brisk; tasty

two observations:

1. took my bike to coffee yesterday at 8am when it was -4F with wind chill (-20C, if you're in a country where the system of measures is rationalized). not a good time to forget gloves or a hat.
2. the swedish have a baked good called a lussebulle (named for saint lucy, who appears to be its patron saint) that shows up around this time of year, after the feast of saint lucy. the lussebulle is shaped out of yeasted enriched bread spiced with saffron and cardamom, two of the three most expensive spices in the world by weight. the subtle ostentation is very appealing.

more soon,

tvålpalatset

i was walking back from the subway the other evening when i saw a cup of coffee on a sidewalk table with a perfect latte fern on top of it. the owner of said cup emerged from inside the building to inform me of the existence of a cafe with excellent coffee just around the corner, which is how i found tvålpalatset (trans. soap palace), located in the first-floor rooms of what used to be the meeting rooms of a boxing club. under the cafe is a labyrinth of skylighted, marble-floored echoing spaces carved out of rock. the owner, who looks like andy from the mv glassworks. now rents these out to conferences and his son runs the cafe and an espresso school. so i'm sitting in the second room, painted completely white with wide-plank scrubbed fir floors. the room is three times longer than it is wide, the ceiling is higher than the room is long, there are marble-topped tables and overstuffed red and blue (the shade you associate with gainsborough and the french monarchy) cut-velvet armchairs, and a large, cream-coloured swedish tile furnace stands in the corner.* they brew beans from åre coffee roasters, and i'm having good lattes for the first time in months.

* these look great and are also magnificently efficient. the masonry surrounding the firebox is designed to absorb heat from the heat source and then radiate it back slowly and evenly over many hours.

stockholm

i got home later than my usual bedtime last night, after stopping in on detroit's third anniversary party (cake, beer, and nostalgic photographs in a bomb shelter under the vestertorp train station, south of stockholm city center). detroit is a shared studio space for emerging artists relatively close to odenplan; in a city as expensive as stockholm, it is a marvelous thing.

the weather in stockholm has been improbably good this week. for the fourth morning in a row, cloudless blue skies and brilliant sunlight. today, it bounced off the bright yellow buildings across the street and into the apartment, finally waking me up by 11am.

the warmth and light brought everyone out into the parks. we stopped for a coffee at a waterfront cafe in hornstull that has apparently been destroyed three times by radical political and religious right-wingers, then walked along the sodermalm waterfront until we got up into the neighbourhood south of folkungagatan where i got another latte and we sat in the park under the church and ate ice cream for a few hours in the sun while moa's friend's daughter harassed other park-goers under the guise of being friendly. after some discussion, the swedes decided that the ice cream known as hjortron (a tangy ice-cream with pale yellow preserves with large seeds swirled through it) is made of cloudberry, a berry prized across the far northern latitudes for its rarity. i woke up long enough to agree, then fell asleep again. in the spring, this city is easy to fall in love with.