In this more personal than usual episode, you'll hear about what it's like to move from a Mediterranean island to the west of Sweden.
I'll share the highs and lows of Swedish life, from tackling its unique bureaucracy to experiencing its renowned childcare system, and give you my insights into Swedish society, taxes, and culture.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is a slightly different type of episode, a more personal one.
[00:00:27] Last year, on March 5th, to be precise, I released an episode about Sweden.
[00:00:33] I had never been there before, I had no links to Sweden or Swedish heritage, but just hours before the episode was released, I had packed up all of my worldly belongings and moved to Sweden with my wife and our two young kids.
[00:00:48] So, this episode is going to be a slightly more personal one than usual, where I’ll share my experience, 1 year on, of living in Sweden, the good AND the bad, and give my perspective on what life in this Scandinavian country is really like.
[00:01:06] OK then, let’s get started, shall we?
[00:01:11] If you use the social network and news-sharing platform Reddit, you’ll know that it is based on the idea of “subreddits”.
[00:01:20] A subreddit is essentially a forum based on a particular interest or topic.
[00:01:27] There are large subreddits, people talking about global politics or Apple products.
[00:01:33] And there are very small, incredibly niche subreddits. A subreddit dedicated to posting pictures of rare lobsters. One dedicated to people sharing pictures of unusual pillows.
[00:01:48] There is also one called TillSverige. It means “to Sweden” in Swedish, and it is all based on sharing information for foreigners moving to Sweden.
[00:02:01] It might sound niche, but it is pretty active, with its 55,000 members putting it in the top 3% of all communities on Reddit.
[00:02:13] There is a lot of useful information there, if you are someone who happens to be moving to Sweden, that is, but there is also a certain repetitiveness to it.
[00:02:24] Every few days, there is the same post from someone, more often than not an American, who is disillusioned with the situation in their country and has decided that Sweden is heaven on earth, and they are willing to do anything in order to move here.
[00:02:42] Free healthcare, unionised jobs, paid sick leave, years of maternity leave, you name it, this person has decided that Sweden is where they want to be, their only question is, how can they get there?
[00:02:57] To which, the moderators and members of the subreddit politely inform them that, while Sweden may have or be some of those things, it is not a complete utopia.
[00:03:09] I am not a moderator of the TillSverige subreddit, nor am I an expert on all things Sweden, but over the next 20 minutes or so, I will share my perspective, one year in, on Sweden, what life is like as someone new to the country, and what I think you can learn about Sweden the country from some of the ways in which Swedish society is structured.
[00:03:35] The first question to address, I guess, is, why am I in Sweden?
[00:03:40] The answer is actually quite simple. My wife is a university lecturer, and she was offered a job at the University of Gothenburg.
[00:03:50] Gothenburg, as you may know, is a city on the west coast of Sweden.
[00:03:55] It’s the second largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, the capital, and it’s about halfway between Oslo to the north and Copenhagen to the south.
[00:04:06] Neither my wife nor I had ever been to Gothenburg before she applied for the position, and in fact, she only spent 36 hours in the city, for her interview, before accepting it.
[00:04:19] So, 12 months ago, we moved here knowing almost nothing about the city, and our knowledge of Sweden was limited to reading books, watching documentaries, and speaking with Swedish friends.
[00:04:33] Strangely enough, where we lived before–Malta–has a lot of Swedish people, who are typically there to work in the online gambling sector, so we did have friends who were able to tell us a little bit about life in Sweden and give us some pointers before we arrived.
[00:04:51] Anyway, other than the little we had been told or had read about, we knew almost nothing about Sweden and knew nobody in the city we were moving to.
[00:05:02] Now, the first category of things I want to talk about today is something that anyone moving to a new country is faced with: bureaucracy.
[00:05:12] Before moving to Sweden, I had pretty extensive experience with bureaucracy in three different countries: the UK, Malta, and Italy, so these were my main points of comparison.
[00:05:26] When it comes to bureaucracy and administration, Sweden is both infuriatingly complicated and beautifully simple.
[00:05:36] The process of getting into the Swedish “system”, being recognised and registered by all of the authorities, can take a while.
[00:05:45] And until you are “in”, it can be very frustrating.
[00:05:51] See, Sweden uses a system called BankID for almost everything. It’s an electronic identification system, and to do anything even slightly official, whether that’s paying taxes or getting a mobile phone contract, you need to have BankID.
[00:06:10] You can only get it once you have a bank account from one of the big Swedish banks, which can be quite difficult to do, and until you have it, you are pretty cut off from all services in Sweden.
[00:06:23] Once you have it, though, it's magic.
[00:06:26] You don’t need to worry about creating new accounts and remembering passwords or even doing things like updating your address with every different organisation if you move house. Because it’s all linked to your BankID, which is in turn linked to the central Swedish tax system, it all updates automatically. Like magic.
[00:06:47] Now, I don’t want to just list the various bureaucratic systems people use in Sweden. That would be really boring.
[00:06:55] Instead, let me tell you what I think this, in particular, tells you about Sweden and Swedish society.
[00:07:04] Firstly, Swedes pride themselves on convenience. The country is pretty advanced when it comes to the use of technology, and it is hardly surprising that technology is used in any way possible to make people’s lives more convenient.
[00:07:21] Secondly, Sweden works very well if you fit into a common category that is easy to understand, and if you have circumstances that are less regular, well, life isn’t quite so easy.
[00:07:37] To give you an example, my wife has a permanent work contract with a large state organisation - the University of Gothenburg.
[00:07:46] She had a fixed monthly salary, a signed contract, and before that, she could point to a similar fixed salary and a contract at her previous employer, another university, albeit in a different country.
[00:08:00] Her situation was very easy to understand, and she sailed through all of the bureaucratic hurdles: registration with the tax authorities, getting a bank account, being able to rent a car, and so on.
[00:08:14] I, on the other hand, had a more complicated situation.
[00:08:19] I work for myself, I technically worked for a British company called Leonardo English Limited.
[00:08:25] But you can’t do that in Sweden, you have to work for a Swedish-registered company.
[00:08:30] So for me to have a work contract, I needed to set up a Swedish company that could employ me.
[00:08:36] Now, I don’t want to bore you with too many really tedious administrative details, but I was in a vicious circle for several months where I couldn’t start a Swedish company because you can only start one if you have BankID, but you can’t get BankID without a bank account, and you can’t get a bank account without an employment contract, and for me to get an employment contract, I needed to start a Swedish company.
