An Alien in Sweden

A blog about my move from England and my new life in Sweden.
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Posts Tagged ‘swedish’

Are Swedish difficult to make friends with?

Monday, July 5th, 2010

The last few months I’ve been reading but not participating in The Local’s forum. I’ve probably read over 500 threads about people who have moved to Sweden from other countries, there experiences and how they have handled the change. It appears that some are good at adjusting yet some gave up quicker and went home.

With any forum you have to take what you read with a pinch of salt as some people will always post in a negative frame of mind. It appears that Sweden is different to how people envisaged but I’m just wondering how many of those who arrived had visited Sweden before. Even though I have been many times it is still going to be a shock to me when I actually do move (just booking a one way ticket will feel strange!)

One of the topics that I have been very interested in is how those who have moved to Sweden have found it hard to make friends. Many of the posts call Swedish people “Cold” or “Unfriendly” and this has got me thinking. It has awoken some memories and thoughts about my visits to Sweden and the difference between the UK and Swedish cultures.

Living the majority of my life in the UK I have found that moving to a new area means that the local pub is the best place to find friends. I’ve been living where I am for around 18 months now and I met my longest known friends in the local. Alas they were never keen to do anything outside of the pub and so that limited the friendships.

Sweden has a much more outgoing culture than the UK and friends will do a lot more outdoors than us Brits. Yet reading all of the posts so far it appears that Swedish people can be hostile to newcomers. Yet is this true? Could it be that those who have moved to Sweden have been to reluctant to approach any new people due to fear of language or not being accepted? I will admit I don’t have many friends in Sweden so I will be starting all over again. I have always been good at meeting new people so I actually see this as more of a challenge than a problem.

So my questions to all my Swedish readers are

• Do you think Swedish people are reluctant to make new foreign friends?
• What is the best way of making friends with Swedish?
• Where is the best place to meet new Swedish friends?

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Learning the language

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Moving to a new country is not an easy task. Especially when it is a country that requires a new language.

Dozens of my friends have moved over here from places like Australia, America, New Zealand and Canada but the main difference is that moving do London did not require them to learn a new language. The last language that I learnt was German and that was some 20 years ago in school! But I was good and left with an ‘A’ grade.

Living in London and doing what I do it is difficult to find the time to attend language schools. So over the past two years I have been learning how to read and write Swedish and will say that I am more than fluent. I can now pick up a newspaper and read it with no problems at all and also writing is fairly much up to speed.

The problem though lies with speaking. Some days I am able to understand all that I hear on TV, other days it seems that aliens have sucked any Swedish intelligence from my very head. Of course I would love a pet Babel Fish (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) but alas we are still several thousands of years away from such technology…or are we?

I read with interest today that Google are going to begin trialling a new system on the Iphone/Android phones were someone who is a non English speaker will soon be able to have a telephone conversation with an English speaker with no problems at all. The aim is that someone will speak in say Swedish and then Google voice translation will translate this into English and speak it the other end.

Now whilst this is a wonderful way to overcome a very simple problem it clearly is not the answer. When I made the decision to move to Sweden learning all about the country and the language was my ultimate achievement. If you do not speak the language then basically you are going to be put in a very difficult situation, regardless of how many Swedes speak English.

I still have a year until I move so I will have more opportunities to learn. So far I’m hanging around the Harcourt Arms pub (great way to not only get drunk but also watch Swedish TV and hear Swedes talk), watching SVT highlights on my Iphone (though I don’t think that watching Dolph Lundgren clips is really helping that much).

No this summer I must master the language like my life depended on it. Because after all, it just may one day.

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