"It's in my blood" a Sweden Travel Page by Sjalen

Sweden - famous for being expensive, cold and full of public drunkenness. Is that all there is to it? Definately not! If you like me, live in Sweden and work in Denmark but used to live in Britain, you will also realise that some things are quite cheap in Sweden. You will also see that the reputation that Swedish girls are stunning is true ;-) but the reputation that we will walk off with anyone is NOT just because we can be nude in the sauna. In fact, we can be quite conservative - it's just that we love things to be the natural way, which you can read more about below.

Ask people what they think of when they hear "Sweden" and what you will hear is ABBA, Björn Borg, blondes, meatballs, high taxes and snow. But there is so much more to this huge country. For a start, the weather is better than most foreigners think. In August we often have 28 degrees almost every day in the Stockholm area and Sweden is the driest EU member state. How about that! The main difference to other countries is that the temperature differences between day and night are more dramatic up north and that spring comes later. It can also be a bit miserable in June because the sea is still not warm enough to affect daytime weather.

"What about the fact that you can't afford going out?" You can. It's only when you want to buy beer for your own fridge that you're better off in Denmark. Otherwise, Sweden is cheaper than both Norway and Denmark when it comes to pubcrawls. Whilst that might not be much to brag about, the solution is to find a good deal. Swedes love package offers and happy hours and drink-with-meal deals are common. The same goes for accommodation where main hotels often have weekend deals. Youth hostels are also in abundance and often very clean and used by all ages.

I hope you read my tips first but if you then want more tourist information, look here: http://www.smorgasbord.se/ Should you want more country statistics and information, try http://www.sweden.se instead.

The south of Sweden is not surprising the most densely populated part of the country, which really doesn't mean a lot by European standards. The Malmö area is in combination with Greater Copenhagen actually Europe's most densely populated region (according to The Economist's statistics) and most of the Scania region lacks the desolate forests you can find just a while further north, but otherwise you will soon find yourself in the countryside once you have left a Swedish town. Urban sprawl only really happens around the big three cities of Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö. Having said that, those cities have everything you might want as far as shopping, culture and nightlife go. Sweden is known for its many musicians, be it pop, jazz or opera, and with a country full of forest and coastline, its restaurants have a great reputation for fish and game, and with the immigration of later decades, a huge number of fun World food and culture.

So, do we have no faults? Yes. Our Danish neighbours often say that Sweden is the "boring big brother" and whilst we certainly know how to enjoy ourselves (as anyone who has been to a crayfish party can testify to), we do tend to follow all rules and regulations and even these days when more and more rules are bent, we pretend that they are not and that everything is well as usual. We might complain to each other and in the media but no way would be protest loudly. We also have a tendency to believe that the Swedish way of doing things is the right way - something that immigrants know only too well as they have tried to settle in Sweden their own way.

Us Swedes worship the great outdoors to the point of it being like a religion. Throughout history, we have had to depend on it since we had few urban areas and still today, more than 50% of the country is made up of forests. This means that we are a nation of fishermen, hunters, mushroom pickers, horse riders and canoers. Living in an oblong country also means that there is always somewhere to go for something interesting whatever the season. Summer comes early to the south and late to the north. Thus, you can enjoy a midsummer swimming in the sea in Stockholm or skiing on a mountain in the Arctic. In January, there are seven hours of daylight in Malmö, but none whatsoever in the Arctic which instead looks like in this picture at noon. In summer, the Arctic instead gets all the fun with 24 hours of daylight compared to only 17 in Malmö...