[00:09:01] It was, as you can imagine, somewhat infuriating.
[00:09:05] Now, I am glad to say it is all sorted but this is just one example of how life in Sweden can be a little tricky if you don’t fit neatly into an easily-understood category, especially when it comes to your employment status.
[00:09:22] So, with that bureaucratic issue out of the way, let me tell you about something more interesting.
[00:09:30] One thing that people always seem to bang on about when it comes to Sweden is how amazing the childcare system is and how it is such a fantastic place to raise kids.
[00:09:42] I have two children, they have spent a year at Swedish nursery, so this is a subject I feel I can talk about with some level of authority.
[00:09:52] And in my experience, compared to every other country that I've lived in, Sweden is a very easy place to raise children in.
[00:10:01] There is super generous parental leave, which applies to both parents, not just the mother.
[00:10:08] This isn’t just immediately after a child is born, like in many countries, but it can be taken until the child is 4, and then you can carry almost 5 months of it over until the child is 12 years old.
[00:10:24] And nursery is practically free.
[00:10:27] Now, it’s not completely free; the cost is based on your salary, and the maximum anyone pays is just over €100 a month. But the government gives you around this much per child in cash every month, so, to all extents and purposes, it is free.
[00:10:47] When you compare this to the UK, for example, where it can easily cost €2,000 a month per child, well it makes life significantly easier on your wallet.
[00:10:58] But apart from the cost, how is Swedish nursery different?
[00:11:02] Well, one thing you often read in articles about Sweden and other Scandinavian countries is about how kids are left to play outside a lot, and they learn to just deal with all types of weather.
[00:11:16] My kids have been in two different nurseries, and I can testify that this seems to be true. Whether it’s sunny, pelting it down with rain, or it’s minus 5 outside, the kids go out to play.
[00:11:31] For my kids, two boys who grew up on a sunny Mediterranean island, this was a bit of an adjustment, the older one would request gloves at the height of Swedish summer, but I am happy to say that they are now getting used to it.
[00:11:48] What else about Swedish nurseries?
[00:11:50] Well, kids in Sweden are taught from a young age to be experimental and independent. The kids are encouraged to create their own games, to do what they want to do, and to pursue their own interests.
[00:12:05] They call their nursery teachers by their first names, and are treated more as equals rather than subjects.
[00:12:13] In Malta, where we were before, it was completely the opposite; kids called their teachers Mr or Mrs X, they were given much stricter parameters, games and activities were more organised, and it felt like kids were encouraged to do particular pre-decided things.
[00:12:33] In Sweden, there is much less hierarchy; it seems a lot more flat.
[00:12:39] What’s more, at both of the nurseries my kids have gone to in Sweden, children and parents have been strongly encouraged to get involved with how the nursery is managed.
[00:12:50] The people managing the nursery are very transparent; there are requests for feedback and forms to fill out about what suggestions we have, and you really get a sense that they want you to feel ownership of the nursery.
[00:13:06] You can see this in multiple areas of Swedish society, from the squash club I joined to the apartments we have rented, more than in any other country I’ve lived in before, there is this sense that, even if you just use a service–like you send your kids to a nursery or you play sport at a sports club–you have a shared responsibility for making it work.
[00:13:30] Now, on this note, let’s talk about this idea of Sweden as some kind of socialist utopia.
[00:13:39] All of the nice stuff the Swedish government gives you, especially if you have children, doesn’t come for free.
[00:13:45] And this brings me to the next point, which seems to be one of the most common questions people ask me about Sweden: tax.
[00:13:54] Taxes in Sweden are high, some of the highest in the world, reaching up to 57% on personal income. And when you factor in the cost the employer pays, they are even higher, as a company pays an extra 31% on top of your salary.
[00:14:13] To give you a precise example, if someone in Sweden buys a course for, let’s say, €100 from Leonardo English AB, my Swedish company, after all taxes are accounted for, I personally might receive around €29.
[00:14:31] And, of course, that doesn’t take into account any other costs, so the real amount is considerably lower than that.
[00:14:39] Now, this is not a complaint, but rather a practical, real example.
[00:14:45] And here’s an important clarification that I believe will help you better understand how Swedish society is structured. Taxes in Sweden are high; they are relatively high for everyone, and the rate at which you begin paying the highest tax rate is much lower than in many other countries.
[00:15:07] In the UK, for example, the highest rate of tax, which is 45%, only kicks in if you earn more than £125,000, which is around €150,000. And if you earn less than €15,000 a year, you don’t pay any tax at all.
[00:15:28] In Sweden, the highest rate of personal tax, at just under 55%, kicks in at 55,000 Euros, and while there is a tax-free allowance for people only earning 1 or 2 thousand Euros a year, there isn’t really the UK equivalent of low earners paying no tax. Everyone who works a full-time job, for the most part, pays a minimum of around 30%, and when you factor in the employer contribution, it’s more like 50%.
[00:16:01] Now, this isn’t a question of what is right or wrong or which system is superior, but what this shows is that in Sweden, almost everyone pays a relatively high tax rate, whereas in a country like the UK, a higher proportion of the tax is paid by people with a large income, and those on lower incomes pay a much smaller amount.
[00:16:26] To give you some more numbers on this, in the UK, the top 1% of earners pay almost 30% of all income tax, and in the US, it's even more pronounced, at around 40% of taxes being paid by the top 1% of earners.
[00:16:44] Sweden doesn’t publish any similar figures, at least figures that I could find, but Denmark does. And in Denmark, which has a similar social structure, the top 1% pays 8% of the total income tax.
[00:17:01] Yes, this also reflects the fact that the top 1% of earners in countries like the UK and the US earn vast amounts of money, and incomes are much more unequally distributed.
[00:17:12] But to get back to the example of Sweden, how does this affect a society, what is the impact on people when everyone is paying a similar percentage in tax, and it is quite a high percentage at that?
[00:17:27] Well, from my experience, and from what I have read from people much more experienced and knowledgeable than me, it leads to people being much more bought into the system, which leads to a stronger sense of communal responsibility and trust in public institutions.
[00:17:44] When most people are contributing at similar, relatively high levels, there’s a perception that everyone is in it together.
[00:17:54] But here’s something that not everyone knows about Sweden.
