Living in a Foreign Country, Lesson 17
by Noelani Kamelamela
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What to Expect: First post of work by this here person, is a stand-alone effort. Writer is working in Sweden currently.
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Disclaimer: Some characters may not show up in the intended way. If these next three letters are only one letter each, then you will not have a problem: ä, å, ö. If you cannot read these characters, just focus on the English parts. It shouldn't detract from the reading experience.
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Distribution: Please email this to people and post it if you feel others will enjoy it. I wouldn't have shared this with you if I didn't think that it was a good experience to share. I would like to be credited as the author if you do end up sharing this. Please don't copy any part of this work and/or distribute this work with your name attached, that's plagiarism and I don't like it. I won't do anything to you, but it's a bad thing to do and bad things have a way of haunting you . . . call it karma or what you will.
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Feedback: Sure! I love feedback. If you read this and feel that you don't understand any part or if you just want to respond to this email me at
hilo@mit.edu. Any angry emails telling me that my writing sucks without explaining will not be responded to. Angry emails which tell me why my writing sucks will be responded to politely. Other emails not of these types will receive romantic or silly poetry. Uh, you should specify which kind you want.
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If you ever travel to a foreign country, you can expect to experience many new and exciting things. Including bathrooms. Or....washrooms....depending on where you are, they get called different things. Bathroom, Restroom, Washroom, Water Closet, and probably a cornucopia of other names. However, no matter what kind of bathroom you go to, you don't really expect to get stuck inside.
American bathrooms tend to be very stable-like. You can get out, whether or not the door is defective. Swedish bathrooms on the other hand, are a little on the janitor's closet side. It's a nice, completely tiled white-grey space with a sink, a toilet, a mirror, cups (I don't know what they're for! Don't ask me), and various paper products all arranged very neatly. And it's clean. As in, you could lick a tile and not taste a thing.
But why am I starting this way? Sweden is a wonderful country. With wonderful, clean bathrooms. And I had a wonderful, exciting, fun internship at Materialvetenskap at Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan this summer. And one wonderful day after not getting any wonderful inspiration to write my final report on my project, hideously titled after much thought on my advisor's part "Supersaturation Level of Alumina Nucleation in Steel," I decided to go eat lunch at one of the school's restaurants.
I felt a little discouraged because I'd been trying to even start writing a sentence for the report ever since I started, which, by now, had been about a month. My research had been going rather well. I had at least fifteen papers to cite, so why couldn't I write anything?
As I went to the restaurant, I realized my hands were probably dirty and so headed downstairs to use one of the bathrooms. I freshened up, sending mental praise to the janitors of Sweden, and then reached to unlock the door of the small closet bathroom space.
Now, Swedish bathrooms are nice from the inside, as I have described, and the outside, which I haven't described yet. The doors tend to be white with a padlock which can be locked once inside and a handle. Both the padlock and handle tend to be nice and shiny. Ooh shiny. Pretty. Nice. Swedish. Moving on.
I flipped the padlock open and reached slowly to the handle. As I turned the handle, there was a very audible "thump." Not a "click." Not a "shoomp." A "thump." Well, it was more like a "thunk." And then, after turning the handle and musing about the strangeness of Swedish locks, I, holding my backpack in my left hand, leaned the right side of my body against the door. And leaned. And kept leaning. In fact, walking out through the door of the small closet bathroom space felt very similar to leaning against a very sturdy, very white wooden door.
Eventually, I realized that the door was not open. Imagine the awareness spreading throughout my brain, neurons firing in rapid succession. Imagine the shock and surprise. Imagine the cursing because I intend to keep this story G-rated.
In true action style and believing that the door must just be a little sticky, I slammed my body against the door. And realized that Swedish doors are tough. And hard, very hard. Lots of tensile strength and durability. Mmm...Mechanical Properties of Materials...Ooh yeah. They probably don't have a very high Hardness in Vicker's, but I digress. After the pain had subsided enough to let me think coherently about the situation, I tried fiddling with the padlock. Maybe, I reasoned, this lock was put in backwards. So, with the padlock in the locked position, I turned the handle and leaned. And leaned.
So, it wasn't the padlock. I have no idea what to do. No, no I do. What resources do I have? While keeping up a running inner monologue similar to this of what I could do to help my situation, there were other, much sillier thoughts running through my head. Thoughts such as "I'm going to die in a Swedish bathroom," "Maybe a hot janitor will find me? God bless Scandinavia," "I can fly out of here! I've got superpowers!" and "Hot janitors! Maybe I should just wait in here . . . " tended to be winning the "How-In-The-Frilly-Heck-Am-I-Going-To-Get-Out-Of-Here" Marathon.
The following five minutes of action were trial-and-error on my part. Highly scientific trial-and-error, I promise.
Problem: Need door open.
Hypothesis: Kick door until door open.
Conclusion: Feet sore now.
Problem: Need door open. Feet sore now.
Hypothesis: Slam right shoulder against door until door open.
