It’s been one year since i first visited Sweden. Some of my opinions changed, some are still the same. Check out 2007’s 40 things in Stockholm to get an idea.
Let’s see, what did we learn in one year:
- Stockholm people cannot drive, obey traffic signals, or stop for pedestrians
- Males who are from Stockholm have the slick backed, douchy, hair
- Men love wearing pointy-toed leather shoes
- Stekare is term used to describe snobby, stuck up, douchy haired males (usually from Stockholm)
- The T-bana is a chaotic mess on Friday and Saturday nights
- Crayfish is pretty darn tasty…pour down that aquavit
- Systembolaget has a line to enter the store on Fridays…buy your beer earlier!
- Swedes are lying (okay deluded) when they tell you Sytembolaget has a great selection of alcohol. And you can place an order for things not in the catalog too!
- Females still wear the stupid looking leggings from the 80s
- Swedish pizza is the best food that the country can offer
- Men won’t flirt with women unless they are on the verge of blacking out
- Everything is fucking expensive in Stockholm; if you are not broke in one week you really weren’t in Stockholm
- Swedish men in general have issues showing emotions
- Females still wear the baggy t-shirts from the 80s
- Some men carry “purses”
- Friday and Saturday are reserved for getting completely wasted. Drunk isn’t good enough
- Swedes freak out when things are late
- Some Swedes are passive aggressive. Other Swedes love to get pissed off
- No one holds the door for you; watch your nose
- With one of highest life expectancy rates in the world, they sure drink, smoke, and drink coffee like there’s no tomorrow
- Drivers still don’t understand the meaning of “pedestrians first”
- Sill is a delicacy according to the Swedes
- One only eats candy on Saturdays
- Mexican restaurants are no where to be found
- Swedish men have issues talking; sometimes you have to kick them in the balls to hear them speak
- There’s no such thing as a discount
- Forget flirting with everyone, you will just look stupid
- Walk fast and look at the sky and hope others don’t talk to you
- Meeting the boyfriend’s family is no big deal
Yeah, that’s about my estimate… only I’m a passive agressive flirt, wife or no! :-)
41. H&M loves you in those baggy shirts and leggings…
I’m planning to do my own ‘lessons learnt’ later this year. It’s not like this but you sure have good finds here!
[...] A Blog in a Glance 40 things I learned in Stockholm one year later [...]
I just found your blog it’s very interesting to read. I added to my blogroll.
4. The big thing with stekare is that they are born rich, not that they are native stockholmers?
13. This is because we really do got less emotions, it’s not that we don’t dare showing them, I think. Because we dare pushing babystrollers alone on the street, and that’s a bigger thing.
19. Door-holding as a compulsory thing is phony niceness and something that is generally bad for people. If someone hold it for me, I have to walk fast, maybe faster than I originally wanted. And what if I wasn’t even going through it, or wanted to stop to start typing a text message. “People expect OTHER people to hold doors FOR them.”
20. Smoke: more than California, way less than France and Yugoslavia.
21. A law that has been created because some bureaucrat assumed that they could save some lives per year, not because they wanted to create more compulsory niceness.
29. FAMILY is no big deal.
I thought about the Swedish male look too. I think this is more of a northern/developed country thing in general. As in the US, and in difference to, say, South America, we are pretty unisex and mix our genders casually. We partly do it because we can AFFORD doing it: there’s still a huge difference because our genders, physically, for example, males are much taller than women. That’s why we don’t have to put on airs, we’re still men – we dare appearing shy because we are still men, and we will prove to be manly in many other situations, after the females has made some more effort to approach us.
But, in South America there is smaller natural differences between the genders. And that might be one of the reasons why South American men feel that they have to put on more airs, and therefore create the latin macho thing…which really isn’t so macho after all.
“19. Door-holding as a compulsory thing is phony niceness and something that is generally bad for people. ”
Seriously? Generally bad for people? That’s the funniest excuse I’ve ever heard… I guess the phony niceness is debatable, but being from a country where that’s a given, I can tell you when WE do it– it’s far from phony. We like each other. We care about each other. We are considerate of each other. So we hold doors for each other, and if that means taking two steps faster to appreciate the consideration, we do it out of gratitude– and that isn’t phony.
Nor is it generally bad for people. Too too funny.
“No one holds the door for you; watch your nose”
Well, where I live people always holds the door for you.. and I live in Sweden.
But, it can be that it is in the northern part and not in Stockholm.
=)
[...] Honestly, I should have learned something about Sweden. [...]