Did follow your advice David and I can actually read a lot of Swedish now…

Yes Palmyra är stangt….just as well as I am on a running programme …again !

But back when I was 14, I left the UK for a year or 2 to stay with my dad in Stockholm and work in a warehouse for Indiska (I had already left school at 13 in the UK …. its a long story) but this must have been around 1989 to 90 /91.

I remember the times were defiantly different back then.
And the social scene was very surreal and very distant.

In 91 I moved back to the UK to return to education, and remember the glee I felt at returning home. And while life was a lot tougher in the UK for me in terms of social problems (rough nightlife / chavs / lack of middle class etc) and paychecks ….. I was still very glad to be back in the sociable UK.

However by 94, it had all got to much for me in the UK.
I think John major was prime-minister at the time, and the poll tax and other issues had come into effect on a very poor / financial recession period. SO I came back to Stockholm to stay at my dads for a few weeks holiday (and trying to scrounge some cash to be on my merry way to hopefully pick grapes in portugal or some other young dream I had back then). Well it never happened and I eventually met my wife over here and have been here since.

When I first came here in Oct. 94 I populously tried to stay away from Expats, as I didnt want to hear the baggage stories …. As there was way too many. But over the years the I have come to realize that many expats over here (that are not geezers at the local pub) are not always knot tied handkerchief Alf Garnett’s … A few expats I have met, are similar to myself in the sense that they left looking for a more relaxed, less aggressive middle class citizen.

Its a very delicate balance.
Utopia in a sense is to imagine that Sweden is your summer house.
And if you have enough cash to be able to travel well and still be able to retreat back to Sweden for the gaps, then that for me I would think is the happy medium.

Sweden is defiantly changing at a fast pace at present.
And I am not sure if I will be so happy here say in 5 years as the changes that we are seeing are a natural progression …. But, and this is a big “BUT” the changes we are starting to see appear to be a far less “liberal Sweden” and if Sweden does become a more hardlined while continuing to recruit a huge amount of outside help which is needed for the economy and continuing to stay on track forcing nationalistic and cultural assimilation then I am sure I will have to look elsewhere to live.

Sweden is defiantly at a cross roads in terms of future direction.
And my biggest fear is that we may see a very skewed social reality very soon. The funny thing is if you took the UK and compared it to Sweden in its present state you couldn’t find a more extreme comparison in Europe.

Can just imagine him quaffing expensive bottles of plonk up Notting Hill!

On saying that its just his view and was quite interested in how he found it on first arriving but after that the book didnt really get going.

In general, I tend not to like those books which make sweeping observations and conclusions about societies from the perspective of the pseudointellectual middle class outsider. As ever in life, “its a bit more complicated than that” .