I read the first post, and part of the reply visible in this link. I'm ethnically Swedish so maybe I don't share the same experience as either of these, but to me they are listing a lot of...
Exemplary
I read the first post, and part of the reply visible in this link.
I'm ethnically Swedish so maybe I don't share the same experience as either of these, but to me they are listing a lot of completely foreign concepts and the conspiracy part of my brain wonders if it is propaganda, which seems to flourish on the Internet right now.
When I get to my computer I'll edit this post with some more direct comments. It's hard to do on mobile.
EDIT:
I am relating some experiences to what I was met with when I lived in the US. I am aware that the poster is Aussie and it's not necessarily the same.
Firstly, there is no consumer choice. Generic and expensive goods line the same few large supermarket type shops. Small business is virtually nonexistent aside from the awful pizza/kebab, Asian food or hotdog/ hamburger stalls run by entrepeneurial immigrants. Customer service and special requests are also non existent. Innovation, warmth, product knowledge and creativity are strongly lacking in the commercial sector.
I feel like this is a very weird statement. It is true that we have a few supermarket chains, but that's the same as any city in the US or elsewhere. There are small independent tobacco shops/grocery stores in some areas, but it's not like NYC with a bodega everywhere. I have had no problems with custom requests or customer service anywhere I have gone. But it's true that we won't bend over backward for our customers like in the US. There's also loads of small shops for anything, just not always in the most central areas.
Immigrants are welcomed, with racism frowned upon harshly, however once these immigrants arrive they are segregated off away from the native Swedes, unable to find employment and unable to navigate the endless complex rule systems with strong risks of being persecuted by the social services. The ‘welcoming’ Swedes dont allow their children to set foot in immigrant suburbs or schools, and wonder why there is very little integration happening.
Integration is a real problem. I don't have the solution for it either, but this makes it seem like immigrants are purposefully moved away from Swedes. As far as I am aware they choose to live close to people with the same background. When I lived in the US I found that a lot of Swedes lived in the same areas as well. Another reason immigrants live in the same areas is that they are often lower-cost-of-living areas. Due to poor integration they kind of have to. So to be clear, we do a bad job at integration but we don't forcefully segregate immigrants into specific areas. I was never disallowed from going to said areas either. School is mostly somewhere close to where you live, so they might not be too inclusive.
Swedish people are very unfriendly, closed minded and conforming. It is almost impossible to form close friendships.
Swedes are hard to get close to, but when you do you're friends for a long time and it becomes a closer friendship. Those are my experiences. In the US it was easy to get an acquaintance but almost impossible to find a friend. I think different expectations of what constitutes a friendship is to blame for this.
There are endless trivial rules which are harshly enforced. I wanted to get my licence in Sweden, but ticked a box on the licence form which asked about health issues. I have had declining kidney function (very irrelevant to driving) so I noted it down. I was unable to get a licence (I have been driving 15 years, but my Australian licence is not recognised here after the first year) because I needed a certificate from a kidney specialist. I was unable to be referred to a kidney specialist because my kidney function is not severely declined. When attempting to fix the issue - rules are rules, and thats simply the way it is. The issue is unable to be resolved so I am allowed to drive in neighbouring countries, but not here. Attempting to live here is filled with many similar incredibly frustrating experiences. Banks wont let you open an account except on weekday mornings, but dont let you know that until you have waited in a queue for several hours. There is no other option even if you work or study on weekday mornings, and nobody cares. Every simple process is a beaurocratic nightmare
This seems incredibly exaggerated. But it could be a point of view that is from an immigrant, something I have not experienced. But I can say that I have friends who have immigrated here and they have not had these problems.
Whilst at first I believed the free schools, childcare and medical services were a great family friendly policy, on closer interaction in the system I realised this is a system of control and incompetence which is not leading to positive outcomes. Firstly, everyone is expected to take their children to daycare and go to work. There is no freedom of choice to look after your children, homeschool or rear your children according to your beliefs and values. Children are informed about endless rights, and have no obligations to behave in a respectful manner. Parents are powerless, teachers are powerless and getting an education in a swedish school is a debacle of children on phones and talking during class, swearing at teachers, abusing and bullying each other and any form of punishment towards unruly children is disallowed. School is somewhat reminiscent of lord of the flies.
Yes, we don't allow parents to home-school children because we can't ensure they are given a proper education. The school also helps identify children who are not faring well to me. We try to give children an objective education so they can best make their minds up about things. How are parents powerless? You can perfectly raise a child without abusing them. You can set rules and make sure they behave in a proper manner.
My personal opinion is that it is on the parents to raise a child and punish them, not necessarily a teacher. But I also think that teachers should be allowed more lee-way to send children home or similarly.
But overall we believe children to be humans with the same rights as their parents, that is true.
Police are useless - except with regard to prosecuting minor crimes such as parking fines. Fewer than 3% of crimes are solved, reports are filed but never investigated - even with matters which are taken very seriously in the rest of the world such as violent crime and rape.
Parking fines are not handled by the police. We report rape differently from elsewhere, leading to inflated statistics. If a woman is raped 10 times it's recorded as once in a lot of the world. Here it's recorded as 10 times, bam 10x reports.
That being said we need more police and they need more funding. I agree on that. Not sure where the 3% comes from though.
Whilst medical care is generally free to low cost, the wait times are insane. It could be 3 weeks to see your GP (too bad if the matter is urgent) and 10 months to see a specialist. Specialists are allowed to refuse referrals, and if you have a chronic illness you are likely in the wrong country.
This is talked about by a lot of people, but I have not experienced it. I get to talk to my GP within days and if it is something very urgent I can go to an ER. Most jobs I have seen offer private insurance as well.
Now to the reply from the person living in Sweden. As I said before I am ethnically Swedish so I can't speak to experiences that this person may have had. I'll just reply to their statements with my own experiences.
Swedish are not very friendly people. It is hard to make friends with them. They are not warm and friendly. It is part of their culture to be a bit distant from each other and this is even worse with people from other countries. It is very normal to not visit your siblings/parents very often even if you live in the same city. Sweden is a very individualistic society, especially in bigger cities. Based on my Swedish friends with foreign backgrounds who have Swedish partners, I noticed that the Swedish partners think it is very strange to go and see your parents 2–4 times a month for a lunch, dinner och just to hang out.
I mentioned above that it can, admittedly, be harder to make friends with a Swede. I see my friends and family at least 2 times a month, usually more. This includes my partners family as well.
Swedish people are very complacent. They think Sweden is paradise on Earth. Very proud of what they achieved and are very happy to talk about it. They talk about it as if it were themselves who did it.
I think Sweden is a much better place to live than a lot of places on this Earth. But I don't think it is Paradise. And I think it's quite global to speak of your country and its achievements as a collective "we".
They are stingy. Swedish people love to get stuff for free but very reluctantly share what they have. They can set aside their monthly savings and tell you that they do not have money for the month to hang out and tell you that they can join only if you can treat them.
