Annnnnd Blastoff!

The last two days have been action-packed. We launched the new bonnier.com into the loving arms of both the Swedish media (they liked it!) and our own staff (a couple of the old people bitched about the change, but whatever). I yawned wrong and threw out my back again, which proves I'm actually 87 years old. And I said goodbye to both Bonnier HQ and my little apartment in Stockholm.

My last day at the office was extremely touching and sweet—the information department took me out to lunch at a yummy Korean restaurant, and then I had a great discussion with Jonas about how my time in Sweden went. In the afternoon, there was a little reception with champagne, fresh-juice cocktails and tea sandwiches where everyone wished me well, and Niklas gave a poignant and hilarious goodbye speech in which he poked fun at me, himself, the Swedish language and our office culture, and I just barely avoided crying. They sent me off with a Swedish care package full of funny stuff like stinky fermented herring, a giant hockey jersey, Absoult vodka and a folk-art horse, and my friends at Bonnier Media University gave me a very stylish necklace as a going-away gift. I didn't expect such a warm farewell—it really was special. I don't know what I could do to thank everyone for giving me such an amazing experience in Sweden. I know I complained a bit during the rough winter months, but I'm very grateful for my time here, and—what do you know—now that it's light out again, I don't want to leave!

As for the Web site, the launch went off with only a minor hitch (we ran a script that broke something and took a few hours to fix), and is now in the talented hands of my job-rotation successor, Ganda Suthivarakom, who, I am convinced, is the ideal person to be in charge of the next phase. I'll continue to act as an admin of the social network, and probably will need to do some sit-downs in the coming months with different teams to show them how to use it for their individual business and editorial needs.

And the next thing I knew, it was the weekend. Last night I had another toast and a nice dinner with our partners on the Web project, River Cresco and the Drupal team, Chas. Today, I mostly chilled out and went to a naprapath to have my back treated. Ganda, Niklas and I went for a walk in the snow and ended the mellow afternoon with coffee at Niklas and Janeatte's house. (Apologies for probably misspelling her name.) I'm really going to miss my Swedish friends, and I haven't yet properly said goodbye to all of them. But I think I'll do a round of hugs and phone calls next Thursday, when I stop in Stockholm for one more day on the way back to the U.S.

For now, it's time to shift gears and get ready for the next installment of the Bonnier Publishing Program, which happens in Finland over the next three days. I am really excited about our business idea. If you'll remember from a bunch of posts back, part of the program consists of conceiving and pitching a new digial project, and I think the one my team has come up with is both creative and viable. This week, we'll dig a bit more into the revenue model and begin to turn our concept into a presentation.

The next order of business: What's to become of artificialswedener.com? Well, I think I'll keep posting periodically, at least until the Bonnier Publishing Program ends in May. Right now there are a lot of loose ends I'd like to tie up. For instance, what insights about the U.S. will I have upon re-entry, now that I'm coming from a Swedish perspective? What will it be like to tour San Francisco in April (the next BPP segment) with a bunch of Scandinavians? Will our business plan turn into a reality? Am I going home to a Mad Max-style, economic-crisis wasteland? Stay tuned to find out!

Fibinacci Food Loop

Today I had the slightly psychadelic experience of eating a meal cooked according to recipes I made up, as interpreted by the test kitchen of a food magazine. If you read this blog back in December, you might remember that I prepared a giant meal during the holidays and served it to my friends and inlaws, while directing a photo shoot of the whole thing for Sweden's Allt Om Mat (All About Food) magazine. Well, today was the day the magazine tested the recipes to see if they actually taste good, and they invited me (and Niklas and Ganda) to come and eat the food. It was really interesting to see how my recipes were interpreted not just by another person but by a person of another culture. They tasted great, and because the cook had the photos from the shoot to work with, she could tell what everything was supposed to look like. There were some subtle differences, but everything was really yummy and it was exciting to see ideas that I made up executed by someone else. The soup was thinner and less spicy, but still really smoky and flavorful, for instance. I put a generous squeeze of lime and some avocado slices into it and it was divine. The empanadas were thicker and sweeter than I made them, but still delightfully rich and flaky. And the pecan pie didn't look like my pie at all—she used a modern cylindrical pie dish instead of the old-fashioned American kind—but it tasted fantastic, especially with the chipotle ice cream on top. All small, interesting differences that added up to food that was just as tasty, but with a slightly new twist.