[00:17:58] It might seem like a socially democratic paradise, and there are very high taxes on your income, but if you are already wealthy in Sweden, there are few of the taxes or mechanisms that exist in other countries to redistribute this wealth.
[00:18:16] There is no inheritance tax, taxes on investments are much lower than on income, there’s no wealth tax or things like that.
[00:18:26] So, for the richest families in Sweden, and there are some very rich, “old money”, Swedish families, they can happily pass their wealth down from generation to generation without having to pay a penny in tax.
[00:18:41] While you could say that it’s fair enough that Swedes aren’t taxed again after they have already been heavily taxed on their income, what this means is that there is less potential for social mobility; the rich stay rich, and because the tax rate is so high, it's harder to build wealth if you don’t have it already.
[00:19:02] Now, the penultimate thing I want to talk to you about today is related to Swedish culture, and how this relates to several other countries I feel I can speak with some authority about: the UK, where I’m from, Malta, where I lived for the last 7 years, and Italy, where I've spent quite a long time living and the country my wife is from.
[00:19:25] Sweden is this curious mix of relatively small country, with just over 10 million people, highly developed but only really in the past 100 years or so, and until pretty recently very culturally homogenous.
[00:19:43] Its size means that there is enough of a domestic market for people to write books or make movies or make music in Swedish, for Swedish people, but there aren’t so many people that there is an abundance of it.
[00:19:59] If you contrast this with Malta, for example, the population is so small that there is pretty much no domestic market for cultural products: songs, books, cartoons, and so on.
[00:20:12] And you contrast this with Italy, there is a bigger market. Italy also has centuries of being a relatively rich country, and for most of that time it was a collection of very different cultures all within the borders of modern Italy.
[00:20:29] And then the UK, a bigger country still, plus with a shared global language and a much longer history of multiculturalism.
[00:20:39] As a newcomer to the UK or to Italy, there is so much cultural history and cultural output that I imagine it takes an awfully long time to really understand and process before things start to feel familiar.
[00:20:56] Sweden, on the other hand, seems to me a lot more manageable.
[00:21:02] There are certain Swedish traditions that all my Swedish friends participate in, songs that all Swedish children seem to know, it seems to me to be a much more cohesive, smaller and therefore more easily accessible cultural landscape.
[00:21:19] Of course, this is a generalisation, but it is my experience so far.
[00:21:24] And, I have to say, it is quite nice.
[00:21:27] I would go to Swedish language class, and we’d learn the lyrics of a Christmas song, I’d then find that my kids also knew the song, I’d hear other children singing it in the tram, and I’d hear it being played in shops.
[00:21:41] Yes, I’m sure the same thing happens in many other countries, but it is something that my wife and I have both observed.
[00:21:48] Now, the final thing to talk about, given that you are learning English, is my experience learning Swedish.
[00:21:56] As you may know, I have learned several other languages - I studied French and Italian at university, I have spent quite a lot of time in China and did a Masters in Chinese, but this was quite a long time ago.
[00:22:08] I started learning Swedish last year, and completely from scratch. I didn’t know a word of Swedish beforehand.
[00:22:17] And I have to say, being a complete beginner was very humbling, and reminded me of the fantastic effort that all of you are making in improving your English, and how difficult it can be to find the time or motivation to actually put in the work.
[00:22:34] Studying Swedish myself reminded me that there are no shortcuts, no special tricks or solutions that will somehow make you learn a language 50 times faster, or that can get you to fluency in 30 days or something ridiculous like that.
[00:22:51] It’s a long and steady process, and having used myself as a guinea pig for the past 12 months, the only thing that I can say is guaranteed to work is regular, daily practice. It’s time-consuming, it’s less sexy than a shortcut, but it will work.
[00:23:09] So, there we go, these are some reflections on 12 months spent calling this Scandinavian nation home.
[00:23:16] Will it be home forever?
[00:23:18] Who knows, but it certainly isn’t a bad place for now.
[00:23:23] OK then, that is it for today's slightly atypical episode about my life in Sweden.
[00:23:29] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you might have learned a few things about Sweden that you didn’t know before.
[00:23:35] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:23:38] Do you have questions for me about Sweden?
[00:23:41] We actually have quite a few members from Sweden or who live in Sweden, so what do you think? What would you agree or disagree with?
[00:23:50] And I’m not going to make these more personal episodes a permanent thing, but do you like these kinds of updates, or do you think, “Meh, get back to the more exciting stuff?”
[00:24:00] I’d love to know, so feel free to shoot me an email or dive right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com.
[00:24:09] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:24:14] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is a slightly different type of episode, a more personal one.
[00:00:27] Last year, on March 5th, to be precise, I released an episode about Sweden.
[00:00:33] I had never been there before, I had no links to Sweden or Swedish heritage, but just hours before the episode was released, I had packed up all of my worldly belongings and moved to Sweden with my wife and our two young kids.
[00:00:48] So, this episode is going to be a slightly more personal one than usual, where I’ll share my experience, 1 year on, of living in Sweden, the good AND the bad, and give my perspective on what life in this Scandinavian country is really like.
[00:01:06] OK then, let’s get started, shall we?
[00:01:11] If you use the social network and news-sharing platform Reddit, you’ll know that it is based on the idea of “subreddits”.
[00:01:20] A subreddit is essentially a forum based on a particular interest or topic.
[00:01:27] There are large subreddits, people talking about global politics or Apple products.
[00:01:33] And there are very small, incredibly niche subreddits. A subreddit dedicated to posting pictures of rare lobsters. One dedicated to people sharing pictures of unusual pillows.
[00:01:48] There is also one called TillSverige. It means “to Sweden” in Swedish, and it is all based on sharing information for foreigners moving to Sweden.
[00:02:01] It might sound niche, but it is pretty active, with its 55,000 members putting it in the top 3% of all communities on Reddit.
[00:02:13] There is a lot of useful information there, if you are someone who happens to be moving to Sweden, that is, but there is also a certain repetitiveness to it.
[00:02:24] Every few days, there is the same post from someone, more often than not an American, who is disillusioned with the situation in their country and has decided that Sweden is heaven on earth, and they are willing to do anything in order to move here.
[00:02:42] Free healthcare, unionised jobs, paid sick leave, years of maternity leave, you name it, this person has decided that Sweden is where they want to be, their only question is, how can they get there?
[00:02:57] To which, the moderators and members of the subreddit politely inform them that, while Sweden may have or be some of those things, it is not a complete utopia.
