More royal establisments

More examples to illustrate that it is easier to sell the product if the store can somehow associate themselves with the good name of the king..


The last one might be a bit outside of the category - but since they are found in Sweden we'll include them anyway.

Pepparkakshus (Gingerbread house)

Another christmas tradition the Swedes take very seriously is the tradition of building gingerbread houses.

In an era of cutting corners obviously you can buy a ready-made kit with walls and roof so the task is 'just' to assemble and decorate it.

However, some people do take the tradition MUCH more seriously and may partake in the Architectural Museum's Pepparkakshus 2009 competition. This competition has been running for 19 years and it seems to be an integrated tradition (well, at least to admire the contributions) among the Stockholmers.

Lisbeth saw a selection of the participating "houses" yesterday and was really impressed by the level of ambition and the imaginativeness. Below is shown the winners but all contributions can be seen on this list. The theme of 2009 was 'Monster' and the participants were divided into three groups: children, bakers and architects, and others. Our readers can make their own guesses as to which contributions are attributed to which participant category...

Tomatillos

It is true that the Swedish autumn is cold and wet and grey and dark - one doesn't get to see the sun all that much even during the 7 ¹/₂ hours it creeps above the horizon this particular time of the year.

But for now, Tue forgives Sweden all this and more.

But why?

We were about to leave Hötorgshallen when Lisbeth noticed that one of the greengrocers had the fruits pictured here. These are the so-called tomatillos that you have heard Tue lament not being able to get ever since leaving California. But here they are - in Hötorgshallen in Stockholm. In size and shape they are quite similar to green tomatoes (plus the recognisable papery husk). Although that's the right family, the plant is actually more closely related to the goose berry. And they are the proper ingredient for making Mexican salsa verde - we celebrated the finding by making green enchiladas with prawns and goat cheese.


That's why!

Tube chanterelles

On Hötorget (in front of Hötorgshallen) there is often a market with fruits, vegetables and flowers. This time of year they are also selling mushrooms from the Swedish forests. They start out in the morning selling them at 20 SEK pr. hg (roughly 1 US$ pr. oz) but late in afternoon the price drops and the sales tactics get more aggressive if they still have a lot left. When we came by this Saturday afternoon we had thought about taking advantage of the lower prices, but the good man wasn't so easy to stop once he started stuffing a bag with tube chanterelles. Suddenly we had 100 SEK less in our pockets and were carrying a surprisingly heavy bag of mushrooms.


Home again we learned that the bag contained some 2.5 kg (5.5 lbs) of tube chanterelles (which means that the price was down to 4 SEK pr. hg (or some 20 cents pr. oz) half an hour before they had to be off the square). After spending some time rinsing away the pine needles and the moss we made ourselves a pot of mushroom risotto - and threw a bunch of bags with mushrooms in the freezer..

Saluhall

After wondering for while about the fact that we hadn't seen a single butcher shop in Stockholm we were told that butchers are to be found in the three large market halls (so-called Saluhalls) of Stockholm: Hötorgshallen on Hötorget (literally The Hay Market), Östermalmshallen on Östermalmstorg (Östermalm being a part of Stockholm located east of downtown), and Söderhallarne on Medborgarplatsen (literally The Community Square).

Tue went to 'saluhall' to look for cuts of meat not available in the supermarkets. This he found - he returned with a beef tongue and a beef heart, each approximately 6 lbs. It should be noted that this is by far the largest tongue we have bought so far - normally they are about half the size. The heart was halved but other than that not prepared. When the fat, sinews and veins had been trimmed there was some 3 lbs left.


Curiously, both were served during the mid-October weekend that Signe was visiting us. Thursday we had the heart as the Peruvian speciality anticuchos de corazon and Saturday we had the tongue as the Mexican speciality taco de lengua (Tue stayed home to cook while Lisbeth and Signe went to for a café+shopping). We forgot to take any pictures of Signe as well as of our trip to the East Asian Museum, so you will have to settle for pictures of the food we served her..

Did we move back to a monarchy?