It was fun seeing the photos they chose for the magazine, as well. The got a lot of shots of Keira and her kids, as well as a few of John and me, and a couple of my inlaws, Penny and Gary. I don't think they'll be able to use all of them, but I'll curious to find out what makes the cut. Speaking of photos, isn't the picture above kind of great? The geek in me hopes someone will use the recipes in the magazine to cook the food and then take a picture of it next to a print-out of this photo. Then I'm pretty sure the universe will get sucked into a black-hole and my head will explode.

The Final Countdown

Normal people let themselves breathe, space activities out sensibly, pause to reflect. Not Megan! I've been in an insane whirlwind of preparation for two big things this week: launching the new Bonnier.com site (and the associated BonFire social network, which is a giant project in its own right), plus...moving back to the U.S.!

I know, I know, I haven't really talked about exactly when I was leaving Sweden and what I'd do when I get back. Those are messy questions. I'll share my schedule, just so you can see what a lunatic I am: Friday is my last full workday in the Bonnier office. Then, I go to Helsinki this Sunday through next Wednesday, for the Bonnier Publishing Program. Thursday the 5th, I return to Stockholm for a one-day stopover (There no direct flights from Helsinki and I could use miles to upgrade to first-class for the flight home from Stockholm). Friday the 6th, I fly from Stockholm to New York to party for an evening with my girlfriends in Manhattan. Then I fly to Baltimore on March 7th (again, because there were no direct flights from Stockholm, so since I had to go through Newark anyway, I decided to make it fun). From there, I'll drive out to the Eastern Shore of Maryland to visit my parents and grandma for a few days. Then I'll drive to Annapolis, Maryland on March 10th for a business lunch with the Bonnier's V.P. of digital media, who lives in Washington, DC but is meeting me halfway. Then I have to fly BACK to New York to shoot two segments of the T.V. show Food Detectives on March 11th. (I think way back in maybe my first post I mentioned that I occasionally guest-host a show on the Food Network. Well, the show got picked up for a second season and I'll be back in the States just in time for their last week of filming.)

From there, I fly back to Santa Fe on March 12, where I will take a week off, for the love of god! Well, sort of. Because the new social network will be in beta, I'm sure there will be a lot of questions and bug reports from our beta testers, so I'll work on that, but I'll mainly try to just be a human being again for a little while, and then swing back into full action on March 23.

What "full action" means is not 100% clear, however. I have responsibilities in a few different places within the Bonnier company: at my alma mater, PopSci, at Bonnier AB, continuing to work on the new Web site, and also with the digital department at Bonnier in the U.S., which, under the leadership of a new boss, is getting a facelift.

But back to the here and now in Stockholm. Today I packed up all my belongings, so I could ship them home and only travel with one suitcase. Kind of key, since I have to make stops in a bunch of places before landing back in New Mexico. This way my stuff will already be at the house when I get there. And holy crap, I have a lot of stuff. I had four humongo suitcases when I came over here and I of course did some shopping over the past seven months, to boot. Niklas said one of the things he'll miss about me is that I wear a different outfit to work every day. Sweet, maybe, but crazy. What can I say? I love fashion. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to do a final sweep of the social network, and also get ready for the DHL man to grab my boxes.....

The Princess and the Chairman

Big news in Sweden today: Princess Victoria is going to marry a commoner! She and her gym-owner boyfriend Daniel Westling got formally engaged in a ceremony today in Stockholm. Westling had been shacking up with the princess in Drottningholms castle for a couple of years, and cynics say the wedding is more or less engineered to provide a little cheer and good publicity for Sweden to distract people from the recession. Not that Swedes are feeling all that woeful anyway, compared to Americans. But a royal wedding is always good fun and there hasn't been one in Sweden since Silvia and Gustav married in the seventies.


In other news, I snapped a photo today of Bonnier Chairman Carl-Johan Bonnier sitting with my friend Sofia at her desk. This is such a great example of how gorgeously unhierarchical Sweden is. This guy is the big boss of an international media company and he's sitting knee-to-knee with a freelance designer, at her desk, helping her with a project. What a country! Can you imagine Si Newhouse doing that?? He's like Oz in sweatpants. I'm pretty sure only Anna Wintour gets to speak to him directly—normal folk would need to speak to his underling's underling, after making an appointment three months in advance.

Equal, But Better

Strandvägen, Stockholm's poshest residential street

Something I've been pondering a lot lately is the weird juxtaposition in Sweden between equality and status. Sweden has perhaps the world's best social services, which ensure that everyone gets fair pay, ample vacation, amazing maternity (and paternity) benefits, free childcare, free education, free health care and free elder care—all factors that serve to level the socio-economic playing field. And there seems to be a national desire to belong, rather than a desire to compete. Unlike Americans, who always say they want to be "the best" at things, Swedes tend to express the desire to do the best they can. They even say that they're happy to fall in the middle of the spectrum, which is something that an American would never say.

