Friday, August 10, 2007

From the Scarp Heap of History and Gloomy Weather

My mom always talked about the automats of Stockholm, where you could buy a herring sandwich off the streets of Stockholm. These machines stood in rows in a room off the street. (Mom, if you're reading this, feel free to comment and correct what I've gotten wrong.) I don't know what was cheap for then but it still seems cheap to me now: one or two crowns per item! Here's a photo of an automat that now serves as kitsche in a hipster coffee shop on Södermalm, the hipper part of town, where rent is expensive and the ambience resembles a co-mingling of Greenwich Village and Soho (London):
















The weather here has not outshined last summer here. No, scratch that. It's been competing with Seattle summers, really. I don't know if it's because I've been in such flux or because I haven't yet suffered the entire dark winter here like everybody else, but I haven't gotten down about it, at all. Here's a photo of the gloom from my balcony, which by the way, is a pretty nice balcony:

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

On the bag, actually my mother of all people attached it. She didn't sew through the vinyl though. My wife has sewn other ones, if only to make sure they are strait and that they don't fall off. Gives me no room to complain.

Anonymous said...

Herring sandwiches?

Pete Eriksson said...

Maybe it was anchovies?

Anonymous said...

You know, I've eaten Sushi, raw cow tongue, barely cooked intestine, the brains of several animals, and once I think I ate puppy. For some reason, the idea of eating a hearing or anchovies in a sandwich makes my stomach curl. Go figure