I took the train yesterday. Nice, environmental choice that also gave me an opportunity to work the full three hours it took for me to get transported from Stockholm, the “capital of Scandinavia”, as the city’s tourist council wants us to call it, to Gothenburg, the .. something of the something on the “front of Sweden”.

Their traditional punchline is that bit about being on the frontal side of the country.

Because, heh heh, that would mean that, OMG, Stockholm would be the backside!

But if that’s true, then Sweden is mooning Finland because we Finns like to call our beautiful Land of a Thousand Lakes “Miss Finland” and if you have a vivid imagination, and can visualize things, you can see her in the picture above. She’s holding her head up high, and raising her right arm … and wearing a traditional Finnish folk dress. (I gave fair Ms Finland a smiling face to help you with the visualization, too).

Now, I’ve always thought that Sweden looks like an extended foot of a ballet dancer which would put Stockholm in the heel and Gothenburg just on top of the foot while the country would be standing on Malmö. (Again, see image above). I know that some Finns will laugh and think that that’s why Swedes are such ballerinas, but I’m not one of them.

Then again, I really don’t have anything to come back with to the Gothenburgers. The Swedish word for a Finn, “en finne”, also means “a zit, a pimple” and undermines all funny quips I could ever come up with. At the end of the day, as far as Gothenburgers are concerned I’d still be just a zit on the backside of Sweden.

But it was a nice city to visit.