Ice Ice Baby

Umeå, Sweden. Temperature: about -15.

Went to -5 bar in the Toaster (oh the irony... they should rename it the bread-chiller) last night for J-Girl's farewell. Don't know who I'm telling that to, since everyone who reads this and actually knows who J-Girl is was probably there. Lil' B, you're the only one I can think of.

-5 bar is a frozen bar upstairs from Lenin Bar, you pay $30 for 30 minutes of coldness. Lenin Bar is an ambient-temperature bar downstairs from -5 bar with a decor consisting of pictures of Lenin and a variety of vodka bottles (all of which were Swedish, not Russian). Lenin Bar charges $5.50 for a beer. Such a money-hungry capitalistic pricing scheme makes me wonder how much involvement Comrade Lenin actually has in the operation of the business, and whether he's regretting lending his good name to it.

Anyway, having just come from -20, and being about to go back there, paying $30 to spend 30 minutes in -5 didn't seem like particularly good value to me. But since Paul payed for all of us, why not? Turned out to be lots of fun.

You get given big fluffy coats, and if you wore thongs you get some ugh boots and plastic sanitary socks. Then you watch a little safety video (!!!) and go into a room where everything is made of ice, the walls, the seats, the bar, even the cups you drink vodka from. The vodka was Swedish, and so was the girl who gave us our coats, so it all made me a bit home-away-from-homesick. A bit of ice-dancing cured all that.

It is somewhat surreal standing in a frozen room look past frozen walls out a window over Circular Quay on a hot summer's night with all the tourists in their skimpy summer clothes. In the narrow gap between the ice-wall and the window paul spotted a drink token someone had dropped. We picked him up by his legs and lowered him down the gap and he grabbed it, but got a bit stuck. A bit of leg-yanking and he was loose, and the free drink was shared by all, and there was much ribald merrymaking.

Paul also cracked a hilari-arse joke about "cold hard cash" with the bar girl. The amazing thing is, she admitted he was the first person to say that! To me, that reflects badly on Sydney.

Since I don't actually have any pictures from last night, here's another one of a cold place. Kjetil on ski trip he just got back from to Oppdal, near Trondheim, Norway. I assume he doesn't mind me posting it.

Tonight is Brett and Melinda's house-warming in The Bronx, aka Redfern, I got my gat..