just so you know, you sound like a fortune cookie

[walkingshadow]

a. okay, i joked about it, but i really don't know how to post anymore. i thank god every day for the alphabet.

b.

Comments

Re: bitter defeat!

[wax_jism]

You could always learn Swedish first, like Cim. But she's also taking Finnish now and seems to like it.

The weather is not horrifyingly freezing, as such, but it is dark and wet for half the year and can be depressing.

Now the long sad tale of IKEA in Finland, the Cliff's Notes version: Sweden is an old empire as you may know, a former super power. Finland was once (for centuries upon centuries, until 1803 or so when King Gustav III squandered large territories in pointless wars, to Russia) a duchy of Sweden. Obvs, due to long history of independence, etc, Sweden is just generally better at everything than Finland (independent fr. Soviet Union in 1917, devastated by losing war w/ same 1944, basically a developing nation until late 60s, partially under Soviet thumb until fall thereof), and we are green with envy and those goddamn Swedes won't come here with their cheap stylish furniture, thank you very much. (To add to this, Finland is quite famous for design, and we take much pride in the modernist/functionalist style which IKEA also uses--we were ahead back in the day with that sort of thing.)

So basically envy, low self-esteem, resentment and a lot of history. We're not really enemies, though, it's a sort of big brother/little brother kind of thing. And of course, once IKEA was here no one could resist and the stores are popping up like mushrooms after rain.

Re: bitter defeat!

[walkingshadow]

huh, thank you for that. i'm familiar with most of the political history, but i never thought of it in practical, modern, consumer-economic terms. makes sense, of course.

The weather is not horrifyingly freezing, as such, but it is dark and wet for half the year and can be depressing.

the idea of that perks me up, actually. i'm kind of like the mushrooms.