The Culture Festival of Stockholm

Two weeks ago I worked for a big festival in town. I had got the job from an acquaintance of mine who lives in the same neighbourhood.

At the festival I was in charge of organising the dressing room areas for the artists who numbered to between 50 and 300 artists per day. We had 2 very large auditoriums to our disposal and I arranged them like little rooms, only without walls. Instead of walls I taped the outline of walls and doors on the floor, so it would look like a blueprint of a house. I thought it was quite fun.

Everything went splendidly or so I thought, my acquaintance who was now my boss wasn’t very thrilled by anything I did or said. She constantly checked up on me “Have you missed this?” “Have you forgotten that?” “Maybe it is better if you do it this way” “Maybe you can do that instead” But the worst was her tone of voice, she spoke to me (and to everybody else) as if she was talking to a five year old, with her head leaning a bit to the side and a patronising smile on her lips.

But since we are still on speaking terms and she wants me to work at the festival next year I must have done something right or maybe I just didn’t do too much wrong…

The best part of the festival was working with the unpaid volunteers. We had about 20 of them, all different sizes, colours, shapes and ages.

There was the greying 50-ish German man who loved everything to do with electricity, if you asked him to move a table from one end of the room to the other he would find some electrical extension cords and start taping them to the floor instead.

Another elderly French speaking man from Burundi was very sweet and he said “Yes of course” to everything one asked of him, only then to disappear for an hour. On his return and questioned why he hadn’t done what he had been asked, he would just smile sweetly again and shrug. (At the end of the week we realised he could talk but didn’t understand any Swedish).

Then there was the little plump old lady who smiled so much her face shrivelled up in a thousand wrinkles. I asked her to fill ONE (1) thermos with coffee. This she did, the only problem was that when I came back from some other chores she had continued to brew coffee and filled every single thermos, jug and cup in the whole room with coffee (about 20 litres of coffee) and she just stood there completely lost and begged me for some more vessels to fill.

There were some young stars as well.

The funniest character must have been a young girl who tripped in on stilettos, tiny shorts and a minute bikini top late one afternoon. She clicked her way over to me and flashed a great big Miss Universe smile at me from behind her huge Chanel sunglasses.

Our job was to make coffee, fix catering and tidy up, her attire was more suited for sipping cool drinks by a pool. I didn’t say anything because I figured that she would come dressed more appropriately the next day – but alas the stilettos, the bikini top and tiny shorts were with us the rest of the week. This Little Miss Universe was more of a talker than a doer, a wide eyed naïve thing. Everything was amazing and fabulous and wonderful and brilliant and WOW! She questioned everything to pieces: why this and why not this and who are you? And why are you? And what are you? She actually prepared 100 questions for me to answer about my life...

But I also met a very nice girl from London, a writer who just moved to Sweden to be with her love. She was (thank you god!) one of those people who when given a task she would do it 150% and then do some more, intelligently as well, without complaining and always smiling.