I am currently writing this blog post on the flight from Stockholm to Helsinki. Therefore, I think it is fitting to give our final thoughts and takeaways from our experiences in Sweden. Sweden was a beautiful country, and each place we stayed in Sweden was unique. Gothenburg was a nice city on the waterfront. It was a good sized city, definitely much larger than Pitea and Linkoping but smaller than Stockholm. As it was the first city we visited, this was our first feel for Swedish culture. We immediately noticed a sense of community in the city. Everyone was extremely friendly with each other, almost making it feel like one big extended family. Everyone also had pride for the city they lived in and the country they lived in. People had Swedish flags everywhere, but also the people in Gothenberg had such admiration for their city, to the point that they jokingly disliked Stockholm.
Next, we drove around 3 hours from Gothenberg to visit the city of Linkoping. When telling locals in Gothenberg that we were visiting their, they questioned why we would go to such a place. However, our two business visits their clearly showed why. Arriving in Linkoping and talking to the locals, it clearly seems that the city is heavily dominated by university students and workers and their families of Saab Aerospace. While Linkoping was a smaller city, they still had nice shops and restaurants, along with some nightlife their. The university and Saab Aerospace also attracts a slight international crowd their. I was surprised to learn that the university has over 40,000 students, which adds significant value to the economy. Additionally, as these students graduate, it gives them an opportunity to potentially remain in Linkoping and work at Saab Aerospace afterward.
Following our visit in Linkoping, we drove and additional 2.5 hours to Stockholm. Our first reaction was that Stockhom was a drastically larger city than the additional places we visited. This was one of my favorite cities that I have visited in Europe, and I feel like you could spend at least two weeks exploring and still would not see everything the city has to offer. Stockholm has a mix of everything, from old architecture to new architecture, every type of restaurant you can imagine, a million different museumms, incredible nightlife, etc. Similarly to the other cities but even more so, there were Swedish flags flying everywhere across the city, which was nice to see the sense of pride the people had. Everyone was extremely kind, and went out of their way to help you. The parks and nature along with the water made the city even more exceptional.
As we are now on the way to Helsinki, I am curious to see how the city and country of Finland compare. I expect Helsinki to be smaller and not as grand as Stockholm, but still a large and nice city. I am also curious to see how Finish language compares to Swedish language, and what similarities and differences there are between the two cultures. While the two countries are very close to each other, I wonder how similar they are.