I am not sure how much insight this person has in others financials. But I would never say I can only join if someone treats me. If I can't afford to go somewhere I am not going to take out of my savings to go. I have a budget for personal spending and if it's not in it, it's not in it.
Things are very expensive. When I travel abroad I often feel that things are cheap compared to home.
This very much depends on where you travel. But things are more expensive to cover the higher cost of employing someone, because that cost goes to our social security system.
Swedish people are not very good coworkers. They are generally lazy. They feel entitled: it is very common that a Swede wants to change job role within the company just because they feel like it. It does not matter if they are very bad at their current role. They are not flexible with their work time if it does not benefit them: they happily finish work and have some beer at 3pm on a Friday, but they refuse to work even 5 min after hours. They cannot handle much work: very often they “hit a wall” and get a sick leave since they are overworked. I have never seen a Swede with foreign background get a sick leave due to overwork. Everyones experiences are different and it is a good thing that you can get a leave if you are overworked but this more common with Swedish people. Coworkers are not good at saying hello. You have eye contact, say hello, but they just look at you. This is very normal.
So we have a good work/life balance and that's a bad thing? I fail to see why you should work overtime without good reason. Productivity worldwide is up more than salaries. I work hard to get my work done, if it's done before my day is over I am going to take the rest of the day off. I value my work in terms of output, not time spent on it. Not saying hello is definitely not normal.
They complain about foreigners or immigrants but they travel abroad to party like crazy and behave however they want.
Partly true, but not normal. We have a problem of a racist party rising in popularity and young Swedes do travel abroad to party. But this seems like an exaggeration.
There is a subtle racism in Sweden. You experience it when looking for a job. If you have a skilled based degree, like a doctor, nurse, dentist etc, your Swedish batch mates will have loads of interviews while you and your foreigns Swede mate are not going to get invited to interviews.
This is true. And it's shameful.
When I was a kid I visited many Swedish friends homes to hang out. One common theme with these visits was that whenever it was time to eat, they told me to wait while they were going to eat. So the friend went and had dinner while you just sat there playing with toys. When dinner was done, the friend came back and continued playing. This was very normal when I was a child in 90s. All Swedes with foreign background has this experience as a child. And all Swedes with foreign backgrounds have a warmer culture than the Swedish one, which means they always offered food to any friend in their homes when it was time to eat. Swedish culture in a nutshell.
This is not a normal experience. I have never experienced it and when it was a topic on /r/sweden most had neither. Very much an outlier.
If you are invited to a Swedish persons home, they usually have just enough food and snacks. Six meatballs per person, one cinnamon bun each and so on.
Not in my experience. But just one cinnamon bun each seems a reasonable serving size.
The first time I was invited to Swedish persons party, everyone had their own alcohol in a plastic bag under their seat. And they did not share what they had. I put my stuff on a common table and they happily drank my stuff first so they could save their own alcohol.
Bringing your own alcohol is somewhat common, but so is sharing in my experience.
If you are going to a Swedish barbecue party where everyone has to bring something, Swedish people only bring enough food for themselves while foreign Swedes bring food so everyone can taste it.
This is not true. In my experience most people bring some stuff and it's all shared. Unless it's specifically stated otherwise.
Not being ethnically Swedish means you generally have a harder time entering a nightclub. When going out with Swedish people, if they are in the front of the queue and get int he club and you do not get in, they would not care and would just sms you and say “OK, too bad. Let’s hang out later next week!” Foreign Swedes would happily leave the club and join you in your rejection, even if they paid to get in.
Admittance may be true. Abandonment is not, in my experience.
If you are at a gathering and are leaving after it is done, you might want to offer rides to some people, especially if they live rather close to where you are going. If you do this, a Swedish person will offer you money for the ride. It is close to my home, so it is not a big deal to give someone a ride on the way. They do not understand the concept of giving. This means that they expect money when doing favours. I have never been offered a ride from a Swedish person. I try not to be treated by a Swedish person, because they do it so they have a favour to ask of you.
We do understand the concept of giving. This is such a weird interaction to describe.
These are obviously my experiences. They may differ for other people. But overall what was said is entirely foreign to me and I ask myself if we are even living in the same country.
Great write-up. A lot of it is very subjective and I definitely do not doubt that many of these things are because of the color of their skin. Recently a thread on r/denmark asked foreigners about...
Great write-up. A lot of it is very subjective and I definitely do not doubt that many of these things are because of the color of their skin. Recently a thread on r/denmark asked foreigners about their experiences and they said many of the same things - so I do not doubt that a lot of it is because of low key (or outright) racism.
With that said - and without knowing them - this person seems to have such an extreme amount of bad experiences. Check your own shoes etc...
Fascinating. This is exactly the opposite of the teacher training I received in Canada. Our education professors taught that the school teacher stood "in loco parentis" or in the place of the...
Yes, we don't allow parents to home-school children because we can't ensure they are given a proper education. The school also helps identify children who are not faring well to me. We try to give children an objective education so they can best make their minds up about things.
Fascinating. This is exactly the opposite of the teacher training I received in Canada. Our education professors taught that the school teacher stood "in loco parentis" or in the place of the parent to educate a child but the ultimate responsibility for the child's education rests with the parent. Thus if a parent wants to homeschool, choose a private school, a public school, a charter school that choice is theirs to make and it's not up to the government to tell the parent what to do. Because its free and easiest, most parents choose public schools but the option to change is always there. The 'proper' education of a home schooler is monitored by a qualified educator from the local school division who visits the home schoolers and makes periodic checks on their curricula, but there is a considerable degree of flexibility in the non core subjects.
It seems like, according to many of the posts on Quora, that Sweden highly values conformity of thought, equality of position and a strong desire not to stand out or make waves, quite different from the values in a more individualistic society like we have in Canada/USA.
I can only offer my experience as an Aussie, I’ve never been overseas so I can’t relate to differences I might see in Sweden or the US. That said, I do know Australia has a reputation for racism...
I am relating some experiences to what I was met with when I lived in the US. I am aware that the poster is Aussie and it's not necessarily the same
I can only offer my experience as an Aussie, I’ve never been overseas so I can’t relate to differences I might see in Sweden or the US.
That said, I do know Australia has a reputation for racism as much as a reputation for being multicultural, and I can definitely say we’re absolutely spoiled for choice when it comes to variety in the supermarket, and small businesses (especially food).
Just to illustrate, even in the small town I grew up in with a population of 6,000 we had, off the top of my head, the following cuisines:
Thai, Chinese, 2x Italian, Mexican (until it burned down), 3x fish and chips (which also do a humble style of burger), Austrian (not to be misread as “Australian”), Indian, Japanese, several modern brunch/cafes, and several places that served what I can only call “small country town bakery” which is a niche I don’t see in bigger Australian cities.
This density of variety is also found in the larger cities too, and in most suburbs across Melbourne I’m usually only a 15 minute drive away from all of the above, and plenty more.
