Joining a Swedish library

My Folkpartiet friend Gunilla is always telling me to join Stockholm’s libraries and today I did.

I didn’t set out to. I went for a walk  this morning, very fresh and a little bitter but there is something very nice about that.  I was on my way to the supermarket to get the ingredients for tonight’s Chicken Vindaloo. I did have a vindaloo with the good professor the other night but its just not spicy enough for me.

I walked through Årsta Torg which is the hub of the community I live in but I am hardly ever there. I saw the library and thought why not.

It brought back some memories going into the library I can tell you.  As you would imagine Årsta bibliotek is on the small side, it had that smell of old books that the libraries of my youth had. They had a very good childrens area, no surprise in Sweden, and not a bad choice of books. The thing I like about these kind of libraries is they have biographies which are out of print.

It was really easy to join up, hand over your leg (id) and they give you a card. You can take books out for four week periods. They also had musical cd’s and dvds. They also had ljudböcker, you know books on cd. Very good for me and my Swedish learning development and they are rather expensive to buy. I can also use any library in Stockholm County with my card.

You can also order books via their online page. Brilliant stuff!

Its surprising to those who know me now but as a kid I took refuge in the library, both at Swansea Central and the school library. I had a voracious appetite for reading.. starting off with Biggles (amazed to read that there were 98 Biggles Books!) and the Hardy Boys before I got really interested in politics and history. I say interested it was more fascinated. I remember reading books that were written for academics not spotty teenagers. I still remember the look of horror on the librarians face when I rocked up with a Rudolf Hess biography!  Our History curriculum was pretty limited so I read further and the fuckers wouldnt even let me study Politics and Government…I had a reputation as an agitator at that stage…no change there then.

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