I am now lying on the bed in my tiny bedroom with a cup of tea and a cookie, thinking back at my first week in Sweden. Today was unusual weather, unusual for Sweden anyway, because it changed during the day. It started awfully wet and rainy and ended with sunshine and a sky as blue as I only have seen it in Scandinavia (it is the same colour as the blue in the Swedish flag). Normally, in Sweden, you can tell by looking out of the window in the morning how the rest of the day will be. When the sun is shining like today I really like Sweden, even if it was cold only + 10c in the evening. However there can be weeks, especially during autumn and winter, when all the days are exactly the same, grey.
In the same way as there is a similarity to the weather in Sweden there is also a similarity in people’s way to be and to dress. The reason is probably partly due to that Sweden has such a small population. The stores all sell very similar clothes. Today a colleague said that she hade heard from other friends (not only me) living abroad that you could find clothes in all colours in the stores, not like in Sweden where it is almost impossible to find clothes in “not fashion colours”. Apparently green is the fashion colour at the moment, not to wonder that almost everyone dresses in black! My mother, by the way, said she wasn’t surprised that people had stared at me when wearing my sunhat with flowers, as described in the last blog contribution from 12/9. She said, “I am not surprised they were staring if you were going around in the city of Uppsala wearing that big, colourful hat. They of course must have thought it was a beach hat, in Sweden you don’t normally were hats in the city “
A nice thing is that at my work KIB (were everyone has been so nice to me this week and really welcomed me back!)the clothe code is much more relaxed and inventive than in the society at large (and we don´t wear uniforms like at Bookdepot or Thorntons). You can wear almost exactly what you like for work, and we do :0)