In case you've forgotten, I sometimes knit. I took one of the nearly eternal sweaters for the way from Italy to Sweden. On the train to Bassano, during the flight from Vienna, in the bus to downtown Stockholm and so on. I finished it two days ago, after having it reknitted two or five times. Since I finished the sweater and since I'm a chickenshit to go shopping for yarn, I had nothing to knit so I was only sitting there. There's another s'n'b on Saturday in a yarnstore so I'll get me some knitting material then.
Stockholm showed me its elusive face again. I got lost. Again. Somehow, the good ole left and right doesn't work the way it should, and the farther bits of the city seem to lack some comprehensive street plan. Or something like that.
On the way back, I waited for the metro and a guy started talking to me. I made a puzzled face, said Studip furriner no speak Swedish, then he asked in nice English whether I had by chance a cough pastille, I said No, sorry, and he apologized for bothering. There's something barren and melancholic about Stockholm's subway stations, they lack the opulent lustre of, say, Moscow or Prague's metro, or that well-inhabited messines of Italian metropolitane, they are neat, spacious and somehow sad. The guy was nice and sort of worn out and the whole situation felt as if it happened in some Aki Kaurismäki movie.
On the way back to Östermalm, I continued being sad. For being a sociophobic chickenshit, for not being able to learn this damn language well enough to grasp more of the general culture. Sigh. I forgot to get to the surface on the right place so I went around the Royal Library. Lousy pic of a place where I spend my days:
It's pretty.
In the hostel lounge, I met Karina, the knitter from Skåne, who, as I reckon, has something to do in Stockholm. I wasn't a chickenshit yesterday when I asked what was that pretty yarn she was using, and today she was finishing another washcloth, we talked for a while. There's that social element about knitting which I totally love. It connects people.
Another hostel dweller started chatting with me and upon seeing that I sort of know Swedish, he managed to make me switch into it (I'm not the worst chickenshit on the world, at least) and then laughed that I sound like a Finn. Erm.... I'm not absolutely sure that it's not a nicer way of saying that I sound like an idiot.
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