Collecting miles

I know, I just talked about how well-trained and nice the Norrona sales guy was (here). When I walked out of their shop in Stockholm, I actually liked the brand about 68% more than before. My closet is full of blacks, whites, browns, jeans and greys. At the sight of their colors I used to reach for my sunglasses.
However, their latest advertisement really made me blink. Are they serious?

Making new stuff out of old stuff is always great. It is responsible, saves resources, turns kids into good people. Second hand has become extremely trendy.

But in this case they make a fleece jacket out of 40 plastic bottles:

- collected in Norway (last Easter, as they point out to make it easier to relate)

- crushed and shipped to the US

- sent to China

- shipped back to Europe

Wow. Now we all know the Norwegians makes their own oil and I am surely no professional in the field, but doesn’t it sound like a long trip for plastic garbage to make? Can the jackets really not be made where the garbage is? I don’t know. Doesn’t sound sustainable to  me and the jacket doesn’t sound green.

I am still breastfeeding and my brain is babyish soft. But wouldn’t any average consumer like myself wonder about the bottle’s journey around the globe? Did they really miss this when they sent the ad to print?
I still like Norrona tough. The sales team is great, the clothes are fantastic – would someone please explain this to me.

Norwegians aren’t price sensitive when it comes to oil

Germany – China

brand eins is a german magazine and one of my favorite publications. Before I dive into the articles I always look at their page called “The world in figures” to get in the mood. All figures come from international media and are put together by Thomas Schmelzer this month.

I selected a couple to stimulate brain activity:

Beer production in Germany 1990 (million hectoliter)                                                          120,2

Beer production in China 1990 (million hectoliter)                                                                  70

Beer production in Germay 2011 (million hectoliter)                                                               95,5

Beer production in China 2011 (million hectoliter)                                                                489,9

Military spendings of gross domestic product 2010 Greece in %                                              2,6

Military spendings of gross domestic product 2010 Germany in %                                           1,4

Global percentage of people who recovered their remote control somewhere in the sofa         49

Global percentage of people who recovered their remote control in the bathroom                    8

Global percentage of people who recovered their remote control in the fridge                          6

Woman of the year

Feminism is not outdated. Dressed people appear more confident. Johnny Depp looks younger without facial hair. I need to teach my daughter to choose her own clothes.

Stolen from Lady Dahmer

Attention please!

I was about to declare this little paragraph finished when I realized the picture below wouldn’t give anyone a good start to their day. I strongly believe in the power of visuals and have therefore replaced it with a much more appealing Marlene. This is about how Monocle makes me read an entire issue covered with men in dirty shoes.

Swoosch! baaang! dooongzzzz

Pictures like the above immediately put my brain on snooze. I cannot get myself to concentrate on a war movie for more than three minutes, neither can I remember any of the characters names or purposes long enough to get some sense into the plot. It might be the lack of female characters and the beauty they bring, the guy-to-guy language or the fact that green, muddy and unshaved visually isn’t very stimulating. However, the hour of sleep I get during “The Pacific” is pleasantly refreshing.

Last week I grabbed the latest issue of Monocle on my way to gate 84B and only looked at it on the plane, realizing the entire issue is dedicated to men in steel helmets. (For those who get the impression that my area of interest are kiss proof lipsticks, may I just say that history is one of my big passions. But not war. War I don’t understand.)

Sad

This is the introduction to the issue. I recommend reading it. It doesn’t exactly change the way I feel about steel helmets, but gives some unexpected insights, packing advice for troubled regions and a military fashion special.

Some impressions:

Sun and warm socks

Autumn has come to Stockholm.

Beautiful mornings on the water (thank god for our new boat), cosy looking fashion in the shop windows and the world shifts to orange. This also means shopping functional clothing for kids. Since this is my first winter as a mom, I am amazed at the prices of miniature fleece jackets. 800 Sek (ca 90 Euros) is the average number for any outdoor piece of clothing. Polarn och Pyret seems to be the shop to turn to but their color combinations make me dizzy. Thinking colors I turn to Norrona instead. These Norwegians make jackets in every shade of the rainbow and I assume one of them will fit my baby girl.

“Welcome to nature”, they say and make you try their jackets at the appropriate temperature

Welcome to nature

But they don’t have kids clothes. The extremely nice and well-trained sales guy recommends an online store instead, which looks really good. It is also run by some very northern people who should know what they are doing. GNEIS, children’s outdoor clothes from Norrland in Sweden. Gneis only sells online to keep prices where they should be. www.gneis.se

Gneis Baby

I am going for this option. It will also prevent my daughter from looking like a member of the Stockholm fleece army. Stockholm is very homogeneous when it comes to fashion. In that spirit the only fleece overall outside Polarn och Pyret seems to be Ver de Terre’s admittedly cute piece. If you feel like joining the crowd, buy it here.

Coop Online

Who said living on an island was inconvenient?

I finally tried Coops online delivery service and must say, I am impressed: The tractor arrived at my garden gate 16.00h sharp and off jumped Göran with a smile. He is the man with the motorized float, electrical delivery trike and the mini- excavator. He also never drives any of these vehicles without sunglasses.

