Little America

"So how do you like it in Sweden?" Mattias said, opening his Coke with one hand–a true skill–and leaning back on his beat-up old second-hand sleeper couch. Fully extended, that couch took up about two-thirds of the total floor area in the little student apartment, so Mattias never pulled it out. Floor area was a precious resource, not to be wasted on trifles like comfortable bedding.
Nolan kicked aside a few empty pizza boxes and dropped his skinny behind down on the dirty clothes underneath. Carefully opening a bottle of domestic beer, the exchange student from Wichita, Kansas considered Mattias's question. They'd known each other for about two weeks now, and had already developed a nice, if lukewarm friendship. They took the same class and went to a few parties together, and there you go. The parties themselves were pretty boring; everyone--including the girls--hit the vodka as hard as they could until the vodka hit back. The next morning, people woke up on the host's floor one by one, went home, shaved their tongues and called in sick. How do you make a decent pass at a chick who currently doesn't know her own name? And you couldn't get hold of passable weed here either. Depressing.
Nolan took a long drink from his bottle. Pripps Blue Export; possibly the worst beer he'd ever had, and expensive too, but everyone insisted it was great once you were accustomed to it, so he was giving it a try. In an emergency, he could get hold of some Bud or Michelob at seven times the normal price, but he never was that desperate. Besides, the local beer contained more alcohol, which was the best quality a beer could have in Wichita.
Tapping out the rhythm of Itsy-Bitsy Spider on the bottleneck with his nails, he reflected for a minute over the weather. Apparently, mid-September in Karlstad meant cold days, freezing nights and lots of wind. Rain was optional. The language course had a picnic sort of thing "so everyone can get to know each other, hihihi," but even the stalwart teacher had to admit that it wasn't such a good idea after trying to make a fire out of wet branches for two hours, in forty degrees and full gale. They all ended up in the desolate university cafeteria, heating their steaks and hot dogs in the public microwaves and watching MTV. He'd never micro a steak again. Depressing.
Nolan stopped tapping. He looked up at Mattias, who was cheerfully singing Itsy-Bitsy Spider in Swedish, doing all the right finger moves.
"Imse Vimse Spindel klättra' uppför trå'n..."
Of course, they had to copy that one too, like everything else. TV was smothered in Fresh Prince, MASH, NYPD Blue and Dallas. The radio stations played about half-half Swedish and English stuff, and he'd been told that R.E.M. and Springsteen had always been bigger here than in the US. Mattias was not only drinking Coke at the moment; he was also fully clad in Nike and Reebok, topped with a red, white and blue New York Yankees cap turned backwards. Nolan got up and looked out the window, down at the street below, resting his free hand on the windowsill. There was a Burger King across the street, doing great business as always. A black Ford Escort mingled with the Volvos and Saabs, honked at a careless pedestrian and disappeared down the lane. Downstairs, there was a coffeeshop, where the artsy part of the student body spent about three-quarters of their waking hours reciting abstract poetry to each other in front of the fishtank. Diagonally across the city square, there was the courthouse, built in a distinctly Greek spirit a hundred years ago. Churchbells rang out through the damp, chilly air just a block away; it was noon. Depressing. Leaving the beer in the window, Nolan turned back to his friend, ready to answer his question.
"It's a lot like Boston," he said.

The broad letter looked odd among the narrow standard American envelopes in the mailbox, taking command of the confined space much the same way John Candy would command a regular elevator. Nolan knew what it was even before he saw the Swedish postmark; a letter from Mattias. They had agreed to keep infrequent contact through the erratic international postal system. Nolan collected the mail, went back inside and sat down in his favorite armchair, placing the bills and junk mail in a neat little stack on the coffee table, and applied his letter opener to the Swedish envelope. Reminded by the vicious look of his little knife, he got up and locked the door, all three locks. Three months after coming home, and he was still slightly Swedified. It was about time to get his old, healthier security habits back before someone burglared himself in and shot him, or something.
Back to the letter. With expectations high and rising, Nolan slid the contents out of the envelope and examined them in the light of his spartan reading lamp: a two-page letter and a few photographs. This was unexpected; maybe the letter would explain more. He unfolded the big, silly sheets--four ring binder holes instead of three, and folded in half--and started reading, the pictures close at hand.
The first one showed Mattias, Nolan and the cardboard Darth Vader helmet they made together before going to the premiere of the Special Edition "Return of the Jedi". It didn't really look much like Vader, but at least it was fairly helmet-shaped and blackish. They were holding it up between them, smiling proudly while covering the most obvious gaps in the construction with their hands. The letter said that the helmet was only a memory now; it had been used as a soccer ball during heavy rain after an especially alcoholic soccer-watching party. Sweden played Scotland in the World Cup qualification thing that night, and the Dark side won both games. Nolan bit his upper lip and put the picture away. The next one was all black. Intrigued, he looked for an explanation.
"This is the Dark side. Ha ha. No really, you took this picture on the beach when you wanted something to remember our topless sunbathing girls by. You forgot to remove the lens cap."
Nolan slapped his forehead so hard it hurt. "Duh!" He couldn't believe he made such a stupid mistake. Depressing. There was only one picture left, in which Nolan's graduation ceremony was captured: dressed in blue jeans and a traditionally purple, green and yellow Färjestad Hockey t-shirt, he was standing in a bland corridor, its pale yellow walls cluttered with notice boards and closed doors. One of his professors, a man in his late fifties wearing a terracotta pullover from 1973 and glasses that looked heavy enough to break the neck of a buffalo, stood opposite of him, handing him a piece of paper. That's how he got his Bachelor's. The letter didn't even mention it. Depressing.
Nolan read through the rest of the letter once, then put it, together with the pictures and the junk mail, in the trashcan. He got up and put a hand on his University of Karlstad diploma, staring at it like it could explain to him what it was doing there. He looked at the trashcan, then back at the diploma, shrugged, and ordered dinner from Domino's. The paper in its frame would haunt him for the rest of his life.