Swedes take a ride on an SL bus from Stockholm ‒ in Syria
Stockholmers David Kutti and Nima Pourmand came across an interesting discovery on their hitchhiking journey through the Middle East ‒ a red SL bus on the streets of Syrian port city Latakia just like the ones back home.
“I thought I was hallucinating at first but when I looked closer I saw it was actually an SL bus,” Pourmand told Dagens Nyheter (DN).
The bus passed them but they managed to find it again the next day, where they spoke to the driver and showed him their SL travel card.
“He saw that the card had the same logo on it as the bus and started laughing. We tried to tell him that you pay with the SL card in Sweden,” Kutti said.
The bus was completely intact, with Christmas-themed adverts in Swedish still in place. The only thing that was missing was the card reader at the front of the bus.
“It was actually nicer than a lot of the buses you see in Stockholm, that was crazy,” Kutti said.
Swedish vocabulary: röd SL-buss ‒ red SL bus
Swedish coffee cheese receives EU protected status
Swedish speciality food coffee cheese (yes, you read that right), has been approved in the EU register of foods with a protected designation of origin (PDO). The cheese, which is produced in northern Sweden, is made with reindeer, goat or cows milk and served in chunks in hot coffee.
Nowadays, it is more of a tradition among the older and rural generation, or organisations that cater to tourists, and less so in cafés in more urban areas of northern Sweden.
Here’s how chef Hjördis Johansson recommends eating it:
“Fill about one-third of the coffee cup with fine-cut coffee cheese and a little powdered sugar. Pour hot coffee to cover the cheese. Drink the coffee and leave the cheese. Add a påtår (a second cup of coffee) and wait for the culinary finale. Drink the coffee and use a spoon to enjoy the coffee cheese,” she explains.
The cheese is supposed to squeak slightly when you chew it. It softens in the coffee, but does not melt.
Swedish vocabulary: kaffeost ‒ coffee cheese
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‘Stockholm syndrome’ bank robber Clark Olofsson dies aged 78
Clark Olofsson, one of Sweden’s most well-known criminals, has died at the age of 78, his family confirmed to the ETC newspaper.
Olofsson was most known for his involvement in the so-called “Norrmalmstorgs drama” in 1973, the bank robbery that gave rise to the “Stockholm syndrome” expression.
The drama continued for six days and grabbed headlines around the world.
“I think Clark Olofsson will be remembered as one of Sweden’s most famous bank robbers, criminal through and through, but there will probably be a bit of a glorified shimmer around him,” former crime reporter Tina Frennstedt told the TT newswire.
She criticised some of the glorifying coverage of Olofsson.
“He has exposed a lot of people to pretty bad trauma,” she said.
Swedish vocabulary: brottsling ‒ criminal
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Sweden Democrats present ‘white book’ on party’s history
The Sweden Democrats presented their so-called ‘white book’ on Thursday, a nearly 900-page document following the party through its nationalist origins in 1989 to its entry into parliament in 2010.
The report showed, among other things, that many of the original leaders of the Sweden Democrats came from Bevara Sverige Svenskt (Keep Sweden Swedish), a racist, right-wing extremist and nationalist campaign organisation. It described the party’s ideology as distinctly ethnonationalist until the mid-90s, and members published antisemitic material and praised the Ku Klux Klan and the Holocaust.
Around 1995, the party started internal discussions about “clearing out the Nazi dregs” and began a process of change within the party which, the document reads, is still ongoing.
Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson, who joined the party in the mid-90s, apologised for the party’s history in a speech at the Almedalen political festival the day before the white book was published, saying that he “apologises deeply”.
This was criticised among other things by researcher Morgan Finnsiö from anti-racist magazine Expo who argued in Dagens Nyheter (DN) that the Sweden Democrats still have issues with antisemitism in the current party.
Swedish vocabulary: vitbok ‒ white book
