Changes

This blog is under construction.
It will be completely different and more suitable for a broader audience once it's back.

Victoria and Daniel

Sweden was waiting for years, and now it will finally happen: Crown princes Victoria and her soon-to-be prince Daniel will marry in 2010. Royal engagements never last that long, usually six months. But the first Bernadotte came to Sweden in 1810, so someone at their press office probably thought it would be a good idea to honour their ancestor, by marrying exactly two hundred years after the family arrived to Sweden.

As usual I amuse myself with reading the comments beneath the articles. I'd say the response is 50/50. Half of the commenters think it would be better to donate the costs of the wedding to Africa or to Swedish hospitals, and the other half congratulates the happy two. I thought that I could make out a generation gap by analyzing the ages of the commenters. I thought that people older than 40 would be jealous, and everybody younger than that, would be happy. Well, no. Sadly enough people in their twenties yelled insults in the forum such as "well enjoy your wedding on OUR taxmoney" etc. I keep on hoping that the Swedish jealousy one day will just...vaporize into thin air. Just...blow away with the wind.

A Swedish comedian (Babben Larsson) once said in the comedy show Parlamentet: "The Swedish dream: a red cottage, a sweet lake, a nice forest next to it, and then a guy standing there being f*cking jealous that it is not his!"

The Dutch prince Willem-Alexander and Victoria are good friends, so this means that the Dutch media will regularly report on the wherabouts of the princes. (After all, this creates a relevant link to the Dutch people somehow.) How fun. At the moment media all over the world call Daniel the "Gym-owner boyfriend". It sounds weird, but it is true. He has his own gym. And that's where they met. It is so romantic. I love this story.

Vattenfall buys Nuon

Vattenfall has bought Nuon for 8,5 billion euro (95 billion SEK). According to the press release however, Vattenfall didin't buy its sworn enemy (the companies weren't exactly pals) but it MERGED with Nuon. Sure, and KLM MERGED with Air France. The media were right to say "the pig ate the swan" about that "fusion".

Anyways, the Vattenfall-Nuon deal is lucrative. The new company will be market leader in Europe. Hollands second biggest electricity provider Essent has been on sale for quite some time. Experts say it will end up in German hands. Soon Holland will have no power over its..power.

I wonder if the tv-commercials will be the same as in Sweden. Tele2 launched its black sheep Frank simultaneously in both countries, which caused some confusion in my mind late at night. In which country was I at that moment? Ah, the next commercial mostly helped me remember.

New trend: Swopping!

In 2008 a shift occured in fashionloving Sweden. To sell or swap your clothes became hip, instead of a shameful thing to do. "Normal" fashionistas until then simply gave clothing worn more than once away to charity, or put in the back of the wardrobe never to be worn or seen again.

But in 2008 something happened. Blog queens organized bloppis after bloppis, a phenomenon you get by combining the words blog and loppis, the swedish term for flea-market. Thus, bloggers organizing flea-markets. Suddenly second hand became something that was allowed for more people than the poor and the hippies. And the even cooler sub trend is to swop. No not swap, but swop. You shop by swapping an item for something else. So then you both have a 'new' piece of clothing, without money changing hands.

I wonder when this trend will reach the Netherlands! The Dutch market is ready for it, since the same state of mind has been manifested here as well. More and more fashionistas are getting sick of the endles consumption and their huge CO2-footprint.

To be continued...

The blog queens of Sweden

Swedish tabloids are increasingly interested in what teenage bloggers have to say. Mostly the blog queens are 16-18 years old and what they tell us in their blogs is not very...intelligent or relevant for anyone outside their schoolyard. It is funny that they become newsworthy every time some jealous Swede files a complaint to the national commercial board, because the teenagers 'advert illegally' about the beauty products they use. The reader might be misled, according to these jealous Swedes. Oh and the tabloids rub their hands and jump into the dirty centre of this 'newsworthy event'.

The biggest financial crisis ever has hit Sweden, and who dominate the news? Three blond girls blogging about beauty and fashion. I must say that I'm ashamed of being Swedish today.

Emigration Fair

Interested in moving to Sweden?

Then come to the Emigration Fair in Nieuwegein on 7 and 8 of march!
Here is the official website:

http://www.emigratiebeurs.nl/nl/

See you there!

Unemployment news

Breaking news from Aftonbladet: the coming years 145 000 Swedes will lose their jobs. In 2010 the unemployment rate will be 9 percent. And remember, this figure is already brushed up by the government, they have found a clever system to look better in the EU statistics, the real figure would be somewhere around 17 percent.

The Central Bureau of Statistics of the Netherlands published their expectations yesterday. Holland will have an unemployment rate of about 6,2 percent in that same period.

The official rate in Sweden is 6,2 percent at this moment. (But as you know, I doubt the Swedish way to calculate).

The BNP of Sweden will shrink to -1 percent next year. The Dutch economy will shrink -0,75 percent.

My personal explanation to this is simple: Sweden went into a state of panic. Companies instantly started letting people go in september, when things started to rumble in the automobile sector.

The Dutch aren't easily dragged into panic. Tabloids don't have that same power here in Holland. No doomsday headlines, no radical left-wing journalists stalking politicians day and night. It helps that the Dutch minister of finance realized that he needed to act quickly. The first thing he did was making sure that the middle class could have full access to their savings. Somehow he understood that this crisis is about the feeling of safety and trust. It all started because banks didn't trust eachother anymore. And when banks don't loan eachother money, their reservers shrink quickly. So they can't lend people money that easily anymore. And then the snowball started rolling down the mountain...