Hi darlings, let’s talk about cultural differences for a while. It’s interesting how different two somewhat similar countries can be. I grew up in Sweden and have lived in both London for 5 years and Australia for 9 months (still counting). Now, there’s quite a few differences between the 3 countries, which is very noticeable once you’ve lived somewhere for a few months.
The plan was to write an ’Australia vs. London vs. Sweden’ post, where I would talk about some of the cultural differences. But it proved to be impossible to comprehend everything into one tiny post. So without any further ado, let me present you my first post series on my blog!
The first topic is going to be.. *drum roll*.. TRANSPORTATION. Okay, that sounded boring, but it’s one of the major differences between Australia, London and Sweden.
So, here we go!
Not having a car in Australia is more or less like a handicap. The public transportation system is very limited and it’s nothing that you can take for granted. What do you mean it should be a bus to this fairly big and popular area? Just take the car. There’s even several places in the cities and further out that can’t be accessed without a car since.. Well, there’s not a single pavement built in some areas. The petrol on the other hand is much cheaper in Australia (around $1.2 per liter) than the UK and Sweden. Another good/bad thing is that you can drive along many of the beaches here as well. It seems like a lot fun, but it’s super annoying if you just want to have a lie on the beach.
London on the other hand is completely different. Having a car in London (unless you live on the outskirt) is just plain stupid. Finding a parking spot is a never ending nightmare and it’s actually pretty common that it takes longer to drive (sit in traffic) than to use the public transportation system. Taxis are also relatively cheap and most of them are allowed to drive in the bus lane, which means that they can just drive pass a traffic jam. The tube system makes it pretty easy to get around, but it’s painfully overcrowded. You sort-of gets used to it though. But having your body bumped into at least 4 other strangers at the same time, while having your face just centimeters from some random guy’s sweaty armpit is an experience that I don’t miss here in Australia.
One of the things that I really dislike with the UK, is the fact that every driver needs to be instanced on the specific car in order to drive it. It means that you can’t drive someone else car unless you put your own name on that specific car insurance. It doesn’t matter if the actual car owner is drunk of his feet or hallucinating of tiredness, no one else can take over the wheel unless they have insurance on that car. A 5 hour road trip with friends means that it’s most likely the same person that need to drive the full trip back and forth, no matter how tired/focused the person is.
Sweden on the other hand is somewhere in-between Australia and London. It has a relatively good public transportation. There’s plenty of buses in the cities and it’s a fairly widespread network of buses, trains and flights between the cities. Now, most Swedes loves to hate the national train provider, SJ, but it’s not as bad as most people try to make it sound like. It’s normally fairly easy to get around by public transport, but having a car is a comfort that a lot of people would not like to give up. It’s different if you live right in the middle of the capital, since you won’t really need a car in the same way.