We spent most of our time in Stockholm simply wandering the streets and getting a feel for the city. All that walking of course works up an appetite, and we thought we should probably eat a popular Swedish national dish. When I investigated Swedish foods, I discovered that many Swedes are apparently happy to nominate pizza and hamburgers for the honor of best Swedish cuisine. I guess if you’re eating a lot of reindeer meat, a good old-fashioned pizza is bound to hit the spot. But, there is one food that stands out as distinctly Swedish… I give you Norwegian meatballs, of course!

Huh? What’s that? Oh, sorry, I meant Swedish meatballs. These Scandinavian countries confuse me with their scandimilarities.

I did some digging on the internet and found something of a consensus that a restaurant called Meatballs for the People serves some of the best Swedish meatballs in town, plus they have the coolest restaurant name ever. So we walked to the restaurant, hitting it just at the right time because normally you need reservations. But even though we we appeared very confident, they gave us a table anyway.

(As an aside, the search engines also returned “the original Ikea” as a great place to go for genuine Swedish meatballs. So next time you’re in an Ikea, feel free to revel in the genuineness of their foreign cuisine.)

I was a little excited because they offered reindeer meatballs, something I’ve never eaten. Unfortunately, they only serve the same type of meat per order unless you order some big feast thing, and I just didn’t want to take a chance to ruin my Swedish meatball experience with the meat from one of Santa’s pets being the only option on my plate and tasting like, I dunno, Rudolph’s butt. And so I remain reindeer-meatless in my life so far. I hope to get a second chance when we take our cruise to Norway in January. Stay tuned!

I don’t always do this, but rather than try to identify every damn building we saw in Stockholm, I’m just posting a series of pictures that we took. I think it offers up a good sense of Stockholm in any case. The city is so clean and safe and well taken care of, and hopefully you can see that from these pictures.

To be brutally honest, I now nominate the Scandinavian countries as the ones who most “have their shit together.” After visiting, I realized Bernie Sanders has a point… the US could do a lot worse than emulating these countries. But I wondered, was it only skin deep? Do they make their cities look pretty while underneath it all is a seething caldron of resentment or unhappiness? So I did a little comparison to find out, the results are at the end of this entry.

But how can you not be impressed by a city whose police headquarters looks like this? I almost felt like getting arrested in order to get a free tour of the inside, but Carolyn made me put the eggs down.

They also have a beautiful City Hall. It was completed in 1923, so it was its 100th birthday year while we were there. This photo was taken from our hotel room, so we didn’t have far to walk to get whatever we needed out of the folks at City Hall. Which was nothing, mostly because Meatballs for the People already took care of the bulk of our needs.

The building has a large courtyard, and is right next to Riddarfjärdenm (pronounced “Riddarfjärdenm”), which is a bay of Lake Mälaren, part of the extensive waterways that help keep Stockholm moist. I was impressed they had a golden statue of me; because of course growing up I was always known as the Golden Child. Ha! The truth is, In a family with seven kids you’re lucky to get noticed unless you burn down the house or something, which is something I rarely did.

This is the inside and out of the Royal Palace. We didn’t take a tour or anything because there was a line, or it cost money, or we were tired, hellifiremember. Sometimes you just don’t want to see every last little thing, you know? Anyway, this the official residence and major royal palace of the Swedish monarchy, but the royals live in another palace just outside of Stockholm, so the eggs I was planning to throw went to waste.

As we were wandering around we noticed a crowd forming inside a large square. Of course we thought it might be something exciting, although I asked several people in the crowd and no one seemed to know why they were standing there. It reminded me of when I point to the sky open-mouthed and just hold that pose to see how many people gather around gawking upward. But I didn’t need to do that there; everyone was already full of gawk.

Eventually we realized it was the changing of the guard. I don’t know why I always thought that involved diapers.

We’ll finish off this entry with a bunch of signs I thought were amusing.

The Swedish love Eastertime, but for some reason they apparently feel the need to post warnings about the Easter Bunny being a slut. “She’s a slut, don’t accept colored eggs or ice cream from her! She might steal your organs!” says Mr. Snipp Snapp Snut.

Swedes seem to like everything tidy, and apparently that includes admonitions to do your hair! I’m sure my pronunciation is off, but I’m guessing it sounds like Doo ar har! Actually that might mean “you are here,” which seems redundant to me. Of course I’m here, knucklehead. I’m standing here misreading your damn sign! Stupid Swedes. But if the hair translation is the correct one, I don’t have much of it, so bugger off because you just hurt my feelings.

This one isn’t funny, unless you’re a irredeemable misogynist, but as far as I can tell, the Swedes are so “woke” that they put the lady’s name first in the title. Of course, maybe it’s only in America that it was turned into Romeo & Juliet. Who knows? What I do know is that “woke” essentially means, “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination.” I’m not sure the people who toss woke around as an insult really understand what they’re saying. Which makes it actually kind of amusing, if it weren’t so sad. Y’know what, if you’re tired of being called a racist, stop being one.

