Saturday, April 09, 2005

Good things about living in Stockholm

Some that I have chatted with over the last months have gotten the impression that I hate it here. I do miss the US quite a bit but having the family here makes it nice. I decided to make a list of things that I in fact feel positive about in Stockholm (also Europe in general). In no particular order:



  1. European Coke

    Obviously the carbonated beverage not the other stuff. It reminds me of the type one gets in Mexico. I hear they use something like cane sugar everywhere but the US where we get corn syrup. I am a complete addict to Swedish (and Mexican) Coke. My Dr. Pepper fanaticism is reversed here. It might be an inverse thing w/ the corn syrup, not sure but DP tastes like Diet or something. Undrinkable.
  2. Chocolate

    I didn't like chocolate that much but I am now an addict to something called a Center bar (I'll eat the Ploop bars in a pinch too). The Center bar is 2 sections of 4 squares each. Chocolate surrounding a toffee center. If you leave them in the fridge they turn sublime.
  3. Potato Chips

    There is some Swedish brand analogous to Saguaro chips back home. I like the plain, regular salt ones in the red bag. They have the perfect crunch and an amazing lack of oiliness. when combined w/ #4 below creates the perfect snack.
  4. Euro meats (dried only) and cheeses

    Under the movie theatre not far from my office is a market call Hotorgshallen. Its a cool market setup w/ about 20 stalls each offering some ethnic type food. There is a seafood stall, sushi, Finland cuisine, falafalel...all kinds of stuff. My favorite though are the deli places offering dried meats, I am becoming quite a connoisseur of spicy dried Italian salchicha. I also am learning a lot about the different Feta cheese varieties. The Bulgarian so far is my favorite.

    There is also a place offering N. African food that makes a lamb sausage sandwich which I will probably end up doing 6 pages on at some point in the future.
  5. Easy-to-use transportation system

    Can't say enough about buses and subways. The are relatively clean, almost totally bum-free, run constantly and go everywhere. Work provides me a monthly pass that give me total free-run of the city and Tina gets on everything free when she has the stroller.
  6. Snow and snow related activities

    Winter is gone now but we thoroughly enjoyed the weekends in the snow. We bought a sled (note that I totally overdid this one and bought the Olympic sled speed demon machine and the boy and I have nearly killed ourselves countless times) and ice skates. As a weather type, snow is 68,000 times better than rain.
  7. Seasons

    This isn't something we get much of in Tucson and its interesting to see how things change.
  8. Coffee

    The average cup of coffee is about 3x as good as the average American. I think we have made great strides on this in the last 5-10 years but the 7-11 or office automatic coffee is much better here. Going to a coffee shop varies here as it would back home but a slight edge to the US coffeshop as its often easier to get a big cup.
  9. Meeting world people (non-Swedes)

    I think I mentioned that Swedes are cold and boring but we have met people from all over and that has been probably the best part of the our experience here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You forgot to list the biggest benefit to living overseas... you don't have to put up with all the fat, loud, obnoxious Americans.

I miss home too

Unknown said...

Seeing as how I match all three of those descriptions, I am not sure how to respond.

Dan said...

I would like the record to state I had Bulgarian Feta while in NZ and it was freaking amazing. I have been searching for it since then, with no success.

Insert joke here about being fat loud obnoxious American in search of cheese.