Yes, we sure did. And the proof is that apparently everything can be more successfully marketed by association with the king.

The little guy above is in control of the Swedish pick-and-mix candy and goes by the name of 'Caramel King' (rumour will have that there is also a 'Godis-prins' - a 'candy prince').

The sign below belongs to one of the first falafel places we noticed. Our expectations were obviously quite high and although we don't know how the Swedish king prefers his falafels, we think we've had better ones else where...

Another large chain of shops sells beds (perhaps even in king-size?!) and the name only becomes all the more fitting for this particular branch which is located on King Street (Kungsgatan)!


We wonder if all firms will change their names when Victoria accedes to the throne and becomes Queen?!

The Ikea Saga

Although we moved into a furnished apartment here in Stockholm we still had to take the metro to Skärholmen to visit Ikea at Kungens Kurva - the world's largest Ikea.

As mentioned the apartment was furnished so we didn't have to resort to such extreme measures as seen in the second picture: the poster advertising a quite nice exhibit on Ikea at Liljevalchs Konsthal.

In fact, we limited ourselves to the few things we could easily carry home on the metro and decided to order a bed and a rocking chair for delivery from Ikea. This would turn out to become quite the story.

For one thing, it turned out that goods cannot be ordered from the Ikea homepage without a Swedish issued visa card. So before we could even get started we had to wait for Tue's bank to issue one of those. Then followed more waiting: Ikea needed a couple of weeks before calling us up to arrange the details regarding delivery. At this point they told us that one of the items we ordered wasn't ready for delivery but that they would ship it later via the mail service - due to the Swedish/Danish language gap we didn't quite catch what exactly was missing. Lisbeth was the one who had to stay home to receive the delivery from Ikea. We were expecting to receive fewer items than we had ordered - so we were very confused when we realised (after the Ikea truck had left) that we couldn't see anything missing, but rather that Ikea had delivered one bed too many (!!!)

We assembled the bed we did want, and also the rocking chair and still couldn't see what was missing. Then we called Ikea to tell them they had delivered one bed more than we had ordered. This information was very difficult for them to process - obviously this wasn't a customer issue they had any kind of routine in handling. But at long last they promised us they could send a guy out to pick it up a mere two weeks later - well, what was the hurry, it was only blocking half our hallway.

Then it was Tue's turn stay home and receive - or rather: to let go. The bed was out the door as agreed upon and since we didn't get any curious extra bills from Ikea we started to think that the whole thing was finally settled. That lasted until we - driving on the highway between Amsterdam and Rotterdam - got a phone call from Ikea: They wanted to arrange for a delivery time for the missing goods of our order. At first we thought they had gotten the info about the extra bed confused after all and wanted to deliver yet another bed, but in the end we understood that the things they had originally promised to ship by mail service were finally ready and they wanted to deliver them now. So Tue had to stay home one more day. When the mysterious package had been delivered it turned out to be covers for the pillows in the rocking chair - something we still hadn't realised was missing.

Shopping in Geneve

No, we haven't gone mad and have starting shopping big time while we are trying to sort out which things to keep and which not to keep before moving all of the former to Stockholm. But before it's too late we want to present to you a nice Swiss phenomenon, that is the wheeled shopping bag:


In Denmark it might only be fragile old ladies who drag these bags around, but down here ALL kinds of people have them - men, women, young, elder. Therefore, they are of course available in all sorts of colours and patterns - we have even seen one with pink flowers.

Unfortunately we never got around to buying one (having only some 100 yards to the supermarkets and being a household of only two we never really needed one) but we have observed that the trick is to place it strategically near the cash registers so it's easy to get it when all the goods have been bought. Some people apparently are not so trusting of their fellow shoppers, as we see people pushing around these wheeled bags inside common shopping carts!


The popularity is probably due to the fact that almost all apartment complexes here have elevators, making it nice and easy filling the bag up with a gallon of milk and six large bottles of water at Migros, rolling them home, taking them up the elevator, and loading them straight into the fridge door. In Copenhagen this sort of bag would always be unhandy when having the carry the loot three floors up the stairwell!


