2002-03-23 Lördag: Louisiana and the Tjanstemanns fest

Louisiana

It was a small party of us that made it to Louisiana. Daniel Wallace was concerned that it would be just me and him and Keith and Paddy, and indeed, it was just that group that met at the appointed time at the train station. But Anna, Rose, and Ben Lacar showed up just in the nick of time; and Nancy and that visiting professor from UCSB and his wife were there too. So it was a good little party. Keith (wearing the hat of the University of California) bought us Øresundrund tickets and we were off, via Helsingborg and a ferry to Helsingør, to Humlebæk, home of the famous modern art museum Louisiana.

Of course, we began in the Cafeteria, where we each ended up with huge trays of food, having underestimated the quantity and quality of the wares (judging from the dillapidated display models). Good food, indeed. Tomato soup, nachos. I even had a real danish: some of pastry, containing vanilla sauce and covered with jellied pineapple.

The exhibition was of Georgia O'Keefe, my knowledge of whom can be credited entirely to the elementary school art program. Many others had never heard of her. Anyway, I was quite impressed with the exhibition, as I didn't realise that her works were so broad in scope; I remembered only the sculls with flowers and similar still-life.

Took the train back to Lund down the coast of Denmark and over the bridge. I slept most of the way. The Danish trains are quite nice. Actually I have this strong but poorly defined impression that Denmark is so much more of a `real country' than Sweden.

Tjanstemanns fest

I didn't really know what to expect of the tjänstemannafest. I arrived an hour late (dressed in army pants and a Berkeley T-shirt) to find a collection of warriors, princesses, gods and goddesses gathered outside Krischansta; as I arrived, one team was receiving their prize, a jug of Jossa Grogg. The theme was TV3's `Adventure Sunday' and we were advised to come as Xena or Herculies; and the invitation also said that the contest (tävlingen) was to begin at half six, and I was to discover that this was to be taken literally.

Immediately I was invited to join Bimbo's team, which consisted of him, Tobbe (as a pirate), Robert Nilsson, and two girls, one who came as The Sun, and the other a Xena-esque character, the latter of whom insisted that I join their team, which was really great. In fact, here's a picture of The Sun, Bimbo, and Tobbe. And, another. Now, since Robert Nilsson, Krischansta's very own prolific photographer, was on our team, you might think that there'd be a lot of pictures of us. But, there aren't. In fact I'm not in any of the 191 photos he posted on his website. I find this very odd.

The contest, however, whatever it involved, seemed to be over. Now, each team was directed to a secret location (for us, the laundry drying room!) where they'd be equipped with inspiration (in our case, a box of wine) and given ten minutes to write a song incorporating several key words (önskebrunn, jättespjut, ymninghetshorn, tänja) which would be performed later.

After writing our song, it was time for dinner. The dinner was really great, and I really enjoyed it. Each table recieved some number of of pitchers of beer (almost unheard of in this country), and somehow Bimbo arranged for us to get even more than we should have. Plus there was plenty of snaps, so it was a good time. The food, too, was great. Some kind of cheese-filled mushrooms with greens for a first course, then a delicious ½ chicken each for dinner, and something yummy for desert. So while we're eating all this great food and consuming the plentiful drink, of course we're singing songs all the time, and Tobbe and Bimbo and Robert were quite friendly, and it was all good.

Then of course the usual disco started, but it was particularly great because the DJ was good, it wasn't crowded, and almost no one was smoking, so the air was clean. Oh yeah, and I knew lots of people, at least superficially. This one girl in a Star Trek motif was quite fun to dance with, but this seemed to irritate this other guy in a dress who seemed (and looked!) rather mean, resulting in him attacking me with his plastic sword. I nearly yelled at him, it was quite irritating. Instead I just avoided the dancefloor when he was around. This girl was clearly attracted to me, which was kind of exciting; but in the end we just sat on a table and talked insubstantially until krischansta closed, which was kind of lame of me (but not unusual!).

Summary: The Tjanstemann's fest started out with great fun and a wonderful dinner and amusement all around. I met a hot girl who seemed to like me but the annoying dress-wearing sword-wielding character got in the way and in the end we talked the smalltalk and then I left. <- why didn't I just write that?

Snaps x 3

SEK 45