Anyone who can think of a good title; enlighten me

More than a week has passed and I think I'll devote this post to it. Maybe next time I'll write about the odd things about Sweden? I should stop promising things right away. But I will ensure you that waiting for the post about the odd things will be all worth it :) I've been keeping a list and it's pretty filled.

The weekend of September 8, my mum came to visit me for the third time already. The previous two times her visits had been mainly about arranging lots of stuff together and it actually resulted in some tense atmospheres from time to time. But by now I've pretty much settled and we could do some fun things. Really sounds like we didn't do anything fun before, which is not true either, trust me. Anyway, one of the weirdest things was that, after we had finished eating at the Pizza Hut, we were forced to give a tip. Uh, right!? When my mum paid, the woman was basically like: ''Okay, and then you have to fill in an amount for the tip''. The machine didn't work, so my mum ended up not paying a tip, but are we the only ones that are surprised you're being forced to give a tip in Sweden!? I wonder if it's only at Pizza Hut (I'm someone who eats out rarely, so I can't really know, but I do know that even the Arabic people in Rosengård don't ask for a tip, let alone ''true rich Western people'' in the centre of Malmö), because it's an American restaurant chain. But every time we ate at Pizza Hut in England and Scotland, no one asked for a tip...

The highlight of the weekend was definitely our visit to the hairdresser. There are several hairdressers in Rosengård (which is the neighbourhood I live in. I don't think I mentioned that in my blog yet) and my mum thought it'd be best to go to the one with a Spanish name. I don't think there are any Spanish people living in Rosengård and the people at the barbershop we went to only firmed my thoughts. They looked at us as if we were lost and weren't supposed to be there at all. After making clear we wanted to have a haircut (in a weird mix of Swedish and English), we sat down and waited for 30 minutes. Thirty nerve wrecking minutes I will confess. I had the same hairdresser for nearly 10 years in the Netherlands and I'm always afraid someone does something I didn't want to my hair. The fact people in Rosengård speak very poor English and I speak very poor Swedish (it'd be more useful if I spoke Arabic and/or Bosnian though, but I happen to not know those languages either) didn't help my comfort either. But seen the fact the average price for a simple haircut in Sweden is about 35-40 Euro and in Rosengård it's not even 15 Euro, I didn't see a reason for not trying one of the many hairdressers over here. And I live in Rosengård, so why bother going somewhere else and spend more money on the same haircut.
The only thing that gave me some comfort during those 30 minutes, is that a lot of guys around my age in Rosengård have a haircut pretty similar to mines, only way shorter on top. So when it was my turn, I gestured a bit around my head and tried to explain I wanted exactly the same haircut as I already had at that moment, but shorter. The woman looked like she understood what I was trying to say and I sat down, looking at my mum who'd already been seated for about 15 minutes. Then, the man next to me waiting for his own haircut, turned to me and asked: ''Do you speak German?'' (he said it in German, just to be clear). Then we basically had a conversation in German about how I wanted to have my hair. Though I will confess we switched to English after some time, because my German is a bit rusty when it comes to speaking. But he actually spoke better German than English. It was so funny, because he was this typical Arabic man you'll encounter in Rosengård and most of them don't even speak English, let alone German. But because he spoke both of those language, he could tell the hairdresser in detail - in Arabic - how I'd like to have my hair. The nerve wrecking problem of my life was solved :) The man told me he was a truck driver and when he found out I actually live in Rosengård, he was really confused and wondered why someone like me would move to Rosengård. I said I didn't see a reason for not moving to Rosengård and he got so excited after that. Getting back to my hair; it got cut way better than my hairdresser in the Netherlands used to do it. It was done in such an extremely detailed way that I couldn't ask for more (I love detail). Next time I'll go to the barbershop just outside my apartment though, because it's only 6 Euro and the one I went to last week was 17 Euro, which is a normal price for Dutch standards, but why not try the cheapest one and see if it's just as good? I didn't go there at first because they were closed and it was Sunday, so I wasn't sure if they were going to open later at the day. They don't actually have any opening times on display. Such a missed chance for them. Turned out they were open later at the day though.

