Today, I spent my time in purely Swedish land. I was on the island of Djurgaarden and visited the Vasa Museum and Skansen, the first of which houses Sweden’s most famous war ship, the second of which is a huge open-air museum that claims to be “little Sweden”. It certainly does this. Today reminded that despite how small of a continent this is, cultures are vastly different. Shifting only about 5 degrees in latitude gives you new skin tone, new cuisine, entirely new climate and a language that is alien to the Danish I heard for the first two days. However, one thing that I’ve overlooked in this discussion is the unfathomable level of immigrant blood.
I’ve been to cities like London, New York and LA before: the cities where it’s clear that due to their locations on their continents as the first ports of entry, that people will immigrate there first. If it were me escaping persecution, destitution and altogether shoddy infrastructure, I would be afraid to venture too far in; best to settle in the first safe haven. However, in this discussion, I forgot to examine where I’ve been in the past week or so.
Copenhagen and Stockholm are both cities situated on archipelago structure with big bodies of waters seeping into smaller ones caressing the land. It’s just a little extra way down a rather broad strait made up the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. Regardless of this relapse in geographical consciousness, I was astonished, not only now, but two years ago when I visited Germany, of how many immigrants were present. Scandinavia has always been portrayed to me as the whitest place on earth. Snow, blue eyes, blond hair, and the whitest people anywhere. Within 4 blocks from my Copenhagen hostel, there were 5 Indian restaurants and within 1 block of my Stockholm hostel, there are 2 kebab shops. Arguably, the best food I had in Copenhagen (and the best Samosa I’ve had) was fed to me by a kind Middle Eastern establishment. And, I’m getting dinner tonight from one of those kebab places.
Like I said before in this blog, European food and culture is nowhere near pure; the purest I found was probably at Skansen today, with all of the farm houses, native dress and home grown industry. Even then, though, there were definite Dutch, Danish and other proximal influences. Everything is effected by immigration; Europe is the regarded overall as toe-to-toe with the [majority] of North America for safety and economic opportunity. So why not have them? If we know that their food is more flavorful at times, the people are sometimes more attractive, why not allow them to assimilate? Why did the colonial powers only move to conquer and usurp, but then scorn actions when the conquered try to become part of that movement? It kinda baffles me. Modern Europe has it pretty together; I must say it’s incredibly weird to see an Indian speaking Hindi one sentence then Danish or Swedish the other. But it’s refreshing not uninviting; it shows that the people are trying. Because of this effort, I think it has become more harmonious.
That being said there are groups regarded with low esteem such as Roma, Eastern Europeans and Africans in general. This is something that every region of the world faces however. It is just up for the continent to give these people space to show their contributive ability, which it is swiftly doing.
Anyway, Stockholm’s pretty much done. My next post will bring to you the joys of the European train, as I will have a foray into the voyage cross-continent.
Till then!
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