How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

I had lunch earlier this week with the guy from the Goethe Institute, one of my fellow students from the Swedish class I took earlier in the summer. He told me that he doesn't understand the Swedes.

"I've lived in South Africa, in Romania, in the States," he said. "I could basically figure them all out. But the Swedes - "

They are an enigma to him. He said he can't figure out what makes them tick.

"Some guy, a Swede, said to me once that Sweden is what America would be like if it were socialist," the guy from the Goethe Institute said. "Now that made sense to me somehow."

I didn't tell him that while George W. Bush would never admit it, the U.S. is in fact rather socialist around the edges. Still, the idea of Sweden as a socialist version of America makes sense to me, too.

The Swedish word for the day is skär. It means pink.

- by Francis S.