My acquittal

Eventually I will have to put numbers in a spreadsheet and send it to someone in an office in Australia who will file it away forever in a colossal cardboard box marked 'funding acquittals'. 

But for now this is my account of two weeks in Sweden, where I:

Ate cheese in a gold room (and not just any gold room – the one where Nobel Prize Laureates dine every year)

Setting the bar high for homemade mosaics - they used 10kg of gold

Had approximately 27 awkward moments where people spoke Swedish to me and I tried to keep the charade going with a well-placed ‘tak’ (thank you)

Gave up converting things from kroner to dollars and accepted the Stockholm-shaped hole developing in my wallet

This is what my bank account looks like now

Learnt that Strindberg invented the first ‘Blue Steel’ pout at the tender age of 22

Got so discombobulated by Swedish summer sunshine that 2am became my new bedtime

Just some standard nocturnal hijinks

Felt strangely at home dancing to Ai Se Eu Te Pego in a Stockholm theatre (Timor’s favourite pop song which I usually hear in taxis and from the mouths of children across Dili)

Experienced real Swedish hospitality when invited to dinner at the chic apartment of a playwright and her philosopher husband (yes, really that is his job)

Developed the ‘Stockholm diet’, where punnets of strawberries are supplemented with coffee, savoury crepes and cinnamon rolls

Cinnamon rolls are best served with a city skyline in the background

Went to the Stockholm Fringe Festival and paid to see a German man wax his legs (and unmentionables)

For the first time, actually participated in an Open Mic night

This is not me doing open mic... I'll aim for this in 40 years

Had several reunions (some squealing, others not) with friends from Australia, Sweden and Croatia

Old friends

Met playwrights from South Africa, Jamaica, Egypt, Canada, Uganda, Iran, India, Indonesia, Spain, Wales, Lebanon, Cuba… the list goes on

Heard my play read by Swedish (and one Norwegian) actors

This is what play readings in Sweden look like

Listened to the lead actress from Peter Brook’s Mahabarata talk about 20+ years of social activism using theatre as a tool for change

Walked through the streets chanting ‘Free Pussy Riot’ with a bunch of fearlessly vocal, creative women

Met a theatremaker from Egypt who experienced the Arab Spring firsthand. 

She said: ‘I believe nothing has changed but us. And I believe that will make all the difference’.

The Hunchback of Stockholm

If I had come from Sydney, I’m sure I would have been smitten by beautiful Stockholm. But coming from Dili means I’m not only smitten, I’m completely seduced. I’ve been stumbling around the city drooling at the perfect cafes and prim sausage dogs on leashes… leashes! I had forgotten how great fresh milk in coffee tastes and the pleasures of wandering around a city where your biggest concern is to not fall over on the picturesque cobblestones or get hit by a hipster on a bike.

Site of my first Stockholm coffee

Unfortunately, although the rest of me loves to travel, my right ankle does not. Just as it did when I arrived in Timor, it’s decided to get swollen and sore (an old netball/general uncoordination injury), which means I am not just stumbling and drooling my way around Stockholm but limping as well. It’s like the Hunchback of Notre Dame except instead of people jeering at me they keep trying to speak Swedish – the response from me is the same, a Quasimodo-esque shrug.

Buskers in tonally matching outfits with hats AND suspenders

I’m sure it’s been said many times before, but the people of Stockholm are ridiculously good-looking. It’s like someone decided to make a really compelling advertisement for socialist government, and cast it with about a million genetically blessed beings. Paid maternity leave LOOKS GOOD people.

Aside from stumbling around, I’ve been indulging in the almighty trifecta of things you can’t get in Dili (not easily, anyway) – dairy products, lounging in parks and museum hopping. I’ve slipped back into my old habits of buying postcards I don’t need at museum shops and seeing what the world looks like from a soft patch of grass. I’ve got to say, this developed country stuff is pretty alluring.

Just another perfect street

Finnish zombies

So I've abandoned the Dili ship to go and nerd it up with some theatre types for a fortnight (more on that later). Which is how I found myself walking through Helsinki on a Sunday morning thinking of zombies. 

Catch ya laters Dili

Having recently been forced to sit through Zombieland (once Bill Murray’s cameo started, I admit I got into it), my experience of walking through Helsinki early on a Sunday morning was somewhat eerie.

Lovely buildings. Beautiful cobblestones. Lots of bicycles waiting patiently for their owners. There was just one thing missing: human beings. At one point, walking through a beautiful 19^th century square, with only the sound of my own feet echoing on the cobblestones to keep me company, I started to expect a blood-crazed Finn to peek out from behind the cathedral and start coming for me.

Nice square... where are the people?

The only other people I encountered for the first few hours were a couple of bewildered tourists and some Finns on a boat who decided that no-one could possibly want to be left alone to read a book in the sun in peace – ‘Why do you want to read a book? You can get a much better tan over here!’

Eventually, at about 9am, more people started to surface, which I was grateful for so I could buy a coffee and croissant and watch them parade by in all of their Scandinavian style. 

I got so excited by pastry on a paper plate I had to take a photo of it

I don’t think I was doing a very good job of pretending to be a bonafide European, especially after I bought a litre of strawberries and started giggling to myself at how wonderful they were (disclaimer: as a child I was put on a strawberry Nesquik ban. There does seem to be a direct link between strawberries and the ‘crazy’ switch in my brain).

One of my very cold feet, one litre of strawberries and one bag from Baucau

 Next stop: Stockholm.

Don't call me Junior

Sometimes driving in Timor feels like one long off-road training course. This morning as I was backing out of our house (a narrow path – taxi and tomb on the left; pigs, chickens and dogs on the right; children and makeshift soccer goal posts directly behind) it occurred to me that I may have to find a new hobby to do with all the spare time I’ll have once I move back to Australia and no longer have to do 62-point turns every morning.


On the weekend I had my first district-driving experience when I went to Gleno – the fabled home of my friend Heidi, temporary Glenoian but Melbournite at heart. According to my odometer, Gleno is 45km from Dili. It took me 1 hour and 45 minutes to get there, which equates to an average speed of around 26km/h. I can’t remember when I would have cracked 20km/h, but maybe it was in the airborne periods as I was flying from pothole to ditch and back again.


Within the first 30 minutes out of Dili, I’d almost been run off the road by a government car, come way too close to hitting a motorcycle, and heard several discouraging sounds from my car. The air con is feeble at the best of times, so I had the windows down and could hear the car’s progressively louder groans as I got higher up into the hills.


I felt I was just getting the hang of it when I turned a corner to find the road submerged in water. Unfortunately my photo doesn’t do it justice – or maybe it just looked worse at the time due to my stress levels. When I made it through, I confess I had a bit of an Indiana Jones moment – 'don't call me Junior!' By the time I returned the next day, some local men had started fixing the road, for which they stopped me and extracted $5 while holding large sticks. It’s Timor’s version of Macquarie Bank.

Really, it looked worse in real life

Gleno itself was much more relaxing, and included a cameo appearance as the token malae at a local wedding. Instead of sugared almonds, guests were presented with cigarettes and the dress code was apparently ‘hoodie and jeans’. I had very little idea of what was going on – for the first hour I thought the groom was one guy (‘oh, he looks so nervous, how cute!’) who later turned out to be an ordinary guest. The bride briefly cried (not from happiness, probably from having to leave her family) but she got into the spirit eventually. Indonesian muzak will do that to you.

Give me a dirt floor wedding any day. But I’ll take a tar road, thanks all the same.

Cake, champagne and Tiger beer at the ready

My plus one

The smiles came later

One of my stops on the way - to take 'photos' (ie. deep breaths)