We are aware that we owe posts from our trip to Italy, but we have realised that they won't be coming until we are done with the move.

Decadent dessert

In a fairly recent post on parallel imports we mentioned Danish chocolate turtles. Afterwards it occured to us that we hadn't had any for quite a while. So on her last trip to Copenhagen Lisbeth picked us up a pack of them.

Btw. we have had a little one...

.. A mini laptop that is!

Since we live parts of our lives online and more than a fraction of that in travelling mode, we invested in this smoking piece of electronic with the aim of increasing our mobility.

Lisbeth bought it when she was in Copenhagen in December but since it wasn't delievered with a protective sleeve, the return trip to Geneva wasn't quite the ease on the cabin luggage as expected.

But subsequently it was duly equipped (in Newcastle - it is evidently a globetrotting laptop!) and the first 'proper' trip through various airports showed that it is exactly as handy as hoped for.

Parallel import

The post on imported baking ingredients last week made us think about which other things we are having summoned from other parts of the world. Obviously certain products are not widely available and we feel nostalgic about them (TimTams from Australia, smoked rolled sausage from the butcher in Tue's hometown; Danish chocolate turtles) but we don't actually NEED them. But here we present some of the things where we haven't been able to find similar products or where the found substitutes just can't match the preferred items.

First the stuff we are having sent/bring back from Denmark:

Cheese strings - The Danish/Scandinavian cheese cutter isn't yet globally found so we have to send for spare strings when they snap. Luckily they don't take up much room and a packet of three strings lasts a long time.

Liquorice - because in contrast to all expectations it is almost impossible to buy liquorice here in Geneva. With the proximity to Northern Europe we had expected that it would be easy to find but actually it was easier in California where Trader Joe's carry Panda liquorice (connaisseurs will know what this is) as part of their regular assortment. In Geneva the best option is to go to IKEA but since it's both quite far and they only have a limited selection, we have build a little stock pile after several visits from and to Denmark.

Lypsyl lip balm - Despite the fact that our lip balms states an US address we never succeeded in finding this brand in Santa Barbara and neither here in Switzerland have we seen them. So we make sure to buy them when we're in Denmark because attempts with alternatives have not been successful. Since we also prefer the same type and they are rather small, it doesn't prove difficult.

Books - Both of us like a number of Danish and Scandinavian authors so in order to follow these authorships Danish books are often found on our wish lists. Before Lisbeth moved away from Copenhagen, she attempted to keep Tue up to date on the best new Danish movies but this is an area where we have given up now.

After our stay in the US we are also relatively dependent on certain non-Danish things:

Biotherm cleansing foam - Yes, it is possible to buy Biotherm in Switzerland but not the specific foaming soap that an insistent sales woman in Nordstrom, Seattle made Lisbeth try and then prefer. So on his recent visit to the Netherlands poor Drew had to bring several bottles across the Atlantic.

Gillette clear gel - It is not just Lisbeth who is particular about certain beauty products because when Tue on his arrival to Geneva realised that he couldn't buy the special Clear Gel version, he promptly imported 6 sticks from the UK. And since that's plenty for maybe another year Drew didn't have to go shopping on Tue's account.

Excedrin tension headache - Drew was however also delegated to bring Lisbeth more Excedrin since her stock ran out in November. But since he brought a huge jar (250 count - no, there is no reason to hide one's medicine consumption) she should be covered for a long time now.

American magazines - Desired British and American books are relatively easy to locate here in Geneva and if not, we are keen customers with Amazon but Lisbeth really misses Border's wide selection of magazines. Bon Appetit was one of the few favorite magazines which it was possible and affordable to sign up for an overseas subscription of so every month we test the efficiency of both the US and the Swiss postal systems (so far we have received 2 out of 3). Other magazines can be bought here in Geneva for astronomous amounts of Swiss francs which is why she is starting to do without...

We have no immediate expections for the need to import Swiss stuff when we move again but we guess we won't know until later just how dependent on Gruyère Salé we have become!

