If I recall, there was a time time long ago when I thought that the most exciting thing a person could do was go to Sweden. Not just my personal favorite thing—more like the officially, objectively best thing. If you got a single wish, it should naturally be for a ticket to Sweden, or some sort of clever way to get multiple tickets to Sweden.
My outlook has changed over the decades, but still when I was invited to this existential risk event in Göteborg, tickets and hotel paid, it still seemed a little bit like outrageous good fortune.
But when I tried to remember exactly what was so uniquely interesting about Sweden, I had trouble. “It’s full of Volvos? Everything is from Ikea? Liseberg theme park? Meatballs? Swedish flags on everything? Something something ABBA?”
Surely it couldn’t be that full of Volvos. That was just a cultural stereotype. And even if it was, Volvos are only so exciting. I figured there had to be more salient interesting things going on, for those of us who are not (currently) Volvo fanatics.
Then I got off the plane—and this is the Volvo decorating the baggage claim:
This Volvo is actually obscuring the front of a volvo truck sticking out of the wall behind it. And while you wait for your baggage to come around the Volvo, your children can play next to it on a Liseberg themed indoor playground. My hotel is also next to Liseberg. And the differences between the (admittedly Dutch) flight attendants who brought me here and ABBA are actually not that large:
I think I’m still going to go with ‘the things that are most delightful about Sweden are mostly intangible to me.’