[00:03:09] I am not a moderator of the TillSverige subreddit, nor am I an expert on all things Sweden, but over the next 20 minutes or so, I will share my perspective, one year in, on Sweden, what life is like as someone new to the country, and what I think you can learn about Sweden the country from some of the ways in which Swedish society is structured.
[00:03:35] The first question to address, I guess, is, why am I in Sweden?
[00:03:40] The answer is actually quite simple. My wife is a university lecturer, and she was offered a job at the University of Gothenburg.
[00:03:50] Gothenburg, as you may know, is a city on the west coast of Sweden.
[00:03:55] It’s the second largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, the capital, and it’s about halfway between Oslo to the north and Copenhagen to the south.
[00:04:06] Neither my wife nor I had ever been to Gothenburg before she applied for the position, and in fact, she only spent 36 hours in the city, for her interview, before accepting it.
[00:04:19] So, 12 months ago, we moved here knowing almost nothing about the city, and our knowledge of Sweden was limited to reading books, watching documentaries, and speaking with Swedish friends.
[00:04:33] Strangely enough, where we lived before–Malta–has a lot of Swedish people, who are typically there to work in the online gambling sector, so we did have friends who were able to tell us a little bit about life in Sweden and give us some pointers before we arrived.
[00:04:51] Anyway, other than the little we had been told or had read about, we knew almost nothing about Sweden and knew nobody in the city we were moving to.
[00:05:02] Now, the first category of things I want to talk about today is something that anyone moving to a new country is faced with: bureaucracy.
[00:05:12] Before moving to Sweden, I had pretty extensive experience with bureaucracy in three different countries: the UK, Malta, and Italy, so these were my main points of comparison.
[00:05:26] When it comes to bureaucracy and administration, Sweden is both infuriatingly complicated and beautifully simple.
[00:05:36] The process of getting into the Swedish “system”, being recognised and registered by all of the authorities, can take a while.
[00:05:45] And until you are “in”, it can be very frustrating.
[00:05:51] See, Sweden uses a system called BankID for almost everything. It’s an electronic identification system, and to do anything even slightly official, whether that’s paying taxes or getting a mobile phone contract, you need to have BankID.
[00:06:10] You can only get it once you have a bank account from one of the big Swedish banks, which can be quite difficult to do, and until you have it, you are pretty cut off from all services in Sweden.
[00:06:23] Once you have it, though, it's magic.
[00:06:26] You don’t need to worry about creating new accounts and remembering passwords or even doing things like updating your address with every different organisation if you move house. Because it’s all linked to your BankID, which is in turn linked to the central Swedish tax system, it all updates automatically. Like magic.
[00:06:47] Now, I don’t want to just list the various bureaucratic systems people use in Sweden. That would be really boring.
[00:06:55] Instead, let me tell you what I think this, in particular, tells you about Sweden and Swedish society.
[00:07:04] Firstly, Swedes pride themselves on convenience. The country is pretty advanced when it comes to the use of technology, and it is hardly surprising that technology is used in any way possible to make people’s lives more convenient.
[00:07:21] Secondly, Sweden works very well if you fit into a common category that is easy to understand, and if you have circumstances that are less regular, well, life isn’t quite so easy.
[00:07:37] To give you an example, my wife has a permanent work contract with a large state organisation - the University of Gothenburg.
[00:07:46] She had a fixed monthly salary, a signed contract, and before that, she could point to a similar fixed salary and a contract at her previous employer, another university, albeit in a different country.
[00:08:00] Her situation was very easy to understand, and she sailed through all of the bureaucratic hurdles: registration with the tax authorities, getting a bank account, being able to rent a car, and so on.
[00:08:14] I, on the other hand, had a more complicated situation.
[00:08:19] I work for myself, I technically worked for a British company called Leonardo English Limited.
[00:08:25] But you can’t do that in Sweden, you have to work for a Swedish-registered company.
[00:08:30] So for me to have a work contract, I needed to set up a Swedish company that could employ me.
[00:08:36] Now, I don’t want to bore you with too many really tedious administrative details, but I was in a vicious circle for several months where I couldn’t start a Swedish company because you can only start one if you have BankID, but you can’t get BankID without a bank account, and you can’t get a bank account without an employment contract, and for me to get an employment contract, I needed to start a Swedish company.
[00:09:01] It was, as you can imagine, somewhat infuriating.
[00:09:05] Now, I am glad to say it is all sorted but this is just one example of how life in Sweden can be a little tricky if you don’t fit neatly into an easily-understood category, especially when it comes to your employment status.
[00:09:22] So, with that bureaucratic issue out of the way, let me tell you about something more interesting.
[00:09:30] One thing that people always seem to bang on about when it comes to Sweden is how amazing the childcare system is and how it is such a fantastic place to raise kids.
[00:09:42] I have two children, they have spent a year at Swedish nursery, so this is a subject I feel I can talk about with some level of authority.
[00:09:52] And in my experience, compared to every other country that I've lived in, Sweden is a very easy place to raise children in.
[00:10:01] There is super generous parental leave, which applies to both parents, not just the mother.
[00:10:08] This isn’t just immediately after a child is born, like in many countries, but it can be taken until the child is 4, and then you can carry almost 5 months of it over until the child is 12 years old.
[00:10:24] And nursery is practically free.
[00:10:27] Now, it’s not completely free; the cost is based on your salary, and the maximum anyone pays is just over €100 a month. But the government gives you around this much per child in cash every month, so, to all extents and purposes, it is free.
[00:10:47] When you compare this to the UK, for example, where it can easily cost €2,000 a month per child, well it makes life significantly easier on your wallet.
[00:10:58] But apart from the cost, how is Swedish nursery different?
[00:11:02] Well, one thing you often read in articles about Sweden and other Scandinavian countries is about how kids are left to play outside a lot, and they learn to just deal with all types of weather.
[00:11:16] My kids have been in two different nurseries, and I can testify that this seems to be true. Whether it’s sunny, pelting it down with rain, or it’s minus 5 outside, the kids go out to play.
[00:11:31] For my kids, two boys who grew up on a sunny Mediterranean island, this was a bit of an adjustment, the older one would request gloves at the height of Swedish summer, but I am happy to say that they are now getting used to it.
[00:11:48] What else about Swedish nurseries?
[00:11:50] Well, kids in Sweden are taught from a young age to be experimental and independent. The kids are encouraged to create their own games, to do what they want to do, and to pursue their own interests.