Baking day

For once we made home-baked buns today which led to considerations on desired ingredients. We wonder why, when we hear of Americans who miss particular American products. Well, not if it's particular ready-made products such as Dr. Pepper (well, maybe a little anyway...) that aren't widely available in Europe. But we've heard of people that bring shortening (which essentially is just a non-perishable version of margarine that can very well can be substituted by ... margarine!) and Clabbergirl Baking Powder (yes, baking powder that is easily replaced by European... baking powder!). We attribute the latter to people's lack of inclination to experiment with other products in their cooking/baking and this is probably also where the reason for the lugging of the huge amounts of semi-processed convenience foods such as cake mix, macaroni and cheese mix, taco mix, soup mixes, guacamole mix across the Atlantic is to be found.

While we personally think that these semi-processed products are silly since the food is just as easy to make from scratch (often with better taste, cheaper, and not least with less fat, additives, and colouring agents) we fully understand the need for products when it's not possible to find a proper substitute or when it's not feasible to make the product from scratch. We certainly missed a few Danish/European ingredients while we were in the States. These were primarily for baking since most other 'speciality' foods are possible to make at home (e.g. liver pate, "cold bowl", rusk, remoulade) albeit involving a bit of detective work from time to time. So we did our share of parallel import: mainly leaf gelatine (indispensable for the great unbaked cheesecake) and vanilla sugar (possible to make yourself but also very easy to mail from Denmark) + liquorice obviously - but that's a whole other story.

The need for fresh yeast was less easy to solve so here we had to change the recipes to procedures suitable for dry yeast. Great was our joy then when we saw fresh yeast stacked up in the supermarkets here in Geneva, and leaf gelatine and vanilla sugar were also just to be picked from the shelves (see photos) - luxury!

But here ten months later we can count on one hand how many times it has been necessary for us to buy said fresh yeast. When the bread in the supermarket is absolutely fantastic there just isn't the same need to make one's own as when we were in California and had a loooong way to bike to Trader Joes to buy the good (no, not fantastic as the Swiss bread but yes, good, and certainly much better than the boring bread in nearby supermarkets) bread.

Christmas preparations

While Lisbeth was sent to Denmark to fetch our Christmas presents (and run a couple of other errands) it was Tue's job to look after the little apartment and shop for the holiday festivities. Particularly the latter can be time consuming when looking for unusual goods and only speaking a broken French. In an attempt to have at least some Christmas traditions we have decided to repeat last year's Christmas cake. For this we require of course the Italian hazelnut liqueur Frangelico, but that shouldn't be so hard to get here, this close to northern Italy where the drink originates? Wrong! Most places that Tue entered and asked for it, he was greeted by a puzzled "C'est quoi, ça?" ('That is what, that?!'). So in the end it was also Lisbeth's job to parallelly import a bottle purchased at the Italian store Supermarco in Copenhagen.

It went a little better when shopping for various cuts of pork. The butcher at the supermarket Migros did have a funny look on his face when Tue asked if he could buy "graisse du porc" ('fat of pig')? Not to be deterred by such, Tue persevered with "lard sans viande" ('bacon without meat'), after which the butcher concluded that perhaps the product in mind was "bardes" ('broad strips of lard'). Once it was confirmed that they agreed and he was busy weighing out half a pound of it the butcher wanted to know what it was to be used for, so Tue had to try to explain liver pâté. Then he didn't have any more questions. But Tue did: what about a "rôti du porc avec sa peau" ('pork roast with its skin')? For this he could only suggest a pork shoulder - with the shoulder bone still in it, that is. Not optimal for Danish style pork roast. At the butcher in the supermarket Coop things didn't go any better. Only when Tue entered a real butcher store, was he told that he could come pick up the piece of meat he was looking for the next morning.


Thinking of specific tasks to perform, a wish had been expressed for a nail on the door for hanging a Christmas decoration from - actually we have practically no nails, but Tue succeeded in finding a single nail, left over from the assembly of some piece of Ikea furniture earlier in the year.