One Swedish friend of mine went to university in the U.S. and told one of her professors that she would be happy to achieve average grades. She was being modest, of course, because she's very smart, but she was expressing herself in a Swedish way, without being boastful or overstating her abilities, so she was shocked when her professor reprimanded her and told she needed to aim higher.

I've encountered this Swedish-American communication difference a lot since I've been here, especially since I'm a very outspoken communicator even by American standards. We're taught in the U.S. that we should strive to be the best. That you should aim as high as possible, and then even if you don't reach your target, you'll still land somewhere pretty lofty. But Swedes are taught to be realistic. Aim for where you want to be, and if your aim is realistic, you'll get there—and by the way, you're probably average; most of us are.

The funny thing about the Swedish way is that even though they openly emphasize averageness, they are quietly obsessed with status. This is a very human thing, of course—all human cultures have important markers of status. But especially in Stockholm, there's definitively the right address, the right handbag, the right last name, the right way to hold your fork, the right outfit to get into the right nightclub, even the right way to accent vowels when you speak. The more "right" things you do, the higher your status becomes.

One very chic Swedish lady recently joked to me that her idea of heaven would be to wake up with the last name "Bonnier." And I said, "Um, why don't you just change your last name to Bonnier, then?" In the U.S. of course, you can change your name to anything you want. I could just go to the department of records and request that my name be changed to Megan Bonnier, and no one except Bonnier employees would bat an eye.

You can't change your name in Sweden because then anyone might potentially take a noble last name, and historically that would have been confusing and insulting to the monarchy. In the 18th or even 19th century, plopping "von" in front of your name would have landed you in jail (or worse), and it's still not legal today. In the U.S. if I changed my name to Megan von Miller, everyone would just think I was an ass.

And then it hit me—maybe all these little status things in Sweden are vestiges of living under a king and queen. In a monarchy, all the plebians can be as equal as the day is long, but the nobility is elevated to another, higher level. Now that the monarchy in Sweden serves mostly a symbolic function, all the symbolic markers of exclusivity can be shared by the public—as long as they have the money or the access. No one can deny that it feels great to be on the inside of the velvet rope. When the playing field is leveled, status becomes all the more appealing.

Steppin' Out in Stockholm

I recently declared that I would go out every single night during my last two weeks in Stockholm. It's getting a little expensive, actually, so I might not be able to go out every night, but I've had a really fun week, despite working a ton on the Web site.

Last night I went out with my friends/colleagues Ganda and Tanja and we had cocktails, danced and enjoyed the powdery snow falling over the city. It was kind of magical, actually. Enjoying night spots surrounded by beautiful people, glittering snow, chic decor, the historical grandeur of Bern's... I snapped some photos with my iPhone just to try to capture the ambience.

First we went to a dining club called Collage, near Stureplan, where we lucked out and got a banquette table at a prime spot so we could watch all the pretty people while we drank our cocktails. We got there at about 11:30 which is very early for Stockholm, so the vibe was mellow, friendly and just-crowded-enough. The hanging our was great, but the dancing was pretty bad at Collage—even by 1 am they were playing Top 40 pop music (which was fun, mind you) and the dance floor was sparse.

So, we left while the people coming from the clubs that close at 1 am were piling in and went to Berns. Berns is a hotel and event space that spans a few different buildings, including two concert halls and a Chinese restaurant, and any number of shows, parties or musical styles could be going on there on a given night. But it was fantastic last night.

On the bottom floor there was a guest-list-only party playing very cheesy techno music, which we didn't at all mind not being invited to. Instead we had drinks in the Asiatisk hall, which is a gorgeous old ballroom with enormous chandeliers and a lot of red and gold—the fading glamor of the last century, which is so great to see preserved amidst all the austere modern decor around Stockholm. Then we headed upstairs to an extremely fun but not very environmentally correct dance party being held on a balcony under heat lamps (remember I said it was snowing?).

The DJ was playing old-school hip-hop from when I was in junior high and the dance floor was jam-packed with the most diverse group of people I've seen in Sweden yet. And, wow, when you cross other ethnicities with Swedish stock, you get ridiculous beauty. Some of the people I talked to were Swedes of Brazilian and Zimbabwean heritage, and there were a bunch of middle-eastern people as well. It was so fun and unpretentious—definitely the best going-out experience I've had in this city.

