Monday, January 24, 2011

You know you´re from Sweden when...



Some of the things on the following list are so true!

21. You have different sets of clothes for different halves of the year and rotate them in your wardrobe and storage rooms . 22. The hallway of your home looks like a used shoe store. (Weather) 1. You are obsessed with weather. 2. You find it perfectly normal to ride a bike in a blizzard.3. It's only a blizzard if you can't see your car in the drive because it's covered in snow. 4. You've worn a souwester (“sydväst”) without being a fisherman. 5. The first little bit of sun is out you go to the nearest park and you put on sunscreen factor 30 and a bikini while watching old ladies walk past in furry coats. 6. You find it normal to have the headlights of the car on at the brightest and sunniest of days. 7. You and your kids are the only ones in the playground wearing clothes according to weather. 8. You always go "That's not REAL snow" whenever it snows in countries that usually don't get snow. 9. You find it adorable when people from other countries get excited about a few milimetres of snow that only stays on the ground for a few hours. 10. You find it ridiculous schools in some other countries have to close if there comes more than five cm of snow on the roads during one night. 11. You constantly whine about the rain or the cold weather. (What others say about the Swedish) 1. People ask you if you have polar bears on the streets and you try to spread the myth further by saying it is true. 2. You have been asked whether there is a “Swedish Bikini Team”. 3. You don't get why Non-swedes think it's odd that the sun stays up for about 24 hours in the summer. 4. You can't see what's so "cute" about writing 13:00 instead of 1 pm. 5. You think that Sweden is constantly in the news abroad and are surprised to find that this is not the case at all. 6. You seriously want to HURT Non-Swedes who ask 'how's life in SWITZERLAND?' 7. Non-Swedes laugh at you for wearing a bicycle helmet and you answer: "At least I won't be the one dying of a skull fracture". 8. People refuse to believe you're actually from Sweden because you're not platinum blonde with a Sven-Göran Ericsson accent. 9. You tell them your surname is Larsson and every Non-Swede automatically assumes you are related to Henrik Larsson. 10. Drunk Englishmen keep telling you how drunk Swedes usually are, in their experience, and you find it rather comforting to know that there are drunk English people keeping an eye out for us abroad! (Misanchellous) 1. You have a summer house in the countryside. It has no running water or flushing toilet, but you can't understand why none of your non-Swedish friends want to visit. 2. The law in your country says it's legal to sell sex, but illegal to buy it. 3. You go downtown during a Sunday and don't expect to meet a single soul during a thirty minute walk. 4. You thought 'Aftonbladet' and 'Expressen' were full of silly news. Then you went abroad and found that many papers include nothing but naked women and sex. 5. In desperation you think you bought the wrong item because the condoms come in square packages instead of rectangular ones. 6. You have absolutely no idea what is meant by" Swedish massage" that keeps being advertised in spas all over the world. 7. You are constantly surprised that you are the tallest one in any given situation while abroad (some countries are exceptions of course). 8. You get chills down your spine thinking about the "Flour-tant". 9. Your parents pay you every month for not eating sweets for a year (or so). 10. You instinctively spot Swedes from a distance based on looks and what they're wearing and/or by the round pale mark in the pocket of their jeans (obviously they are anomalies- Norwegians or Finns at a push…) 11. You have been or know someone who has been an exchange student 12. You are amazed to find that other countries are not familiar with winter tires and 'halkbanor'. 13. You know an entire catalogue of “Bellman”- and “Norge” jokes. 14. You own more than 5 candles and light them daily. 15. Everyone owns at least one mobile phone, but there's no longer land line phones in all homes. 16. You think that v70R is the ultimate sportscar. 17. You know the population of your hometown quite accurately. 18. At the age of ten, you knew all twenty five counties of Sweden by heart, including every town with approximately more than five people in it. In other words, you’ve have had a good geographical education. 19. You wash your face in an English bathroom and get totally annoyed about the fact that you are either burning your face or putting a layer of ice on it! Therefore you rave to Non-Swedes about the superiority of only using one tap for both hot and cold water since "In the country where I come from, we have had one tap for both hot and cold water since the Medieval days!" 20. You can type in someone’s name on the internet and find out everything about them; phone numbers, see where they live and even see a picture of their front door. 21. You go to McDonalds & the staff work as elite models in their spare time. 22. When you tell Americans that you're Swedish and get thoroughly annoyed when they say "Me too!" 23. You have seen both your parents naked more than once. 24. You secretly consider Finland a part of Sweden and can't understand why they don't. 25. Your queen is from Germany. 26. Someone in your family or someone you know has a ping-pong table in their country house. 27. You find it normal to have the kitchen lamp hanging from a cord/string over your table instead of being attached directly to the ceiling. 28. You get homesick out of reading that list 29. You actually read all of these posts. 30. You would never ever admit to anything on this list (since that would make you “too” Swedish) 31. You unfourtunately realise that everything on this list is true.