From what I’ve heard about most of the rest of the world, that level of variety for a small town isn’t common, so if that’s the standard you’re used to, I can see why the commenter made the claims they did about the lack of variety they noticed in Sweden.
From my perspective, Australia has an extremely poor selection of supermarkets. It's a duopoly, with Coles and Woolworths controlling 65% of the market (and in my experience, they are so similar...
...I can definitely say we’re absolutely spoiled for choice when it comes to variety in the supermarket...
From my perspective, Australia has an extremely poor selection of supermarkets. It's a duopoly, with Coles and Woolworths controlling 65% of the market (and in my experience, they are so similar to each other that they might as well be the same). After that, you've got Aldi with 10% and and IGA (Metcash) with 7%, and that's over 80% of the supermarket industry right there. I've been living here for over a decade, and I don't think I've ever even been to a supermarket outside of those four. I certainly can't think of any.
This is particularly bad for farmers. Coles and Woolworths basically jointly set the price that farmers can sell for, squeezing many of them out of the industry, without passing those savings on to customers. Many Australian farmers do not sell food to Australians at all because they cannot afford to.
Mind you, I'm coming at this from an American perspective, where there are dozens of supermarket chains, nearly all of which control less than 10% of the market (only Walmart has a higher share).
Judging from these statistics, it looks like Sweden's supermarket industry is even more consolidated than Australia's, with just one company controlling over 50% of the market. Ouch.
I'm an immigrant to Sweden from the US, and your descriptions sound much more accurate to my experience than the OP. I live in a fairly small town centered around a particular industry that...
I'm an immigrant to Sweden from the US, and your descriptions sound much more accurate to my experience than the OP. I live in a fairly small town centered around a particular industry that encourages a lot of young, especially accepting people to live here, so I know that is a factor.
I've had no trouble meeting people. Everyone has been quite friendly and kind. We've had tons of help moving here, offered freely, from Swedes. Moving from those acquaintanceships to friendships has been hard, but it was hard to do that in the US, too. Moreso in the US, because people tend to live much more spaced out there, making meetups less convenient.
The integration complaint struck me as particularly odd. Yes, Sweden is not doing a perfect job, but it's so much better than the US does. In Sweden they have free Swedish courses for immigrants, and the courses also try to teach you about Swedish culture and expectation. Even then, if you speak English, everyone will happily speak it with you and give you no trouble. In the US there is no standardized program of free English courses, (i don't want to say they don't exist at all but I've never heard of one and I lived in a city where it would have been in high demand) and a very low percentage of American born people speak a second language.
Obviously comparing the medical system as an American and as an Aussie is going to have a completely different standard. I can't stop raving about the medical system here, though (maybe that's why I'm struggling to make friends). My husband has diabetes, asthma, and we just recently found out, a condition that causes him to grow tumors in his endocrine system. That last one probably would have killed him in America. Instead he's getting much better care far more regularly and we're not spending thousands of dollars every month on medical bills.
Maybe Australia is just so great that they make Sweden look terrible in comparison, I haven't been and couldn't say, but I am extremely happy that we've moved here and I have zero intentions of ever moving back.
The second response borders on bizarre to me. Are there any Swedes here that can lend some insight into the accuracy and cultural forces at play? The idea that you would have a child over and not...
The second response borders on bizarre to me. Are there any Swedes here that can lend some insight into the accuracy and cultural forces at play?
The idea that you would have a child over and not offer dinner? Or that favors are all transactional? Mind blowing. The only culture I've had much exposure to (and this is immigrants to the US) is Korean culture. It's almost aggressively the opposite, if you turn down food, you need to leave. And they'd keep offering food like the strategy is to make you go home by forcing you to be full.
Yeah, that response felt bizarre to me too... especially the part about schooling, where they described the cartoonishly bad behaving "lord of the flies" like students, and complained about how...
Yeah, that response felt bizarre to me too... especially the part about schooling, where they described the cartoonishly bad behaving "lord of the flies" like students, and complained about how you can't homeschool children "according to your beliefs and values" (which is a red flag statement to me).
Every time Sweden gets discussed on social media it feel's like it's turned into a battleground between far-right trolls pretending to be from Sweden, outright fabricating stories in order to push an anti-immigrant or anti-progressive political agenda, and people idolizing the country so glossing over or denying there are any issues whatsoever. And because of that it feels very difficult to get an accurate understanding of the actual issues there.
Yeah, a good friend of mine is a teacher in Sweden and I cannot imagine her letting anything like that happen. When we talk she'll tell us stories about the kids and by and large it mirrors my own...
Yeah, a good friend of mine is a teacher in Sweden and I cannot imagine her letting anything like that happen. When we talk she'll tell us stories about the kids and by and large it mirrors my own experience attending high school in the US.
Swede here. I believe the food thing is wrong or at least not the norm. We usually offer our kids' friends food/dinner when they are over. Maybe except when we know their parents are coming to...
Swede here. I believe the food thing is wrong or at least not the norm. We usually offer our kids' friends food/dinner when they are over. Maybe except when we know their parents are coming to pick them up in a couple of minutes (but then we'd probably wait to have dinner anyway). If the friend is someone new we usually check in with their parents first. Of course this might just be how we do it, might be different elsewhere.
My only exposure to this idea was when a Twitter thread about it went viral. It's a relief to see people from Sweden saying it's not normal, because there were definitely lots of rapid defenses...
My only exposure to this idea was when a Twitter thread about it went viral. It's a relief to see people from Sweden saying it's not normal, because there were definitely lots of rapid defenses from Swedes back on Twitter. I've had a grudge against Swedes ever since, but my wife is Norwegian so I'm obligated to have a grudge against Swedes anyway. I assume (or at least hope) that the Swedes defending the idea in the Twitter threads were just the Swedish variant of your usual unhinged Twitter user.
Can't answer your question (canadian here), but the critique from that second response around work culture and only adjusting schedules when the time fit sounds... healthy? At least from the...
Can't answer your question (canadian here), but the critique from that second response around work culture and only adjusting schedules when the time fit sounds... healthy?
At least from the Canadian/US cultural work norms I've seen, it takes a concerted effort for a team to build, respect, and maintain healthy time boundaries, and many of the examples they mentioned (like, leaving early on a Friday if allowed, but then refusing to work even 5 min late another day; taking mental health leaves when needed) feel like a protective worker-employer balance.
Definitely, that part sounded healthy though the author seems to to feel that it is unevenly applied. I wonder what the author's country of origin is. It sounds to me like they are experiencing...
Definitely, that part sounded healthy though the author seems to to feel that it is unevenly applied. I wonder what the author's country of origin is. It sounds to me like they are experiencing substantial racism.
I'm assuming Australia. They (Renee Gabriella, the Educator) mentioned that her Australian drivers license isn't recognized there. Looking through her Quora profile, she mentions she's...
I'm assuming Australia. They (Renee Gabriella, the Educator) mentioned that her Australian drivers license isn't recognized there. Looking through her Quora profile, she mentions she's college-educated in Australia and all that. And has had quite a few negative experiences in Sweden.
