You know you’ve lived in Sweden when…

 The first thing you do when walking into a bank/ post office/ chemist etc. is to look for the queue number machine
 When a stranger on the street smiles at you, you assume:
o He is drunk
o He is in
o He’s an American
 You have developed a big coffee culture within yourself, drinking 4+ cups a day
 The sound “Jah/Ah” has become part of your ever day vocabulary
 You find your native language has deteriorated somewhat and phrases like “Can you borrow me”, “Take a beer” etc.
 You are now always on time and being late is now deemed unacceptable
 You have given up on trying to find “fat free” food and so just pile on the butter & sugar
 Your front door now resembles a shoe shop with the amount of shoes on show
 You look at a Volvo and think “Hmmmm they don’t seem like a bad car”
 You grow accustom to the cheap coffee at University
 You know that a national or religious holiday is now an excuse to drink (In the Lords name obviously)
 An outside temperature of 5C is a mild day in winter
 When someone asks for three cheers you say “Hoorah,hurrah,hoorah,hoorah!”
 You have conversations outside with people even though it’s -10C
 Julmust starts to taste good to you
 You associate Fridays with “After work”
 You suddenly dash for the door at 1.30pm on a Saturday when you realise Systembolaget only has half an hour left until it closes
 A night out is 5 hours of a pre-party then 3 hours in a club
 You get extremely annoyed when the bus is two minutes late
 You are shocked when a train is delayed
 You assume that anyone who apologises after bumping into you is a tourist
 You hide the fact you have a Nokia
 Seeing a young woman with lit candles stuck to her head no longer worries you
 You love the fact that in winter you don’t need to put beers in the fridge just 2 minutes outside will chill that bottle
 When buying alcohol the first thing you look at on the bottle is the alcohol percentage
 You no longer snigger when the words “fart, bra, or slut” used in conversations
 Hearing and seeing swear words in the media is perfectly acceptable
 In winter a lie in means you will prob only have 2-3 hours of daylight
 You know that “Extrapris” means goods are cheaper, even though in English it means the opposite
 You ringed somebody instead of you rang them
 You don’t seem surprised when the GP not only can’t help you but has come up with the same diagnosis you had before you visited him
 Ikea isn’t just a place to buy furniture, it’s a dinner out for meatballs at under £2
 You save all plastic bottles and cans as this becomes money when you are poor
 You have gotten used to the idea of a kebab pizza and see it as normal
 Eating a kebab from a takeaway when sober appears normal to you
 McDonalds is too expensive but Time out is cheap and good
 “Pussi” to you means a popular brand of cat food and not the female sex parts
 You get used to the fact that you are a Swedish XL when back home you can fit into a M/L
 You are so desperate for Alfresco coffee that you will sit outside with a blanket wrapped around you
 You get used to the fact that they add tax onto some items in the supermarket at the till but not all, so you never really know how much your shopping will be
 “or” becomes a question rather than a joining word for two choices
 You are used to the idea of unisex toilets
 ICA is not I.C.A it’s eeka
 Ikea is not eyekea it’s i kea
 You know that fan is a swearword and not the word describing an admirer
 You think Swedish doesn’t have swear words because the use the English ones most of the time
 You think caviar being sold in a tube is normal
 You accept that Swedes are at their most friendly and most talkative when they are drunk
 J becomes Y in your English, i.e. John become Yon
 Seeing cars driving with their lights on in bright daylight seems normal
 You struggle to work out if a Swedish guy is gay or not, (Trust me such a tough challenge)