###You know you’ve been in Sweden too long, when
- It seems reasonable that no business can be conducted on Friday afternoons. [or the entire month of July]
- You become extremely skilled at assembling pre-packaged furniture kits.
- You wear a dress or skirt over your trousers and combine them with training shoes. [this is especially problematic if you’re male]
- You think black rimmed glasses are cool.
- Your wardrobe now consists of 20 different shades of black and grey.
- You’ve been engaged for four years and don’t have any plans to get married.
- You seriously contemplate getting into H & M.
- “Candles” are a permanent fixture on your weekly shopping list.
- You spend the week’s entertainment budget on a pack of cigarettes and a drink in Gamla Stan.
- You reach for your pocket 20 times a day as mobile phones ring all around you.
- You actually care if your mobile phone meets the fashion standard - and so do your new Swedish friends!
- You think riding a racing bike in the snow is a perfectly sensible thing to do.
- You think it’s more fun to stay at home and drink then go out.
- You get extremely annoyed when the bus is two minutes late.
- You think women are more than equal than men and deserve to have better positions in the work place.
- Your wife watches TV while you look after the kids.
- You get into a Mercedes taxi cab and think nothing of it.
- You lose any artistic talent whatsoever.
- You rummage through your plastic bag collection to see which ones you should keep to take to the store and which can be sacrificed to garbage.
- The first thing you do on entering a bank/post office/pharmacy etc. is look for the queue number machine.
- A sharp intake of breath has become part of your vocabulary, as has the sound ahh’.
- You associate Friday afternoon with a trip to system bolaget.
- You think nothing of paying $50 for a bottle of cheap’ spirits at system bolaget.
- Silence is fun.
- Your native language has seriously deteriorated; you begin to “eat medicine” and “hire videos”.
- Your front door step is beginning to resemble a shoe shop.
- It seems sensible that the age limit at Stockholm night clubs is 23 or 25.
- The reason you take the ferry to Finland is: a. duty free vodka b. duty free beer c. to party
- The fact that all of the “v’s” and the “w’s” are together in the phone directory seems right.
- You are no longer scared of volvos and volvo drivers.
- You use mmmm as a conversation filler.
- An outside temperature of 9 degrees Celsius is mild.
- When someone asks for “three cheers”, you say “hoorah, hoorah, hoorah, hoorah”.
- You wear sandals with socks.
- You eat jam with savoury dishes.
- You have only two facial expressions, smiling or blank.
- Seeing a young woman with lit candles stuck to her head no longer disturbs you.
- You wear warm clothing when it’s 25 degrees plus in April - because it’s April.
- You wear shorts and t-shirt when it’s barely 10 degrees in July - because it’s July.
- You start to think that having a sauna in the nude with a bunch of strangers is a necessary part of daily life and a necessary part of business.
- Paying $5 for a cup of coffee seems reasonable.