No Bad Weather, Only Bad Clothing

“Där finns ingen dålig väder, bara dålig kläder.”

“There is no bad weather, only bad clothing.”

It’s one of the most popular Swedish sayings, and I finally learned the true meaning tonight.

I threw on one of my warmest fleeces and walked across town to our friends’ apartment a little after 8 to catch some March Madness hoops action.

I wouldn’t exactly say it was warm outside, but we’ve had much colder nights over the past few months.

Amanda and I ran the paved loop around Falköping earlier this afternoon and couldn’t stop talking about how much the weather had improved during the two weeks I was back home in California. Virtually all of the snow had melted and sidewalks and roads were dry. It really looked and felt like spring was right around the corner.

I left our friends’ place a little before midnight and walked out into a legitimate snowstorm. I couldn’t believe how much snow had fallen in only three hours.





I love fleece jackets. A quality light fleece can rival a thick down, in my opinion. As warm as they are, though, fleeces are not waterproof. Tonight’s blizzard was a wet reminder.



Swedes say there’s always one short yet big storm right before spring actually arrives, and I hope this is it. If the long-range forecast is even close to accurate, it looks like things could finally warm up significantly next week.

Six Months Later

I honestly can’t believe I’ve already lived here half a year. Some days, when the culture shock is still intense, it feels like I landed last week.

You try to mentally prepare yourself for the culture shock in the weeks before the move. Amanda’s agency had their au pairs read multiple articles about it when she moved to California a few years ago, and I consulted a few sources myself this week in an attempt to ascertain which “phase” I’m in.

The adjustment phase, long after the honeymoon phase and anxiety-filled negotiation phase, usually begins sometime between six months and a year. In many ways, I’m already there. In the adjustment phase, per Wikipedia:

One grows accustomed to the new culture and develops routines. One knows what to expect in most situations and the host country no longer feels all that new. One becomes concerned with basic living again, and things become more "normal". One starts to develop problem-solving skills for dealing with the culture, and begins to accept the culture ways with a positive attitude. The culture begins to make sense, and negative reactions and responses to the culture are reduced.

I couldn’t write a more accurate paragraph to describe my feelings right now.

I’m starting to embrace routines I used to scoff at.

Like fika, a coffee break that is so much more than grabbing a cup of caffeine. Workplaces literally grind to a screeching halt for 30 minutes in the morning and again in the afternoon for this experience, which usually includes sweet baked goods.

Like taking a number at every bank, pharmacy and jeweler instead of standing in an organized line.



Like taking your shoes off every time you enter a residence, not to mention the absence of carpeted rooms in said homes. Hardwood floors are the norm.

Like visiting Systembolaget for alcohol on Friday evenings. Even watching “Let’s Dance” (Sweden’s version of “Dancing with the Stars”) on Friday nights with the rest of the TV-glued country.



I have a more positive attitude about other cultural difference I’ve had to adapt to and lifestyle changes I’ve made in the last few months, too.

My wardrobe is full of tighter-fitting clothes than I ever wore in the States.

I don’t get all worked up about shitty service in restaurants and stores because I recognize those employees have no incentive to help me, since they receive no gratuities or commission.

I smile when I see a pint of Ben and Jerry’s on “sale” for the “special” price of $7.80.



Gas isn’t going to get any cheaper if I curse about paying the equivalent of $8 per gallon, you know?



I’ve also learned to stop trying to say hello to people in passing, and to not let that bother me anymore. A vacationer might call Swedes cold for this, but I’ve learned better. They’re just reserved, and offering a friendly greeting to a stranger on the street is plain weird here.

It’s little things like those and I’m still getting used to new things all the time.

There’s still a lot of frustration about the language. I was set to start my fifth week of a government-funded Swedish program for immigrants when I got the offer to work these last two months in Stockholm, which ultimately derailed my language studies.

My comprehension has improved so much that Amanda often speaks Swedish to me at home, but I answer in English. I still can’t roll an ‘R’ to save my life, one of the reasons I gave up on Spanish in my sixth year of classes and a continuing problem here. There may be a lot of similarities between Swedish and English, but there are plenty of differences, too.

As I continue to freelance articles from home, I’m going to try the self-study method and see how quickly my Swedish improves. I have several resources, including texts from the Government-funded course and a local library.



While I no longer feel like a fish out of water every day, I still have moments. Sweden is an easy place to get comfortable, and I’ve come a long way in six months. I have a long way to go, and I’m so thankful for the family and friends we have here to help me through each challenge. It’s the best support system an expatriate could ask for.

I fly back to California next week for the first time since I moved. I probably haven’t lived away from the Golden State long enough to experience much reverse culture shock, but who knows what will surprise me when I go back?

