cigarettes are much less, and rent is much less. Shame that it's so difficult to find somewhere to live in the first place!
When I was last here I ordered a falafel wrap at the end of a night out, and was very confused to find that this wrap included mashed potato as a filling! I like mashed potato, and it was very tasty mashed potato, I just really didn't understand why it was there. Sweden is apparently really big on mashed potato, and this is quite normal. I mentioned this earlier today to a German person who I'm currently sharing a house with, and she didn't seem to be phased by this at all, so I'm wondering if this is actually normal outside of Sweden too. Definitely not in England though.
In other news, I've decided in a couple of weeks to go back to England temporarily, as my boyfriend and I are both quite unhappy about being separated. It also seems the more sensible option, as when we get back here in December or January we'll have more money and more options for housing, which is the biggest concern I have here. I can go back to my old job on a temporary basis, and save even more money too. It's sad to leave Stockholm again so quickly, but something is really missing being here alone, and I'd much rather change the plan and come back in a couple of months. I'm still going to go to job interviews and look into jobs in the next couple of weeks, and also use this time to improve my spoken Swedish, and generally integrate more with Swedish people. I'm planning to leave a lot of my belongings in Stockholm, so I can say with absolute certainty that I'll be back before long. I have a meeting about a job on Monday that's quite important, but this is the plan regardless of the outcome of that. I don't think that company will want an immediate start, and I'm told that a notice period of three months is quite normal here, which takes us up to December anyway. Coming here now was still completely worthwhile, but I do feel that I could be much happier than I am. So that means two more weeks to keep munching my way through Stockholm, and then a little while to plan what to eat when I'm back!