Johnny B. Svensson

For four days last week, I was married in Sweden. I mean, technically I've been married the whole time, but I actually experienced Stockholm with my husband last week, which was fantastic. Let me tell you, that boy can eat some pickled herring. I've never seen anything like it. He has a palate for pungent flavors, which sort of makes me wish he was here during stinky rotten fish season, or whatever the time of year is called when people eat sturströmming—herring that ferments for up to a year in bulging cans (hello, when cans bulge that's a bad thing) that reek of vinegar, rotten eggs and rancid butter when opened. Yummy! Anyway, I kind of wish John had gotten a chance to taste sturströmming, because I think he might be one of the few humans on earth who would actually like it.

Besides eighty-sixing every herring dish in Stockholm, John also spruced up his wardrobe at Filippa K (pictured above), sang "Sommartider" in shockingly good Swedish during karaoke night (pictured below), and partied with me on the cheesy Birka Paradise boat on Valentine's Day. And then someone stole his debit card number and cleared our bank account of a big chunk of money, which wasn't cool at all. We're involved in an ATM fraud investigation right now and hopefully it'll be okay, but it was definitely a jarring ending to our strange long weekend. Whaddya know, it turns out Stockholm is edgy after all!

Launch That!

Well, I'm now down to the final 17 days of life in Scandinavia. I move out of my apartment on February 27th so Ganda can move in, and then I make stops in Helsinki, New York and Maryland before heading back to Santa Fe. The end is bittersweet, as endings often are. I'm ready to go home, but I'm so happy that our new Web site is about to launch. It's in great shape and I think it will really do good things for Bonnier in terms of creating a new brand position that emphasizes openness and an emphasis on people. If the site helps a single employee get a new perspective on her job and suddenly realize she works for a cool, progressive company, my time in Sweden will have been well-spent.

Lately I've mainly been spending time at work, but I did take a couple days off last week to hang out with John during his all-too-brief visit. I'll write more about that in my next post, because I'd like to keep this one short and sweet. Why? So you can watch this video tour of the new Bonnier.com site. I look like a complete dork, but that's the price I'm willing to pay to spread the gospel. Enjoy!

ABBA SingStar. Oh, My Aching Head...

Wow, my posts are becoming few and far between these days. Remember when I used to post a couple times a day sometimes? Well, that was before work got crazy-busy. Now I come home from work and... keep working. But I'm excited about the payoff. I unveiled the new Bonnier Web site for a couple of select audiences on Friday, and I'm going to continue giving presentations about it all next week, until John comes to town and whisks me off on a romantic adventure. (That is what you're going to do, right, honey?)

Anyway, I am thrilled that I'll soon be able to go home feeling like I accomplished my mission for being here. Not that I was ever in doubt about that, but I would have been seriously bummed if something had gone wrong and the project had fallen through or been drastically off-deadline. People in our company are so used to Web launches being delayed indefinitely that no one really believed we'd actually get a site live in February, so I feel good about showing them that it's possible to execute a plan on time and on budget. Time to raise our standards, folks!

Other than working 12-14 hour days all last week, the main things I did were to go to a bar on Friday night and make friends with some random people (an Estonian, a Dutch guy and an Italian) who were here for the big international furniture show this weekend, and go with my friend Maria to a party last night. I'm trying to decide whether to go to the furniture show myself today, but I don't have much momentum—indeed, what I've got is a very sedentary form of inertia—because I'm massively hung over this morning.

Last night's party was at the home of a nice couple named Helen and Tomas (sorry if I butchered the spellings, guys). They hosted a pair of "troubadours" who are doing something called The Living Room Tour, which entails playing only for parties in people's homes. Kind of a fun idea. The music was okay, but the main feature was apparently that their lyrics are very funny, and I didn't understand most of what they were saying, so I didn't get the full effect. Plus, one of the musicians told Maria to shut up when she was translating a joke to me, which I thought was kind of funny, but not very nice, considering there were only like 30 of us sitting there. Maybe they play in people's living rooms because those are the only audiences likely to give them silent, rapt attention.

Anyway, after the troubadours, we had a dance party complete with disco ball, and played SingStar on the PS3. (Kudos to the hosts for such a sweet party set-up! I wonder whether that disco ball is always in their living room?) I bought Guitar Hero for John, which I thought covered our musical videogame needs, but SingStar is really, really fun. I think we're going to have to get that one, too. The best part is that you can sing at the same time as someone else, and the game shows you who's singing the song better. So it's simultaneously a duet and a duel. The second best part is that there's a SingStar ABBA edition. You guessed it—nuthin' but ABBA songs. My my, how can I resist you? The above image of ABBA clad in gold foil against a Swedish flag is perhaps my new favorite photo of all time, by the way. Can I get that in extra-large poster size, please?

