Since I have returned to the United States after a fantastic holidays in Europe, I have had some peaceful time to reflect on what I learned over the last semester and to adjust back to life in New England. In this blog post I am going to talk about how I made the adjustment back to an American lifestyle and some of the major differences that I find between US and Swedish cultures.
While much of the Western world shares many of the same amenities and priorities, it is in the details of everyday life that show how each country, culture, and population is unique. One major change from student life in Lund, Sweden and being home in Connecticut is that I used to ride my bike every day to get around town but I haven’t hopped on a bike since returning to the US. All across Sweden, even in the smaller towns like Lund, there is a much larger focus on providing reliable public transportation with buses and trains, as well as a network of safe bike lanes and paths. On the other hand, I have enjoyed driving my car a lot since moving back home, something that is rare and more of a “luxury” for college students in Sweden.
In some regards the student life at Lund has distinct differences from my experience at Northeastern or any other American college. While I have found that “college students will be college students” no matter where you are, the way that students organize and participate in social events at Lund is a bit more orderly and reserved than in the US. At the same time, it was surprising to me that a university as large as Lund (40,000 students) had much fewer student clubs, organizations, and sports teams than Northeastern University. For the Swedish students, it appears that packing one’s schedule full of extracurricular activities is not as high of a priority, and they would rather spend their time studying at leisure or getting together with friends to have a fika together.
In general I have found that Swedish people, while perhaps more reserved and shy, are always very polite and helpful even to strangers. Certainly I believe that students, by the time they are attending university, have a certain level of maturity and sense of responsibility expected of them (such as cooking most of their meals and packing a daily lunch for school). In the US it is much more common to buy a meal out if you are in a rush to go somewhere or just feeling lazy for the day. This strikes me as neither good or bad, but it resembles a different set of priorities for social interactions and structuring one’s everyday life.
