Since we spent last weekend putting laminate down in the kitchen rather than touristing, we don't have any new, exciting scenery to share. Instead, here's some more things we've found that are different in Sweden.
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| Covering the kitchen floor with cheap laminate made it SO much nicer. |
DRIVING
Luckily, they do drive on the right side of the road. There are still some differences though. An obvious one is that the speed limits are all in km/h. Also, they stripe the roads different. All the stripes are white which was hard to get used to at first. We've only seen maybe two stop signs ever. They have a lot of signs that are essentially yield signs instead. I don't think they ever have a 4-way stop. There are lots of roundabouts. They are a little intimidating at first but actually work really well. They keep traffic moving quickly through intersections.
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| I tried to get a picture of a typical round-about but they aren't very photogenic |
The street lights also take some getting used to. They go green-yellow-red-yellow-green. It's kind of like "on your mark, get set, go!"
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| This means it's about to turn green. |
There are often separate lights for bikes at crossings (with a little button to push like the pedestrian crossings). I'm not sure why they bother since they always change with the pedestrian walk/don't walk sign anyway. The bikers and pedestrians are probably the most challenging part of driving here. There are lots of them to avoid. Oh, and you have to make sure you don't turn onto a bike path instead of a road-- some are wide enough to fool you.
One other funny driving thing that I have yet to get a picture of--when they want you to slow down, they put a nice chicane into the road. Some are pretty dramatic. Unlike speed bumps which you can go over pretty fast, a tight chicane really forces you to slow down.
This is not so much about driving, but I'll put it here since the picture is a road sign. Can you figure out that sign? It's a reduced speed for a school zone that is in effect the dates school is in session. What makes it confusing is that in Europe they write dates backwards from how we do. September 12 is 12/9 not 9/12. It is hard on the brain! You'll also notice they use 24 hour time. One other weird date thing. They frequently use week number, especially at school, as in what week of 2011 this is. I get notes that say, "Homework for week 36 is..." (but in Swedish) or "Week 45 will be fall break"and I must admit I never know what week number we are on.
SHOPPING and FOOD
You have to put a coin deposit in to get a shopping cart. That won't be shocking to anyone who has shopped at Aldi. You also have to bring your own bags or pay for bags and you always bag it yourself.
Stores close much earlier than in the US, especially on the weekends. Grocery stores are open a little longer, but most stores close by 5-6 pm on weekdays and by 4 pm on Saturdays. Apparently Swedes do not spend their weekends shopping.
There is a whole line of food here that comes in a tube (like a giant toothpaste tube). The best we can understand, they are spreads of some sort. Some are various flavors with cheese and we've also seen some labeled caviar and herring. We have not dared experiment with any of them yet.
Reading your cereal box (and other packaging) is a multicultural experience. Here's two sides of a box of Rice Krispies.You can count all the languages. Since each Scandanavian country has its own language but none is big enough to warrant its own packaging, this is common.
And here's a box of Ritz crackers. It covers all of Europe.
A couple of other food things-- people tend to eat with both their fork and knife, one in each hand. We had dinner with some friends--some American, some Swedish-- and at the end of meal, we noticed all the Americans' knives were unused. :-)
And it seems really common here to eat a hard cracker-like bread. None of us care for it. It is always available at school lunch. G has started calling it Hard Tack.
And here is a typical barbecue grill at a Swedish park. The kids think it looks like a fire hazard and they may be right since we've seen several charred tables.
OTHER ODDS AND ENDS
Toilets typically have a button or knob on the top of the tank. The ones at our house have two buttons next to each other. You can push either or both, depending on how big of a flush you want.
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| A fairly typical toilet-- though we've seen a number of varieties |
The beds look really different. They have a really thin top mattress over a thicker foundation. They still sometimes push twin beds together and call it a double (both the hotel and our rental house-- good old American queen bed is coming in our sea shipment. Hurray!) They make up the beds a differently as well but we ignore that.
Bikes are decked out to be useful vehicles, rather than just toys. The bike sections of stores are huge--tons of accessories available.We picked up a used bike to use until ours arrive. It came with a bell, a headlight, fenders, and a book rack on the back and we added a basket for all those textbooks.
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| Bikes at a church youth activity. |
We've seen that a lot of kids use the rack on the back as an extra seat to give a friend a ride. You also see many bikes equipped with baby/toddler seats and often see whole families heading out in the morning for school, daycare and work on their bikes.
