Informed fear

My worries about living in Sweden fall into two main categories: personal happiness pitfalls and grocery availability. In regards to the latter, they don’t even have coffee ice cream for chrissakes. What kind of a society is that? It doesn’t even make sense–they love coffee!

But fine, I’ll get an ice cream maker. However Sweden, unavoidably, is notable for various other factors that I know from personal experience are problematic for me: darkness, loneliness, and uncertainty. The darkness is obvious enough. I mean, the Arctic Circle swings through the country. For a large part of the year the sun never even really comes up. That’s some serious darkness. I fell into a serious depression just by living in a ground floor dorm room–I need light!

And loneliness. Sure there’s family, but I need friends. Specifically, I need mommy friends. But Sweden has one of the lowest birth rates in the world; I’ll be living in a teeny tiny village; what mommies are to be found probably already have friends, and Swedes are notorious for sticking to their early childhood buddies.

Plus, and this ties into the third problem, I don’t really speak Swedish. I may never, though I will try. Some people might feel like breaking out their high school foreign language knowledge with me, but, really, would you? It’s only sensible to try to operate in Swedish as much as I can, but that means coming off kinda stupid, or childlike, and enduring every linguistic interaction as a stressful, embarrassing challenge rife with opportunity for confusion and mistake. I certainly won’t be able to evince my real personality and thoughts, at least for a few years, as fully as I can in English. And I like my personality and thoughts.

And I’m not even mentioning how I have to go to two-three more years of school there just to be able to continue my career. When I feel like marinating in these worries, there are several websites for Americans in Sweden where people like to share their Swedish miseries. Below the cut are selected quotes that especially freaked me out. Sure, there are at least partial solutions to all these problems, and the best defense is a good offense, which I intend to attempt, but I do worry. With reason.

“Now I seriously feel like I turn into a cave-woman every time I prepare to speak Swedish. I call someone on the phone and while the phone is ringing, am already planning ahead of time what I will say so that I am not stumped completely when they answer. I call the doctor and think I’ll say, “hello, this is D and I am having a problem and need to make an appointment,” and what comes out probably is more like “me sick, need doctor time.” I feel like ending with a grunt and a chest bump… “

“I don’t miss anything special about the US. It’s just that even after two years here, I still feel like an outsider looking in. I still don’t have a “real”job. I still can’t comfortably speak Swedish, participate in conversations, etc… The food is boring. Everything is always closed. Customer service is terrible. Prices are too high. People are childish. It goes on and on. I didn’t feel particularly ‘at home’ anywhere in the US either – I guess that is just me. But at least there I knew what to expect and how to put myself out there, talk to people, get what I wanted/needed. For living in a socialist country, Swedes sure seem to have a ’screw you’ attitude.”

“Sweden is not the easiest place to get integrated into. The weather does not help either. It is a culture that does not easily accept strangers into the fold. There are always exceptions but generally people have the same friends from childhood and stick to those same friends. “

“I have been here for five years and it has felt mostly like a five-year-vacation at an expensive resort with horrible service”

“I still have days occasionally where I just up and hate this place and want out as soon as possible. It comes from feeling helpless and dependent, and I just don’t do helpless and dependent.”

“your English skills degrade.”

“the [medical] level of care here is much lower than we had in the US and my kids’ health is well worth paying for. “

“he school lunch was absolutely horrible. I was so psyched that my kids would get a good, nutritious, Swedish lunch for free when in fact what was served was stale bread and something that appeared to be hot dog and celery soup. I couldn’t believe it was that bad. The classrooms were not specific to the subjects. That is, the teachers just float from room to room with an IKEA bag of broken pencils for the kids to borrow. No sense of “this is a classroom”. No discipline. Terrible academics. Ghetto-level facilities and resources. This is the educational system here?! Big let down. “

“I just have to land a damn job, or go to school, AGAIN, and suck it up’

“Today, with a temperature of -12, I resent the HELL out of moving here!”

“My first 2 YEARS were basically a mix of rejected job applications, been unable to manage all the bureucracy by myself and feeling like a “not so smart” kind of person while attending my [Swedish] lessons, all of this carried a lot of issues for me and my Swede and we were near to split. “

“To be honest moving back to Sweden from Florida was very difficult. I loved the sunshine and the fact I lived 100 feet from a beautiful beach and when I came here it seemed to get more gray everyday. Most of my first term as a teacher just getting out of bed was a real struggle. I was extremely depressed all the time to the point where even doing the simplest things became difficult. There were days when I seriously considered just leaving without telling a soul”

“One thing that eats at you is the every day fleeting contacts with people on the street, at stores, at hospitals whatever – leave a person born and raised in the US starving for something more.
Please – someone raise your voice, laugh out loud, push and joke with me, meet my eyes with a smile, help me without hopes of a reward just out of kindness, warmness. Where is the spontaneity and passion for everyday situations? This steril social enviroment eats at you.”

” In Sweden both parents MUST work due to the tax structure. The reality is that in Sweden you are essensially forced to hand your children over to be raised by strangers at 1.5 years of age and up in a day-orphanage environment, so called dagis.”

“What is the hardest for me is that here in Sweden you have the same friends from preschool until you die, not many get let in the circle of friends. In the US at least you could get made new “friends” after every move you made or new job you got.”

“do what it takes to learn this language and simply accept the fact that your IQ is going to drop 30 points every time you speak.”