Swedish Stuff From a Missionary's pov: From a Swedish Mission Website

I read the following list on a Swedish Mission website.  I think it's funny, especially because it's Sweden from the point of view of a non-Swedish LDS missionary.<><> <><> <><> <><><><> <><> <><> <><><><> <><><><> <><>

Things That Are Different in Sweden:  For Missionaries

Completely in the spirit of fun, tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating humor, here is a list of things that are different in Sweden from what we provincial Americans might expect. Be careful. The next door in the uppgång (walk-up) is the backdoor of the last guy who is still not interested. Beer in pop machines. If you guzzle a glass of water on hot day, you are being rude and demanding more NOW! They have an island called "Island land" (Öland). Dog Toilets. Fireworks at christmas, easter and just about every occasion (at least when there's darkness). Traffic lights click or beep so blind pedestrians can tell whether the light is red or green. You can take off the showerhead and rinse the conditioner in 30 seconds instead of five minutes. Also you can wash your hair without washing your body if you're in a hurry. If you're not careful, you will still be knocking on doors in summer at 11:00 pm...and the sun is still out. You turn on bike headlights in the winter at 3:00 pm. Old Swedes go on walks with cats and rodents and use a leash to drag the helpless animal behind. A can of Coke costs USD 2.00 (SEK 15) at a cafe. Everybody has super deluxe baby carriages with heavy duty wheels. No matter how little snow there is, everyone uses studded tires all winter. No salad is complete without grated carrots. Swedish kids learn to cook in elementary school. Girls dress up as witches for Easter and boys dress up as hobos. Kids sell Bingo/Lotto tickets at the grocery store for fund raising projects. What you think is a Ku Klux Klan rally in December is really a Santa Lucia procession. All furniture made of light beechwood or pine. Unedited R-rated movies on regular (non-cable) TV. Windows with Venetian blinds in-between two panes of glass. You can camp, hunt, & pick berries on private property. You attach your phone cord to the wall with something that looks like a 220-V plug. Everybody owns a cellular phone. Red boxes around town you put your used batteries in. Everyone takes the rainiest month off in summer for vacation. Front doors on the back of houses shaped like barns. They claim that wall-to-wall carpeting is why americans get sick, but almost everyone in Sweden has a cold. Americans like fluffy towels, while Swedes like to smash them in a mangler. Pear ice cream. Popular pizza toppings include bananas and curry, or artichoke hearts and roast beef. "Swedish pizza" to missionaries means "thin, flimsy crust made by a middle-eastern person". If you're patriotic, you're probably a racist. Köttfärs is not hamburger as we know it. You can practically step outside your back door and be in a forest, and pick berries that are in season. You've got to squeegee the whole bathroom floor after taking a shower. Cab drivers drive Mercedes Benz. It takes a crew of six Swedes a week to rip up a cobblestone sidewalk, scrape the dirt off the back, and put it back in. (Not counting bad weather, holidays, fikas.) Cops drive Volvos and Saabs. Half naked women answer the door. Swedes don't know what a 'date' is. They always go to dances and parties in a group. The amount of daylight you get at different times of year, light in the summer, dark in the winter. You don't have to lock your bicycle to a lamp post. Just lock the wheel so it doesn't turn, and nobody will take it. You can't buy greeting cards, aspirin, deli sandwiches, develop film, rent videos or bank at the grocery store, but you have to do all that at separate stores. When you order spaghetti, don't forget to ask for sauce and meatballs, or all you'll get is the noodles. Pear-flavored and blood-orange-flavored pop. While Snapple claims to be made from the best stuff on earth, Bob saft is the best stuff on earth. Pregnant women bicycle. More store owners honor the Sabbath day. Plastic grocery bags made to last more than five minutes. You can't tell by looking at what kind of handle a door has whether you should push or pull. "Valentine's Day" decorations at Christmas time Illuminated red buttons to turn the hallway lights on for two minutes. Root beer is not popular. The natives think it tastes like toothpaste. Corn on the cob is not for human consumption. Chocolate soda pop. You can ride a bicycle without getting killed. "Kaviar" (actually smoked cod roe) is a snack food in toothpaste tubes. If an elevator is on the third floor and you are on the first and want to go up, you have to tell the elevator to come down. Elevators with no doors on the cab, just the stationary ones at each floor. You could touch the wall moving past as the elevator moves. Continuously running elevators that you jump on and off of like a ski lift (paternoster?). Licorice can be salty. You'll burn your mouth if you're not careful. Rotten fish in a bulging can is a delicacy (surströmming). Riding a bicycles on a cobblestone street. Shaving not as popular with girls. Rose hip tea (nypon soppa). "Hockey" with curved clubs and a very small ball (bandy). Traffic lights turn yellow on both stop and go. Doorknobs on toilets and toilet handles on doors. Asking for "peanut butter and jelly" is like asking for "rock candy and frosting." You can get by on SEK 5,- in food budget per week. Everybody wants you to come in and "fika." It's not surprising to see a movie theater or a bicycle repair shop closed for a month in the middle of the summer. You go to a health food store to buy maple syrup. If you order a pizza with olives you get a whole unpitted olive rolling around on top of your pizza. A clothes dryer is a luxury (but a drying room isn't). The spin cycle is handled by a different machine than the wash and rinse cycles. If you think a Swede is suffocating she may just be saying yes. You can serve ice cream with a knife. Mayonnaise comes in toothpaste tubes. If it weren't for the engine running you might be able to hear a pin drop on a bus with 75 people on it. When a Swede talks about "the system", he's not talking about beating the establishment; he's talking about buying liquor. A person who speaks only one language is rarer in Sweden than a polyglot is in the USA. Thanks to Donald Einar Asp, Mathew Bone, Ted Boren, Rick Bosler, David Boss, Brian M. Boyd, James Davis, Harold Dozier, Gustav-Eric Engstrom, Erick Hartman, Ric Jensen, Christian Karlsson, Dale Olson, Gary Oviatt, Kenth I. Svensson, Lee Swindlehurst and Chad Woolley.