JR67

When I talk to people from northern parts in the US I speak the "I come from nowhere" US English. When I talk to fellow southerners I slip a bit...

GUWonder

How do you speak to people from urban, southern coastal parts of California? The same way you speak to people from the DC burbs in Virginia? Virginia no longer has the southern accent it used to have thanks to Northern Virginia being Yankee carpetbagger central.

The MN/WI area has a rather distinctive accent from most of us Yanks. Unlike a sibling of mine who grew up with me, I always retained the “I come from nowhere accent”. I’m not sure which accent in Sweden comes closest to the “I come from nowhere” accent in Swedish. Maybe nowhere.

Fredrik74

The closest you get is that native Stockholmers genuinely believe they don't have an accent/dialect. They just speak normal Swedish.

fassy

here is the official information:
https://transportstyrelsen.se/en/roa...-eea-countries

or from the FAQ:

RedChili

Happy birthday, to all fellow Norwegians in the SAS forum!

JR67

I remember years back Sydsvenskan had a letter to the editor where a Stockholmer who had moved to Skĺne demanded that they put subtitles on Sydnytt.

GUWonder

Closed captions/subtitles on that also would be music to my ears too.

Superrman

Gratulerer med dagen!

JR67

Anyone in the Malmö area up for a quarantine-busting evening of Texas Hold'em where we can bad-mouth SAS? I'll front the food and beer - the rest of you only have to promise to lose and feed my ego. Takers?

oliver2002

Re: Driving Licences:
Japan: uses a different convention for recirpocal DL recognition that most of the world, hence some DL (like Germany issued ones) need a separate translation from the JAF.
Swedish DLs have a new system: whereas previously you could renew it like your passport and have it sent to the nearest diplomatic mission now you have to apply for renewal in the EU country you live in. That way my wife now has a German DL valid till 2035. In the US Michigan didn't recognise the Swedish licence and made her do the written and practical driving test. Which was a joke, the wife of the instructor who took the test made her go thru the test to be administred the next day. Michigan had reciprocity with Germany, so I got a US DL without any issues. The lady at the DMV mentioned that should have taken away my German DL before handing me the MI DL but noted in the rcord that I had 'forgotten' to bring it to the DMV that day. A similar thing happened to my Indian DL in Germany: after completing the tests I had to surrender it for the new German DL.

A colleague of mine coincidentally got her DL in the US: when she was in WA under a high school student exchange for a year, the local HS literally gave her a DL because she took the driving lessons at school as part of the normal curriculum. Back in Germany the authorities in Bremen said they would accept it to issue a German DL because she was in the US for more than 6 months. She still took some lessons to manage in Germany but dodn't have to spend the enormous sums kids need to pay to learn how to drive here.

GUWonder

I had my runs with European exchange students who thought it was cool that they too could cheaply get US driving licenses courtesy of US high school driver's ed courses and could drive in the US. Most of them couldn't drive in their European home countries because the driving ages at home required them to be older than the US state where they got their licenses and often their families didn't want to pony up the money to get it done. There was a time before I got my (non-learning-permit) DL when I thought that it was interesting that 14-year-olds could drive in Iowa. Now I consider it anything but cool to encounter the scooter/moped-brigade of comparable high-school-age teenagers in Scandinavia driving on bike paths, sidewalks and wherever else their machine powered-vehicles take them.

A lot of German and Scandinavian au-pair applicants who want to go to the US are not wanted by potential host families/employers in the US because the applicants aren't able/licensed to drive even in their home countries. It could be said that the age at what a German or Scandinavian person -- and even more so if narrowing down to female persons -- gets a driving license often says something about the socio-economic background of the person. In the US, it says much less.

JR67

Nowadays it almost seems like the socioeconomic gradient in age at getting a license in Sweden is polarizing. Working-class kids are all getting licenses at 18, while kids from the upper middle class and above are waiting. Sometimes a LONG time. Of all my friends and acquaintances, only one had a daughter who got her license when she turned 18. This is probably because many of them start working and need the license right away, but it is still a bit odd. I got my license on my 16th birthday, as did pretty much everyone else I knew. Of course licenses are more important in the US than in Europe and I have always been a bit of a petrol-head, but...

GUWonder

It's always been a polarized difference in Sweden as far back as I can remember.

If someone plans to live and/or work outside of the Swedish cities or is going to work in a job that requires driving as part of the job or to reasonably and reliably get between home and work, then getting a driving license becomes more urgent. And it becomes way easier when the parents already have a vehicle or two (or more) of their own at home already.

If you live in Vellinge and are working just about anywhere -- with the exception of maybe parts of Malmo -- as part of your first job out of school, then you'll probably want to drive or be driven (without using the buses). And to have much of any social life in most of Vellinge, you'd need to drive unless you're still hanging out only where you'd go when still in school. Which 18 year old guy from Ostra Grevie in Vellinge isn't looking to get a driving license as soon as they can?

I do wonder why the police don't stop more people around Vellinge for sobriety checks on weekends and during the holiday periods. I'm sure a lot more licenses would get pulled if they did so -- especially at a time when systembolaget seems to have done relatively ok with sales in and around Vellinge, demand for taxis has stayed very low, and the Vellinge party folk seem to be still having the time of their life with home parties involving a changing cast of characters if not just their old time school buddies.

Does Sweden even allow people subjected to pulled licenses to get back a license limited to the purpose of driving to and from work?

JR67

Ha! When I moved down here I had been socialized into the "No driving with even a drop of booze in your body" Swedish city-folk attitude. We had acquaintances over for dinner and served wine. They both had wine. I asked about how they were getting home and the answer was "We will take XXX-vägen." Lots and lots of private roads in Vellinge. I was flabbergasted. And I would warn against driving down here after 10 on a weekend night. And it only gets worse the further from Malmö you come....

GUWonder

As if those private roads don’t also have public vehicular traffic.

Some people in Skane think that the roads on which they live are private roads and even try to put up their own road signs on roads that aren’t private roads. Seems to be something that the Swedish “villa” inhabitants are more likely to do than apartment inhabitants.

In Swedish law schools they used to often discuss the situation of how it was illegal to operate a rider lawn mower while drunk, presumably in people’s own gardens.