To be fair, as a child in Norway in the 90s, this was common for me as well (not getting dinner at friends). It was mostly just a thing parents of classes had agreed on so that children would go...
To be fair, as a child in Norway in the 90s, this was common for me as well (not getting dinner at friends). It was mostly just a thing parents of classes had agreed on so that children would go home for dinner with family even if it was at a different time.
Also, some homes were the popular ones because they had a pc or Nintendo or large playground, so it would be very unbalanced who would always had to serve dinners.
Not a norm, depended on the circumstance and distance to home and frequency of visit etc. Usually, the family that didn’t serve dinner did it out of respect for my parents so that I would eat dinner with my family. Sometimes we called and asked if it was ok that I ate with the friends instead, and if ok then that family would always share food.
I'm not a native Swede, I moved here about 8 months ago. I can absolutely refute the idea that favors are transactional. We have had so much help since we've moved here, and no one has expected...
I'm not a native Swede, I moved here about 8 months ago. I can absolutely refute the idea that favors are transactional. We have had so much help since we've moved here, and no one has expected anything in return. The only exception is a system of cat-sitting that my husband's coworkers have. They watch our cats if we leave town and we watch theirs if they do. It's pretty reasonable.
I have spoken to a few Swedes about the dinner time at a friend's thing. Most of them have not experienced it, but those who have explain that it's a social awkwardness issue. The parents assume that your parents are already planning dinner for you, and they don't want to spoil your dinner or mess up your parents' plans. There's an anxiety that asking your parents could be taken as thinking they weren't going to feed you, which would be insulting and they don't want to insult. It's not a lack of generosity, it's just awkwardness.
I absolutely love living in Sweden, I have nightmares about being made to go back to America, but I do have some complaints. Mainly, the way these people make any sort of Mexican or South American...
I absolutely love living in Sweden, I have nightmares about being made to go back to America, but I do have some complaints. Mainly, the way these people make any sort of Mexican or South American inspired food is a crime. They make burritos with radishes. Not pickled or even slivered, this isn't some cool fusion technique, just slices of unspiced radish thrown in there. They make guacamole with olive oil and a lot of sugar, but never vinegar. And the produce tends to be naturally sweeter before sugar is added, to the point where Pico di Gallo tastes weirdly sweet even if I make it at home without adding any sugar.
We had nachos at a Greek restaurant last night. By far the best "Mexican" food that I've had since I got here, and even then they made them weird. All the wet toppings were on the side so there was nothing sticking the onions and tomatoes to the chips. You had to sort of dip the chip in the cheese or sour cream or whatever and then try to pick up some onions. The flavor was good, though, and the cheese was exactly the fake cheese flavor that I expect from nacho cheese.
Oh, and you can order chili cheese fries here. You don't get fries with cheese and chili, like the spicy meat stew. You get fries with cheese and slices of chili pepper.
In Florida, my spice tolerance was fairly low. I liked a little, tiny kick. Here, I order the maximum spiciest possible thing, and it's usually a little spicier than a standard mayonnaise.
That's about it as far as complaints go. I'm not a big fan of the cold, but I knew I was going to have to deal with that. The food thing was more surprising. Everything else here honestly rules.
I live in Germany but my wife is Norwegian, and boy do they love their tacos there. Luckily, they're basically the same as when my family had taco night growing up -- but I'm white girl of...
Mainly, the way these people make any sort of Mexican or South American inspired food is a crime.
I live in Germany but my wife is Norwegian, and boy do they love their tacos there. Luckily, they're basically the same as when my family had taco night growing up -- but I'm white girl of Germanic descent who grew up in Ohio, so that's a low bar to clear. Very nostalgic for me, but I don't think it's the same genre as actual Mexican food. I can only imagine the culture shock to a Floridian.
Finding Latin American food is really annoying here as well. Luckily I live in Berlin so I can find a few properly international places, but even here there's shockingly little to offer when it comes to decent Latin American food. I'm also with you on the spice level -- I look like a spice fiend compared to Germans when in reality I'm just a middling American white girl as far as my spice tolerance goes. I'm considering growing my own chili peppers at home with a grow light because finding fresh chilis is such a pain here.
My wife did finally find a place that does buffalo wings though. It's in a weirdly remote neighborhood but I had such bad luck finding them anywhere. Those were my fucking holy grail of "American foods I miss" for a while.
I'm a native Swede. When you mentioned Mexican food, I thought, surely they're talking about our "tacos", the family Friday night staple, but no. I've never heard of burritos with radishes. I'm...
I'm a native Swede. When you mentioned Mexican food, I thought, surely they're talking about our "tacos", the family Friday night staple, but no. I've never heard of burritos with radishes. I'm not saying this didn't happen, I'm just curious under what circumstances? Was this at a restaurant?
This was at the Taco Bar restaurant at the Stockholm Airport. I know that's not actually supposed to be a decent restaurant, but I didn't expect the issue to be in that direction. Also the salsa...
This was at the Taco Bar restaurant at the Stockholm Airport. I know that's not actually supposed to be a decent restaurant, but I didn't expect the issue to be in that direction.
Also the salsa that came with it was really sweet, even for Swedish food, like almost a tomato jelly, and the chips were the kind Americans would recognize from lunchables, which is an extremely particular junk food niche that I'm not sure how to describe exactly. They're prepackaged school lunches that kids tend to like, but if you received that kind of food in any restaurant in America you would be genuinely confused. They sell them at like, kids sports games and sometimes movie theaters, where you're sort of trapped and the fact that they have food at all is secondary to the reason that you're there. They're not chips for eating, they're chips for cramming in your mouth before your blood sugar gets so low that you kill someone.
That's a little harsh but they're pretty bad chips.
I would take it with a grain of salt. I'm an American and have a few very good Swedish friends who I connect with monthly. While there are some vague truths here, I think most of it is wrong....
I would take it with a grain of salt. I'm an American and have a few very good Swedish friends who I connect with monthly. While there are some vague truths here, I think most of it is wrong. Their education system is great and encourages non-classroom based learning (i.e. physical education often has a snow survival, hiking, skiing elements; they are encouraged to take a gap year and study or work abroad before university). The work systems can be frustrating for employers, but it's because employees have much better protections (something we really lack). And the thing that isn't discussed here is the appreciation for personal life. The average Swede get over 40 days of vacation a year (compared to our 10) and they get a total of 1.5 years of parental leave to be used over 4 years for each child (both mother and father).
I think the main difference between America and Sweden is that here our wants are catered to - you can find any assortment of tv, food, etc that you want - while in Sweden it's the needs that are focused on - healthcare, personal leave, housing, etc... I think it's better to be wealthy here and better to be poor there.
I think a couple of commenters think I'm taking this as gospel fact. I've seen plenty of people say similar stuff about the US (It's hard to make friends, education sucks, etc), which hasn't...
I think a couple of commenters think I'm taking this as gospel fact. I've seen plenty of people say similar stuff about the US (It's hard to make friends, education sucks, etc), which hasn't really been my experience, but clearly others have problems I don't.
