This is your Random Swede!

[kseenaa]

YES!

I just signed up for something absolutely awesome! I've talked to people from all over the world since yesterday! This is AMAZING!!!

OK, so mostly people from the US. Why are you so fascinated with Sweden? I'll ask that the next US-person I'll get on the line. But man oh man... I am LOVING being a random swede!

Call Sweden! Talk to us! We love talking! And, bonus, we're good at english. ;-D

Watch on YouTube

The Swedish Number

My first call was from a couple high as kites guys from Netherlands! X-D They wanted prostitutes and drugs, both illegal in Sweden! Oops! X-D And it has moved on from there to some sad calls (woman who had lost her husband) to interesting ones (refugee politics in Sweden) to calls just from people curious on the country and what great sights there are (the nature, get out in the nature, for GAWDS SAKE! and visit Öland and Gotland, for SERIOUS!!!)

I am so continuing to be a random swede in the evenings. This is so awesome. I hope this will continue to be a thing, just like the swedish twitter account @Sweden where a random swede tweets each day... I so so so hope this will continue. Because I am loving the hell out of this!

Call Sweden! Get a chance to talk to me or my countrymen (and women!)!!!!

This entry is crossposted between LJ and DW. Comment where you are comfortable.

Comments

[the_rck]

Hm. I think my interest in Sweden mainly comes from my mother having spent a year there as an exchange student while she was in high school. She used to pick up a little extra money when I was in elementary school by tutoring people in Swedish. I remember sitting in the living room while she had people translating fairy tales out loud.

Her host family sent us a few small gifts-- Mostly I remember tomten (sp?) Christmas ornaments, one blue and one brown (this was before my brother arrived, so it was one for me and one for my sister). I have no idea what happened to them. I'm not sure if my mother still has them. I hope so because I'd like to think that I'll get one of them some day, but I worry because I think she and my step-father got rid of all of their Christmas stuff in one of their moves without letting any of us kids have any of it.

[kseenaa.livejournal.com]

Really? That is so cool! From what I've learned from the refugee kids I work with daily, swedish is really hard to learn! So kudos to your mom for not only learning it and then teaching it to!

Yeah, Tomten is spelled like that. :-) It's our version of Santa, so to speak. A shame to get rid of all your Christmas-stuff though. :-P

[the_rck]

My mother adopted some customs/foods-- She really loved that flat rye bread, the hard stuff that I'd almost call a cracker, but that comes in large round sheets. I don't like rye, so I never got into it, but I remember her bringing home the big round packages wrapped in blue paper.

At Christmas, she would make rice porridge (I do it, too), using the recipe she learned from her Swedish host mother. We used to listen to an album of Swedish winter/Christmas music every Christmas morning. I don't remember the name of the album, but it was vinyl (this was the early 1970s, so I suppose it couldn't very well have been anything else) and had kids sledding on the cover.

At one point, on a trip, my mother found a Swedish bakery a couple of hours away from where we lived. It was too far for her to go often (we didn't even own a car then), but she would buy a lot of bread whenever she did get there. I specifically remember limpa (sp?), but there may have been others, too.

I'm not sure if my mother's birth family didn't have Christmas customs (surely they must have? I can't remember anything in that direction with that part of the family, but...) or if she simply didn't like those customs much.

[kseenaa.livejournal.com]

AHA! She liked knäckebröd aka crispbread (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crispbread)? Not many none-scandinavians do! Totally cool! And yes, that's how limpa is spelled. :-D

I think that is wonderful that she adopted so many of our Christmas traditions. :-D