The visit was different to most prior travels of mine. I was there for almost two weeks and didn’t learn any of the language on purpose but at least a few words stuck anyways. I didn’t taste any specialty. I went to no museum and did no sightseeing. I stayed at a campground once and slept one night in a hotel. Instead of touristy activity I spent plenty of hours talking to the natives getting to know them and the country.

Some observations:

• The swedes are a sporty bunch. You don’t ask anybody if they go to a gym, you ask them to which gym they go to. Runners everywhere, families tend to exercise with their children. There even public “gyms” just like there are public playgrounds in germany where you have different stations to work out.
• Alcohol consumption seems to be quite low, smoking seems uncommon as well. Smokers tend to take at least 5m of distance to non smokers when outside.
• The standards for equality are high. I met women who said that they are no feminists at all but from my point of view were more feminist than plenty of germans claiming themselves feminists. Very self confident and laid back at the same time. Awesome company!
• The swedes love to be outdoors. Having a boat and a summer house at or near a lake is quite common. Companies do sport activities outdoors to raise the team spirit.
• Stockholm is a very nice city but they try their best to keep motorists out of the city. As a foreigner you don’t have to pay the general city entrance fee but parking is around 2€ / hour from 9-17h in most places. There is no such thing as free parking and there’re places which are even more expensive and/or fees apply all day. So expect to pay 15€ / day just for parking. My suggestion: Leave the city at 09:00 to one of the nice lakes around the city (10km / 15min drive), enjoy your day there and return at 17:00. Not exactly environment friendly but at least budget friendly…
• The “swedish bikini team” (as featured in “Married… with children” (Al Bundy) and old US beer commercials)) is fake. They are US actresses with blonde wigs…
• I saw no hitchhikers at all
• A swedish mile is 10km. Roadsigns are all in km but some swedes tend to give distances in swedish miles.

All in all I liked sweden a lot and I will come back for sure. The only reason I have to push on was best described by eve: “So you drove 1400km just to be at a place which looks exactly like your home place?”. No, I didn’t. I love the south of sweden exactly for being like a vaster, flatter version of the harz mountains but I’m travelling. So I want to see new stuff which means I have to move on. I can imagine living in the Stockholm area though. It’s just like a 1,3 million inhabitants town in the middle of the harz mountains. Does it get any better than this?