Conclusion: I tried this already, but I forgot. Right shoulder sore now.
Problem: Need door open. Feet and right shoulder sore now.
Hypothesis: Slam left shoulder against door until door open.
Conclusion: This was actually a variation on an earlier hypothesis. Left shoulder sore now.
Problem: Need door open. Feet and shoulders sore now.
Hypothesis: Think outside of the box! Think! No more violence! It just ends in pain!
Conclusion: Hot janitors! Maybe I should just wait in here . . .
Ugh, I needed to think out of the box. Just thinking about what I did makes me tired. And I was tired. So, I sat down on the toilet after inconclusive and exhaustive experimentation and looked around. I needed help.
Problem: I need help.
Hypothesis: Other people come to bathrooms. Other people can help me, well more than I've been able to help myself. . . Must communicate with other people.
I really don't trust my spoken Swedish. It's all right when I all I have to do is point somewhere and say "left" or "right" (approximations of such, "till vänster" and "till höger") maybe even when I say "I am an American. Can you understand English?" ("Jag heter Amerikan. Prätter du Engelskan? Can du Engelskan? Engelskan? English? Engelskan?" These phrases must be said with appropriate waving of arms as if you were a chicken), but mostly its just embarassing and even more difficult to communicate when I try. I understand when it's spoken to me, mostly. It's really funny how people just assume that I'm Swedish. It doesn't help that I am multicultural and can nod like a professional, just makes me look even more Swedish, I guess. Every person who has walked up to me on the street starts speaking Swedish to me. Some people from Bolognaise, France did. Even a nice couple from Texas thought I was Swedish. The nice couple did the waving of arms as if a chicken, that's where I picked up the phrase and the motions.
Even with my lack of Svenska skizzles, Noe-speak for skills, I know a couple of phrases. I pulled out my trusty Kollegie block*A4*70 blad*linjerat*hålat (notebook for all of the notes I took for the report that would never get written if I didn't get out) and ripped out a sheet of paper. Using a green highlighter, I spelled out hjälp in big letters, then stuck the piece of paper out so that the words could be read by a passerby.
Probably looked like this to the person who finally helped me: HJÄLP!!!!!!!
This, as you can probably guess, means help. As in, help me. In my case, that word meant many things. It meant "help me, I don't want to get stuck in a bathroom unless you're a hot janitor in which case let's get stuck together, I need to write my report, I need to eat lunch, I have to get out of this white-grey clean area of Swedishness, please please help!"
A couple of minutes after I had placed the sign under the evil white Swedish bathroom door, I heard a voice say "Hello?" It sounded male and loud and helpful. I was saved!
After much mutual fumbling and saying of different phrases, he made me realize that I had never bothered to unlock the padlock from the time before when I believed that the padlock may have been put in backwards. Silly me. I unlocked the padlock, turned the handle and leaned. And out of the prison I walked.
I was really confused. Did I do that? Was it the padlock? Will I ever be able to go into a Swedish bathroom again without horrible flashbacks? Although, I have to admit, thinking about hot janitors wasn't so bad.
After a bit of verbal exchange and much playing of charades (you really should learn to do this well, its practically essential when in another country), I looked at the door. I was still confused, but I was beginning to piece an idea together. One of the handles was hanging off, the handle that was attached to the outside of the door. I pointed to the handle.
"Was this on the floor?" I said, pointing at the handle then on the floor.
It was obvious that he didn't really understand what I was saying. I improvised.
"Handle. Floor." I mimed the handle falling to the ground.
He still didn't get it. He had saved me from the bathroom, and I was grateful. He was probably really intelligent. He probably had a Ph.D. in something. I was probably ordering around the next Albert Einstein, but the desire to know the meaning of what had just happened to me burned my politeness to ashes, begging for some kind of release.
I reached for the handle and gently grasped it, intending to mime as I once had before. Without much warning, the handle fell off.
"Oh, yes. The handle on the floor. Yes, I found it that way." He nodded furiously.
"Oh, right. I will . . . leave a sign. Writing for . . . the bathroom. So people . . . know." I nodded furiously back.
"That . . . would be good. I will . . . leave now." My savior nodded ceremoniously and left. He never even told me his name.
Feeling joyful and a little sad that I didn't get the Nordic god's name, I made a different sign with my green highlighter and notebook with the word avstängt, which means closed, and a monochrome cartoon of a green stick person inside a green bathroom yelling hjälp in green letters with a green handle on the ground outside of the green bathroom. I stole some sticky tape from a bathroom next to the one I had been occupying for some time and taped the sign to the closed faulty-door bathroom. As an afterthought, I picked up the handle that had been on the ground and placed it closer to the bathroom. Maybe someone would come along and fix it.
I left and got some lunch, alone as the only American at KTH as usual. I held on to most of my laughter until I was out of the restaurant and heading back to Materialvetenskap. I don't think I even started my report that day. But I didn't mind. I think I deserved a little rest.
Living in a foreign country can be a little too exciting at times.
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Pax! -Bev