[00:12:05] They call their nursery teachers by their first names, and are treated more as equals rather than subjects.
[00:12:13] In Malta, where we were before, it was completely the opposite; kids called their teachers Mr or Mrs X, they were given much stricter parameters, games and activities were more organised, and it felt like kids were encouraged to do particular pre-decided things.
[00:12:33] In Sweden, there is much less hierarchy; it seems a lot more flat.
[00:12:39] What’s more, at both of the nurseries my kids have gone to in Sweden, children and parents have been strongly encouraged to get involved with how the nursery is managed.
[00:12:50] The people managing the nursery are very transparent; there are requests for feedback and forms to fill out about what suggestions we have, and you really get a sense that they want you to feel ownership of the nursery.
[00:13:06] You can see this in multiple areas of Swedish society, from the squash club I joined to the apartments we have rented, more than in any other country I’ve lived in before, there is this sense that, even if you just use a service–like you send your kids to a nursery or you play sport at a sports club–you have a shared responsibility for making it work.
[00:13:30] Now, on this note, let’s talk about this idea of Sweden as some kind of socialist utopia.
[00:13:39] All of the nice stuff the Swedish government gives you, especially if you have children, doesn’t come for free.
[00:13:45] And this brings me to the next point, which seems to be one of the most common questions people ask me about Sweden: tax.
[00:13:54] Taxes in Sweden are high, some of the highest in the world, reaching up to 57% on personal income. And when you factor in the cost the employer pays, they are even higher, as a company pays an extra 31% on top of your salary.
[00:14:13] To give you a precise example, if someone in Sweden buys a course for, let’s say, €100 from Leonardo English AB, my Swedish company, after all taxes are accounted for, I personally might receive around €29.
[00:14:31] And, of course, that doesn’t take into account any other costs, so the real amount is considerably lower than that.
[00:14:39] Now, this is not a complaint, but rather a practical, real example.
[00:14:45] And here’s an important clarification that I believe will help you better understand how Swedish society is structured. Taxes in Sweden are high; they are relatively high for everyone, and the rate at which you begin paying the highest tax rate is much lower than in many other countries.
[00:15:07] In the UK, for example, the highest rate of tax, which is 45%, only kicks in if you earn more than £125,000, which is around €150,000. And if you earn less than €15,000 a year, you don’t pay any tax at all.
[00:15:28] In Sweden, the highest rate of personal tax, at just under 55%, kicks in at 55,000 Euros, and while there is a tax-free allowance for people only earning 1 or 2 thousand Euros a year, there isn’t really the UK equivalent of low earners paying no tax. Everyone who works a full-time job, for the most part, pays a minimum of around 30%, and when you factor in the employer contribution, it’s more like 50%.
[00:16:01] Now, this isn’t a question of what is right or wrong or which system is superior, but what this shows is that in Sweden, almost everyone pays a relatively high tax rate, whereas in a country like the UK, a higher proportion of the tax is paid by people with a large income, and those on lower incomes pay a much smaller amount.
[00:16:26] To give you some more numbers on this, in the UK, the top 1% of earners pay almost 30% of all income tax, and in the US, it's even more pronounced, at around 40% of taxes being paid by the top 1% of earners.
[00:16:44] Sweden doesn’t publish any similar figures, at least figures that I could find, but Denmark does. And in Denmark, which has a similar social structure, the top 1% pays 8% of the total income tax.
[00:17:01] Yes, this also reflects the fact that the top 1% of earners in countries like the UK and the US earn vast amounts of money, and incomes are much more unequally distributed.
[00:17:12] But to get back to the example of Sweden, how does this affect a society, what is the impact on people when everyone is paying a similar percentage in tax, and it is quite a high percentage at that?
[00:17:27] Well, from my experience, and from what I have read from people much more experienced and knowledgeable than me, it leads to people being much more bought into the system, which leads to a stronger sense of communal responsibility and trust in public institutions.
[00:17:44] When most people are contributing at similar, relatively high levels, there’s a perception that everyone is in it together.
[00:17:54] But here’s something that not everyone knows about Sweden.
[00:17:58] It might seem like a socially democratic paradise, and there are very high taxes on your income, but if you are already wealthy in Sweden, there are few of the taxes or mechanisms that exist in other countries to redistribute this wealth.
[00:18:16] There is no inheritance tax, taxes on investments are much lower than on income, there’s no wealth tax or things like that.
[00:18:26] So, for the richest families in Sweden, and there are some very rich, “old money”, Swedish families, they can happily pass their wealth down from generation to generation without having to pay a penny in tax.
[00:18:41] While you could say that it’s fair enough that Swedes aren’t taxed again after they have already been heavily taxed on their income, what this means is that there is less potential for social mobility; the rich stay rich, and because the tax rate is so high, it's harder to build wealth if you don’t have it already.
[00:19:02] Now, the penultimate thing I want to talk to you about today is related to Swedish culture, and how this relates to several other countries I feel I can speak with some authority about: the UK, where I’m from, Malta, where I lived for the last 7 years, and Italy, where I've spent quite a long time living and the country my wife is from.
[00:19:25] Sweden is this curious mix of relatively small country, with just over 10 million people, highly developed but only really in the past 100 years or so, and until pretty recently very culturally homogenous.
[00:19:43] Its size means that there is enough of a domestic market for people to write books or make movies or make music in Swedish, for Swedish people, but there aren’t so many people that there is an abundance of it.
[00:19:59] If you contrast this with Malta, for example, the population is so small that there is pretty much no domestic market for cultural products: songs, books, cartoons, and so on.
[00:20:12] And you contrast this with Italy, there is a bigger market. Italy also has centuries of being a relatively rich country, and for most of that time it was a collection of very different cultures all within the borders of modern Italy.
[00:20:29] And then the UK, a bigger country still, plus with a shared global language and a much longer history of multiculturalism.
[00:20:39] As a newcomer to the UK or to Italy, there is so much cultural history and cultural output that I imagine it takes an awfully long time to really understand and process before things start to feel familiar.
[00:20:56] Sweden, on the other hand, seems to me a lot more manageable.
[00:21:02] There are certain Swedish traditions that all my Swedish friends participate in, songs that all Swedish children seem to know, it seems to me to be a much more cohesive, smaller and therefore more easily accessible cultural landscape.
[00:21:19] Of course, this is a generalisation, but it is my experience so far.
