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Swedish proverbs Posted by Katja on Nov 1, 2011
Personally, I love proverbs. They help me understand different ways of thinking and cultural differences. Depending on how big the cultural differences are between your country and Sweden some of these sayings you might have heard in your own language or can see the logic in them just by understanding the words. Others are however…
Allemansrätten Posted by Katja on Oct 24, 2011
Have you ever heard of “Allemansrätten”? Translated to english we would call it something along the lines of “Right of Public Access”. It is almost universally seen as a symbol for Sweden, or maybe at least for most of Europe’s nordic countries. The right to walk freely in the woods, (even private ones) picking berries…
Producer responsibility = Producentansvar Posted by Katja on Oct 17, 2011
Many countries all over the world have recently banned free plastic bags (plastpåse) in grocery stores, including in Australia, Great Britain, Ireland, France and many more. Kenya, certain parts of India, Bangladesh and Taiwan have even banned plastic cutlery in some cases. Sweden has not. According to Hannes Borg, employee at the Ministry of Environment…
Collective over individual Posted by Katja on Oct 10, 2011
Let us take the case of how we look at progress in school in Sweden as an example of this. The whole gets focused more on than the individual’s progress and level in today’s school system. Instead of dividing up an age group into A, B and C classes for math, English and Swedish for…
Tips and tricks for Swedes in friendliness Posted by Katja on Oct 3, 2011
Not too long ago I wrote a post on how physical I experienced Swedes being after I came back from Japan. A lot of the responses were that you did not at all feel Swedes were particularly physical and had on the contrary felt that they were rather cold and quite distant. I can understand…
Opening hours Posted by Katja on Sep 29, 2011
The chances that you will be battling people right after work for groceries are quite high in Sweden. Probably less so now then a couple of years ago when almost all shops closed at 5 PM, but I think you would still be hard-pressed to find a shops that is open after 9pm on a…
Age in Sweden Posted by Katja on Sep 16, 2011
The almighty ‘personnummer’ (your birthdate) makes everyones ages’ public and this may explain why Swedes do not mind giving their age when introducing themselves. For example when a group of people introduce themselves for each other, they say what their name is and how old they are. You age is a kind of ‘taboo’ subject…