snow is your friend

hello dear all,

So much for the blogging impetus, eh? Well, I guess I am as much to blame as anyone, but this internship o' mine is just plain hard graft! Sure, it's located in this beautiful Disney-esque little city, but look closer and you'll see that those sweet little cobble stones are nothing short of sure-fire traps of doom, who's sole purpose in existence is to take you down to their level, and take you down hard. So far my mortal coil has not yet seen these little harbingers of destruction from up close, but I have up to now experienced an average of 5 near-slips per day: with the added dread of plummeting to the earth carrying such appliances as MP3 jukeboxes, mobile phones and -let's not forget- the laptop. One can understand that being on the streets thus gives a whole new meaning to the word breathtaking.
In all of this I have learned a very valuable lesson: snow is your friend. It may sound silly, but in Scandinavia you need those little white fractals of ice firmly and amorously embracing the soles of your shoes. When walking along a pedestrian track you should therefore always reciprocate by carefully placing your feet on the patches of snow, lovingly ignoring their grubby appearance. You may be tempted by the clean spots of clear street, but beware! Do not go to the light! These apparently safe zones of paving are in fact completely invisible mini glaciers, solidly frozen to the surface of the road so as to lure you into believing in their false sense of security. I imagine they have on their conscience many a broken bone, the little bastards.
And so, my reader(s): today's advice is to rid yourself of the thought that clean is safe! In fact, the grubbier the path, the better: so as not to pollute the Baltic sea with salt, they just throw around sand (and its big brother: gravel) in a random pattern in this corner of the world.

Do avoid the yellow patches, though.

Swedish television, for those of you who were waiting for that post, will be discussed at a later date, due to the writer's current disposition of trying not to fall to her untimely death at the age of 23.