[00:21:24] And, I have to say, it is quite nice.
[00:21:27] I would go to Swedish language class, and we’d learn the lyrics of a Christmas song, I’d then find that my kids also knew the song, I’d hear other children singing it in the tram, and I’d hear it being played in shops.
[00:21:41] Yes, I’m sure the same thing happens in many other countries, but it is something that my wife and I have both observed.
[00:21:48] Now, the final thing to talk about, given that you are learning English, is my experience learning Swedish.
[00:21:56] As you may know, I have learned several other languages - I studied French and Italian at university, I have spent quite a lot of time in China and did a Masters in Chinese, but this was quite a long time ago.
[00:22:08] I started learning Swedish last year, and completely from scratch. I didn’t know a word of Swedish beforehand.
[00:22:17] And I have to say, being a complete beginner was very humbling, and reminded me of the fantastic effort that all of you are making in improving your English, and how difficult it can be to find the time or motivation to actually put in the work.
[00:22:34] Studying Swedish myself reminded me that there are no shortcuts, no special tricks or solutions that will somehow make you learn a language 50 times faster, or that can get you to fluency in 30 days or something ridiculous like that.
[00:22:51] It’s a long and steady process, and having used myself as a guinea pig for the past 12 months, the only thing that I can say is guaranteed to work is regular, daily practice. It’s time-consuming, it’s less sexy than a shortcut, but it will work.
[00:23:09] So, there we go, these are some reflections on 12 months spent calling this Scandinavian nation home.
[00:23:16] Will it be home forever?
[00:23:18] Who knows, but it certainly isn’t a bad place for now.
[00:23:23] OK then, that is it for today's slightly atypical episode about my life in Sweden.
[00:23:29] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you might have learned a few things about Sweden that you didn’t know before.
[00:23:35] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:23:38] Do you have questions for me about Sweden?
[00:23:41] We actually have quite a few members from Sweden or who live in Sweden, so what do you think? What would you agree or disagree with?
[00:23:50] And I’m not going to make these more personal episodes a permanent thing, but do you like these kinds of updates, or do you think, “Meh, get back to the more exciting stuff?”
[00:24:00] I’d love to know, so feel free to shoot me an email or dive right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com.
[00:24:09] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:24:14] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is a slightly different type of episode, a more personal one.
[00:00:27] Last year, on March 5th, to be precise, I released an episode about Sweden.
[00:00:33] I had never been there before, I had no links to Sweden or Swedish heritage, but just hours before the episode was released, I had packed up all of my worldly belongings and moved to Sweden with my wife and our two young kids.
[00:00:48] So, this episode is going to be a slightly more personal one than usual, where I’ll share my experience, 1 year on, of living in Sweden, the good AND the bad, and give my perspective on what life in this Scandinavian country is really like.
[00:01:06] OK then, let’s get started, shall we?
[00:01:11] If you use the social network and news-sharing platform Reddit, you’ll know that it is based on the idea of “subreddits”.
[00:01:20] A subreddit is essentially a forum based on a particular interest or topic.
[00:01:27] There are large subreddits, people talking about global politics or Apple products.
[00:01:33] And there are very small, incredibly niche subreddits. A subreddit dedicated to posting pictures of rare lobsters. One dedicated to people sharing pictures of unusual pillows.
[00:01:48] There is also one called TillSverige. It means “to Sweden” in Swedish, and it is all based on sharing information for foreigners moving to Sweden.
[00:02:01] It might sound niche, but it is pretty active, with its 55,000 members putting it in the top 3% of all communities on Reddit.
[00:02:13] There is a lot of useful information there, if you are someone who happens to be moving to Sweden, that is, but there is also a certain repetitiveness to it.
[00:02:24] Every few days, there is the same post from someone, more often than not an American, who is disillusioned with the situation in their country and has decided that Sweden is heaven on earth, and they are willing to do anything in order to move here.
[00:02:42] Free healthcare, unionised jobs, paid sick leave, years of maternity leave, you name it, this person has decided that Sweden is where they want to be, their only question is, how can they get there?
[00:02:57] To which, the moderators and members of the subreddit politely inform them that, while Sweden may have or be some of those things, it is not a complete utopia.
[00:03:09] I am not a moderator of the TillSverige subreddit, nor am I an expert on all things Sweden, but over the next 20 minutes or so, I will share my perspective, one year in, on Sweden, what life is like as someone new to the country, and what I think you can learn about Sweden the country from some of the ways in which Swedish society is structured.
[00:03:35] The first question to address, I guess, is, why am I in Sweden?
[00:03:40] The answer is actually quite simple. My wife is a university lecturer, and she was offered a job at the University of Gothenburg.
[00:03:50] Gothenburg, as you may know, is a city on the west coast of Sweden.
[00:03:55] It’s the second largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, the capital, and it’s about halfway between Oslo to the north and Copenhagen to the south.
[00:04:06] Neither my wife nor I had ever been to Gothenburg before she applied for the position, and in fact, she only spent 36 hours in the city, for her interview, before accepting it.
[00:04:19] So, 12 months ago, we moved here knowing almost nothing about the city, and our knowledge of Sweden was limited to reading books, watching documentaries, and speaking with Swedish friends.
[00:04:33] Strangely enough, where we lived before–Malta–has a lot of Swedish people, who are typically there to work in the online gambling sector, so we did have friends who were able to tell us a little bit about life in Sweden and give us some pointers before we arrived.
[00:04:51] Anyway, other than the little we had been told or had read about, we knew almost nothing about Sweden and knew nobody in the city we were moving to.
[00:05:02] Now, the first category of things I want to talk about today is something that anyone moving to a new country is faced with: bureaucracy.
[00:05:12] Before moving to Sweden, I had pretty extensive experience with bureaucracy in three different countries: the UK, Malta, and Italy, so these were my main points of comparison.
[00:05:26] When it comes to bureaucracy and administration, Sweden is both infuriatingly complicated and beautifully simple.
[00:05:36] The process of getting into the Swedish “system”, being recognised and registered by all of the authorities, can take a while.
[00:05:45] And until you are “in”, it can be very frustrating.
[00:05:51] See, Sweden uses a system called BankID for almost everything. It’s an electronic identification system, and to do anything even slightly official, whether that’s paying taxes or getting a mobile phone contract, you need to have BankID.
[00:06:10] You can only get it once you have a bank account from one of the big Swedish banks, which can be quite difficult to do, and until you have it, you are pretty cut off from all services in Sweden.