Likewise, a wish had been expressed for the baking of more cookies, particularly the traditional Danish cookies vanilla wreaths and perhaps also the so-called Jew cookies. Before any baking took place, intelligence arrived that both of these two types of cookies had been donated from Lisbeth's mother, so perhaps it would be preferable to try to bake something else. Tue then chose to make the not particularly Christmassy pistachio shortbreads, and the modern compliment of the Jew cookie, the palestinian cookie, giving a fresh breath of some different spices.

Last but not least, the purchsed lard was of course used to bake the intended batch of liver pâté and when Lisbeth's flight touches the runway tonight the pork roast will probably be in the oven at home...

Check Culture

Being used to a country where no one under the age of 50 actually having a check book (and noticing how fewer and fewer people seem to ever use cash either), Tue was somewhat surprised when he found out he needed to get one in order to be able to pay the rent, water bills and so on over here.

Checks are used a lot: most people here in Goleta can only pay their rent by sending a check to the landlord; house wifes are seen happily writing out checks in the supermarket (where there's a small sign posted about the fees added in case of any 'bounced check'); and it's generally assumed that one pays the bills using checks - whether those bills are the subscription of the paper or last year's due taxes, and so on. Goleta Water District was one of the few public services that accepted electronic transfers via the bank, but when they updated their systems in 2007 (!) that option disappeared and they were back to only accepting checks - sigh!

The only advantage is that this presents another way for people to express their personality. There are quite a number of choices when it comes to the preprinted graphic on the checks:

Mail-in rebate

Another often advertised rebate is the ’mail-in rebate’ which differs from ordinary rebate coupons in that you don't get a rebate at once. Instead you have the possibility of getting a specified amount of money back by mailing certain 'proofs of purchase' to the company.

What one needs to send them varies quite a bit, but often it's the receipt from the store, the bar code (kind of weird if it's something like shampoo!) and perhaps a filled out questionaire from the company. When to send it in is even more confusing; in some cases it is within 30 days of purchase, in others it has to be between 6 and 9 months after acquiring the item. Particularly the more substantial rebates on electronic equipment use the concept of delayed mail-in - we're assuming the idea that many people will forget to mail it in, so that it's cheap for the company to promise large mail-in rebates in order to convince the customer to buy their product.

We've only used this scheme once - receiving $1 back as a rebate on a bottle of shampoo simply isn't worth the bother (especially considering you need to spend a stamp on sending the coupon)! But when Tue bought his cell phone he managed to mail the bar code of the side of the box, a copy of the original invoice, documents to prove he kept the subscription for at least 2 months and that he actually paid the first 2 monthly bills. Accordingly the company did send a nice check back to him .. some 6-8 weeks later. The system works, but what a bureaucratic mess - not just for the consumer, but also for the companies that need people to verify whether or not the mailed in claims qualify for rebate before mailing back a check. *

* The widespread use of checks here is quite another story, and it will get it's own post on the blog.

Coupons

On the shopping ‘scene’ we have noticed so many oddities that we are introducing a little new category where the first posting is a presentation of the widespread phenomenon in the discount jungle over here: coupons.

For groceries, the coupons arrive via the regular supermarket brochures from where one cuts out a coupon that entitle a price reduction of 1 dollar or so on a particular item if the coupon is presented at check out.

Furthermore, in the mail we receive leaflets from the fast food outlets and a few other restaurants that are more or less the form of a coupon that either entitle you to save a few dollars on the total bill or to receive e.g. free fries with your burger.

Finally, from time to time we receive an envelope full of coupons (cf. the photo below) that promote discounts for all sorts of things: laser operations, car insurance, airport parking, plumbing assistance, contact lenses etc. These coupons often gives very generous reductions, i.e. 50-100 dollars (entire 250$ on the laser operation!) so if making greater investments it is a good idea to have a close look through the stack of coupons.

That we think it is a completely hopeless task to fiddle with coupons when at the register (and not least to keep track of where-what-when - and also remember to actually bring the coupons) to save a mere 2 bucks or get free fries, well... that's just our wallet's bad!