Swedes and Sweets

There’s one thing Sweden does better than any other country, and it has nothing to do with contemporary furniture design.

Swedes consume the most candy in the world. It’s no exaggeration. I thought Americans were pretty good at eating sweets, but no, Sweden trumps us.

I’ve read statistics that claim an annual average of as many as 18 kilograms of candy consumption per person. That’s roughly 40 pounds of candy each year, which I find disgusting. Considering that people like Amanda and me are bringing that average way down, I shudder to think of Swedes at the other end of the spectrum consuming a pound of candy or more every week.

Similar statistic sources say the average Swede guzzles 90 liters of soft drinks annually. NINETY. With epidemics like these, I understand why some are pushing so hard for Sweden to take a page from its Scandinavian neighbors’ books and institute a sugar tax. But I digress.

Swedish sweets (“svenskt godis”) are most commonly sold by the kilo as “losvikt godis.”

You scoop a medley of flavors into your bag and pay by weight. There’s a better chance someone has a bag of godis in their cabinet than a liter of milk in their refrigerator.

There are more fruit varieties than you could count:

There’s an equally impressive number of chocolate choices:

There are more licorice options than you could imagine:

I don’t even know how to describe some of the other flavors:

You can find godis in every store that rents movies, every gas station, every Pressbyrån (a chain of convenience stores that emulate 7-Eleven) and, perhaps most unfortunately, every grocery store. There, you don’t find the godis. The godis find you.

At our favorite supermarket in town, you actually can’t get to the cash register to pay for your groceries without passing through what I call the “Valley of Godis.” Believe me, it’s quite a gauntlet to run, especially on a chilly weekend night.

Whenever I ask why candy consumption is so excessive here, people invariably point to two things: holidays and weather.

It’s part of the culture. Candy is a key element of every holiday, and Swedes are very good at celebrating holidays.

Perhaps even more responsible is the weather. Long winters mean dark days and cold nights, which encourage “myskväll.” There’s no direct translation, but it basically means a night in, watching TV or movies. It’s all many Swedes do from November through March, and sweets are a natural component.

While obesity isn’t as obvious here as it is in the United States, it’s a growing problem, particularly among kids. This extreme consumption of candy and soda must be mainly to blame.

Random Musings from Stockholm

• There may only be a million people in Stockholm’s urban area, but it seems like 70 percent of them smoke cigarettes. It’s incredible, even for a “big city” where smoking will obviously always be more prevalent than a small town.

• Stockholm is a beautiful place full of gorgeous people, but again, I guess that’s to be expected for any country’s largest city.

• MAX sucks. I hadn’t tried Sweden’s largest burger chain despite living here almost six months and I probably never will again. MAX tries to compete with McDonald’s and Burger King, which are both very popular here. MAX claims to serve “Sveriges godaste hamburgar,” but I respectfully disagree. The fries were good and so were the bun and toppings, but I’m a firm believer that the meat makes the burger and I’ll take Burger King beef over the crap I forced down at MAX any day of the week.

• On a related note, “American Dressing” really isn’t so bad. I’ve never seen it in America, but Swedes love it and MAX, McDonald’s and Burger King all slop it on every burger they serve. It’s like a cross between Thousand Island dressing and the special sauce McDonald’s puts on Big Macs, and I used to absolutely hate it, so much that I simply wouldn’t eat the burger if I asked for it with no dressing and they put the sauce on anyway. One afternoon at Stockholm Central, while waiting for a train back to Falköping, Burger King put the dressing on my Big King XXL and I was so hungry that I ate it anyway. Turns out I might actually kinda like it. Chalk it up to becoming more Swedish with each passing day, I guess…

• Public transportation in Stockholm, particularly the subway system, is underrated outside Sweden due to the small size of Stockholm in relation to other European capitals. It’s extremely efficient and, at around $100 USD monthly for unlimited bus and subway trips, it’s also a bargain.

• There’s a certain type of adolescent male who rides around Stockholm on the subway all day long blasting metal music from his iPod at a volume so loud he’ll be deaf by age 30.

• Public transportation can be an awkward experience, though, especially if your eyes tend to wander. You’ll get anything from an awkward look to a mean glare if you make eye contact with anyone. Tunnel vision is a must on the tunnelbana and other trains in Sweden.

• Even if it’s less than a buck and I’ve been to enough major European cities that I’m used to paying to use a public restroom, I still hate doing it. When I do, I always try to “take full advantage,” if you catch my drift.

• I’ve rekindled a childhood love for blueberry muffins.