[00:06:23] Once you have it, though, it's magic.
[00:06:26] You don’t need to worry about creating new accounts and remembering passwords or even doing things like updating your address with every different organisation if you move house. Because it’s all linked to your BankID, which is in turn linked to the central Swedish tax system, it all updates automatically. Like magic.
[00:06:47] Now, I don’t want to just list the various bureaucratic systems people use in Sweden. That would be really boring.
[00:06:55] Instead, let me tell you what I think this, in particular, tells you about Sweden and Swedish society.
[00:07:04] Firstly, Swedes pride themselves on convenience. The country is pretty advanced when it comes to the use of technology, and it is hardly surprising that technology is used in any way possible to make people’s lives more convenient.
[00:07:21] Secondly, Sweden works very well if you fit into a common category that is easy to understand, and if you have circumstances that are less regular, well, life isn’t quite so easy.
[00:07:37] To give you an example, my wife has a permanent work contract with a large state organisation - the University of Gothenburg.
[00:07:46] She had a fixed monthly salary, a signed contract, and before that, she could point to a similar fixed salary and a contract at her previous employer, another university, albeit in a different country.
[00:08:00] Her situation was very easy to understand, and she sailed through all of the bureaucratic hurdles: registration with the tax authorities, getting a bank account, being able to rent a car, and so on.
[00:08:14] I, on the other hand, had a more complicated situation.
[00:08:19] I work for myself, I technically worked for a British company called Leonardo English Limited.
[00:08:25] But you can’t do that in Sweden, you have to work for a Swedish-registered company.
[00:08:30] So for me to have a work contract, I needed to set up a Swedish company that could employ me.
[00:08:36] Now, I don’t want to bore you with too many really tedious administrative details, but I was in a vicious circle for several months where I couldn’t start a Swedish company because you can only start one if you have BankID, but you can’t get BankID without a bank account, and you can’t get a bank account without an employment contract, and for me to get an employment contract, I needed to start a Swedish company.
[00:09:01] It was, as you can imagine, somewhat infuriating.
[00:09:05] Now, I am glad to say it is all sorted but this is just one example of how life in Sweden can be a little tricky if you don’t fit neatly into an easily-understood category, especially when it comes to your employment status.
[00:09:22] So, with that bureaucratic issue out of the way, let me tell you about something more interesting.
[00:09:30] One thing that people always seem to bang on about when it comes to Sweden is how amazing the childcare system is and how it is such a fantastic place to raise kids.
[00:09:42] I have two children, they have spent a year at Swedish nursery, so this is a subject I feel I can talk about with some level of authority.
[00:09:52] And in my experience, compared to every other country that I've lived in, Sweden is a very easy place to raise children in.
[00:10:01] There is super generous parental leave, which applies to both parents, not just the mother.
[00:10:08] This isn’t just immediately after a child is born, like in many countries, but it can be taken until the child is 4, and then you can carry almost 5 months of it over until the child is 12 years old.
[00:10:24] And nursery is practically free.
[00:10:27] Now, it’s not completely free; the cost is based on your salary, and the maximum anyone pays is just over €100 a month. But the government gives you around this much per child in cash every month, so, to all extents and purposes, it is free.
[00:10:47] When you compare this to the UK, for example, where it can easily cost €2,000 a month per child, well it makes life significantly easier on your wallet.
[00:10:58] But apart from the cost, how is Swedish nursery different?
[00:11:02] Well, one thing you often read in articles about Sweden and other Scandinavian countries is about how kids are left to play outside a lot, and they learn to just deal with all types of weather.
[00:11:16] My kids have been in two different nurseries, and I can testify that this seems to be true. Whether it’s sunny, pelting it down with rain, or it’s minus 5 outside, the kids go out to play.
[00:11:31] For my kids, two boys who grew up on a sunny Mediterranean island, this was a bit of an adjustment, the older one would request gloves at the height of Swedish summer, but I am happy to say that they are now getting used to it.
[00:11:48] What else about Swedish nurseries?
[00:11:50] Well, kids in Sweden are taught from a young age to be experimental and independent. The kids are encouraged to create their own games, to do what they want to do, and to pursue their own interests.
[00:12:05] They call their nursery teachers by their first names, and are treated more as equals rather than subjects.
[00:12:13] In Malta, where we were before, it was completely the opposite; kids called their teachers Mr or Mrs X, they were given much stricter parameters, games and activities were more organised, and it felt like kids were encouraged to do particular pre-decided things.
[00:12:33] In Sweden, there is much less hierarchy; it seems a lot more flat.
[00:12:39] What’s more, at both of the nurseries my kids have gone to in Sweden, children and parents have been strongly encouraged to get involved with how the nursery is managed.
[00:12:50] The people managing the nursery are very transparent; there are requests for feedback and forms to fill out about what suggestions we have, and you really get a sense that they want you to feel ownership of the nursery.
[00:13:06] You can see this in multiple areas of Swedish society, from the squash club I joined to the apartments we have rented, more than in any other country I’ve lived in before, there is this sense that, even if you just use a service–like you send your kids to a nursery or you play sport at a sports club–you have a shared responsibility for making it work.
[00:13:30] Now, on this note, let’s talk about this idea of Sweden as some kind of socialist utopia.
[00:13:39] All of the nice stuff the Swedish government gives you, especially if you have children, doesn’t come for free.
[00:13:45] And this brings me to the next point, which seems to be one of the most common questions people ask me about Sweden: tax.
[00:13:54] Taxes in Sweden are high, some of the highest in the world, reaching up to 57% on personal income. And when you factor in the cost the employer pays, they are even higher, as a company pays an extra 31% on top of your salary.
[00:14:13] To give you a precise example, if someone in Sweden buys a course for, let’s say, €100 from Leonardo English AB, my Swedish company, after all taxes are accounted for, I personally might receive around €29.
[00:14:31] And, of course, that doesn’t take into account any other costs, so the real amount is considerably lower than that.
[00:14:39] Now, this is not a complaint, but rather a practical, real example.
[00:14:45] And here’s an important clarification that I believe will help you better understand how Swedish society is structured. Taxes in Sweden are high; they are relatively high for everyone, and the rate at which you begin paying the highest tax rate is much lower than in many other countries.
