The Rabbit Room

Looking forward to hearing you in Västerås on Sunday! And really looking forward to fika after the concert. No contact lenses required.

For one heady moment I thought the proprietor had shaved, but there appears to be some lingering fuzz…

My husband and I had a rather entertaining conversation with Ben on Friday night in which he said the following:
“It’s very humbling being in Sweden, because they are condescending to us the entire time we’re there.”
It took us a moment to understand that he said the verb “condescending,” not the adjective. He meant that it’s humbling that the Swedes will strive to understand English in order to enjoy your music.

In case anyone was wondering what the adjective looks like, I guess they can look no further than this video.

Ben’s monkey dance is the highlight of this film!

Monkey dance! Yes.

The name of our former home included the word Fika.

Oh, please tell me those guys on the street were in on the joke. They looked so confused and sad!!

Fika? Is that the signature dish of the good ol’ Muppet chef?? The one ingredient being well-tossed fish? I think you can get it at Ikea.

Seriously, I’m saddened to realize that I also don’t know the answers to these socio-political questions. I must rank myself with the rest of the great unwashed masses who associate the great country of Sweden with nothing more than “Bork, bork” and affordable home furnishings.

Oh yeah, I’m with Laura… you guys let them in on the joke when you stopped filming, right?? Please say yes.

I, too, was looking for an Agree button on Laura’s comment.

I recognized two of the three “random” people in the video.

I am fikaing right now.

In all seriousness, how do you go about doing a tour in Sweden? Do y’all have a following there? We can barely get you to St. Louis? Or are the churches here just stingy and artistically impaired?

This video makes a mockery of the word ‘educate.
Unless, of course, you did tell those poor souls the truth before or after you mocked them for knowledge that would probably never be important to them.
Ever.
Very cringe-worthy.

This has to be one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen.

I’d be interested in hearing the answer to MargaretW’s question too.

1. i invented the word fika (which may be why i pronounce it better than you do).

2. i am swimming in the arctic waters of jealousy that you, soon, will be in our fair homeland, drinking coffee in which one of those tiny spoons could stand upright. not to mention the cakes. ‘scuse me, “kakor och bullar.”

3. the danes?!??!! BAH!!!!! silly danes, everyone knows they’re crazed lunatics. my uncle torbjorn says you can’t trust a dane as far as you can kick him.

MargaretW: Musicians go where they are invited. A bunch of crazy Swedes booked a bunch of shows, so off to Sweden they go.

I guarantee they’ll be happy to come to St. Louis if someone books a show there. Here’s the contact info for booking a concert in your area: http://andrew-peterson.com/contact/

I’m with Laura and EmmaJ, but had a feeling I was missing the joke (and that’s okay!)…and also wishing I knew who’d be booking shows for the Captains Courageous in Michigan …guess someday it might had better be me! (How’s that for lousy English?)

Evie…you are so spot on when it comes to the Danes!!
Gosh, so true!

But in all fairness….I’ll let you in on a secret…us Swede’s actually kind of like them…or well, in a similar way as with the Norwegians…whom we treat as our brothers and do loooove to hate!!Moaaahahahahaha!!

It’s funny how much some Chicagoans look like people I know here in Nashville.

Pete: not to mention their Southern accents.

Apparently no innocent bystanders were actually harmed in the filming of this video.

For the life of me I can’t understand the meaning of this.

Must have been a long day. I think I’ll take a coffee break…

I am fully in favor of un-innocent bystanders being pseudo-persecuted.

Andrew Peterson and the Captains Courageous are all idiots…and I absolutely love them for it.

P.S. This vid brings me much, much happiness. I’m having flash backs of the old Gully films, with AP re-recording song parts, and Shive offering obnoxious (yet hilarious) Dorian jokes. So glad to see the Captains Corageous haven’t outgrown their silly shenanigans. Looking forward to many more video posts!

Laughing is good for my snorka and helps when people feel pravika.

I made those words up. All of them.

I’ll see your Pravika Mr. S.D. and raise you a Grendie-Benji!

Say Grendie-Benji seven times in a row, standing in a bucket of Fried okra with a bum-eye shut half of the way.

I triple-dog dare ya!