• There are a lot of English-speaking expatriates from countries not called the United States, and to borrow a fellow American expat’s trademarked expression, nearly all of us are “love refugees.” I learned the most about cultural differences from non-American expats this winter.

• I have an easier time paying 70 SEK for a beer than 70 SEK for a fast food value meal, when it should probably be the other way around.

• I didn’t fully grasp the importance of a large, hot meal at lunchtime in Sweden until working this 9-to-5 job in Stockholm and going out to eat with coworkers every day. While dinners may be as light as cheese and crackers, Swedes enjoy a hearty, multi-course meal at midday. For anywhere from $10 to $15 USD, you typically get your choice of meat, potatoes in multiple styles, a salad bar, bread and a drink, and if you’re still hungry after all that, dessert and coffee are also included. Dagens lunch is a great concept.

• Skyview at Ericsson Globe is a cool experience. My brother and I visited the attraction one evening and got some great views of Stockholm from the top of the world’s largest hemispherical building.

• It’s easy to take for granted seeing your significant other every day. I started learning this over a year ago, but the last two months in Stockholm definitely reiterated it.

Back in Falköping

I’ve been back in Falköping about a week since wrapping up my two-month contract at JG Communication in Stockholm.

It was an absolute whirlwind eight weeks.

My parents visited for the holidays.



A week later, my brother got his first taste of Sweden (and several other European countries).



Juggling their visits and maintaining a longish-distance relationship while learning about the complex field of telecommunications on the fly was a challenge, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. I’m very lucky to be continuing my work with JG on a freelance basis.

It’s really nice to be home again after 8,000 SEK ($1,250 USD) of train travel between Falköping and Stockholm, at least every weekend and some weeks even more frequently.



The trip can be as short as 2 hours, 20 minutes or as long as 3 hours, 42 minutes, depending on the speed/type of train.

There are exactly 341 kilometers of rail between Falköping and Stockholm, which is about 212 miles. To put my commute in perspective for a Californian, the following drives are each between 210 and 220 miles: Reno to San Francisco on I-80, Eureka to Santa Rosa on US-101 and Sacramento to Visalia (45 minutes southeast of Fresno) and Fresno to Los Angeles, both on CA-99.

The cycle quickly became quite routine, though.















It’s not feasible to travel that distance daily, but I was fortunate enough to be able to spend weeknights in Stockholm, one of the toughest places to find rental living in the entire world, while spending the other three in Falköping.

I rented a room from Amanda’s aunt during the weeks and I owe Annika and Amanda’s awesome cousins Tind and William a huge thanks for putting up with me. I couldn’t have accepted my first job in Sweden without them, and although the flexibility of freelancing from home for a while will be nice, I’m looking forward to what the future holds for me here on the employment front.

A Typical Swede

What is a Swede?

As much as I hate to stereotype anyone, Swedes can often be some of the easiest people in the world to make generalizations about.

The text below was rumored to be discovered in a computer lab in Umeå, a city in northern Sweden.

Not everyone fits a single mold, and keep in mind that this is written to be funny, but a striking number of Swedes I encounter on a daily basis exhibit many of these traits...

Enjoy.

A Typical Swede

A Swede is tall, blonde, blue-eyed, and wears a wooly hat in the winter. By nature he is shy, reserved, serious, industrous, and finds it hard to laugh at himself. He is also a creature of habit and every morning gets up at 5.30 to give himself enough time to read the morning newspaper before going to work. Since work does not usually start until 8 o’clock, this can only imply that a Swede is also a slow reader.

Apart from himself, his chief interests are money, his job, his home, ice-hockey, and his family (in that order). He also loves animals – especially dogs – and spends hours cycling through the town dragging a huge and ferocious German Shepherd behind him on a leash.

A Swede is usually punctual, honest, reliable, clean, has his own teeth, and is law-abiding. Evidence of the latter is particularly noticeable at pedestrian crossings. No matter what the weather is like, a Swede would rather get soaked to the skin than cross an empty street when a red light is showing. Similarly, he always wears a seat belt, never drinks and drives, always has a television licence, usually hands in his tax-return on time, invariably has a plastic bag in his pocket when he walks his dog, and never has a bath after 10 o’clock.

A Swede is also very cautious and rarely does anything on impulse (except perhaps sneeze). To him, all decisions are a matter of life and death. Take a simple matter like buying cheese, for example. A Swede may try at least ten different sorts of cheeses before finally deciding to buy twenty grammes of Brie. It is the same sense of caution that prevents him from plunging into marriage straight away. Instead, he lives with a woman first, has one or two children, then – if all seems well – asks her to marry him.

With reference to marriage, a Swede is quite unlike most European men. Anything a housewife can do, he can do better – from cooking to sewing on buttons. In fact, everything in the home (apart from breast-feeding) is shared.