More or less, it's interesting to see that some people have common complaints about any given place in the world.
This is pretty it in my experience. You see very similar negative views on a lot of expat forums as well. It even makes sense, people that have something to complain about are more likely to seek...
some people have common complaints about any given place in the world.
This is pretty it in my experience. You see very similar negative views on a lot of expat forums as well. It even makes sense, people that have something to complain about are more likely to seek out a venue to complain about it. Hence, you seeing a lot of similar complaints on expat forums for any given country. Although I'd argue that this post likely skews the view even more as it explicitly invites negative experiences to be shared. I'd go as far as saying it is a leading question.
Honestly, some of these complaints are random garbage but several are things you'd here from immigrants to any northern European country. The bit about how hard it is to make friends is something...
Honestly, some of these complaints are random garbage but several are things you'd here from immigrants to any northern European country. The bit about how hard it is to make friends is something I've heard verbatim here in Germany.
Interesting indeed. I think I'd be pretty offended if someone I worked with closely for 10 years didn't greet me warmly when we bumped into each other again. More than likely would invite them for...
It doesn’t matter for how long you have known someone. The day you cease to be colleagues or neighbors or whatever, the ‘connection’ ends. The person who spoke to you animatedly for 10 years on the bus everyday will greet you politely and distantly and move on when you run into them later. No excited hellos, no catching up, nothing. And you wonder what all those years of acquaintance meant to them. They are not being false. It’s learned behavior.
Interesting indeed. I think I'd be pretty offended if someone I worked with closely for 10 years didn't greet me warmly when we bumped into each other again. More than likely would invite them for coffee or a drink to catch up a bit even if the offer is not taken. Wonder if this is 'Sweden' or just this person's experience?
Winter is like hell. The first few months feel cosy and the snow is beautiful, but eventually the darkness, cold and boredom start wearing you down.
This feels false to me. I lived with two Swedish women when I studied abroad during university. We only lived together for 3 months but since then we have met up for vacation every other year and...
It doesn’t matter for how long you have known someone. The day you cease to be colleagues or neighbors or whatever, the ‘connection’ ends.
This feels false to me. I lived with two Swedish women when I studied abroad during university. We only lived together for 3 months but since then we have met up for vacation every other year and have bi-monthly skype calls to catch up. They could not be warmer, nor could their friends that I have met or their families. I get Christmas cards from one of their brothers that I've only met once. I'm not sure who wrote this response, but I feel they might be more of the problem than the Swedes.
That was the point in their comment where I started to think of the old saying, "If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the...
That was the point in their comment where I started to think of the old saying, "If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole." And so maybe the reason they have had that ghosting repeatedly happen, are having other difficulties making friends, and were not even informed of an acquaintance's death or invited to their funeral, is because they're actually a bit of an asshole and nobody they have met there enjoys being around them.
We've only been here for 8 months, not really long enough to connect and then disconnect from people, but my husband is still friends with people here that he met online several years ago and only...
We've only been here for 8 months, not really long enough to connect and then disconnect from people, but my husband is still friends with people here that he met online several years ago and only met one in person before we moved here. In June he went to a bachelor party for a Swede that included non-native friends the groom hadn't seen in a while and was still close to. I went to the Bachelorette party for that same couple, the bride was a non-native Swede and had old Swedish friends attending. Extremely anecdotal, I know, maybe two years from now I'll be thinking about how true this post was, but I don't see any warning signs of that.
I grew up in the upper Midwest of the US, an area where a lot of Scandinavian folks migrated to. I'm kind of fascinated that several of the non extreme cultural comments sound like what life was...
I grew up in the upper Midwest of the US, an area where a lot of Scandinavian folks migrated to. I'm kind of fascinated that several of the non extreme cultural comments sound like what life was like there.
Winter is like hell. The first few months feel cosy and the snow is beautiful, but eventually the darkness, cold and boredom start wearing you down.
See Minnesota, the Dakotas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and most of Canada (I hear Toronto isn't so bad). In other words, the North.
I wonder why this person has had enough exposure to the police to feel they're incompetent, there was no example given.
Honestly my understanding is that the weather in the Midwest US can often be harsher than the winters in much of Scandinavia, at least these days. Obviously the far north is a different story, but...
Honestly my understanding is that the weather in the Midwest US can often be harsher than the winters in much of Scandinavia, at least these days. Obviously the far north is a different story, but the winter I spent in Oslo with my wife was a bit milder than back in Cleveland. The blizzards in the Midwest US can get rough.
Most of their complaints honestly could describe winter almost anywhere that isn't super temperate, imo. That said, the darkness specifically is much worse in northern Europe. The latitude difference is pretty big -- Paris would be north of the US-Canada border (and not by any technicality -- it'd be north of where most Canadians live). Detroit is close to Istanbul when it comes to latitude. The amount of daylight you get in the winter is drastically, noticeably different moving from the US to Northern Europe. I moved from Cleveland to Berlin, and I've lost an hour of daylight in the winter, and especially if you have any sort of seasonal-affective disorder, it's pretty brutal. The further north you go the worse it gets on that front.
I hadn't realized that about Europe! Paris is even at a higher latitude than Seattle. It looks like only Alaska really compares with Scandinavia for day length. Aside from the day length...
That said, the darkness specifically is much worse in northern Europe.
I hadn't realized that about Europe! Paris is even at a higher latitude than Seattle. It looks like only Alaska really compares with Scandinavia for day length.
Aside from the day length differences, I'm always amazed how differently the sun acts between Seattle and the southern US. You have time to get bored during a sunset in Miami, no so much in Seattle.
I grew up not too far from Duluth, I'm quite aware of what the winters are like :)
Mirror of the question without all of the Quora
I read the first post, and part of the reply visible in this link.
I'm ethnically Swedish so maybe I don't share the same experience as either of these, but to me they are listing a lot of completely foreign concepts and the conspiracy part of my brain wonders if it is propaganda, which seems to flourish on the Internet right now.
When I get to my computer I'll edit this post with some more direct comments. It's hard to do on mobile.
EDIT:
I am relating some experiences to what I was met with when I lived in the US. I am aware that the poster is Aussie and it's not necessarily the same.
I feel like this is a very weird statement. It is true that we have a few supermarket chains, but that's the same as any city in the US or elsewhere. There are small independent tobacco shops/grocery stores in some areas, but it's not like NYC with a bodega everywhere. I have had no problems with custom requests or customer service anywhere I have gone. But it's true that we won't bend over backward for our customers like in the US. There's also loads of small shops for anything, just not always in the most central areas.
Integration is a real problem. I don't have the solution for it either, but this makes it seem like immigrants are purposefully moved away from Swedes. As far as I am aware they choose to live close to people with the same background. When I lived in the US I found that a lot of Swedes lived in the same areas as well. Another reason immigrants live in the same areas is that they are often lower-cost-of-living areas. Due to poor integration they kind of have to. So to be clear, we do a bad job at integration but we don't forcefully segregate immigrants into specific areas. I was never disallowed from going to said areas either. School is mostly somewhere close to where you live, so they might not be too inclusive.
