Church

On Sunday, Timor and his family took me to their church. Now personally, I'm not a church-going person anymore, but this place was particularly entertaining. For starters, the building is located in downtown Stockholm, between a ice cream stand and a MacDonald's. As you enter the building, there's a small cafe where Christian's mix, mingle, and buy coffee and pastries. Now the entire service is in Swedish, and all I know how to say is ''meatball,'' but they were prepared. Timor acquired a small electronic box for me, which looked like a remote control with headphones attached to it. It had 4 different channels, each receiving a spoken translation of the service. ''Put it on channel 1, that's English,'' Timor told me. So I quickly put it on channel 3, which was Spanish.

We entered the top balcony of what I guess were the pews, but it seemed more like seating for a theatre. This may have been because we entered during opening hymn, sung by 5 singers and an entire band. There was an electric guitar, bass, drum set, keyboard, violin, trombone, and even bongos. I was kinda envious of the bongo guy, because he could go to a club, walk up to some girls, and be like, ''Hey. I'm in the church band. I play bongos.'' Guaranteed ass. Along with the band, the singers were incredibly stereotypical. One girl was obviously the leader, since sometimes instead of singing she would yell out something in Swedish, which I could only assume was, ''Clap your hands for Jesus,'' because everyone did just that.

The audience was really into it, too. One woman even brought a tambourine. I assumed she was cut from the band. My favorite guy though, was this Arab man that as at the church wearing a long-sleeve button-down with a giant star of David on the back. Obviously, this man does not want to go to hell, and is covering all his bases. Over the course of the service, there were five reverends, including one woman who gave a sermon so long, I'm pretty sure the band started playing her off.