“Friendship is unnecessary, it has no survival value; but it’s one of those things that gives value to survival” – CSLewis.
You could use this quote and put in fika as another thing that gives survival value. But you can´t take away friendship if fika shall have that significance. Fika gets it´s value not just by the culinary enjoyment but from the people you experience it with!
Will come and listen to you in both Uppsala and Falun (if all goes well)!

I really feel like a need a coffee break right about now. Can anybody tell me why?

Ach, yes, on a second viewing I can tell that those “random Chicagoans” are trying to hold in their laughter. Almost had me fooled, though. Safe travels through the homeland!

I totally went to Google for this. It’s been a whole day, and I just couldn’t not-know any longer. (geek!)

…and now I’m hungry.

Prayer going up for AP & the C.C. (and families)

JWitmer: I had to Google it too. No way I’m going to invite mockery by admitting I don’t know what fika is!

Fika sounds awesome. And this comment thread makes a lot more sense. Praying you guys have an amazing time and many good fikas in Sweden! (did I pluralize fika correctly? am I going to be laughed at now?)

S.D. must have folded. So sad!

Yes Jen. We are laughing ! Here comes a small lesson in using he word fika. Read it if you want to but take this as a warning. The lesson comes from a swede with limited knowledge in English. You actually can’t bend the word fika when you talk about the future. The same way you can’t bend the english word to fly. You say that you will fly a lot next week. Or ” I hope you get to fly a lot in Spain!”. So to use the word fika in a similar sentence would sound like this in swedish. “Jag hoppas ni får mycket fika i Sverige!” Or in English .” I hope you get a lot of fika in Sweden!” Another way to say it is “Jag hoppas ni får fika många gånger i Sverige!” that in English is ” i hope you get to fika a lot in Sweden!”
Because of my english I may have gotten it a bit wrong but its close. There’s probably someone that can explain this better then me but you would do ok in Sweden using this.
I probably bored you to death with this but I warned you and its nothing a little fika wouldn’t fix!

1.) Ben Shive’s face at 2:17.

2.) Chinese cymbal.

Agreed, BuckBuck. Too good.

3.) Wait. That was a gong.

Ah ha! Google and Wikipedia have answered the question for me, and now I know that I once experienced the wonder of fika with a Swedish friend, only I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. Maybe because we were speaking English in Asia and not Swedish in Sweden. In fact, I was just reminiscing about that very thing on this very day.

I think… I would like to go to Sweden one day myself.

Cheers – hope it’s a great trip with plenty of pleasant fika opportunities!

Ha! I thought Andreas was making up more words when he mentioned Uppsala and Falun. This is not a thread one should read without coffee.

So when one rents a car in Sweden, are your choices the red Saab, the blue Saab or the white Saab? (Sorry, I’m from Detroit, I just had to ask.)

It depends on what pricerange you ask for. If you chose the high end you get those or a volvo. In the medium you get some french car. If you go for the budget choice you get a Chrysler.;-)

Thanks, Andreas! That was really helpful, not boring. Now I won’t have to worry about embarrassing myself in front of Swedes or the Captains.

And I could really use a fika right now.

Fika- to drink coffee. I LOVE FIKA!!!

So, Andreas, as an English-grammar geek I just double-checked and it sounds like “fika” is what we would call a “mass noun.” We would use the word “bacon” the same way. Example: Correct: “I’d like some bacon, please.” Incorrect: “I’d like bacons, please.” Okay, going back to my quiet corner!

Loren, I always order “Two eggs and bacons, please.” There’s really just no other way to do it.

Ha! Canaan Bound!

I like saying “fishes,” and not only because it stokes warm memories of Betty Lukens flannel graphs, but also because it is more multi-cultural. If I were the lone bluegill in a school full of large mouth bass, this would matter to me.

Likewise, “bacons” should be applied in cases where it is necessary to acknowledge various species of fatmeats. A plate full of turkey bacon + peppered + thick slab honey smoked = bacons. A plate full of Hormel Black Label only = bacon. Unless, of course, one piece fries up in the shape of the Virgin Mary. In that case, we are back at square one.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop. Ironically, at the table beside me, a group of three (Hebrew?) language scholars are passionately arguing the importance of precise word choice. The woman has a convincing accent, so I trust her most. Wait. They’ve switched to Freud. These people seem to know the answers to things. I should ask them about bacons…

Blast. A group of scholars “IS”. Now that it is finally quiet, I can think again.

