This time around it wasn’t so bad. After shifting countries and cities a few times, you start to get used to it. The sudden jump into a new culture can be said to be somewhat akin to rolling (inebriated) around in an Icelandic lake during spring - shocking, daring, refreshing, and on occasion, somewhat unpleasant (and yes, I have done that).
At least with the lake there’s always the hot shower to look forward to afterwards. Sometimes you wonder what form the hot shower is going to take in your life :).
But, it is definitely enlightening to move around. Although difficult and sometimes downright frustrating - “What do you mean you don’t like marmite? Are you mad?” – it is ultimately rewarding.
It took me two years to get over the culture shock I experienced in Iceland. Right as I started to feel comfy and as though I was a part of the crew (and started get a healthy hang of the language), I decided to move to Sweden with Kat. Now Sweden, to most of us kiwis, is regarded as the land of “hot blond chicks and the Swedish chef”. And on the very back of that reputation, I’m surprised there isn’t an invasion of kiwis here. They might be disappointed on arrival, I still haven’t seen the chef.
So here I am again, finding myself slightly bewildered and confused, trying to figure out how to wrap my tongue around the strange sounds they have in their language, trying not to get myself into trouble by disliking some of their foods (they get terribly offended if you refuse to eat something that they deem to be traditional).
Swedes love rules. They love rules so much that they made a rule that says you have to follow the rules. Don’t get caught crossing the road if you are in sight of a pedestrian crossing, or you might receive a few glares, or even worse, a sniff. At least the Icelanders were good that way, they don’t care about rules at all, an easy fit for kiwis. A typical example might be if a sign says ‘food this way’. Even if there is a kiosk sitting next to the sign, brimming with the most delicious food you can imagine, you can’t buy any of it. You have to follow the sign, can’t you read?
That brings me to the Gs and the Js. Swedes often have problems differentiating between the two letters in English, especially when spelling words for you, or when pronouncing them. This is because, without rhyme or reason, they can pronounce them both the same way in Swedish, or differently. Depending on either the mood of the speaker or where he is from in Sweden, or if he has decided to make life difficult for you. One day somebody tried to help me spell Gävle (pronounced Yavly). He started out with a perfect sounding “G”, and I proceeded to write down a “J”, because as I mentioned just before, they often get them mixed up. But it turns out it really is a potluck. This time he had it right, and upon seeing me write a “J”, he informed me “no, it’s a ‘G’, don’t you know what a ‘G’ is?”.
Typical!
Sometimes these kinds of misunderstandings turn out to be hilarious. I told an Eddie Murphy joke to my friend, the punch line being “so the bear wiped his ass with the rabbit”. Eddie Murphy made some comments in that particular stand-up about people screwing up his jokes. I mentioned this to my friend and mentioned that I was probably screwing it up. He then decided he would earnestly retell the joke without screwing it up, but despite his best intentions, the punch line changed to be: “so the bear wiped the rabbit with his ass”.
Swedes are blunt. Very blunt. English and Swedish grew up on opposite sides of the tracks, we developed words like please, thank you, and so on. Although they have these words they don’t seem to like using them all that much. In particular, I don’t really think they have a word exactly like “please”, so you can often hear what sound like orders from your girlfriend or friends, e.g. “can you please pass me the knife” becomes “pass me the knife”. I have it on good authority that they think the pleasantries of English are superfluous and make us sound like we are waffling on and wasting time. This is one thing I refuse to budge on though, I can’t stand the lack of pleases and thank yous. I guess I am a bit more of a stick in the mud than I thought ;). In their defence, they don’t consider it rude at all to speak your mind, and maybe that is something that we English speakers could do a bit more of. Since being here (and in Iceland) I have noticed that non-native English speakers don’t mess around in anyway when corresponding with each other in English. They just say exactly what they mean or want, totally (or usually) devoid of any pleasantries, and get on with it. This can be a bit of a hard pill to swallow on occasion, and its not a rare occurrence for one of us English speaking fellows to take some offence. But I think I’m going to cover that some more later.
For now, I am going to run off to find some Swedish meatballs!
