Sweden is a nasty country

Submitted by One of few enlightened about Sweden (Sweden), Jun 19, 2013 at 12:52

Sadly, the truth about Sweden hasn't spread far from the, seemingly very few, people who know the truth.

Many who come here probably do have a good time in Sweden - people here usually are nice to tourists or "make a good job" of appearing to be, especially people working in the tourist industry. But that's probably the case in most countries. I'm glad that most people seem to enjoy their stay, it's not nice going somewhere and being treated badly but the negative is that if most of the people who come here think that Sweden's bees knees, it's less likely that the truth will come out about what a nasty twisted country Sweden really is.

Been born and having grown up (and unfortunately still living) in Sweden, I can testify that the story about Sweden being so great and Swedes being such nice people, just "reserved" - with the only negative being the cold weather - is wrong.

Sure, those things are true as well but I could mention a lot more common negatives such as being jerks towards people who are different from most ethnically Swedish people unless they have a religious or ethnic cause for being different than the norm and discrimination (including patronizing behaviour) towards those found to be diagnosed with a mental disability; uncaring or downright obnoxious doctors and other medical personnel (plus incompetent when it comes to most doctors [surgeons and some other non-GP types possibly being exceptions]); terrible elderly care both when it comes to elderly homes and "outpatient" service; lousy schools with the teachers not doing their job properly when facing bullying - they talk to the bully and if he/she denies any malicious intent, the teachers just leave it at that.. All of the previously mentioned issues I have either experienced or witnessed myself.

Also, as Immigrant in Sweden mentioned, there are problems with discrimination and intolerance towards people with immigrant backgrounds and Swedes are overly nationalistic and the media here at least can be at times as well, with exaggerated - or just pure slanted - voicing of Swedish achievements. However, the media is also good at mentioning problems in Swedish society, which it does often, but not on all issues though.

However, most people in Sweden with immigrant backgrounds are behaving just as bad, and many worse, as most ethnical Swedes, acting like jerks to people who haven't done them anything wrong. Some, or many, of those people might've become Swedified by their surroundings and some might've suffered so much damage that they can no longer fully control their behaviour, or are past caring.

I suspect a lot of the first-generation immigrants weren't very nice people when they came here but some of them, probably can't behave properly either because of what they've been through back home.

Sweden also hasn't been spared of being a vulgar & superficial & distasteful/unclassy society when it comes to love and sex.

The issue of treating other type of animals badly is something which Sweden hasn't been spared of either. But I wonder if people in most other countries really talk in such a disrespectful silly way to "their" dogs as some (many?) middle-aged women do over here.

However, I've had a lot of experience with Norwegians as well - they are very similar to Swedes, a lot of them possibly even worse than the average Swede. They might be chatty and smiley-smiley but that doesn't make them nice people. I've goot a very bad impression of people from France, Germany and Ireland as well. I've been to Ireland once and the people there were very unfriendly, some condescending or otherwise pseudo-friendly. I met quite a lot of people from France there and as soon as I told them I was from Sweden it became all smirks, raised eyebrows and bitter expressions and they turned a lot more quiet. This, despite me being friendly and not doing anything offense towards them but maybe it's not about bad past experiences with Swedes or northern Europeans but rather a continental western/central European superiority thing.

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