Frank and I went to a great Swedish bring-your-own-crayfish crayfish party tonight. Grad students and postdocs of the Uppsala theoretical physics department organized the whole evening, bringing paper crayfish banners, napkins, caraway-flavored cheese, and many other necessities.
Antti, who (though Finnish) is our guru for all things Swedish, took me yesterday to the huge department store known as Coop (pronounced Cope) where we bought frozen jumbo crayfish cooked Swedish style (lots of salt) but from Spain. I didn’t think I could eat a whole kilogram box of crayfish, but I almost did tonight–that’s because most of the stuff in the frozen box isn’t meat–it’s shell or juice or something not very edible.
Now, it’s not a real Swedish party without Swedish drinking songs. Paradoxically, Swedish laws about drinking drivers are much stricter than the US laws–drinking one tablespoon of wine in Sweden could land you in trouble if a Swedish policeman stops you.
Frank was kind enough to be our non-drinking driver tonight. He’s not much of a drinker although he does like parties–and also he doesn’t like shellfish, so I made him two giant smoked-salmon sandwiches for tonight.
Swedish schnapps glasses are (fortunately) really tiny–maybe one tablespoon capacity? That’s a good thing because the first drinking song always seems to be Helan går. “Helan går” means (roughly) “The whole thing goes.” The idea is that if you don’t drink up your entire (tablespoon) drink in the pause at the end of this song, you won’t get even a half a drink for the next song. That small glass is also a good thing because the number of drinking songs at a dinner is typically 8 or 9.
We brought a bottle of Gallo Turning Leaf white wine, but I also got offered some vodka (wow!) and some Swedish aquavit (whew!) (if this blogppost seems incoherent, that’s your explanation!)
After three or four Swedish drinking songs, Frank and I stood up for our national honor with an American drinking song, of which we two remembered slightly different versions:
Leprosy
Is creeping all over me
There goes my eyeball,
Into my highball.Leprosy
Is creeping all over me
There goes my ear, dear,
Into my beer, dear.Leprosy
Is creeping all over me
There goes my chin, dear,
Into my gin, dear…
Thus I hope my American readers will be happy to know that Frank and I gave a good account of our own native culture. And, in sum, a good time was had by all.