Sweden: From Prince to Pauper, Coffee Surprise, and Pictures

Backpacking across China and Southeast Asia certainly has its rewards: the beautiful landscape, the exotic cultures, the tasty curries and spicy Sichuan cuisine, the pristine beaches on secluded islands… the list goes on and on. Upon arriving in Scandinavia, however, the advantage of Asian travel I appreciate the most is that it’s dirt cheap.

Going from Thailand or Malaysia to Sweden is like taking a giant leap from Target cargo pants to Diesel jeans. Your average hostel in Bangkok is going to run you about $8 a night for a double room (don’t even get me started on the more remote areas… Matt and I were paying $2.50 for a riverside Bungalow in Laos, and I had a single room on the River Kwai for $1.50). Compare that with the $30 I was paying in Sweden for a place in an 11-bed dorm and you’ll start to get an idea of the financial shock I underwent.

Perhaps the saddest consequence of my fall from fiscal grace was the blow to my culinary experience. I’ve found that after traveling for an extended period of time, it’s not the sites, but the food that begin to excite you. I’d take a spicy Thai red curry or a plate of dumplings and wanton soup over a visit to another wat any day of the week. It appeared now, much to my chagrin, that my magical food tour would have to be put on hiatus in Scandinavia. Whereas in Asia I had been eating out for every meal, in my 2 weeks in Sweden I never once even sat at a restaurant.

I found myself forced to navigate the aisles of many a Swedish grocery store. Going to a grocery store in a new country is always a bit of a shock. Once you cross a border, everything from the sections to the labels to the languages to the foods themselves magically change in an instant. Having just gotten used to the stores in Southeast Asia, I was again cast into an unknown culinary world in Europe. I don’t know why it is, but to me the foods in the grocery stores of European countries are so much weirder and more intimidating than those of Asian countries. Maybe it’s the massive sections of belly-sized cheese wedges that smell like gym socks or maybe it’s the rows and rows of sausages the size and shape of which I can’t imagine came from any one particular animal. There aren’t as many familiar name brands either. The biggest kicker, though, is the lack of English anywhere on the packaging. As you may have guessed, I haven’t totally mastered Swedish yet, so I just had to guess at what everything was.

On my first trip to a grocer, I was looking for milk and found a paper carton with a picture of a cow on it. The brand name was ‘Milkjo’ or something absurdly close to ‘milk’ like that. It even said 3%, which I correctly took to be the fat content. I didn’t worry about what ‘Fil’ – which was written in bigger letters than the brand name – meant. It just had to be milk. I returned to the hostel and brewed myself (poured hot water into freeze dried crystals) a cup of coffee, which I was aching to have after my long day of travel. I tipped the carton of ‘milkjo’ and out came a much thicker liquid than I remember milk being. I stared for a long moment at the goop in the mug. ‘Well, it’s 3% and I usually drink 1% at home so maybe it’s just supposed to be thicker,’ I thought. I gave the carton a whiff and jumped back halfway across the kitchen. It smelled like spoiled yogurt. It turns out that I had bought ‘Sour Milk’ (that’s what ‘Fil’ means), a Swedish favorite. Surprises are the last thing I like with my coffee.

CLICK HERE for some pictures of my 2 weeks in Sweden, which I promise were better than how I just made them sound.