October issue

During my latest weekly phone call to my daughter in Sweden, she casually mentioned that she was going to take a couple of days off work to go to Lisbon with some friends for an extended weekend. Why? “Well I have never been there,” she said. A few months ago the same group of girls took off for Barcelona. It is something that strikes me every time I go to Sweden - the young people there are really well-travelled.

I am amazed at the number of Swedish kids we bumped into in, for example, Cochin, India, that we finally made it to just a couple of years. Australian kids also seemed to be everywhere we went.

On the other hand you don't see that many North American young people around. Kids here don't seem to travel that much. One of the reasons for this is the perhaps the longer distance and higher cost of going to another country. In Europe there is Ryanair, the no-frills airline, that at times offers flights from what it calls Stockholm (Skavsta, 100 kilometers away) to London Stanstead for as little as $20. In North America discount airlines don't seem to fare very well.

Of course it is not necessary for North American kids to travel to another country. There is so much to explore on this vast continent. But I wonder how many young people do that. I once ran into a young architect here in Vancouver who had never been to Seattle, a three-hour car trip away.When I came of age in Sweden, travel was relatively expensive and crossing the Atlantic was a big deal, but all young people tried to make it to Copenhagen that gave you a glimpse of the continent.

From an educational point of view there are great benefits to visiting different countries. I was reading about a recent survey in which 11 percent of young citizens of the U.S. were unable to point to their own country on a map. The location of the Pacific Ocean was a mystery to 29 percent, Japan to 58 percent, France to 65 percent and the United Kingdom to 69 percent.

"Geographic illiteracy impacts our well-being, our relationships with other nations and the environment, and isolates us from the world," says National Geographic President John Fahey.

I think one of the problems for American kids is that the world is not considered a safe place. Ironically though, the few North American kids you see in Europe, often happen to be girls. Could that be because the boys have other priorities like getting their first set of wheels? Or is this another case of girls getting ahead of boys?

September Issue

And how long have you lived in this country? I was asked by a Swede whom I had just met at a party in Stockholm a few years back. I was quite taken aback by the question, asking myself if it was my German-sounding surname or that I had acquired somewhat of an accent in my Swedish that prompted such a question. But the guy was just making conversation and considering that almost 15 percent of the population of Sweden has an immigrant background, there was a fair chance that I could also have my origins in another country.

With such a large immigrant population, it is no surprise that related issues are such a hot topic in Swedish media. Immigration is of course not a new phenomenon in Sweden. Through the centuries groups of immigrants from different parts of Europe have made their home in Sweden. What is new is the sheer volume of the influx of recent years as well as the very varied backgrounds of the recent immigrants, many of them coming from distant lands that most Swedes had not even heard of not too long ago.

At the time my great great grandfather came to Stockholm from Austria to start a brewery, immigrants were quickly assimilated. Today integration has become a real nemeses for Sweden, something that is very descriptively laid out in the (for Swedish Press rather expensive) in-depth article we bring you this month, that better than anything else we have seen describes the situation right now. It is well worth reading (and you find it at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/magazine/05muslims.html?ex=1296795600&en=722dbb00a718b0f9&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss)!

There is one thing that I disagree with in Christopher Caldwell’s Islam on the Outskirts of the Welfare State and that is his statement that “no one expects the Social Democrats to be chased from power any time soon.” This could well happen on September 17 and you can read about the run-up to the nail-biter election on page 9.

Even though I have lived away from Sweden for 24 years now, I will of course never regard myself as anything other than a full-blown Swede. It is a different matter here where, after all these years, I still feel like an immigrant, however well assimilated I am. I think I am like many Swedes I have encountered in North America who are well integrated in the society here but who still tightly hold on to their ancestry. I have even met many descendants of the first major emigration wave to North America a hundred years ago - when Sweden lost a full fifth of its population - who are still fiercely proud Swedes even though they do not speak a word of the language and have never set foot in the country.

Have a nice September

Anders