Inside the blue boxes I found everything I ordered, excluding the items I reliably forgot (still breastfeeding). Learning: ginger weighs much less than I thought. We can now cure the entire island from their first autumn flu with the volume I received.
(even perfectly healthy ginger lovers should try this juice)

The rest of the day passed in a blur, picking plums, making compote and trying to avoid this individual.

Too much nature

Rocking the cradle

Sweden is famous for its nature, IKEA and the many gay nannies a US- friend thought he had spotted on the streets of Stockholm. True, there are just as many men with strollers and coffee cups as women (see lattemamma). But they are dads.

I met this dude on the bus today. Mixture between wild, wild west and Hells Angels on paternity leave.
Gotta love this country.

- Posted from my iPhone

Only the best for our children

Mc Donalds has now hit Germany with its book campaign. With every Happy Meal kids get a free book. Sounds like a wonderful idea to reach the less fortunate with some education. They did the same thing in Sweden a couple of years back and I couldn’t find many who complied with my distaste for this kind of branding. Now I gladly see that Foodwatch shares my concern in an open letter and even SPIEGEL takes up the story.

I can see how this came into being. Mc Donalds marketing person asks their (probably PR) agency to  reverse the public opinion of burgers producing an army of fat kids. So they brainstorm about obesity and google their way to the fact that it is closely related to income and education. Then some strategic- creative person says that books are an international symbol for education and that this is especially strong since visual communication bypasses rational thinking. Basically a book next to the Mc Donalds logo across global media will effectively cover the fat kid.

The same guy with the retro-big glasses then says that classic children books have high nostalgic-emotional value to the grown ups (buying the Happy Meals) and presents some curves showing an increase in sales. Mc Donalds marketing person is seriously impressed, nods mildly and loves how this can be adapted for all major markets.  Whoops-a-daisy: a morally untouchable- good cause- branding campaign is born.

I guess it is better Mc Donalds gives away books than plastic toys – both for the children’s development and the environment.

But really, their business calls for something more like voluntary self-censorship, where they admit their food doesn’t promote health and stop advertizing to minors.
If they absolutely must sell products this questionable, limit the marketing to grown ups who can make deliberate choices.

Sweden is where detective stories are made. Since the roaring success of Stieg Larssons Millennium trilogy even the last person on the planet has been confronted with the dangerous pleasures of the Swedish underworld and it sometimes seems like a Swedish name has become a quality- or at least sales promise for chief inspector so-and-so’s latest adventures.

Håkan Nesser is one of Sweden’s best-selling authors – producing detective stories of course.

Together with a couple of friends, he now starts and airline: RAUK AIR, to ensure they all get to their summer- writing- or family houses on the island of Gotland without the hassle of a car drive.

Håkan Nesser has been lying next to my sunglasses for a couple of days now. Looking for a book my pregnant brain could cope with at 35 degrees under a beach umbrella, P. suggested I try one of his.

It is certainly not Håkan’s fault the book falls apart when I get to page 82. But his writing style drives me up the wall from about page 120. Whenever one of his characters is lost in thought, he marks that with some quote, preferably from the bible. Why on top of that everyone starts thinking in english as soon as they are by themselves, remains a miracle.

When they do open their mouths however, they tend to start their sentences with the word: “Allright”.

Everyone. The inspector, the 65-year old therapist and even the french Inspector Leblanc. On about every other page.

My feeling that there is something fishy with the spelling gets confirmed by Webster’s dictionary. All and right should be two separate words. If you insist on merging them to one (as some stubborn members of society have done in the last 75 years), alright. But take out one “L” (see here).

I am certainly no specialist on english grammar and spelling. But wouldn’t the publisher have stumbled over the twohundredandthird “Allright”, marked it red and sent back the manuscript to Håkan asking him to take out at least 201 of them?

Well, the book sold anyway, got an award and Håkan starts an airline. All in all: all good.

Learnings:

a) Don’t trust holiday reading advice by people who read dead philosophers for relaxation and store piles of 17th century biographies on their bedside table.

b) I need to find the editor at Månpocket in case I ever try to get published.

Mangoes on fire

The swedish speaking community has already given this some attention and with the latest spread to the car industry, I think fruit-styling deserves a translation.

Selling your place requires serious styling in Stockholm. All apartments and houses are so white and light and fresh and modern, there is no chance you will get a good price when your house looks like your house. You need a photographer with a major wide-angle and a photoshop license, wax to shine all surfaces – and the one appealing idea that fits just your home.

A new real estate agent, called Fantastic Frank has made this his specialty. Here you can choose themes and a team will show up with the right accessories.

This apartment, beautifully decorated with fruit, has made it into the top 3 Facebook conversations (or click here for more images) :

Sleep in peace

The stair-challenge was solved beautifully

Pineapple puffs

Bathroom saved:

Just put grapes

Lemonfresh

This concept seems has proven successful and spilled over to other business areas.

This guy in Västerås had trouble selling his – admittedly quite average looking- Opel. When his ad on Blocket (the swedish site ebay never beat) attracted no buyers, he decided to walk in Frank’s footsteps and try the pineapple-trick. And the poetry.

What can I say? The ride was sold within hours.

Opel, 1996

“If you are one of the people who have always dreamt of owning an Opel Astra, your time has finally come.

Swapping for Diesel tractor possible.

Opel. Beauty comes from within.