There’s an old joke in Finland, a popular one, that goes like this: “When the Swedes switched from left-hand side traffic to driving on the right side of the street, the move was made in steps. First, only trucks and buses…”

And it a true comic style, the end of the sentence is left hanging, because the punchline is the mental image of the chaos that would ensue. Mind you, that’s not the best one of all the jokes that Finns have about Swedes. There’s a whole school of Swede jokes in Finland. My favorite: “There was once a Swede who shot an arrow to the sky. He missed.”

Maybe you have to hear it in Finnish.

Well, the image about the Swedes changing their traffic is a funny one because our brain naturally connects it to the modern day situation and how funny would that not be? When the Russian czar made Finland switch, the year was 1858, and since the first Benz Motorwagen wasn’t built until 1885, the change was probably mostly awkward for horses and goats, but the Swedes didn’t make the change until 1967, which is sort of late.

Canada had changed to right-hand side traffic in 1923, Portugal in 1928, Austria and Czechoslovakia changed in 1939, and Hungary in 1941 – the last three under the watchful eyes of the Third Reich. Iceland went right a year after the Swedes, in 1968.

Only 125 accidents were reported on “Dagen H”, the H Day, where H stands for ”höger”, or right in Swedish. That was less than on an average Monday, probably because somehow driving on the wrong – right – side of the makes you pay attention. So, Sweden had switched sides.

Well, almost all of Sweden – in a true Asterix style, there is one village that holds out against such silliness. One of the busiest streets in Stockholm still has left-hand side traffic, officially. It’s underground, but I’m willing to bet that tens of thousands of people walk there every day. It’s the tunnel that connects the main subway station, T-Centralen, to the main train station, and you’d be ill-advised to walk those 100 meters on the right-hand side.

Believe me. I’ve tried. Oh, I’ve tried.

You can do it. It’s doable. I’ve done it. But it’s difficult, and it’s annoying. Sometimes it’s just smarter to be wrong with the rest of them, than to be right, but alone.

For a while, I thought it was simply an example of poor construction and signage, so that the doors fed the traffic to the wrong place, until I – not too long ago – realized that the main station actually has “do not enter” signs on the doors on the right, and green arrows on the left.

It’s crazy, but it’s not that surprising. The subways run on the left-hand side, and many of the escalators at the stations have left-hand side traffic, too, so that the escalator going up in on the left-hand side. Of course, once you get on, you stand to the right and stay there so that I can run up the stairs, passing you on your left.

That’s the deal, isn’t it?

Somehow, all this back and forth with the different sides of traffic has confused Swedes to the point where people no longer have a natural instinct about what’s right and what’s – wrong. The 43 years simply haven’t been enough to make this new behavior a part of the Swedish psyche.

When I’m riding my bike, I like to use the bell to warn people about the object in the rear view mirror that is closer and faster than it appears: me. Like with honking, ringing that bell often gets misinterpreted. All I want is the people to get out of my way. I’m not angry, not threatening, I just want to make them aware of my existence.

A lot of people – most people – walk on the left-hand side of the bike path, and sure, I can understand that sometimes you just end up there, or you think that the bikes are always closest to the street. But I never know which way they’re going to yield. And if it’s a couple, chances are they take steps to opposite directions.

The same dance takes place whenever two people meet each other in a place where there’s only place for one. You take a step to the right, only to see the person in front of you to take a step to his left so you make another quick move to the other direction, but the person you’re meeting does the same, only a fraction of a second later, so there you are – there I am – staring at somebody’s chest.

Five seconds, and an awkward laughter later, you still stand there, unless by sheer luck, you’ve been faster, or slower, than your dancing partner, and have a clear path to wherever you’re going.

And that’s the secret behind Milan striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s moves. Here, for example, he shows the moves needed to get on the subway at Stockholm’s main station: