Rambling thoughts on Sweden
I’ve moved to Sweden from the US, and while the cultures are pretty similar any many ways, there’s many small things that are just subtle different, and I wanted to write them down and share them with people.
Just a few, short thoughts, I won’t go into too much detail for any of them:
Why are the toilets here just, better? It’s funny we take these sorts of things for granted, but the toilets are great here. The hole in them is freaking massive, like, you’d have to flush a small animal down to get one clogged. Which is great.
I was riding my bike to the city the other day, which isn’t a far ride, but pleasant. One thing that really caught my attention, though, is the amount of older people on their bikes. And I don’t mean like, 50s or 60s older, most of these people were easily in the 70s. To me, that’s awesome. You go, older people. These bike trails aren’t flat and straight, they’re pretty hilly and have a lot of twists and turns, and they’re more than double my age and keeping up with the rest of us like a bunch of badasses. But in all seriousness, they are awesome for that.
Speaking of things I saw in the city, men pushing baby strollers. I know, that shouldn’t be like, a shocking thing, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a father pushing a baby stroller, either with his wife or just by himself. It’s pretty common here.
There’s an app most Swedes have called Swish. Swish is, by far, the best thing we don’t have in America. And why don’t we? It’s so obvious. Swish is an app that allows you to instantly send money to another person’s account. You connect your bank account to it, you have a “swish number”, and you type in the recipients number and send whatever amount you want. So if you’re out with friends and decide to split dinner, you can easily split the check. If you live with roommates, you can easily pay utilities or rent. It’s like, the checks for the 21st century. And it really is! My girlfriend’s mom commented “checks? Yeah I have one blank check, I keep it as memorabilia.” Most people have never even seen a check, they laughed and thought I was joking when I said we use those regularly. “That’s so old fashioned!”
Speaking of old fashioned, bike locks. At first, I thought people just trusted that Sweden’s crime rate is so low, they don’t need to lock their bikes up. Because people just park their bike wherever, like, right in front of the grocery store for example, and leave it. At least, it looks that way at first. The bike locks are built into the bike! It’s a little metal bar that you clip through the spokes of the tires, lock with your key, and walk off. When I asked about the typical rope/chain type locks we use, “oh, we haven’t had those in years.. those are so old fashioned!”
Why do Swedes say random words in English? Idioms and phrases I can understand, to say “Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only ______!” can’t be said exactly the same way in Swedish. However, listening to daily conversation and hearing a person say “supposedly” in English in the middle of a Swedish sentence is just.. odd. “Supposedly”, I’m sure, can be found in the Swedish language. Actually, the direct translations, “förment”, is two syllables shorter than supposedly, so they’re not even getting by with saying an easier word! This isn’t the only example, you hear it all the time.
I think that’s it for now. Maybe later I’ll elaborate, or post more as they come.