Swedes are hard to get close to, but when you do you're friends for a long time and it becomes a closer friendship. Those are my experiences. In the US it was easy to get an acquaintance but almost impossible to find a friend. I think different expectations of what constitutes a friendship is to blame for this.
This seems incredibly exaggerated. But it could be a point of view that is from an immigrant, something I have not experienced. But I can say that I have friends who have immigrated here and they have not had these problems.
Yes, we don't allow parents to home-school children because we can't ensure they are given a proper education. The school also helps identify children who are not faring well to me. We try to give children an objective education so they can best make their minds up about things. How are parents powerless? You can perfectly raise a child without abusing them. You can set rules and make sure they behave in a proper manner.
My personal opinion is that it is on the parents to raise a child and punish them, not necessarily a teacher. But I also think that teachers should be allowed more lee-way to send children home or similarly.
But overall we believe children to be humans with the same rights as their parents, that is true.
Parking fines are not handled by the police. We report rape differently from elsewhere, leading to inflated statistics. If a woman is raped 10 times it's recorded as once in a lot of the world. Here it's recorded as 10 times, bam 10x reports.
That being said we need more police and they need more funding. I agree on that. Not sure where the 3% comes from though.
This is talked about by a lot of people, but I have not experienced it. I get to talk to my GP within days and if it is something very urgent I can go to an ER. Most jobs I have seen offer private insurance as well.
Now to the reply from the person living in Sweden. As I said before I am ethnically Swedish so I can't speak to experiences that this person may have had. I'll just reply to their statements with my own experiences.
I mentioned above that it can, admittedly, be harder to make friends with a Swede. I see my friends and family at least 2 times a month, usually more. This includes my partners family as well.
I think Sweden is a much better place to live than a lot of places on this Earth. But I don't think it is Paradise. And I think it's quite global to speak of your country and its achievements as a collective "we".
I am not sure how much insight this person has in others financials. But I would never say I can only join if someone treats me. If I can't afford to go somewhere I am not going to take out of my savings to go. I have a budget for personal spending and if it's not in it, it's not in it.
This very much depends on where you travel. But things are more expensive to cover the higher cost of employing someone, because that cost goes to our social security system.
So we have a good work/life balance and that's a bad thing? I fail to see why you should work overtime without good reason. Productivity worldwide is up more than salaries. I work hard to get my work done, if it's done before my day is over I am going to take the rest of the day off. I value my work in terms of output, not time spent on it. Not saying hello is definitely not normal.
Partly true, but not normal. We have a problem of a racist party rising in popularity and young Swedes do travel abroad to party. But this seems like an exaggeration.
This is true. And it's shameful.
This is not a normal experience. I have never experienced it and when it was a topic on /r/sweden most had neither. Very much an outlier.
Not in my experience. But just one cinnamon bun each seems a reasonable serving size.
Bringing your own alcohol is somewhat common, but so is sharing in my experience.
This is not true. In my experience most people bring some stuff and it's all shared. Unless it's specifically stated otherwise.
Admittance may be true. Abandonment is not, in my experience.
We do understand the concept of giving. This is such a weird interaction to describe.
These are obviously my experiences. They may differ for other people. But overall what was said is entirely foreign to me and I ask myself if we are even living in the same country.
Great write-up. A lot of it is very subjective and I definitely do not doubt that many of these things are because of the color of their skin. Recently a thread on r/denmark asked foreigners about their experiences and they said many of the same things - so I do not doubt that a lot of it is because of low key (or outright) racism.
With that said - and without knowing them - this person seems to have such an extreme amount of bad experiences. Check your own shoes etc...
Fascinating. This is exactly the opposite of the teacher training I received in Canada. Our education professors taught that the school teacher stood "in loco parentis" or in the place of the parent to educate a child but the ultimate responsibility for the child's education rests with the parent. Thus if a parent wants to homeschool, choose a private school, a public school, a charter school that choice is theirs to make and it's not up to the government to tell the parent what to do. Because its free and easiest, most parents choose public schools but the option to change is always there. The 'proper' education of a home schooler is monitored by a qualified educator from the local school division who visits the home schoolers and makes periodic checks on their curricula, but there is a considerable degree of flexibility in the non core subjects.
It seems like, according to many of the posts on Quora, that Sweden highly values conformity of thought, equality of position and a strong desire not to stand out or make waves, quite different from the values in a more individualistic society like we have in Canada/USA.
I can only offer my experience as an Aussie, I’ve never been overseas so I can’t relate to differences I might see in Sweden or the US.
That said, I do know Australia has a reputation for racism as much as a reputation for being multicultural, and I can definitely say we’re absolutely spoiled for choice when it comes to variety in the supermarket, and small businesses (especially food).
Just to illustrate, even in the small town I grew up in with a population of 6,000 we had, off the top of my head, the following cuisines:
Thai, Chinese, 2x Italian, Mexican (until it burned down), 3x fish and chips (which also do a humble style of burger), Austrian (not to be misread as “Australian”), Indian, Japanese, several modern brunch/cafes, and several places that served what I can only call “small country town bakery” which is a niche I don’t see in bigger Australian cities.
This density of variety is also found in the larger cities too, and in most suburbs across Melbourne I’m usually only a 15 minute drive away from all of the above, and plenty more.
From what I’ve heard about most of the rest of the world, that level of variety for a small town isn’t common, so if that’s the standard you’re used to, I can see why the commenter made the claims they did about the lack of variety they noticed in Sweden.
From my perspective, Australia has an extremely poor selection of supermarkets. It's a duopoly, with Coles and Woolworths controlling 65% of the market (and in my experience, they are so similar to each other that they might as well be the same). After that, you've got Aldi with 10% and and IGA (Metcash) with 7%, and that's over 80% of the supermarket industry right there. I've been living here for over a decade, and I don't think I've ever even been to a supermarket outside of those four. I certainly can't think of any.
This is particularly bad for farmers. Coles and Woolworths basically jointly set the price that farmers can sell for, squeezing many of them out of the industry, without passing those savings on to customers. Many Australian farmers do not sell food to Australians at all because they cannot afford to.
Mind you, I'm coming at this from an American perspective, where there are dozens of supermarket chains, nearly all of which control less than 10% of the market (only Walmart has a higher share).
Judging from these statistics, it looks like Sweden's supermarket industry is even more consolidated than Australia's, with just one company controlling over 50% of the market. Ouch.
I'm an immigrant to Sweden from the US, and your descriptions sound much more accurate to my experience than the OP. I live in a fairly small town centered around a particular industry that encourages a lot of young, especially accepting people to live here, so I know that is a factor.
I've had no trouble meeting people. Everyone has been quite friendly and kind. We've had tons of help moving here, offered freely, from Swedes. Moving from those acquaintanceships to friendships has been hard, but it was hard to do that in the US, too. Moreso in the US, because people tend to live much more spaced out there, making meetups less convenient.
