Carl Nilsson-Polias

Author’s note: this epistle is online for the sake of posterity, transparency and archaeology. Written only weeks after my final high school exam and sent to only a handful of people, it’s unsurprisingly embarrassing in hindsight but, unfortunately, not far from my manner of writing now, five years later. Carl, December 2006

Greetings fellow members of the universal yuj!

This should be the first instalment of a series of e-postcards that will
attempt to provide a discussion and analysis of that most ubiquitous of
literary subjects - life. Along the way, I might mention what Sweden is like
but don‚t expect too much from me.

While some people use leather straps and metal studs to satisfy their
masochistic desires, the Nilsson-Polias family, being the boring bourgeois
product of cosmopolitan Adelaide that they are, use intercontinental travel
to sate their appetite for punishment. What should be your regular
3-stopover, 32-hour haul, this year became a 40-hour journey through the
depths of human suffering and degradation. Thanks to the wonders of an
absolute shirt load of frequent-flyer points we managed to get an upgrade
from Melbourne to Frankfurt. So, we had business class seats, business class
meals (accompanied by pressed linen table cloths and napkins!), business
class service and business class German neighbours across the aisle. As you
might imagine, this was actually quite pleasant and this alone should stop
me from bitching but Qantas still managed to screw things up. A delayed
take-off of three hours in Melbourne meant we, along with a host of others,
missed our connecting flight to Gothenburg. Hence, another five hour wait in
one of the worst-designed, least smoke-free airports in the world -
Frankfurt. However, this wait was not without its advantages for it allowed
young Carl to conduct various observations pertaining to the human condition
and to enjoy watching various cultural stereotypes play out their roles in
public.
The first subject of such an observation was a middle-aged, apparently
single Jewish woman from Australia. She had missed her connecting flight to
Tel Aviv because of the delayed Qantas flight. On arrival in Frankfurt,
Qantas opened a single counter to deal with around 200 pissed off travellers
who were now stranded in the industrial heartland of southwest Germany. The
woman under observation made it quite clear to anyone within earshot (namely
the European Union and parts of upper Mongolia) that this was a disgrace and
she wasn‚t flying with Qantas again. Either in response to her outbursts or
in order to stop other members of the queue from giving her a good slap and
a warm glass of milk, Qantas eventually opened two other counters. This now
allowed the said woman to jump every 30 seconds between queues in the futile
hope of getting to a counter within the 7 hours she had before the next
flight to Tel Aviv. Needless to say, my mother remained a pillar of Swedish
stoicism and pragmatism throughout the entire affair and got to the counter
a good 15 minutes before the aforementioned woman.
The time spent in the queues also allowed me to develop some completely
stupid, useless and ignorant portraits of various nationalities. Germans:
having been to Australia, they all (I mean all!) wear Akubra hats. Swedes:
having been to Australia, they look like a cross between an albino rabbit
and a lobster (thanks to blond hair and sunburn). Australians: wear thongs,
even when they know (or do they?) that they are arriving during the European
winter.
My last observations in Frankfurt were of a Chinese family and a German man
involved in the kind of conversation that should only exist on bad
teaching-aids for English as a Second Language. The German man was dressed
in snakeskin cowboy boots, black leather pants, black leather jacket, black
leather hat etc. etc. In case you hadn‚t grasped this yet, he‚d been to
Texas (apparently all Germans who are on their way home from Texas look like
this). Naturally, this haute couture caught the eye of the patriarch of the
Chinese family. Being the worldly, experienced traveller that he was, he
immediately thought he was in the presence of a real-life, tough-as-you-like
cowboy. Barely managing to stifle high-pitched squeals of delight, he
attempted to nonchalantly strike up a conversation by commenting “Nice belt
buckle”. In the ensuing scenes of camera swapping and snaps of the Chinese
man in various parts of the cowboy‚s attire, I felt the need to fill in some
of the details of these two men‚s history. The German man was obviously
single because no one would contemplate marrying such a complete dunce. He
probably worked selling some absolutely pointless device in his hometown of
Hamburg (this part turned out to be correct - he was a wallpaper salesman -
he showed the Chinese family some of the samples he had with him - they were
very impressed by the texture and quality of the finish). The Chinese man
was actually Chinese and so I figured that he must be an engineer,
accountant or Party member because he had enough money to take his family on
a trip to the USA and Europe and his rather infantile behaviour suggested he
didn‚t spend a great deal of time toiling the land for the greater good of
the People‚s Democratic Republic. However, the two men were nothing compared
to the daughter in the Chinese family. Judging by her grasp of the English
language and her factual knowledge she was probably almost 20 years old.
Judging by her worldliness, demeanour, dress-sense and conversation she was
7 and three quarters. Her enthusiasm was exemplary. Not content with keeping
a conversation going on wallpaper and Shanghai‚s public transport system
with a middle-aged German man dressed entirely in leather, every now and
again she skipped over to an Indian girl (who also spoke very good English)
and suggested they be pen pals. The Indian girl seemed to be slightly less
enthusiastic about this proposal and, when the time was right, made an
opportune getaway from that part of the transfer lounge, dragging her
confused parents along with her. Unfortunately, I (along with my mother)
soon tired of hearing how wonderful it is to travel for one week in the USA
in order to visit virtually every city ever mentioned in a Hollywood movie
without doing much more than shop and strike up conversations with German
tourists. So, we moved on to greener pastures.

Finally arriving in Sweden, we were met by a +5 temperature and absolutely
no snow. It is currently -10 with snow promised for tomorrow, but I won’t
hold my breath. Why is snow important? Imagine, if you will, that you are
living in Robe or Goolwa with your 93 year-old grandfather who is half-deaf.
It is stinking hot outside but you can’t go into the water because its
poisoned, you have a television but there‚s only one channel and you don’t
understand what’s so entertaining about seeing Swedish personalities answer
questions on local geology. What do you do? Other than read, write
long-winded emails and sleep? Nothing, nada, sweet Fanny Adams. At least
with snow, there is some possibility of fun! My mum actually cried out
yesterday “Why do I come to Sweden? Do I forget how f*‰&ing boring it is?”

Speaking of reading books: before I left, my father (also known as ‘that man
who lives with us’) suggested I read Philip Roth’s book “Portnoy’s
Complaint”. If there was any doubt that my father has single-handedly
corrupted my innocent young mind they can now be categorically removed. This book is the literary equivalent of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.It is the novel that Tenacious D and Woody Allen would write if they tripped together one fine Sunday afternoon. It is the funniest, crudest, darkest
work I have ever read. And it’s even full of literary references: Anna
Karenin, Crime and Punishment, King Lear. And I would probably recognise
plenty of irony but I was away that day. It would be the perfect addition to
the IB English syllabus, though I can’t imagine the powers-that-be would
approve of some of the language. Anyway, I’ve almost finished it and I’ve
only been reading it for two days.

Well, if this email doesn’t convince you that the IB and Sweden have given
me both verbal diarrhoea and a hint of insanity, then you must have done the
IB as well.

Until next time, goodbye.