Svenska Fajitas!

So I've just finished making and eating my first batch of Swedish fajitas. They're like normal fajitas, but made in Sweden ... !! They turned out pretty nicely, though the fajita mix here is a bit too spicy for me. Odd, seeing as in anything else in Sweden it is near impossible to get a good amount of spice.

But cooking here in Sweden is different, and I thought that I would dedicate a post to the odd things that the Europeans have decided to do differently from us (or that we have decided to do differently from the Europeans, I can't tell which yet). First, the stove. It is not an electric stove with wire coils, nor is it a gas stove. I will only guess that it is electric, but consists of thick metal discs set into the white stove top, whose knobs do not go lo-hi but rather from 1-5 or 1-12, depending on which burner you are using. The oven is also different, but I haven't used it yet. It seems unnecessarily small.

I have also noticed the street lights are different. Green means go and red means stop, but yellow AND red lit up at the same time mean get ready to go. Just yellow means get ready to stop. There are also separate lights for the bike paths and for pedestrians. Sometimes, the bike path totally separates from the road itself and veers off on its own course and direction, beneath tunnels and alongside horse farms, etc. There seem to be many more bikes than cars in Lund. The town has a lot of squares, and each square it seems is filled with at least 200 bicycles each. The large square by the train station must be in the thousands.

Washing machines are quite opposite. You have to sign up for a time here, since the Swedes are so concerned with orderliness and timeliness. You can only use the machines during your time slot, then you must swipe in, load your clothes (again, into an unnecessarily small washer), choose what type of detergent you want (oh yes, it's provided), and press start. If you only press start for a few seconds, the machine will only go 25 minutes. If you hold it longer, the machine will run up to 72 minutes. Though I can't imagine why. And yes, it's free. Drool all you want, UCLA, who spend $5 at a time to do laundry ... read this and weep!

Supermarkets make no sense here. Sure, they group some of the bread together, but for some reason other types of bread are clear across the store. There are hardly any frozen vegetables, by nearly 50 types of frozen meatballs. Cheese isn't sliced -- apparently, that's an American thing. I sort of appreciate sliced cheese. Thankfully, the bread is sliced.

Well, I will leave it at that. I am sure to update later. Here is some Swedish for you to learn:
limpa - bread
ost - cheese
tvätta - to wash
kläder - clothes