A Swede also likes to think he is well informed and spends hours finding out all he can about such things as nuclear power, the Third World, pollution, South Africa, the sexual habits of the centipede, etc. while at the same time paying little attention to unimportant matters - such as the name of his neighbor or whether certain types of beer should be banned or not.

Most Swedes as fanatics when it comes to keeping fit and regularly spend their weekends running through the nearest forest or cycling for hours in the cellar on a bicycle fixed to the floor. With his health in mind, he has also given up smoking, sugar, drinking coffee in the evenings, going to bed after 10 o’clock, and mixing with strangers.

But perhaps the greatest thing about a Swede is his sense of equality – of everyone being the same as everyone else. To help this, most Swedes have the same surnames – Svensson, Nilsson, or Persson – earn the same amount of money after tax, have the same taste in furniture, dress alike, think alike, drive a Volvo, and go to Majorca or Kreta in the summer.

A Swede also refuses to admit that he is prejudiced in any way. To him, all foreigners are just the same as Swedes and, although he doesn’t actually have any Jugoslavian, Greek, Turkish, Polish, Italian, Finnish or Czechoslovakian friends, he is certain there is very little difference between them and Swedes – apart from their names, their customs, the way they grow vegetables in the kitchen, the fact that they carry knives, rob banks, live on social security, pinch their jobs, breed like rabbits, beat their wives, and speak Swedish like someone with a gobstopper in his mouth.

Finally, a Swede loves the sun, hates queuing, gets a kick out of being first on the bus, detests winter, enjoys sex, can’t stand gypsies, believes what the National Social Board of Health and Welfare tells him, doesn’t believe in God, worships Ingemar Stenmark, only gets drunk when he drinks, is patriotic (wears Swedish flag underwear), visits the off-licence twice a week, visits his parents at Christmas, goes to English classes, and, inevitably, is deeply offended by an article such as this.

Reflecting on 2010

I rang in 2011 last night the same way I kicked off 2010: happy, healthy, employed and celebrating with friends in the bitter cold of a Swedish winter. As we said goodbye to one year and welcomed another, it really sank in how monumental 2010 was.

It was a year of firsts, from experiences (helicopter flights and bottle service) to travel (Scotland, Italy and Las Vegas twice).



Some firsts weren’t so positive. 2010 was the first year I didn’t even snowboard once in December. I was also forced to sell a car for the first time. Fortunately, I’ll see it around Arcata when I visit since I sold it to a friend. Unfortunately, it won’t be MRWINTR because I had to release the personalized plate and according to the DMV website it has already been registered to a new vehicle. It was the best car I’ve ever driven and I could really have used it over here in all this snow.



Early in 2010, I made the decision to leave my California life behind to spend the next few years in Europe. Much of the winter and early spring were spent filling out residence permit paperwork between a near-record number of snowboarding trips.

A couple months later I finally graduated from college. Cliché as it may sound, it really was a long road and sometimes it’s hard to imagine I had just finished my first semester in the dorms only five years ago.



Professionally, 2010 was quite an adventure, too.

One minute I was sharing a Sugar Bowl chairlift with US Olympian Daron Rahlves.



A few months later, I was unemployed for the first time since age 12. After three unforgettable years at the Auburn Journal it was time to move on. I’ll never take for granted the opportunities I had or the people I worked with in the foothill communities.

After five months of not knowing what to do with myself, I finally landed short-term employment as a consultant at JG Communication, writing internal and external articles primarily for Ericsson. There are only four weeks left on my contract and I’ll soon be unemployed again, but I’ve learned some pretty incredible stuff on the marketing side of journalism in a very short time.

2010 was a year of great concerts, including Wiz Khalifa (for the second year in a row), Three 6 Mafia, Jason Derulo and Chamillionaire.



I saw some pretty good baseball at Dodger Stadium, then lost a little faith in the sport when the Giants defied all odds to win the World Series.

I also ate two of the best meals I can remember. The first was a four-course menu at Capitol Garage with pairings from Lost Coast Brewery during Sacramento Beer Week. Looking at this menu again is making my mouth water.



Amanda and I also had a spectacular dinner in Las Vegas at Fleur de Lys in Mandalay Bay.



I made some strides in the kitchen myself this year, perfecting the ingredient ratios for my sun-dried tomato gorgonzola mashed potatoes.



By the time I moved to Sweden in August, I was also cooking healthier and more gourmet than ever before.



2011 is already looking like it’ll be another great year. I’ll check two new countries off my list in the first month alone. Hopefully I find some stability in my professional life while I continue to enjoy this beautiful country I call home.