Victoria 
Studly Swede 
Swedish Babe
Moose Info 
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Let's clear one thing up here. I am from Switzerland. Switzerland and Sweden
are not - repeat: not - the same thing. SwiTZerland means TZeese, TZocolate,
and preTZision waTZes; SweDen stands for Durable cars, Drastic taxes and genDer
equality. Switzerland has the Alps (among a lot of other geographic features),
and Sweden, among a lot of other geographic features, has the arctic circle. Having said all that, there are some connections that link me to Sweden. For example, I had a Swedish partner, Viveca Wallqvist, in polymer lab, and during my year abroad, I got to know Daniel Andersson, also a Swede (and we had to reiterate to the Americans that we were not from the same country). However, that's not all. (Don't hope for too much here. I don't want to let you down.) I was born on the same day as the Swedish Crown Princess Victoria: July 14th, 1977! Quite the bomb, huh? Except that my Mom beat the Queen of Sweden by about twenty hours. (An interesting sidenote here: with every following child, Mom widened the margin somewhat.) My time of birth is also noted for a more pertinent historical event, namely the New York City Blackout of 1977. "Wait a minute", I hear the older folks among you saying, "that was on the thirteenth!" Yes, but I was born at 1:30am Central European Time, which is 7:30pm on the previous day in Eastern Time - and the lights didn't go off until 9:20pm Eastern Time. (The Crown Princess was of course too late to claim any influence on those events.) But enough navel-gazing. One last thing Sweden is known for (at least here in Switzerland) is its moose. Especially since the Smart and the Mercedes A-class initially failed the "moose-test", which means they flipped over during a maneuver designed to simulate the everyday event of swerving to avoid a moose. (In Swedish, I assume it's called älgtest.) You can also download this test for your own computer! Update! I don't stop running into Swedes wherever I go, and this time, in Japan, it's Anna Bäckman, who's doing her diploma thesis here at Nippon Steel Corporation and staying at the same dorm. She has kindly agreed to be "an ambassador for my country" but adds, regarding her homepage: "I'm not sure it's representative for Sweden, though..." |
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