Sunday, August 27, 2006
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Monster in Malmö
My company has sent me to Malmö to work on a “special” project - just for a month or two.
The Prison
I was taken to my company flat by a plump ditzy lady. ‘The flat’, she told me, ‘is in the “posh” part of town and close to the beach’. Oh la la! We stopped outside a very flash cake-like building with a nice lawn – but of course - this was not where I was staying. Opposite this palace of flats there was a dirty yellow brick block. It looked like a mix between a prison and a high school – shudder. A tiny slow lift took me up to the fifth floor. The plump stressed lady had left me maybe she knew what was waiting and didn’t want to be made responsible.
The Cell
The flat has a hallway with cupboards that haven’t been dusted since the sixties, leading into a small square room with a pocket-sized kitchenette. At first I thought they’d forgotten to put a bed in the room but then I found it - behind the door. A microscopic thing! Could a midget have lived there before? Or maybe people in Malmö are smaller than the rest of the world?
All the furniture is from Ikea (of course), a mish-mash of styles and eras, but the one common factor is – extremely bad taste. There’s a HUGE television and a microwave, neither of which I use! And the worst of all - NO internet! Life suddenly became so lonely, without my virtual life.
The Monster Lair
The bathroom… oh dear the bathroom has (if you can get into it cause the door gets stuck) dirty yellow walls, brown floor, a leaking toilet, a shower curtain which is greenish black from furry mould and impossible to use because it has ‘glued’ itself together.
But the worst is the sewer in the floor; which b.t.w. must be the largest in Sweden. Usually a drain or sewer will have a metal sieve-like thing to prevent stuff from clogging it up. But this sewer has something more like a net with large holes, the only thing it prevents from going in, is the person standing on top of it!
It also gives you the best ever view of the dirty black-brownish sewer. Every time I go into the bathroom my eyes are involuntarily drawn to this dark abyss and I wonder what kind of monster will come out of there in the night when I am sleeping sweetly. My biggest fear is that the door will get stuck for real whilst I’m in there with the Sewer Monster!
The Prison
I was taken to my company flat by a plump ditzy lady. ‘The flat’, she told me, ‘is in the “posh” part of town and close to the beach’. Oh la la! We stopped outside a very flash cake-like building with a nice lawn – but of course - this was not where I was staying. Opposite this palace of flats there was a dirty yellow brick block. It looked like a mix between a prison and a high school – shudder. A tiny slow lift took me up to the fifth floor. The plump stressed lady had left me maybe she knew what was waiting and didn’t want to be made responsible.
The Cell
The flat has a hallway with cupboards that haven’t been dusted since the sixties, leading into a small square room with a pocket-sized kitchenette. At first I thought they’d forgotten to put a bed in the room but then I found it - behind the door. A microscopic thing! Could a midget have lived there before? Or maybe people in Malmö are smaller than the rest of the world?
All the furniture is from Ikea (of course), a mish-mash of styles and eras, but the one common factor is – extremely bad taste. There’s a HUGE television and a microwave, neither of which I use! And the worst of all - NO internet! Life suddenly became so lonely, without my virtual life.
The Monster Lair
The bathroom… oh dear the bathroom has (if you can get into it cause the door gets stuck) dirty yellow walls, brown floor, a leaking toilet, a shower curtain which is greenish black from furry mould and impossible to use because it has ‘glued’ itself together.
But the worst is the sewer in the floor; which b.t.w. must be the largest in Sweden. Usually a drain or sewer will have a metal sieve-like thing to prevent stuff from clogging it up. But this sewer has something more like a net with large holes, the only thing it prevents from going in, is the person standing on top of it!
It also gives you the best ever view of the dirty black-brownish sewer. Every time I go into the bathroom my eyes are involuntarily drawn to this dark abyss and I wonder what kind of monster will come out of there in the night when I am sleeping sweetly. My biggest fear is that the door will get stuck for real whilst I’m in there with the Sewer Monster!
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