Subculture

I mentioned in an earlier post that I lived in Sweden and one of my jobs was washing dishes at a restaurant. Well, if you were going to do a job like that, you might as well do it in one of coolest restaurant/pubs in Stockholm. The joint was called Bistro Boheme. The owners were a Czechoslavakian family. The father had passed years before I started working there. The mother, Ivana, couldn't speak Swedish very well and couldn't speak any English, but yet we got along very well. Her son Jakub pretty much ran the place, and his sister Marketa was one of the bartenders. Playing the coolest music at night, and the best lunches in the daytime, Bistro was the trendiest spot in the city.

I walked right in, told them I needed a job, and I was hired. Maybe they thought having an American there would be good! I only worked weekday lunches and a few nights a week, but I loved it. Sure, the actual work sucked, but I got along with everyone, and I actually learned a lot of my Swedish working there. After my shift ended during the day, I would always relax with a good book and some coffee. After a while, I noticed a lot of the regulars would play Backgammon at the bar. I slowly joined in, and then learned the secrets of the game watching them. Before I knew it, I was playing for cigarettes. I didn't have to pay $7.00 a pack for a long time!

The nights were totally different. Once the dinner crowd left, the place lit up like the 4th of July. Stockholm on the weekends is a huge party city. Clubs are open as late as they want to. The Bistro closed at 2am. Afterwards, my friends from work and I would just sit at the bar drinking Pilsner till it had it's affect. Just sitting there, smoking, eating, talking, laughing, telling jokes, making fun of my Swedish. They were great times. Sometimes we would hit the other clubs in the city. Most of what I learned about Sweden, I learned there. All the dark secrets of the city you can't read in a happy tour guide. The underpinnings of a Socialist society and why they prefer it that way.

When I left Sweden about a year after I had that job, my friends were sad but they understood why I had to leave. I came back a couple years later to visit those friends, and had a great time for a week straight. I spent more time at the Bistro, and fell back in the routine of Backgammon, coffee, cigarettes, drinking and laughing. I haven't been back since, and chances are I won't for a good long while. But maybe one day I can return to the place and it will still have that same atmosphere.