A Few Strange Things

I apologize for neglecting my posts, it's been a busy first 3 weeks.  I've made a few new observances on the difference between the American and Swedish daily life :

The grocery carts here are taking some getting used to.  While I knew that I was going to have to have 5 kronor in order to use a grocery cart (you get the money back when you chain the cart back up at the end of your shopping trip), I was unprepared for how strange the actual carts were.  In the US your normal grocery cart goes backwards, forwards and turns...the rear wheels don't turn to the left or the right.  Here in Sweden the grocery carts can go sideways, diagonalways, in just about any direction you could possibly want.  While this sounds fine, and is easily brushed off....imagine trying to push a cart with 100 pounds of groceries and a 60 pound child standing on the front diagonally across a downwards slope leading to the parking lot...it's a bit difficult to steer in the right direction when the cart insists on going straight down the incline directly into traffic.  Maybe I haven't mastered the art of the grocery cart in Sweden, or maybe I'm just weak...but my shopping trips are always an adventure (now that I've figured out where the grocery stores are, and how to navigate the many roundabouts).

Another oddity that I noticed just recently (we had our first movie night), was just about everything to do with the theater.  When we first went in we made the normal run to the bathroom (to keep from having to miss part of the movie)...but the door was locked!!!  Of course Joel was completely unfazed by this, and had he not been there I don't know that I would have figured out the secret.  There is a code on your movie ticket that you have to enter into a number pad that unlocks the bathroom...lucky for me I had thrown the movie ticket into the front pocket of my purse and it was easily retrievable, but still, a secret code to use the bathroom???  Come on, really?  Are there so many people in Stockholm wanting to walk in to the movie theater just to use their bathrooms, that they need  to put a lock on the doors?  And to be honest, the bathrooms weren't that nice, or clean for that matter.
As an American I have, quite frequently, participated in the time honored tradition of arriving at the movie theater at a ridiculously early time in order to ensure that I could secure a good seat in the actual theater...oh, but that isn't the way here in Sweden.  When you buy your ticket, you choose your seat.  Assigned theater seating.  No more"saving" the seat next to you in order to ensure the desired space between groups attending. So, even though there were 3 or 4 empty seats next to the isle...I still had to sit next to some complete stranger who, unforutnatley, had yet to discover the joys of deodorant.