Dan's Birthday Party

Backebo, Sweden

15th September 2007

I woke up in the middle of the night and I saw an old man sitting in front of me, watching me sleep and I jumped up in my bed in a panic. It was just a hallucination but god did it scare the shit out of me. Dan assured me his Grandpa isn't hiding in the wardrobe in our room.

Today was Dan's birthday party. There are 4 of us non-residents of Sweden that are staying at the house. We helped Dan get his party setup during the day. Around 2pm most of the Swedish guests arrived and we were given booklets. In these booklets were photos and mini-biographies of each guest. Most of the biographies were embarrassing spins on reality but it was so funny reading through them. I got away pretty easy:

"Mark Litwintschik - Grandchild of freedom fighter. Has a strong fetish for Estonia. On his way to become one with his Egyptian water pipe. Has been to more countries than I have. Grew up with bears."

Other people had descriptions like:

- "Was once the dream boyfriend of every 14 year old girl in Kalmar. Now flashing a stylish 70ies porn-actor look."
- "Loves Narva but will deny the Battle of Narva"
- "Her parents don't believe 'thank you' exists as a phrase"
- "Child of a freedom fighter (Poland)."
- "Child of a freedom fighter (Germany)."
- "Child of a freedom fighter (Canada)."
- "Believes that you need life insurance (or a magazine subscription, depending on the day)"
- "Loves a good fjortis-fylla! (and will disagree with everything I've written here)"
- "Obsessed with toothpicks, which might be the reason for his designer skills"
- "Once fed illegal substances to moose"
- "Child of a freedom fighter. Mother of a red head. Might be the only pregnant woman here, might not"
- "Was once convinced there was a positive meaning to the word 'grotesque'"
- "Master plumber and an expert with a sawed off Coca Cola bottle"
- "Responsible for the steep increase in girls with eating disorders"

We had a few games to play during this alcohol free party:
1. We had to find lego hidden in a large field.
2. We had to do a treasure hunt where along the way, we were asked questions about dan that we had to answer.
3. We did a treasure hunt around Backebo which resulted in us trespassing of just about everyone's property, opening their wells, mailboxes and doors to there barns on several occasions in order to find clues.
We had some hardcore games of Dodge ball.

In the end, my team came second, Anja's team came first. They won ant farm kits. We've been told 18 black ants can survive for 6 months in one of these NASA-tested ant environment kits, at which point we should introduce a red ant to control the population.

We ate moose for dinner and had some lively and funny discussions around the table. When it came to singing happy birthday, Dan asked that we all sing it in our mother languages at the same time. So he heard it in Estonian, Russian, German, Polish, English and Swedish simultaneously. It was really nice to meet so many friendly, funny and intelligent people.

Chatting with all the computer geeks that came to the party reminded me of my teenage days hacking away on whatever code caught my interest. They were into some similar and interesting stuff that I also enjoyed. Also, after getting to actually live in a Swedish home for a few days and interact with a group of Swedes, which can be hard to do if you just come here on holiday, made me wish that I was born in Sweden instead of Canada.

A lot of people might get shocked or upset by that but I'm sure it would have helped me do more with my life. I'm not saying that I want to learn Swedish and move to Lapland or anything. If I were a Swede, I would probably live outside of Sweden anyway but, the computer geeks there seem like they are on top of the league table.

They learn languages much more effectively than Canadians and can speak an amazing level of English. They can also work where ever they want in the EU without any hassles or quotas. Sports wise there is quite a bit to do in the country. There is in Canada too but I wish I had tried to become thin before I turned 23. There are also a lot of beautiful blonde women in the country but I already have a beautiful and blonde wife so I'm not so worried about that :)