Swedish Food: for astronauts and kings

After a long long long long long long flight bolstered by vodka and chocolate non-pareils I landed in London completely cracked out. I wandered around in a circle for two hours looking at the bewildering mall of designer stores and hoping that I wouldn't sit down, fall asleep, and miss my flight.

A short flight later I landed in Gothenburg. We drove through miles of beautiful forest between the airport and the city. Gothenburg is wet and cold and small and dark. Everything is closed today (Sunday) and past 5 any other day. Their licorice candy has ammonium chloride in it, leading one of my team to believe that they're trying to kill us, or that when he's eating the candy he is in fact smelling a bathroom. The same person yesterday described the language of German as "a disease of the throat".

The trip has been a hurricane of errors surrounding the work we're here to do. The first day and night in initial ignorance of the debacle we were facing we were able to enjoy some of our time here and I walked around for an hour and took some photos in a park and in the grocery store (foreign grocery stores speak loudly about a culture, and I love to listen) and I and my other, food-adventurous co-worker took part in a completely nutty and extravagant meal at what was described as one of the best restaurants in Sweden.

The plane going straight up toward the pole.


Early spring flowers covering the grass in a small park here.




Canal. The buildings here are not as old as most I've seen in Europe and they are built in a sturdy style, I'm assuming to fend off the unceasing wind and rain during the winters.


My trip to the grocery store. Wandering through I saw a lot of the usual stuff, then was delighted to find a display of these. Swedish has pretty much been indecipherable to me so I wasn't sure what it was. Bacon in a tube? Bacon fat in a tube? Bacon paste? Whatever it was, I had to have it. I'm a sucker for gimmicks.



Then I wondered, was this an oddity here? A gimmicky thing? Bacon in a tube? I mean, who ELSE wouldn't be able to resist the brightly colored tubes? Then I saw that not only was there bacon in a tube, amongst the tubes was hidden another type, apparently there is also lobster in a tube. The plot thickened.



I was very amused by this point, and it was one of those moments where you're glad you're not traveling alone, that you will be able to share this discovery with someone else who will hopefully find it as amusing. (Holy moly! Food in tubes!).

Then I hit the mother lode.

I rounded the corner and got confirmation for this not being a gimmick.

Rows and rows of tubes of food. It was like a stockpile of sustenance in case Sweden suddenly launches itself off the face of the earth and everyone becomes an instant astronaut, with the necessary food to go with it. What is the deal.



Blue cheese, lobster, shrimp, caviar, ham and other meat-like meats (from what I could decipher from the helpful illustrations). It went on and on. It had to be a normal Swedish thing.

When I went back to the vendor and presented my bacon-in-a-tube gift to my co-worker and we both marveled over it and the fact that it didn't need to be refrigerated, the Swedes confirmed that yes, there are all sorts of things in tubes, and in fact Ost means cheese, so these are mostly all kinds of cheeses in tubes. Seafood cheese paste in a tube, bacon cheese paste (in a tube), ham cheese paste (in a TUBE). There were some confusing ones, like banana in a tube. Really not clear on that one. The most common food in a tube is caviar (not a cheese), which they have little individual tubes of at breakfast. I haven't gotten to try any of the tubes yet, sadly, but rest assured that the bulk of my bags will contain tubes on the plane ride home.

The Swedes are understandably amused/confused/possibly slightly affronted about our fascination with their tubed foods.

Next up, Swedish food, for kings.