Side Note:

I thought this video was fake the first four times I watched it, because the bottle of Cholula seemed to move. Then I realized it was one of those tricksy, high-dollar two-camera deals.

Being of a vegetarian persuasion and thus disinclined toward breakfast meats, I have nevertheless nominated the following sentence (courtesy of Hugh Lofting in Doctor Dolittle) as quite possibly my favorite from the past week:

“‘Couldn’t I?’ said the dog. ‘That’s all you know, you stupid piece of warm bacon!’”

P.S. I’m with y’all on the amusing potential of the non-count noun misuse. Similarly with negative polarity items, but that’s a subject for a different day.

LOL, EmmaJ, can we get into negative polarity items? (Oh wait, it’s not another day yet…) Buck Buck, did you ask the Hebrew scholars about “bacons”? Personally I like “fishes” now and then, too, and I’m quite fond of “peoples,” though not for dinner. Canaan Bound, when you ask for the eggs and bacons, how many bacons do you get?

Slaw. Slacks. Sheers.

If I say those three words aloud more than once or twice in a row, I feel nauseated. My brother used to taunt me with them, since he was the first to notice it.

Try it. Say them.

Slaw.
Slaw.
Slaw.

Sheers.
Sheers.
Sheers.

Slacks.
Slacks.
Slacks.

It’s just gross.

Particularly, I feel this way about slacks if I visualize them as thick synthetic with a bit of stretch.

No, I didn’t ask about the bacons. The conversation switched to Lybia and all sorts of glottaled fricatives and spituitary plosives began to happen. In the end, I retreated. I’m sorry. I feel like I have failed you all.

Loren: I’m starting wondering who is laughing at who. Don’t even know if my last sentence is even close to being right?! To say that fika is a mass noun is to simplify a bit. Fika is more of a verb. When I think of fika I don’t think about a cup of coffee. I think about sitting down with someone, mostly my family, having a break from the rush and stress that often draw us in in everyday life. An example of a common fika is the one with my wife and children. Often its in between meals or an hour or so after dinner. It starts with the question: Ska vi ta en fika? In English somethinf like: shall we have a fika? Then we make coffee or tea (usually coffee) for us parents and lemonade for the kids. We often have homemade cinnamonbuns (much smaller than yours and it can vary from family to family what kind of bread that is,uncolved!) and some cookies to go with that. Then we sit down enjoying each others company. You can apply the same procedure when you are with friends. The important thing is that it isn’t the coffee, buns or cookies that are the main thing in fika. Its the social interaction. So can’t you have a fika on your own? Yes you can! But it still isn’t the eating that is
important. Its the contemplation of the things you’ve done or are about to do or just pausing for a while that is the main objective of fika .

OHHH. I get it. He was drinking coffee, and he didn’t know what fika was…
I may be slow, but I get there eventually.

Your English is just fine, Andreas! I love your description of a fika; it reminds me very much of times with my family, particularly our Saturday mornings. I love pause and reflect times with friends and family, especially over food!

No failures on your part, Buck Buck …. And as for awful words, my sister’s personal least favorite is “moist.” Just makes her cringe….

Ewwwww. “Moist.” That too.

Haha. Moist is wierd. Reminds me of an episode of How I Met Your Mother where Lily shares her extreme dislike of the word, and everyone consequently uses it as often as possible, just to watch her cringe.

Ha! I wonder if I could find a copy of that and send it to my sister just to torture her !

Mocking the Danes! Risky business that. Let’s discuss this over some warm Aebleskivers…I’ll tell the boys to leave the broadswords outside.

Viggo Mortenson is half Danish…..

Tonight our family won´t have time for fika. We´re going to Uppsala to listen to Andrew Peterson live!!!!

Andreas, thank you for sharing all that you did!

Everyone, this was a hilarious post to read while putting off doing my dishes and my homework! Ah! Thank you!

“We know FIKA”: our son’s favorite part.