The stank of Stockholm is legendary. Dunno why Carolyn’s sticking out her tongue… to taste the stank maybe?

I’ve always kind of thought it odd that Americans generally think of “bastard” as a swear word. It doesn’t seem that much different than “orphan” to me. Although I suppose, “You dumb orphan, you just killed my dog!” doesn’t carry the same derisive gravitas. Anyway, not sure what’s going on here: either the owner’s last name is Bastard, or he is a bastard and damn proud of it, or the beef they serve is all from bastard cows. By the way, because we are a full service blog I searched on “bastard” in Google Translate, but it isn’t a Swedish word. Neither is burgers. Budbee probably is though.

Hasbeens doesn’t translate either. At least they give old farts someplace to go I guess.

Get gassy on the ocean with your own farty magazine!

Everyone in the elevator looked at me funny when I hissed all the way down. I never did find out if Högst was on the elevator, or if it’s just a memorial thing, like maybe Mr. Högst weighed 800 kg but the elevator was able to successfully transport him without plummeting down the shaft and landing in a heap of twisted metal instead, I dunno.

Don’t use the stairs! It’s a trap until you make it to the lobby!

I’m a fan of the rock group Jethro Tull, and apparently the Swedes are too. They gave the group their very own way through customs. As Tull is now a pretty old group, they may be living in the past though. Maybe they should take their aging, locomotive-breathed selves out of there and do a little bungle in the jungle instead.

I think I just lost half my audience.

I don’t know about you, but I am not interested in the least in buying confections with glass in it. I hope their licorice wasn’t full of it though, as we had our share of that yummy candy. Our rectums didn’t bleed after we ate them, so I think we’re safe.

Speaking of gross, I guess this is how they motivate their people to keep the city clean. “Our city is gross, clean up all that food you dropped on the street and put it in a bag!” You know a country is pretty wealthy when their litter looks like groceries.

Okay, so earlier I mentioned that I wanted to see if Stockholm’s cleanliness, beauty, safety, and and overall good cheer was genuine or if as soon as every obvious tourist turns a corner they start pummeling each other and calling each other names, like Norwegian meatball.

So I decided to compare Sweden to Texas, because comparing a 10 million person country to a 330+ million person country if probably not fair. I chose Texas because it’s kind of a poster child for right wing governance, and is as close a thing the US has to a state that wants to be its own country. Texas is bigger than Sweden, but not by so much that comparisons fall apart. America, and Texas probably in particular, is all about sacrificing almost everything for a higher GDP. They clearly are ahead of Sweden in that regard, $78,455 to $61,028. Congrats, Texas, all those cows and oil helped you get ahead in GDP! Woohoo! (By the way, I think “The Oily Cow” would make a great name for a restaurant or a rock band.)

Let’s see what that better GDP gets you:

	Texas	Sweden
Population (in round numbers)	30 million	10 million
Area	695,662 km²	528,447 km²
2020 murder rates	6.6 per 100,000	1.24 per 100,000
No. of people killed or wounded during a mass shooting in 2022	321	0
College grad rate	31.5%	49%
Health Care	A recent survey ranked Texas as having one of the nation’s 10 worst health care systems.	In an overall ranking of health care system performance in 11 industrialized nations, Sweden ranked 3rd, the US last. And Texas is among the worst in the US. So, like the worst of the worst.
Happiness	Texas ranks 21st in the US, and the US ranks 16th in the world.	Sweden ranks 7th in the world.
Infant mortality	5.3 deaths per 1000 live births	1.7 deaths per 1000 live births
Literacy Rate	71.8%. (Texas ranks 49 out of 50 among states in the percentage of the adult population with a high school education; 16% of adults over 25 in Texas don’t have a high school diploma or equivalent.)	99%
Cost of Living	The average cost of living in Sweden ($1385) is 37% less expensive than in the United States ($2213). Sweden ranked 33rd in the list of the most expensive countries in the world vs 5th for the United States.	According to the internet, Texas is 81.4% more expensive than Sweden. I guess all those “high taxes” might help make everything else cheaper!
Life Expectancy	76.5 years	82.4 years
Number of senators named Ted Cruz	1	0
Number of cows	12.7 million	303,390
GDP Per Capita	$78,455	$61,028

So while fat cat Texans have it pretty good, for the rest of Texas that higher GDP gets them over 5 times the murder rate, more mass shootings than anyone ever needs, over 50% fewer college graduates per capita, far worse health care (with the ever-present worry of bankruptcy if you get anal cancer), lower happiness, over 3 times as many infant deaths, lower literacy, a higher cost of living, and a shorter life… whew! But they do get a lot more cows!

They can keep their Ted Cruz, though.