For the first time in my life I have celebrated Swedish National day, at the Svenska Klubben in Sydney. It's a Swedish club in Sydney, there is a number of different clubs and organisations for Swedes and other Scandinavians in Sydney.
The event started with flag raising and singing of the national anthem, followed by traditional folk dancing (pictured above) and finishing of with a really good smorgas bord lunch. And there was a raffle, and even better than that, I won a price. A present voucher for IKEA. No I'm not kidding.
I thought the event was very nice, the food was lovely, I did feel a bit silly with flag raising and national anthem singing, but the great food made up for that.
I have never been much for formalised nationalism, in my 10 years in London I never attended a Swedish group event or even have any swedish friends really. Somehow it feels more important here. Maybe it's because I'm so much further away now.
Anyway, the food was great.
I don't think that many swedes in Sweden actually cares about this day. All I know is that it's really annoying that the whole city is closed off because they've started some ridiculous celebration of princess Victorias wedding. Love week or something stupid like that. So I had to take the subway to my job and home again in the middle of the night. That bugs the crap out of me.
ReplyDeleteI'm SO happy that I'll leave the country before the wedding. It'll be chaos!
Lovely Maria, I think that with the distance groves the national feeling to your country and what you are native to. Så it's ok with celebrating 6 june, I think I would do it if I lived in Australia. I'm also very happy that you are connecting with my aunt, relatives are important. I agreee with Lovisas remarks according the City; but now I've read that they will clean it three times a day during this period and I'm so worried that the cleaningmoney will be finished after the wedding.
ReplyDeleteWow, my doughter a blaming nationalist. Flag and al! Well I have seen it before when I was traveling around. Either people become very Swedish or they became very "anti Swedish".
ReplyDeleteI am glad that you went the first way but hope that it was mainly the food and the IKEA check which made you fall.