swedish culture particularities

Sorry for my abscence. Obviously, I'm not good at blogging regulary. But today I have some funny things that deal with swedish culture for you.

Sverige biten [swedish piece/bite]:
When Swede's eat, cake for exmple (but it's the same with every kind of food), nobody takes the last piece. If you really want it, you'd take half of it. And the next person takes the half of the half until it's ridiculously small. Then you stop. Because nobody dares to take the last piece. This phenomenum is called "Sverige biten".

Dansk:
Sweden has been in war with Denmark for 300 years. Calling someone dansk is an insult.

Russen kommer
My favorite one. It means: the russian is coming. It's not the russians but just one particular russian. Like one russian is threatening enough :D Like the rest of the world, Sweden is afraid of Russia. Although they know, that Russia does not mean to attack them. Because nobody wants to attack peaceful Sweden. But the uneasy feeling, the distrust stays. In germany we have that phrase: "the russians are coming", although not everybody of you might know about it because we never use it.

Does not really fit here, but I laugh so hard everytime I see this video:
http://9gag.com/gag/aw74Mpx/omg-putin-shinzo-abe-prime-minister-of-japan
how the japanese prime minister is running and gets so excited about meeting Putin, his great idol :D  I could look at this for hours :D

Eurovision Song Contest
It's a big thing here. Sweden is always high ranked. Last year they won again. If you wonder how they finance it here's the answer: They have pre contests in Sweden in which they choose who will sing this year. It's 6 weeks. And almost every Swede's watch it. And often they're ashamed of doing this, but they still do.

Nordfront:
A word that I as a german better never say. It's like the swedish NPD.
 Generally I have to say, that Germany has no bad reputation here. And they like Angela Merkel very much, for her refugee politics. They know much about german history, german politics, politics in other countrys and their history as well. Do I know a single swedish politician? Ehm, I don't think so. :(

Refugees:
In one of my previous posts, I said that I think Swede's are not really trying to integrate the refugees and foreigners. I don't want to generalize. Because generalizing is something you should not do, when talking about this issue, But many swedish people, (I would say the majority) want to have refugees in Sweden. Because they know, that over the long run, they're good for Sweden. Because of the decreasing birth rate for example. And for the taxes. This week there was a show on TV where famous swedish artists sang and you could spend money. And so many people did. That makes me happy again.
But there's another side, like for every topic. look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSI166wWDII
Fortunately, not too many people think like this old lady with her strange views.

Birthday.
Swedish teenagers have a special way of celebrating someone's birthday. They decorate the person's locker in school. And then they sing. Very nice :)

Tolerance
Swede's are very tolerant. Outing is no problem here. You may be homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or whatever. They don't care. They tolerate you the way you are. Cool thing. I wished it was lke that in Germany even more.

Health
They live very healthy. I don't see many people smoking. And they don't drink much alcohol either. Many people go to the gym. From the age of 16 to 80. And they often go by bike. Uppsala is the city of the bikers. You really need to be careful when walking around so no bike runs you over.


It's late in the night and I can't think of more particularities in the swedish culture right now. As I already told you, I changed school. It's been 2 weeks now on my new school and I'm very happy that I changed school. That I was brave enough to make the change although I had to start at the bottom again. The people in my new class and school are so nice and more open-minded. I dare to speak swedish, right now. I almost only speak swedish with them. But I have to study very much. That means a lot of translation work. But I'm fine with that.
The first snow fell in Kiruna on thursday. That means that we have snow in 2-3 weeks too. Probably. Who knows. We'll see. I could be more excited for snow. I don't have warm enough clothes yet. But it'll be alright. Maybe. Everybody warns me about winter and says that everyone gets very depressed. 6 more months.....
Anyway. Right now the weather is super good and I enjoy the autumn. Today I didn't even need my jacket.

It's almost half past two in the night so I better go to sleep. I hope you enjoyed the post. And sorry again for not writing. I have so many things to tell you, but no time to write all of it down. And there are so many differencies that I'd like to tell you about, that sometimes, I don't know where to start.


Good night

Franziska