Welcome to this bilingual (Swedish-English) group blog by family members living on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, "the pond". Our interests range from the scientific to the eclectic, including gourmet food, horses, art and literature, computers, species in nature, history and iron, and photography. Three generations are posting here.
This is probably something very swedish: "Fritidskontor", translates into something like "leisure office". Could either be an office with a very relaxed atmosphere, or the place where the plans are laid out for people's spare time. ;)
/O.K.
(Listening to while posting: Jonas Hellborg - Put the shoe on the other foot)
Posted by
O.K.
at
8:55 AM
9 comments:
For the English speaking:
FRITID = Free time
This is a holy thing for Swedes, and is the time you are not working. With 5 weeks of vacation per year for everybody, Swedes also have more of fritid than most other people.
I think though that a FRITIDSKONTOR is usually about planning after-school and summer activities for children, but I could be wrong.
whatever it is I need it, and need it now!
Book a meeting, or better yet: Apply for a job there! :)
Traditionally there has been a lot of official planning for the Swedes' free time, especially since the introduction of a lot of vacation time, most of it expected to be used in july when factories and offices more and less closed down. This is not the case anymore, you are pretty much free to spread it over the year as you wish.
Of course LS is right about the meaning, I just found it to be a funny combination of words.
Is there an Occupied Time Office anywhere you think? =ARBETSKONTOR. (Working Office)
Of course there is. The german equivalent of Arbetsförmedlingen (Employment agency?) is called Arbeitsamt, meaning Arbetskontor. (I think, my german isn't rusty. It is a pile of Fe2O3 dust.)
You never took German. O.K.! I think all German you know probably comes from obscure movies (Achtung!) or noisy music (Kraftwerk). Still, the rust is probably correct.
I find it kind of interesting that the opposite to Fritid is Arbete (Free time vs. Work) - it sounds like Work is completely Occupied time and non-working is completely Free time. But when you are not working there are a million things that needs to be done, it is not Free Time. As they say in "Its a Wonderful Life": 'I wish I had a million dollars!' I also wish I personally had a million free hours! I would spend half of them on fun work I never get done at work...
I never said how big the pile of ferro-oxide was. ;) It is very small, mostly gathered from reading german literature about electronics.
Imagine all the things you'd have to forsake to save up a million bucks. Having a million can't be as much fun as spending one... And about a million hours, that is like asking for another (long) life or 500 years of fulltime work. What kind of project did you have in mind?
I want to build birdhouses for every bird in the world AND find more new species, at least 100 per year... and save the world, and make lots of good food for starving people.
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