5 Culture shocks moving from the UK to Sweden
Hej Hej (Swedish for hey hey)…
I have now been living in Sweden for nearly 2 months, so I thought I would share with you some things I have deemed different enough to write about:
1.Opening Hours
So this one might not seem like a large issue at first but when you’ve been meaning to go to the bank for 3 weeks and it is only open when you’re at work it can be a bit of a nightmare! I guess this is because in the UK we expect the services around us to be open outside of working hours and let the people who work in retail and other services not enjoy the evening and weekends.
The workaround is that it is okay to run errands during the working day, most people in the office are used to it, so as long as you give a heads up, feel free to run to the bank etc… I still haven’t found time to go myself yet…
2.SystemBolaget
This I believe is quite a Swedish, or maybe Scandinavian thing. Any alcohol over, I think, 3.5% by volume cannot be sold from a shop unless it is Systembolaget!
So this makes nipping to the supermarket and picking up a bottle of wine with a meal, or a couple of beers extremely difficult to do.
They, like many other stores, have really weird opening hours and are always closed on Sundays. It’s just something you get used to and have to plan if you want a party, or are stocking up.
Plus the cost of alcohol here is really expensive - it makes London look cheap for a pint!!!
3.Fika is a way of life
So if you do not know what Fika is, then you need to pay some close attention!
It is a coffee break with cake, like English tea and cake or High Tea. But the Swedes have it quite often during the day, and have this amazing thing called Kanelbullar, a Swedish cinnamon bun. Today, 4th October is national Kanelbullen Dag… so of course I had to have some today.
4.Snus
Now, this I am not the biggest fan of. It is a nicotine beanbag you put under your top lip and it releases nicotine into your blood. It often leaves people smiling with black lines down their teeth, and supposedly burns the gums… I don’t see the fascination, to be honest. But it is nice to be hanging out with someone having a snus than a cigarette or a vape.
The one thing I don’t like so much is how much litter you see from the used beanbags on the streets in the city. It is really lazy when the box they come in provides a space for you to store your used ones.
5.Apartments measured in Square meters
Finally, this one was a bit of a strange one for me coming from the UK, where number of bedrooms and location kinda determines the price. But here it is all done on the size of the apartment, which makes sense… but trying to work out if 30m square is a good size place when not in the country is hard to judge.
Another metric they use is the number of physical rooms and not just bedrooms. When I was looking for an apartment and saw it was 2 rooms I was shocked to learn they count the living room in that also… madness.
I hope you enjoyed these small insights into the differences between the two countries. If you have any of your own, please let me know in the comments or on social media.