The integration complaint struck me as particularly odd. Yes, Sweden is not doing a perfect job, but it's so much better than the US does. In Sweden they have free Swedish courses for immigrants, and the courses also try to teach you about Swedish culture and expectation. Even then, if you speak English, everyone will happily speak it with you and give you no trouble. In the US there is no standardized program of free English courses, (i don't want to say they don't exist at all but I've never heard of one and I lived in a city where it would have been in high demand) and a very low percentage of American born people speak a second language.
Obviously comparing the medical system as an American and as an Aussie is going to have a completely different standard. I can't stop raving about the medical system here, though (maybe that's why I'm struggling to make friends). My husband has diabetes, asthma, and we just recently found out, a condition that causes him to grow tumors in his endocrine system. That last one probably would have killed him in America. Instead he's getting much better care far more regularly and we're not spending thousands of dollars every month on medical bills.
Maybe Australia is just so great that they make Sweden look terrible in comparison, I haven't been and couldn't say, but I am extremely happy that we've moved here and I have zero intentions of ever moving back.
The second response borders on bizarre to me. Are there any Swedes here that can lend some insight into the accuracy and cultural forces at play?
The idea that you would have a child over and not offer dinner? Or that favors are all transactional? Mind blowing. The only culture I've had much exposure to (and this is immigrants to the US) is Korean culture. It's almost aggressively the opposite, if you turn down food, you need to leave. And they'd keep offering food like the strategy is to make you go home by forcing you to be full.
Yeah, that response felt bizarre to me too... especially the part about schooling, where they described the cartoonishly bad behaving "lord of the flies" like students, and complained about how you can't homeschool children "according to your beliefs and values" (which is a red flag statement to me).
Every time Sweden gets discussed on social media it feel's like it's turned into a battleground between far-right trolls pretending to be from Sweden, outright fabricating stories in order to push an anti-immigrant or anti-progressive political agenda, and people idolizing the country so glossing over or denying there are any issues whatsoever. And because of that it feels very difficult to get an accurate understanding of the actual issues there.
Yeah, a good friend of mine is a teacher in Sweden and I cannot imagine her letting anything like that happen. When we talk she'll tell us stories about the kids and by and large it mirrors my own experience attending high school in the US.
Swede here. I believe the food thing is wrong or at least not the norm. We usually offer our kids' friends food/dinner when they are over. Maybe except when we know their parents are coming to pick them up in a couple of minutes (but then we'd probably wait to have dinner anyway). If the friend is someone new we usually check in with their parents first. Of course this might just be how we do it, might be different elsewhere.
I have seen the eating dinner while guest stays in friend's room before on reddit....wondering if this is the same account that told the story there.
My only exposure to this idea was when a Twitter thread about it went viral. It's a relief to see people from Sweden saying it's not normal, because there were definitely lots of rapid defenses from Swedes back on Twitter. I've had a grudge against Swedes ever since, but my wife is Norwegian so I'm obligated to have a grudge against Swedes anyway. I assume (or at least hope) that the Swedes defending the idea in the Twitter threads were just the Swedish variant of your usual unhinged Twitter user.
That's what I expected. Thanks for the sanity check
Can't answer your question (canadian here), but the critique from that second response around work culture and only adjusting schedules when the time fit sounds... healthy?
At least from the Canadian/US cultural work norms I've seen, it takes a concerted effort for a team to build, respect, and maintain healthy time boundaries, and many of the examples they mentioned (like, leaving early on a Friday if allowed, but then refusing to work even 5 min late another day; taking mental health leaves when needed) feel like a protective worker-employer balance.
Definitely, that part sounded healthy though the author seems to to feel that it is unevenly applied. I wonder what the author's country of origin is. It sounds to me like they are experiencing substantial racism.
I'm assuming Australia. They (Renee Gabriella, the Educator) mentioned that her Australian drivers license isn't recognized there. Looking through her Quora profile, she mentions she's college-educated in Australia and all that. And has had quite a few negative experiences in Sweden.
I was looking at the mirror, so I was referencing the response by Blivastu.
Ah, apologies!
To be fair, as a child in Norway in the 90s, this was common for me as well (not getting dinner at friends). It was mostly just a thing parents of classes had agreed on so that children would go home for dinner with family even if it was at a different time.
Also, some homes were the popular ones because they had a pc or Nintendo or large playground, so it would be very unbalanced who would always had to serve dinners.
Not a norm, depended on the circumstance and distance to home and frequency of visit etc. Usually, the family that didn’t serve dinner did it out of respect for my parents so that I would eat dinner with my family. Sometimes we called and asked if it was ok that I ate with the friends instead, and if ok then that family would always share food.
I'm not a native Swede, I moved here about 8 months ago. I can absolutely refute the idea that favors are transactional. We have had so much help since we've moved here, and no one has expected anything in return. The only exception is a system of cat-sitting that my husband's coworkers have. They watch our cats if we leave town and we watch theirs if they do. It's pretty reasonable.
I have spoken to a few Swedes about the dinner time at a friend's thing. Most of them have not experienced it, but those who have explain that it's a social awkwardness issue. The parents assume that your parents are already planning dinner for you, and they don't want to spoil your dinner or mess up your parents' plans. There's an anxiety that asking your parents could be taken as thinking they weren't going to feed you, which would be insulting and they don't want to insult. It's not a lack of generosity, it's just awkwardness.
I absolutely love living in Sweden, I have nightmares about being made to go back to America, but I do have some complaints. Mainly, the way these people make any sort of Mexican or South American inspired food is a crime. They make burritos with radishes. Not pickled or even slivered, this isn't some cool fusion technique, just slices of unspiced radish thrown in there. They make guacamole with olive oil and a lot of sugar, but never vinegar. And the produce tends to be naturally sweeter before sugar is added, to the point where Pico di Gallo tastes weirdly sweet even if I make it at home without adding any sugar.
We had nachos at a Greek restaurant last night. By far the best "Mexican" food that I've had since I got here, and even then they made them weird. All the wet toppings were on the side so there was nothing sticking the onions and tomatoes to the chips. You had to sort of dip the chip in the cheese or sour cream or whatever and then try to pick up some onions. The flavor was good, though, and the cheese was exactly the fake cheese flavor that I expect from nacho cheese.
Oh, and you can order chili cheese fries here. You don't get fries with cheese and chili, like the spicy meat stew. You get fries with cheese and slices of chili pepper.
In Florida, my spice tolerance was fairly low. I liked a little, tiny kick. Here, I order the maximum spiciest possible thing, and it's usually a little spicier than a standard mayonnaise.
That's about it as far as complaints go. I'm not a big fan of the cold, but I knew I was going to have to deal with that. The food thing was more surprising. Everything else here honestly rules.
I live in Germany but my wife is Norwegian, and boy do they love their tacos there. Luckily, they're basically the same as when my family had taco night growing up -- but I'm white girl of Germanic descent who grew up in Ohio, so that's a low bar to clear. Very nostalgic for me, but I don't think it's the same genre as actual Mexican food. I can only imagine the culture shock to a Floridian.
