The Swedish Mating Game

With the festive season packed away for another year, the sparkling Christmas lights and cosy festive markets were replaced with snow turned to grey sludge and endless dark and cold days. The anticipation that precedes Christmas was replaced by dread at the thought of a long, cold, winter. Charlotta returned from Cork, reclaiming her room in the corridor, and I moved into a flat with four young Swedes.

 They were quite a different kettle of fish from the girls in the corridor. I was now living with a gamer, seemingly allergic to daylight hours (I suppose winter in Sweden was a happy time for him), an IT whiz and martial arts enthusiast, with an impressive collection of swords and an unnerving ability to convey his disapproval of almost everything I did with just an unwavering stare. This caused me to stop whichever offence I was committing at that moment to sit cross-legged on the carpet with hands on knees with the hope that by displaying submission he would be dissuaded from using the opportunity to practise whichever life-snatching move he had learnt that week. There was the self-confessed nymphomaniac whose somewhat vocal, extra-curricular activities, often accompanied by Barry White, drove  me to purchase industrial earplugs, kept close at hand, ready to be employed at any hour of the day. The final one was a rather pleasant med student who didn’t possess any character traits quite as distinctive as the others.

 Around this time a girl I had met on the odd occasion in Christchurch, moved to Lund for a student exchange.  I wouldn’t say Kirsty and I hit it off straight away, but as the saying goes, beggars can’t be choosers, so we persisted.

I won’t lie, as much as I wax lyrical about the wonders of Sweden, winter of 2010 was brutal. Nothing brings people together like shared adversity. It soon became apparent that we both suffered from severe snow allergies. The most noticeable symptom of this debilitating illness is a weight gain of seven kilos overnight. Annoyingly, Swedish girls, having been exposed to the allergens from birth, develop immunity, thus maintaining their already unrivalled title as most disgustingly good-looking breed of the human race. This coupled with our terrible luck with the opposite sex saw us both slip into a bout of low confidence.

It didn’t stop us trying, however. It became a bit of a social experiment for us. After each fruitless night out we would retire to our favourite Turkish establishment, for a post-match play by play over a kebab. The only attention we managed to get was from the charming Turkish men. Using the attention as a balm for our bruised egos saw things getting out of hand one afternoon. So absorbed in inhaling the free fries that were now a foregone conclusion, we failed to notice we were the only customers and, that having closed the doors, three men were now closing in on us. The discussion of dowry soon got our attention however, that, the over-friendly hand on a knee and the other three men appearing from the kitchen. We made a run for it out the open kitchen door, grateful for the first time in our lives for coming from hardy, sheep-tossing stock. You Swedish girls may be beautiful but I’d like to see you spear-tackle six grown men. We didn’t stop running until we had scaled a 2m high fence and came face to face with a bunch of horrified mothers in a playcentre, shielding the eyes of their toddlers from the sight of two strange girls, dresses up around armpits and clutching the remains of their kebabs.

So what conclusions did we draw from our failed attempts to connect with the opposite sex? We had a number of excuses, fat and ugly was a popular one, foreign factor was often used as well. We really began to feel as though we were involved in a game where everyone else but us knew the rules. The mating game is hard enough when dealing your own culture, how were we ever going to figure it out here. It’s not that we were after boyfriends or even, you know, “love for a night,” just a little attention for goodness sake!

One night while discussing the situation over yet another bottle of vodka, unable to face another of our pitiful Bridget Jones ramblings, my flatmate (resident expert) stepped in to offer some advice. After listening to our game plan -make eyes at man in hope that this will be enough for him to get the hint and buy us a drink, she informed us that we needed to be more aggressive, that Swedish men were used to assertive women. She was appalled to learn that neither of us had ever made the first move when it came to boys. We weren’t against the idea, and were all for equality between the sexes. We had just never considered it before.

Emboldened by this new insight we thought we would try it out. Recently I had been finding excuses to go into a phone shop, to perve at the gorgeous sales assistant. My reasons for being there were starting to lose credibility and I was probably either starting to look like a stalker or a really pedantic selector of silicon phone protectors. Deciding this was the perfect opportunity to test out this new information, we devised a plan where I would just walk into the shop and ask him out. The target was busy with another customer when we arrived, so we mulled around the phone accessories for a while. The following is more or less what happened next.

Another Sales Assistant: Can I help you ladies with anything?

Me: No thank you, we’re here to talk to that other guy.

Another Sales Assistant: Raised eyebrows and a knowing smirk

Kirsty: Tries to distract him, with accessory related questioning.

Target is finally available. (Actually that’s something we didn’t factor in, what if he has a girlfriend???)

Target: What can I help you with?

Me: Heart racing, sweat patches no doubt appearing through my 15 layers of clothing.

Ah well actually I have a non-phone related question. Smooth Kate.

Do you want some coffee?  I know this is how it happens in American movies.  I mean only if you’re available.

 Other customers begin start to look over.

Target: Looking quite taken aback and uncomfortable. Uuuuuuuuuuuum yeah, I’ll think about it.

Me: Taking this as a promising sign, I stand there grinning like gormless twit, (we didn’t rehearse this far in.)

Target: Ah, do you want to give me your number?

Me:  Oh yeah, ok.  Actually I don’t know my number.

By this stage quite a crowd has gathered and are beginning to enjoy the show.

I have to ask Kirsty for my number, so the other sales assistant escorts her over to us clearly not wanting to miss this.

Kirsty has just lost another phone so doesn’t have my number either.

Target: Asks for my full name and date of birth.

Me:  Feeling a little insulted. I’m not too old for you.

Target: Obviously eager to get the nutcase out of his store, informs me that as this is a phone shop, he is able to find my number with a few quick clicks on the screen in front of him, if I would just give him the information.

Triumphant that a boy has asked for my number, we turn to leave the store.

Target: Hey, my name is Christian.

Pfft and?

We found a glass of wine and settled in to debrief. We were both feeling emotionally drained. Kirsty’s heart was thumping so hard during the whole episode; she didn’t hear all that was said. Feeling empowered, we declared that from now on this is how we would approach the problem.

I was looking forward to the next part of the experiment, where the boy would call and we would take that coffee. At that time I had been having a few problems with the taxi driver who until recently drove me to work for “free”. As a precaution, I answered all unidentified calls as Janet. So when one of these calls came through, and Janet answered, the guy, flustered, apologised, saying he was looking for Kate. Realising it was Phone Shop Boy I quickly reassured him that it really was Kate and I only said Janet because I had a Kurdish taxi driver called Azad stalking me. He hung up pretty quickly.