Source: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2226483923

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Sweden: one or two countries?

It’s amazing how the places I saw when arriving to Sweden for the first time (mid-August) changed so much after the first snowfall. Despite what I thought previously, snowfalls aren’t always the same. I have my own snow classification:
  • Snow storm (not good for biking, hurts your eyes);
  • Winter wonderland (slowly falling snow, like dust floating through the air);
  • Foggy snow (very little snow flakes that get your clothes all white);
  • Snowmen snow (good for making snowmen. The temperature has to be near zero from what I understood so far, otherwise it’s like dust and doesn’t allow for making of snowballs);
  • Annoying snow (when you want to get somewhere fast and its snowing like hell).
Other types of weather one can encounter in Uppsala:
  • Icy – falling easily guaranteed, on bike or on foot;
  • Cold like hell – below 20ºC (negative of course XD) becomes quite of a problem.
Several places I’ve passed by before are hardly recognizable now. I’ve made a photo comparison to show you. Is it the same place or a different place?

Bridge Nordiska
From Stockholm bridge near Nordiska museum


Grand Hotel
Grand Hotel – Stockholm

Stockholm channels
Stockholm channels

 Stora torget stockholm 2
Stora torget – Stockholm

Stora torget stockholm
Stora torget – Stockholm

Nordiska museum
Nordiska museum – Stockholm

Nordiska statue
Statue in front of Nordiska museum

PUB
PUB shopping center – Stockholm

BMC
BMC landscape – Uppsala

BMC 2
BMC landscape – Uppsala

BMC bycicle park
BMC bicycle park – Uppsala

Rudbeck garden
Garden near Rudbeck laboratory – Uppsala

Rudbeck laboratory
Rudbeck laboratory exit – Uppsala

Cathedral
Cathedral – Uppsala

Catle bell
Castle bell – Uppsala

Botanical garden
Botanical garden – Uppsala

Triangle 2
Triangle – Uppsala

Triangle 3
Triangle – Uppsala

Triangle 1
Triangle – Uppsala

Castle 2
Castle – Uppsala


Castle 1
Castle – Uppsala

Street Carolina Rediviva 2
Street to Carolina Rediviva – Uppsala

Street Carolina Rediviva
Street in front of Carolina Rediviva – Uppsala

Carolina Rediviva
Carolina Rediviva library – Uppsala

Linee statue
Linné statue

Gustanavium
Gustanavium museum- Uppsala

Blasenhus
Blashuset garden – Uppsala

Uppsala river
Uppsala river

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Getting back

After 4 months living in Sweden, time has come to say goodbye and spend Christmas in Portugal. Now on the bus 801 to Arlanda airport, the sun has greeted me with a shiny yellow light. I haven’t seen it for long… The huge extensions of grass and green trees I saw when coming here have been filled with white snow landscapes and dark branches scattered with falling flakes. The tops of the pine trees trace a thin line on the horizon, with the sun shining behind. As Swedes say (and hopefully me in the future) “Det är solen skiner!”. If someone told me Christmas had born here I would believe so. I leave Sweden missing my family and friends back in Portugal, but I realize I’ll also miss the friends I made here in the last few months, as well as the magic spirit of this country. The cold is a minor problem after adapting to it and can well be refreshing for the mind. I feel I belong in Sweden and I’ll be back here in 2 weeks. The bus is arriving and the check-in awaits me. A sign at the airport says:
“You haven’t seen nothing yet”
It makes sense if you haven’t been to Sweden before!

DSC03686
View from the airplane window – a frozen peaceful world

DSC03727
Arrival at Oporto – Douro river