Finding Latin American food is really annoying here as well. Luckily I live in Berlin so I can find a few properly international places, but even here there's shockingly little to offer when it comes to decent Latin American food. I'm also with you on the spice level -- I look like a spice fiend compared to Germans when in reality I'm just a middling American white girl as far as my spice tolerance goes. I'm considering growing my own chili peppers at home with a grow light because finding fresh chilis is such a pain here.
My wife did finally find a place that does buffalo wings though. It's in a weirdly remote neighborhood but I had such bad luck finding them anywhere. Those were my fucking holy grail of "American foods I miss" for a while.
I'm a native Swede. When you mentioned Mexican food, I thought, surely they're talking about our "tacos", the family Friday night staple, but no. I've never heard of burritos with radishes. I'm not saying this didn't happen, I'm just curious under what circumstances? Was this at a restaurant?
This was at the Taco Bar restaurant at the Stockholm Airport. I know that's not actually supposed to be a decent restaurant, but I didn't expect the issue to be in that direction.
Also the salsa that came with it was really sweet, even for Swedish food, like almost a tomato jelly, and the chips were the kind Americans would recognize from lunchables, which is an extremely particular junk food niche that I'm not sure how to describe exactly. They're prepackaged school lunches that kids tend to like, but if you received that kind of food in any restaurant in America you would be genuinely confused. They sell them at like, kids sports games and sometimes movie theaters, where you're sort of trapped and the fact that they have food at all is secondary to the reason that you're there. They're not chips for eating, they're chips for cramming in your mouth before your blood sugar gets so low that you kill someone.
That's a little harsh but they're pretty bad chips.
Pretty interesting.
As an American, who hasn't traveled much, it's very easy to idealize other countries. This offers some nice perspective.
Why are we treating these random internet answers as fact? I don't understand.
I would take it with a grain of salt. I'm an American and have a few very good Swedish friends who I connect with monthly. While there are some vague truths here, I think most of it is wrong. Their education system is great and encourages non-classroom based learning (i.e. physical education often has a snow survival, hiking, skiing elements; they are encouraged to take a gap year and study or work abroad before university). The work systems can be frustrating for employers, but it's because employees have much better protections (something we really lack). And the thing that isn't discussed here is the appreciation for personal life. The average Swede get over 40 days of vacation a year (compared to our 10) and they get a total of 1.5 years of parental leave to be used over 4 years for each child (both mother and father).
I think the main difference between America and Sweden is that here our wants are catered to - you can find any assortment of tv, food, etc that you want - while in Sweden it's the needs that are focused on - healthcare, personal leave, housing, etc... I think it's better to be wealthy here and better to be poor there.
Edit: poor or even just middle class.
I think a couple of commenters think I'm taking this as gospel fact. I've seen plenty of people say similar stuff about the US (It's hard to make friends, education sucks, etc), which hasn't really been my experience, but clearly others have problems I don't.
More or less, it's interesting to see that some people have common complaints about any given place in the world.
This is pretty it in my experience. You see very similar negative views on a lot of expat forums as well. It even makes sense, people that have something to complain about are more likely to seek out a venue to complain about it. Hence, you seeing a lot of similar complaints on expat forums for any given country. Although I'd argue that this post likely skews the view even more as it explicitly invites negative experiences to be shared. I'd go as far as saying it is a leading question.
Honestly, some of these complaints are random garbage but several are things you'd here from immigrants to any northern European country. The bit about how hard it is to make friends is something I've heard verbatim here in Germany.
As an American immigrant to Sweden, this post did not line up with my experiences at all and I would caution you not to accept it uncritically.
Interesting indeed. I think I'd be pretty offended if someone I worked with closely for 10 years didn't greet me warmly when we bumped into each other again. More than likely would invite them for coffee or a drink to catch up a bit even if the offer is not taken. Wonder if this is 'Sweden' or just this person's experience?
Laughs in northern Canadian. Sobbing ensues.
This feels false to me. I lived with two Swedish women when I studied abroad during university. We only lived together for 3 months but since then we have met up for vacation every other year and have bi-monthly skype calls to catch up. They could not be warmer, nor could their friends that I have met or their families. I get Christmas cards from one of their brothers that I've only met once. I'm not sure who wrote this response, but I feel they might be more of the problem than the Swedes.
That was the point in their comment where I started to think of the old saying, "If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole." And so maybe the reason they have had that ghosting repeatedly happen, are having other difficulties making friends, and were not even informed of an acquaintance's death or invited to their funeral, is because they're actually a bit of an asshole and nobody they have met there enjoys being around them.
Yeah, I landed the same place.
Heh, said the same thing in another comment!
https://youtu.be/cLJrQj-ClMk?t=70
I fucking love Justified. I just started a rewatch of it a few days ago and am already mid-way through Season 3. :P
We've only been here for 8 months, not really long enough to connect and then disconnect from people, but my husband is still friends with people here that he met online several years ago and only met one in person before we moved here. In June he went to a bachelor party for a Swede that included non-native friends the groom hadn't seen in a while and was still close to. I went to the Bachelorette party for that same couple, the bride was a non-native Swede and had old Swedish friends attending. Extremely anecdotal, I know, maybe two years from now I'll be thinking about how true this post was, but I don't see any warning signs of that.
I grew up in the upper Midwest of the US, an area where a lot of Scandinavian folks migrated to. I'm kind of fascinated that several of the non extreme cultural comments sound like what life was like there.
See Minnesota, the Dakotas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and most of Canada (I hear Toronto isn't so bad). In other words, the North.
I wonder why this person has had enough exposure to the police to feel they're incompetent, there was no example given.
Honestly my understanding is that the weather in the Midwest US can often be harsher than the winters in much of Scandinavia, at least these days. Obviously the far north is a different story, but the winter I spent in Oslo with my wife was a bit milder than back in Cleveland. The blizzards in the Midwest US can get rough.
Most of their complaints honestly could describe winter almost anywhere that isn't super temperate, imo. That said, the darkness specifically is much worse in northern Europe. The latitude difference is pretty big -- Paris would be north of the US-Canada border (and not by any technicality -- it'd be north of where most Canadians live). Detroit is close to Istanbul when it comes to latitude. The amount of daylight you get in the winter is drastically, noticeably different moving from the US to Northern Europe. I moved from Cleveland to Berlin, and I've lost an hour of daylight in the winter, and especially if you have any sort of seasonal-affective disorder, it's pretty brutal. The further north you go the worse it gets on that front.
I hadn't realized that about Europe! Paris is even at a higher latitude than Seattle. It looks like only Alaska really compares with Scandinavia for day length.
Aside from the day length differences, I'm always amazed how differently the sun acts between Seattle and the southern US. You have time to get bored during a sunset in Miami, no so much in Seattle.
I grew up not too far from Duluth, I'm quite aware of what the winters are like :)