Anyway, last night we were drinking boxed white wine for like five hours while all the singing and dancing was going on, and today I think I have sulfite poisoning. But I have the feeling I'm the only person in the world who would attribute her throbbing head to wine sulfites rather than, um, just a massive amount of alcohol. What a dork.

Perfect Stockholm Saturday

Yesterday I had such a great day. In the morning I went on a run around Kungsholmen (the island right below the one I live on) on a beautiful trail I'd never used before. I wish I had discovered it earlier, because it meanders beside the water most of the way, passing all these sweet little cafes and swimming spots which are probably supercharming in warm weather.

Anyway, the view was still great and no weird precipitation was falling out of the sky, which made it all the better. The trail winds around City Hall, so I took a detour through the courtyard, with it's amazing arches and vaults, and found a wedding photographer shooting portraits of a bride and groom there. The sun actually peeked out for a little bit and lit up Södermalm across the water, giving the neighborhoods and boats kind of a hallelujah quality.

It was fuh-rEEzing cold, though, and I couldn't feel my hands by the time I got back to my own neighboorhood, so I stopped and had a latte and did some people-watching in a really sweet little cafe. People here always look so elegant. I mean, sometimes you see people wearing athletic clothing, but no one ever looks schlubby. Even just to go out for a coffee, Swedes tend to look very put-together. I, on the other hand, seem to have two modes: dressed up and decidedly NOT dressed up. I've been trying to stay a little closer to the mean lately, but I find it actually takes some effort. Just throwing on jeans and a cute top and a sweater doesn't really do the trick for me, somehow. Maybe I'm just inherently messy or something, but I actually have to do my hair and throw on some cute shoes and accessories as well, or I look like I just rolled out of bed (and not in the good way).

Oh yeah, another thing I saw on my run was a couple of people emerging from the water after scuba diving! I was dumbfounded. They must have been on some sort of research mission, testing the water or doing underwater archeology work (I like to make my conjectures as mysterious as possible).

Later in the day, I met up with a couple of girlfriends to see the movie Mammoth and have dinner at this yummy Asian place/nightclub called Ljundgrens. The movie was good, but not as good as I was expecting. On a scale of 1 to 5, we all gave it a 3.5. The thing is, it needed an edit.

You get invested in the characters because Michelle Williams and Gael Garcia Bernal are really good actors and the little girl who plays their daughter is adorable and bright. There are several parallel plotlines all constructed to tug at your heart, which works, but then toward the end, the director throws in a couple of scenes that are tangential to the plot and just kind of push the message over the edge.

The movie is about work/life balance—how we should prioritize our families versus our jobs. But after the theme has been hit home by all the film's primary characters, we really don't need to be hit over the head with it by the revelation that the secondary characters are dealing with the same issues. My humble opinion is that if a couple of unnecessary scenes get cut, this movie could be a success on the international market, but without a visit to the cutting room, sophisticated audiences might be a little annoyed that it's so unsubtle. It still moved me, though. Michelle Williams was particularly convincing and Bernal's character was so sweet that I liked him even when maybe I shouldn't have. But then again, I think he's superhot, so that might have tainted my judgement. A lot of critics in Sweden are comparing the film to Babel, which also starred Bernal and which I think got so-so ratings in the U.S.? I can't remember. I should also mention that about a quarter of the movie was in Tagalog with Swedish subtitles. I was very proud of myself for being able to read along!

After the movie, we had a great meal at Ljundgrens. I had a very modern and innovative sashimi plate that was to die for. And we had really good ginger cocktails made with fresh ginger juice. Almost healthy, but with vodka.

One more random item of business: I've been using a reusable shopping bag from Envirosax that my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas just about every single day, and I wanted to mention it here because I think everyone should have one! It's made from fine-gauge polyester, like a parachute, and folds into a tiny cylinder (like a little sleeping bag) that weighs nothing and fits into your purse or briefcase, so you always have a bag on hand if you decide to make a quick stop at the store. They also come in 5-bag pouches so you're prepared for a bigger shopping trip. I think this is fantastic for urban dwellers who might spontaneously decide to buy a few things as they walk past a store—now we can be effortlessly prepared instead of using a plastic bag or lugging around normal cloth shopping bags, which take up a lot of space. Bonus: Envirosax are printed with very stylish graphic designs, too, if you care. Buy one here!