I took a special detour this evening coming home - it's my last "visit" to these particular banks. I've taken time off at lunch to visit the banks at least 4 times to open an account. Each time they told me to bring something new to be able to help me.
"Bring a letter from your employer. Sorry, we don't have a phone to call them."
Are you serious? A bank doesn't have a phone?
"Sorry, a letter's not enough. You have to have a personal number."
But the guy yesterday swore upon the life of his firstborn that a letter is enough!
"Sorry, that personal number isn't good enough. Bring a customer of the bank to verify you."
This personal number is good enough for the government to tax me, but not good enough to open a bank account?
That last one was really too much, but I complied and reluctantly bothered a collegue. When we sat down, the bank guy started speaking to her in Swedish, which turned out to be an extended explanation of why I wasn't able to get an account. So "Bring a customer of the bank to verify you" actually means "I don't know how to speak to you in English, so bring someone who'll translate why we can't give you an account."
Rules are rules, and I don't mind it if you can't change them. I even don't mind the scenic bike ride to the bank 3 or 4 times. But to trick me into wasting someone else's time is a bit too much, no?
Here's something interesting I just found out - on 3 Sept 1967, Sweden changed from left hand to right hand traffic. It's hard to imagine the amount of preparation required. Read to find out more...
The pictures are taking forever to load. Here's one to tide you over. Gothenburg has a very extensive tram system that I'd say is on par with that in Zurich. You can pretty much explore the whole city in a few hours riding these. I think the front looks like a funny face with a little hat, like something right out of Thomas the Tank Engine.
The Swedish name for Gothenburg is actually Göteborg. You pronounce "Gothenburg" exactly as it looks, but it's nowhere close to the Swedish pronunciation. Luckily, whenever you speak English to a Swedish person, you're free to just say the English version and there won't be any awkward "what?.... oh! you mean Göteborg!"
The bus station in Gothenburg was filled with crazies. One guy accosted me and spoke some pretty broken English about really random topics. "Have you heard of Firefox? It's quite good, yes? What is it, an operating system? No? But it's quite good, yes?". After he left, a Filipino guy sitting next to me gave me a "sorry for the crazies in this city, but I swear it's got nice things too" kind of look. He went on to tell me that Asian men are hot stuff here with the Swedish girls, and that I'll find out for myself at the disco. Somehow I think his information is outdated at best...
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