As I was writing an email ysterday, I thought some of the things I was saying was sounding vaguely familiar. I then remembered an article I wrote for a student magazine in Sweden. I was plagiarising my own work! :P
I don't think I have posted this up before... This was written over three years ago now - Oct 2002 I think. I was still a teenager then - I feel sooo old!
"Why Sweden?"
Why Sweden? A question I am sure all exchange students can relate to and one which was probably answered with something along the lines of, "I am not sure really...", followed by a lot of mumbling about Sweden, Uppsala, the weather, blah blah blah. Perhaps I should start by answering, "I was fascinated by your colour coded milk, and well, I wanted to meet Abba...". Actually, the meeting Abba part does have a degree of truth to it.
To be honest, I have no idea why I chose Sweden or Uppsala, but I am glad I did. I came here expecting it to be snowing in the middle of summer with people living in igloos, and ofcourse, blonde hair and blue eyes. I happened to arrive on a day measuring 27 degrees C - it had been colder in Australia when I had left. Being my first time travelling so far - alone, I did have doubts as to whether I was in the right country...
Everything was different - and "different" to me at first was synonymous to "wrong". The cars were on the wrong side, the water spins the wrong way, the stars were making all the wrong constellations and "oranges" were called "apelsin". I saw no logic - except of course in the colour coded milk!
I also had a very grave image of Swedes. I remember reading my "International Student Guide" and was particularly scared when I read the following, "During the first time in Sweden you may experience loneliness" (pg 33- last paragraph). That sentence somehow set the image of Swedes for me. I was convinced that Swedes would be the quietest lot and wasn't even expecting to make eye-contact. Perhaps I was just preparing for the worst, so that when I was here, even a grunt or burp would satisfy me.
It would be a complete lie if I was to say that I experienced no "loneliness", however, that was attributed to being so far away from home, more so than anything.
I am glad to say that my expectations were all proven wrong (and this time truly WRONG!), and am almost ashamed of having had such preconcieved ideas in the first place.
My image of Sweden aside, I was more than a little surprised at what the Swedes had to say for Australia! "All I know is you have dangerous animals!"????? I am probably not your average "Aussie Crocodile-hunter" but I think I speak for the majority of Australians when I say that no, we do not share our homes with deadly snakes and yes, Arachnophobia exists in Australia too. Also, NO! We do not ride on kangaroos to uni and we deffinetly don't cook wombats for Christmas!
If there is one thing to be learnt from all this, it is that we can not help such stereotypes. Forming such images is probably beyond our control, however, if we were to avoid certain places or events because of such notions, then we are probably missing out on more than we truly realise.
Vidya Vasudevan.
(This was followed by a quarter page picture of me with a cheesy grin :D )
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