The little differences

Lucky for me and M, our work schedules have allowed us to spend a lot of time visiting each other in our respective countries.  Last year I visited Sweden twice, for a total of about nine weeks.  It's always fun to see the differences between countries, and this was especially exciting since it was my first visit to Europe.  I could go on and on about the major differences between Swedish and US foreign policy, taxes, health care, etc, but instead I'm going to talk about the surprising, sometimes brilliant, sometimes puzzling, little differences that I noticed.  I'm excited to start getting used to them.

• Bed Linens:  Fitted sheets do not exist in Sweden.  You just tuck the corners of a bottom flat sheet under the mattress.  Also, the bedspread is split into two separate, single-sized quilts: one for each person, so cover-stealing is never an issue. 

• Booze:  The sale of alcohol is regulated by the Swedish Alcohol Retail Monopoly, or Systembolaget.  All alcohol is quite expensive, but the fun thing about buying beer is that you can mix and match the different brands of single cans and bottles.  The not-so-fun thing about drinking the beer is that Swedes usually consume it warm, and always poured into a glass.  I plan to stick to my American roots when it comes to beer drinking: cold, and from the can....sorry guys.  (As a side note, all Swedish pharmacies were also government-owned until 2009.  When I brought M into a Walgreens he thought it was hilarious that you could pick up your prescription medicine along with a case of beer and a gigantic bag of chips all in the same store). 

•  Candy:  On Saturdays, all Swedish kids (and most grownups) are treated to Lördagsgodis, or "Saturday Sweets."  It's just like the pick 'n mix style of candy we have here in the US, but with a much bigger selection.  So, you grab your little scoop and go to town picking out the different flavors you want.  A lot of the candy flavors were a little strange for me...most of them were either big hunks of gumminess or licorice-based, while I prefer anything chocolate.  M's favorite is an absolutely vile invention called Jättesalt ("Giant Salt").  This stuff looks like little brown rocks and tastes like you gnawed off a chunk of one of those big salt licks my dad used to put out for the deer.  M calls it "proper" candy and was craving it the whole time he was in Texas.

• Christmas:  I confess, I could normally care less about celebrating Christmas, but I found the Swedish decorations and traditions to be tasteful and beautiful.  The houses are decorated with simple white candles in the windows and I didn't see a shred of the technicolor tackiness and materialism that vomits across the US during Christmastime.  It was almost enough to make this Scrooge feel all warm and cozy inside.

• Food: The four major food groups in Sweden are meat, potatoes, fish, and coffee.  I thought most of the food was delicious, wholesome, and simple, mostly due to the fact that M is an amazing cook who makes everything from scratch with meat that he's slayed with his own Vikingesque hands.   Once again though, some of the dishes were a little too salty for my taste.  One thing I tried that I don't think I'll ever develop a taste for was blodpudding, a type of crumbly sausage made from dried pig blood and other fillers.  My favorites were the endless piles of kantarelle mushrooms we picked in the forest.                                          

 

       Swedes love food that comes in tubes, whether it's caviar, bacon-flavored cheese, or crab-flavored mayonnaise.  The refrigerators in Sweden even have special little racks where you can hang all your food-tubes.

• Front Door Etiquette: When you come inside any house in Sweden, you MUST take your shoes off at the door.  Accidentally stepping more than a few feet into the house with your shoes still on will earn you immediate status as a dirty savage.  Don't do it.

• Grocery stores:  In order to get a cart, you deposit a few coins into a machine that holds all the carts locked together.  Sweden's dairy section was probably the most impressive...I have never seen so many different types of yogurt in one place.  I was also pretty excited about the mix-your-own-granola section.  In some stores, each child gets a free organic banana per visit.  Also, you pay for each grocery bag, so you have to eyeball the amount of stuff you're buying and decide ahead of time how many bags you'll need. 

• Laundry:  For some unknown reason, it takes over an hour and a half for a regular cycle of laundry to finish in a Swedish washing machine.  When M visited me in Texas, he was convinced there was no way clothes could get clean in a 30-minute washer cycle.  Also, you can't forget to empty out the big plastic water tank in the dryer between loads.  I spent about three hours trying to dry a load of laundry at M's house before I realized they were still wet because the water tank was full. 

• Nudity:  Compared to our uptight American culture, Swedes are not afraid of their bodies.  Butts and boobs are common sights on television, and are seen as normal as an arm or a leg.  Photos of women in magazines are average and healthy-looking without tons of airbrushing.   I picked up a typical housewife-y magazine at the gym and stumbled across an article blatantly illustrating different shapes to shave into your pubic hair, complete with smiling women and their landing strips, lightning bolts, and hearts.  No big deal.

• "Pizza":  Sweden has gotten creative with its pizza toppings, to say the least.  The normal pizzas were pretty good, a little thin on the sauce...but some of the more innovative toppings included eggs, peanuts, bananas, curry sauce, and tuna fish.  Thanks, but no thanks.

•  Urban sprawl (or lack thereof):  Within just a few minutes after driving outside the city limits, you find yourself amid huge, real forests with craggy rock cliffs and tall pines...not a bulletin board, strip mall, office complex, or condo to be seen.  After a few miles you get to the next town and back to civilization, but being surrounded by native forest reminds you of what the landscape is supposed to look like.