Streets and Vocab

Organized Chaos: I think Christine used that term several years ago... If you looked at my room, it would look like a huge pigpen. But what you don't see is that there is actually a place for everything and a thing for every place... Ask me to find something in that pigpen and I'll show it to you in the blink of an eye. Yes, that (insert thing) is supposed to be on/in/all over that (insert place), that's where it belongs. BUT what happens when this perfect balance gets messed up? I can't find my camera's card reader!!! I don't know where it could be, because it's not in the neat box of "electronic stuff." And if it's not there, it could be ANYWHERE. Or nowhere.

So sadly I can't share my Thanksgiving pictures! They are stuck on my camera!!! I'll keep searching though... But I've been wanting to share some funny street/bus stop/tram stop names in Gothenburg. Actually I think they are all stops on a bus or tram line, otherwise I wouldn't have remembered/been able to find them. You might think I'm living in some sort of story book world with some of these names... Translated to English, of course. Some of them aren't that funny (or at all?) in Swedish but just translate funny.

Positive Street (one of my faves. I always wonder if they mean in a scientific or a psychological sense)
Music Way (in the same area as Piano Street and Radio Street, no joke)
Vegetable Square (another favorite and the first one that made me laugh when I first moved here)
Prince Street
Medical Specialist Street/Medical Student Street?? (Doesn't sound that weird but looked it up anyway)
Seminar Street
Temperature Street
Wave Master Street
The Fescue
Paradise Street
Ship's Bridge (I think it sounds cool in Swedish)
Furniture Street
Rainbow Street (a new favorite! I get off here for Swedish classes!)
Sunbeam Street

I live right by Olive Valley's Street, which I think is cool. Especially because I LOVE olives, olive oil, anything made with either of the two. And the grocery store right below the apartment is called "The Olive."

While looking some of these up just now I found some new ones! Jewelry Street, Wishful Weather Street (we need that here), Virgin's Square, and Giant Stone's School (sounds like caveman education).

Yes, these are streets I often pass by and I actually have to take the voice recording seriously when she calls out the next stop. But it probably isn't as funny to the Swedes. Not just street names, a lot of Swedish words are funny too. To me it sounds a bit like how the Native Americans spoke back when (you know, the "Chief Big Bear lives on Big Rock by Blue Waters..." kind of stuff in the probably censored stories and books we read as kids) because a lot of bigger words are formed with really simple small words, more obviously than we see in English. Not to mention, the first name "Björn" is the same as the word for bear. Would that fly in English? I think maybe the language has been preserved well?... And yeah we could dissect English words from their roots and find funny/primitive translations too, maybe if you know Latin...

Yay for the Swedish Language and I hope you liked the little Anglofied window into the city!