Just to add to this, I signed on many years ago after coming back from living in Canada for a few years, and I had to fill out some extra forms to basically confirm that I was intending on remaining in the UK (i.e. looking for a job there) rather than just coming home to sign on for a few months then buggering off…

Congratulations!

Because they are Russian?

Probably don't lead with the fact you imagine they're not capable of defending their own country...

I lived in the US for four years and travel regularly all over North America - I can assure you my chocolate research is most diligent ;-) I concede there's plenty better than Hersheys, but I have never yet found anything that holds a candle to European chocolate. I won't give up though!

Oh I know, I just get the giggles every time I see it. Living in Sweden as an English speaker is fraught with situations like that - I once nearly fell out of a kajak laughing at the sign on a bridge by Gamla Stan saying 'infart förbjuden', because if you're going to fart, it had better be out!

I love Marabou! And those fudgey ones in teeny cupcake cups you get at Christmas! I miss them already.

If they did I don't think I'd ever get any grocery shopping done, for all the drooling.

And this is what happens while they're busy singing and dancing:

Please don't encourage Swedish men and facial hair! Seriously, on the streets of Stockholm, for every guy that looks like a long lost Skarsgård, there's eight that look like long lost yetis.

I strongly suspect the OP isn't aware of this, but Swedish chocolate isn't bad. Even if they inexplicably have a chocolate bar called 'Plopp'.

I strongly suggest Americans do take some of our chocolate. Yours is barely swallowable. An appalling state of affairs for a supposedly developed country!

Where are the Americans when you need them?!

I'd suggest that the real issue is that your guy friends need to learn when it's not appropriate to try to chat ;-)

There are unisex bathrooms everywhere in Sweden. It's... completely unremarkable. That's one of the (many) reasons I laugh at halfwits clutching their pearls over trans kids getting to use bathrooms other than the one the halfwits think they should, because unless someone is coming in the stall with you, what on earth…

It's unclear from the comments thus far whether that's clear to people...

Nowhere did I say discount, but I would certainly take that extremely relevant context into consideration with regards to their "free and educated" opinion on this matter.

Are Catholics not religious any more? Or Americans for that matter?

Where are all these 'zillions of free, educated women'? Seriously - I've never met a non-religious, liberal woman who isn't pro-choice in my life. They may or may not chose abortion for themselves, but they would never deny other women that right. The only women - or men for that matter - who seek to impose their…

It's kind of aimed at YA, but I read a book as a teenager that stayed with me: As the Waltz was Ending by Emma Mackalik (sp?) Butterworth. It's the memoir of little girl in Vienna who comes of age just as Austria becomes Nazi-occupied, and then lives through the war. Her father is ferverently anti-Nazi, but is…