7 More Things Normal in Sweden That Would Terrify Most Americans (Part 2)

The first 1,000 people to use this link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare: skl.sh/andrewaustin10211

One thing that have terrified me as an Swede - when visiting America - is the habit of having wall-to-wall carpets in the bathroom... :-D

The date thing - that's pretty much the entire world. The US is very much the odd one out going with M/D.

Nudity is a natural thing, shooting people on the other hand...

When I was younger the Swedish postal service was top notch. Any letter or smaller package fom any part of the country was delivered the following day. There were full service post offices in every town, and mail boxes everywhere that were emptied the same day. Even in the weekends. Even remote villages had daily postal service. Staff made sure to get every mail through even if not properly labeled. Those were the days. Then came Postnord…

Us swedish nationals are also terrified of the Postnord. Definitely the most terrifying on your list.

I love that you point out that alcohol is expensive in Sweden. As a Norwegian however... We actually drive all the way to Sweden to buy alcohol because it's cheap! xD

The day/month/year way of writing dates is pretty universal outside the US. Systembolaget means, that a lot of people living in the south of Sweden come to Denmark to buy alcohol. They literally take the ferry from Helsingborg to Helsingør, buy cases of beer, wine, and spirits, and take the ferry back. It's quite the industry. Regarding religion: in most of the Nordic countries, religion doesn't define you outwardly, it's a private thing. We don't ask, because it's none of anyone's business.

One thing that I think is pretty funny is the fact that Swedish students don't normally call their teachers or professors by any titles. In America you will frequently use titles like "teacher", "professor", "doctor" etc, followed by their surname, but we don't really do any of that in Sweden; we just use their first name. This would probably come off as extremely rude to American teachers, and most likely trigger them a bit, but it is actually a thing in Sweden. =P When I was in 4th grade in the mid-90s I used to have a third cousin in my class who called our teacher "Sudden", just because that teacher looked exactly like the former Swedish hockey legend Mats Sundin (who is often called "Sudden" over here), so he would often go "ey, Sudden!" when he wanted help with something, lol.

sweden has high taxes. but that makes studying at uni, going to the doctor's, etc. much less expensive.

I think the week thing doesn’t help you in your “normal” life but as a student it helps me organise what/how many test and assignments I have in the week.

one thing that would terrify rich americans is actually having to pay taxes in sweden and not being able to use loopholes to get out of it.

You have dates in reverse in US, Sweden follows the ISO standard for dates. You also not use the metric system ,you are alone with this together with Myanmar and Liberia

Andrew, I get rare bourbons when I'm in Sweden that I can't find in USA. The Systembolaget has some extreme buying power.

According to ISO 8601 "The international standard date notation is YYYY-MM-DD", so its, well, the international standard. The same goes for timenotation: hh:mm:ss, where hh is hours 0-23, no AM/PM. So, the US is backwards again compared to the world regarding adopted international standards. I was a bit baffled when I visited US and most I met refered to 24-hour clock as "military time".

Literally thought 9/11 was on the ninth of November because of your American dates

To be honest, as a swede, I dislike when people use week numbers instead of dates too.

As a Swede, I don't always know what week it is and it confuses me sometimes too, but I understand how it is easy in some cases, like when you apply for vacation you can easily say you want week X-Y rather than having the dates and weekdays connected to those dates, and for school Hollidays its easy to say the autumn break is week 44, every year, regardless of the dates. Sportsbreak in the winter is always week 9 (in Stocholm, it varies across the country, but each region has the same week every year). The medieval week in Visby is always week 32 etc.

The cat wondering who you are talking to 😁

You are partly wrong when it comes to the chuchtax. You only pay that IF you are a member of the chuch otherwise you only pay the fee for funerals. However! Many sweds are members for the sole reason of being able to use the chuches facilities when they get married. Otherwise those venues are closed to them and many wants to keep that option open.