I think I should tell a bit about the neighbourhood I live in. It's odd I didn't talk about it before. Rosengård, with 85% of its inhabitants having a none-Swedish background, is infamous and considered to be the most dangerous place you can visit in Sweden, maybe even Scandinavia. Swedes are crazy about reporting every bad thing that happens here. This resulted in the neighbourhood being considered as some Godforsaken place filled with criminals. It's believed that there's a huge gun trade and many gangs, so the most common question people ask me is if I've been shot yet. When I tell people I live in Rosengård, they are like: ''Oh, okay....'' and a few seconds later: ''So... is it okay over there?''. Honestly, I've cycled through the neighbourhood very late at night several times now and still haven't encountered anything disturbing. When there are some places I should avoid late at night, well, I'll just find out about them. I'm not deliberately looking for dangerous places at night, but I'm not avoiding any places either. I think that only fuels fear. Someone actually recommended me to cycle a different route at night that goes around Rosengård instead of through it, just because there are supposed to be many tough areas here. Many people are avoiding Rosengård right from the start without even having put one single step into the neighbourhood. In combination with the Swedish media being obsessed by negative news about the area, lots of people are simply fed by biased media and ignorance. Most people who are scared of Rosengård have never actually been here. Before I moved here, I already noticed its the black sheep of Sweden by simply browsing the internet (some people I know in Finland even knew the neighbourhood), but when I came here and started encountering people in Malmö, I noticed how big the image of Rosengård is. It's huge. It's so big that most of the international students I met, who had never even been to Sweden before, were shocked when they heard I live there, because they had heard many stories from Swedish people. Someone who lives in a totally different city even got warned by people from that exact city, saying he should definitely not visit Rosengård. People who don't even live in Malmö, let alone visited this neighbourhood. I think it's a real shame that many Swedes even spread their opinions on international students for example. I think such people are the ones who could form a good objective opinion. There have been a few big riots here years ago, Fox News even came over once. Yeah, it was pretty bad, but in general - and relatively speaking - Rosengård is not that bad. Compared to Dutch ghetto's, it's an extremely tidy place with tons of mowed grass. It's very green here and Swedish municipalities mow the grass for its people. Imagine the tidiness compared to Dutch ghetto's, not even mentioning countries like England and the USA. Seen the fact I've been to some ghetto's in the Netherlands and didn't even feel uncomfortable over there, I wasn't worried about Rosengård. To be honest; Swedish people are just not as ''used'' to foreign people as Dutch people for example. I'm not going to say the Netherlands is a country where you'll find zero racism (quite the opposite, really), but we have a big colonial history which resulted in immigration that started way earlier than Sweden's (the Netherlands' rather few restrictions concerning immigration has also resulted in a lot of foreign people living in the country). The fact Islamophobia is on the rise and most people in Rosengård are Muslims isn't helping much either.

I could go on forever :)

So what did I do apart from that weekend? Well, mainly a lot of reading. I had to re-read everything we had to read the past two weeks because I had trouble making notes and therefore didn't make any at all. A lot of reading, I promise you. Something worth mentioning was the ''Welcome Day'' organized earlier last week. We had an amazingly nice lunch, but the rest of the day was a bit odd. Pretty much everything was in Swedish and in some way it felt like they were making fun of the none-Swedish speakers. It was in a theatre and there were funny interviews with some people and there was a comedian. I couldn't laugh too much, because, well, everything was in Swedish. At some point the comedian did a long imitation of Zlatan Ibrahimović, but because the girl next to me had no clue who this Zlatan guy was, I ended up explaining it to her. 
Earlier that morning I actually felt extremely sick. It still amazes me that a few hours later, I felt fully healthy again. I was extremely nauseous and felt as if I'd throw up any minute. Maybe I caught something the day before, when I got soaking wet while riding my bike. Soaking wet might even be an understatement. When I finally found a place where it wasn't raining, someone biking past me even stopped to ask if I was hurt.

The most surprising thing at the moment? I started to really enjoy cooking. It has even become so extreme that I see it as a moment of relaxation and don't want to hurry with it because I have something important to do for school. This is quite amazing, because I never liked cooking and whenever I had to cook in the Netherlands, I liked to be finished as soon as possible. I was a very easy cook. Of course I'm no Gordon Ramsay in Sweden, but I like to make a real edible meal instead of eating something super easy. A lot of students actually seem to do the last thing. But no, of course I like to be the opposite of a typical student. I'm so tidy I'll probably get high blood pressure from sharing my kitchen. I'm not even kidding. And it seems like I'm one of very few students who don't buy something in the student cafeteria every day. And the funny thing is that the people who often buy something over there, are usually the ones who most complain about Sweden being so expensive. Well, there's already this one thing you could easily save loads of money on......