[00:15:07] In the UK, for example, the highest rate of tax, which is 45%, only kicks in if you earn more than £125,000, which is around €150,000. And if you earn less than €15,000 a year, you don’t pay any tax at all.
[00:15:28] In Sweden, the highest rate of personal tax, at just under 55%, kicks in at 55,000 Euros, and while there is a tax-free allowance for people only earning 1 or 2 thousand Euros a year, there isn’t really the UK equivalent of low earners paying no tax. Everyone who works a full-time job, for the most part, pays a minimum of around 30%, and when you factor in the employer contribution, it’s more like 50%.
[00:16:01] Now, this isn’t a question of what is right or wrong or which system is superior, but what this shows is that in Sweden, almost everyone pays a relatively high tax rate, whereas in a country like the UK, a higher proportion of the tax is paid by people with a large income, and those on lower incomes pay a much smaller amount.
[00:16:26] To give you some more numbers on this, in the UK, the top 1% of earners pay almost 30% of all income tax, and in the US, it's even more pronounced, at around 40% of taxes being paid by the top 1% of earners.
[00:16:44] Sweden doesn’t publish any similar figures, at least figures that I could find, but Denmark does. And in Denmark, which has a similar social structure, the top 1% pays 8% of the total income tax.
[00:17:01] Yes, this also reflects the fact that the top 1% of earners in countries like the UK and the US earn vast amounts of money, and incomes are much more unequally distributed.
[00:17:12] But to get back to the example of Sweden, how does this affect a society, what is the impact on people when everyone is paying a similar percentage in tax, and it is quite a high percentage at that?
[00:17:27] Well, from my experience, and from what I have read from people much more experienced and knowledgeable than me, it leads to people being much more bought into the system, which leads to a stronger sense of communal responsibility and trust in public institutions.
[00:17:44] When most people are contributing at similar, relatively high levels, there’s a perception that everyone is in it together.
[00:17:54] But here’s something that not everyone knows about Sweden.
[00:17:58] It might seem like a socially democratic paradise, and there are very high taxes on your income, but if you are already wealthy in Sweden, there are few of the taxes or mechanisms that exist in other countries to redistribute this wealth.
[00:18:16] There is no inheritance tax, taxes on investments are much lower than on income, there’s no wealth tax or things like that.
[00:18:26] So, for the richest families in Sweden, and there are some very rich, “old money”, Swedish families, they can happily pass their wealth down from generation to generation without having to pay a penny in tax.
[00:18:41] While you could say that it’s fair enough that Swedes aren’t taxed again after they have already been heavily taxed on their income, what this means is that there is less potential for social mobility; the rich stay rich, and because the tax rate is so high, it's harder to build wealth if you don’t have it already.
[00:19:02] Now, the penultimate thing I want to talk to you about today is related to Swedish culture, and how this relates to several other countries I feel I can speak with some authority about: the UK, where I’m from, Malta, where I lived for the last 7 years, and Italy, where I've spent quite a long time living and the country my wife is from.
[00:19:25] Sweden is this curious mix of relatively small country, with just over 10 million people, highly developed but only really in the past 100 years or so, and until pretty recently very culturally homogenous.
[00:19:43] Its size means that there is enough of a domestic market for people to write books or make movies or make music in Swedish, for Swedish people, but there aren’t so many people that there is an abundance of it.
[00:19:59] If you contrast this with Malta, for example, the population is so small that there is pretty much no domestic market for cultural products: songs, books, cartoons, and so on.
[00:20:12] And you contrast this with Italy, there is a bigger market. Italy also has centuries of being a relatively rich country, and for most of that time it was a collection of very different cultures all within the borders of modern Italy.
[00:20:29] And then the UK, a bigger country still, plus with a shared global language and a much longer history of multiculturalism.
[00:20:39] As a newcomer to the UK or to Italy, there is so much cultural history and cultural output that I imagine it takes an awfully long time to really understand and process before things start to feel familiar.
[00:20:56] Sweden, on the other hand, seems to me a lot more manageable.
[00:21:02] There are certain Swedish traditions that all my Swedish friends participate in, songs that all Swedish children seem to know, it seems to me to be a much more cohesive, smaller and therefore more easily accessible cultural landscape.
[00:21:19] Of course, this is a generalisation, but it is my experience so far.
[00:21:24] And, I have to say, it is quite nice.
[00:21:27] I would go to Swedish language class, and we’d learn the lyrics of a Christmas song, I’d then find that my kids also knew the song, I’d hear other children singing it in the tram, and I’d hear it being played in shops.
[00:21:41] Yes, I’m sure the same thing happens in many other countries, but it is something that my wife and I have both observed.
[00:21:48] Now, the final thing to talk about, given that you are learning English, is my experience learning Swedish.
[00:21:56] As you may know, I have learned several other languages - I studied French and Italian at university, I have spent quite a lot of time in China and did a Masters in Chinese, but this was quite a long time ago.
[00:22:08] I started learning Swedish last year, and completely from scratch. I didn’t know a word of Swedish beforehand.
[00:22:17] And I have to say, being a complete beginner was very humbling, and reminded me of the fantastic effort that all of you are making in improving your English, and how difficult it can be to find the time or motivation to actually put in the work.
[00:22:34] Studying Swedish myself reminded me that there are no shortcuts, no special tricks or solutions that will somehow make you learn a language 50 times faster, or that can get you to fluency in 30 days or something ridiculous like that.
[00:22:51] It’s a long and steady process, and having used myself as a guinea pig for the past 12 months, the only thing that I can say is guaranteed to work is regular, daily practice. It’s time-consuming, it’s less sexy than a shortcut, but it will work.
[00:23:09] So, there we go, these are some reflections on 12 months spent calling this Scandinavian nation home.
[00:23:16] Will it be home forever?
[00:23:18] Who knows, but it certainly isn’t a bad place for now.
[00:23:23] OK then, that is it for today's slightly atypical episode about my life in Sweden.
[00:23:29] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you might have learned a few things about Sweden that you didn’t know before.
[00:23:35] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:23:38] Do you have questions for me about Sweden?
[00:23:41] We actually have quite a few members from Sweden or who live in Sweden, so what do you think? What would you agree or disagree with?
[00:23:50] And I’m not going to make these more personal episodes a permanent thing, but do you like these kinds of updates, or do you think, “Meh, get back to the more exciting stuff?”
[00:24:00] I’d love to know, so feel free to shoot me an email or dive right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com.
[00:24:09] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:24:14] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
