What makes Sweden Sweden?
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What makes Sweden Sweden?
Hacon (and a bit of Steve) reflects on those quirky traits we discovered…
o Really rubbish mini golf almost everywhere
o Swedes love their lawns. Perfectly mowed, trimmed, and raked of any clippings.
o Golf courses are loved (possibly linked to the immaculate lawns) so much they’re in nature reserves (eg Nacka nature reserve – which permits trucks to drive in nearly every day to deliver food and packages and often fills the reserve with the sound of lawn mowing)
o Herring! In a household one person will love it and the other hate it
o Conflict avoidance: a Swede will still be nice to you if they don’t like you
§ Passive aggressive? Maybe this is why they are neutral for almost 300 years
§ "Tiga ut nagon" This roughly translates as "giving the silent treatment."
o If a Swede really doesn’t want to speak to you, they will say:
“My sincerest apologies, but I do not speak a word of English”
o Flies crawling on your food is usually fine, but wasps are the devil incarnate and must be feared to the most extreme extent capable of expressing
o Swedes love a special form of queuing called nummerlap (take a ticket with a number on and wait)
o Drinking on a weekday makes you an alcoholic
o Swedes love “the nature”
o Sweden is no longer the homogenous society I thought they were
o Some women don’t like me to hold doors for them
o Swedes usually carry alcohol in little purple bags
o Swedes either don’t know how good they’ve got it (why are you studying us?!) or are secretly devilishly proud of what they’ve got and don’t want to share it.
