Christin perceives herself as a 'real' Swede and all her family members and friends are 'real' Swedes, too. Therefore, she is an expert on nordic traditions and culture - good for a teacher of Swedish as an additional language.
To be a Swede means that you are 'sweet', I am not referring to the general attitude of Swedish people but to their eating habits. According to Christin they are world leaders in the consumption of sweets (godis) (80kg/ person/ year) and pastries (bakverk). This is rooted in the tradition of 'Fika' - having coffee and some sort of pastry like 'kanelbulle, chokladtårta, kaka'. You do that twice a day, once between breakfast and lunch and the second time between lunch and dinner. Every time you have coffee or seldom tea and something sweet or a sandwich (smörgås), either with cheese, ham, or egg. At the weekend, traditionally on Saturdays, people buy a 'godis påse' means a bag full of sweets. There are lots of 'godis handla' means shops where you can buy sweets and they are really huge!
A special favourite of real Swedes is lakrits means licorice. Most western European people don't like the rather medical taste of licorice but the Scandinavian people love it. And not only that they are in favour with the sweet ones - no, they also have salt godis! You can buy lakrits covered with salt instead of sugar, it's def. not my favourite, but I am not a Swede ;-)
Having a Swedish neighbour is also really great because he/she will def. never bother you with knocking on your door or talking to you! Normally, a real Swede will not leave the home when someone else is in the staircase - so they always listen and look through the door fish eye if they can safely leave the house. My Australian friend Olivia is telling me funny stories about their past attemps to get to know their Swedish neighbours, but after 6mo they finally stopped trying to talk to them because they feared sometimes one of then could call the police when they further try to make friends with them ;-)
Christin is talking a lot about food and drinks, too. She told us that Swedish doctors recommend to drink a lot of tub water instead of mineral water. The sparkling mineral water should have weird effects on your brain if you drink it a lot?! We could not believe that, but she is the expert! Swedish doctors do not follow the common guideline of 'drink min. 2 l of water every day' - according to Christin doctors here recommend to drink whenever you are thirsty and not just because you feel obliged to do so. Sounds great because you have a lot of freedom to do whatever you like but what about older people or children? But maybe there exist at least some exceptions ^-^We also started to discuss the correct beverage to lunch and dinner for children. Christin told us that in Sweden it is perceived that you should drink lots and lots of milk. Especially children are forced to drink milk to every main dish - it is good for their bones and they need that because the winters here are long and dark! But according to Christin not only children drink milk for lunch or dinner, also adults prefer to do something healthy for their bone structure - in order to prevent themselves from bone fractures during the winter. But we all admitted that if you fall down hard because the streets are covered with ice and snow you will break your bones with or without drinking heaps of milk during the summer and autumn! But we are not Swedish doctors either ;-)
Beeing a real Swede and living in Stockholm means also being single! This is a fact I really cannot understrand because Swedish women are really beautiful and the guys are handsome, too - so why there are so many singles? Christin answered this question with 'Swedish men are very shy and the women are rather emancipated'. I concluded for me - if you are a self confident and well educated woman you will stay single in Stockholm, or you are lucky enough to get to know a foreign tourist!
To be continued ....
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