This week was a great time to feel more like a tourist and explore parts of Stockholm I have yet to visit. My parents came to visit from Tuesday, June 30th – Tuesday, July 7th. They stayed around the city center, not too far from T-Centralen. Walking around with them gave me the chance to see the parliament and the royal palace – a few tourist destinations I hadn’t visited yet. We also spent the weekend in Amsterdam! It was great to see another city I hadn’t been to yet. My parents have traveled a lot since my sister and I were younger, and it was nice to hear their views on the city, its culture, and how it compares to other places they’ve been to. My mom kept noting how nice and calm the people of Stockholm felt, as compared to other major cities in Europe and the US. She had a conversation with a local at the hotel who explained that this is common for the summer, but not so much the winter when they’re dealing with the extreme cold, which is completely understandable. I noticed this aspect too, but not so much until I went to Amsterdam and came back to Stockholm. This is not so much the kindness part – because we had lovely interactions with people in Amsterdam as well – but the calm and quiet feel of Stockholm really contrasted with the crowded and almost chaotic streets of Amsterdam. I really enjoyed both cities in their different ways, but since it is peak tourist season in Amsterdam, and a lot of locals have left Stockholm for the summer, I really noticed how quiet and calm it feels, even if there are lots of people on the streets.
This obviously is not a hard cultural aspect to adjust to; if anything, it makes it easier and less overwhelming to navigate. It just feels like such a crazy shift coming from the East Coast of the US, with cities like New York and Philadelphia to compare it to. But I think this is one part of why I haven’t felt too anxious or overwhelmed getting to know the new city. Another positive cultural difference I’ve noticed is the overall trust and simplification of Swedish communication in the workplace and all around the city. I’ve mentioned this a few times in other blogs, since it has been one of the biggest changes I’ve noticed within the internship, but our supervisor is very trusting of my coworker and I, despite being brand new interns from a totally different country. On top of that, I am not even working in a field I am super familiar with. He will give us tasks and allow us to run with it pretty quickly, without much explanation. He also doesn’t need us to ask for permission when going on lunch breaks or leaving for the day. I don’t mean this like being in grade school and having to raise our hands or anything, but in general I could tell my coworker, and I felt a bit uncomfortable just packing up for the day without being officially dismissed at the end of the shift. Especially because we haven’t had a super official cut-off time; it can range from 4-5 pm. This was a bit of an adjustment, but after a while it was great to feel so trusted by a higher-up and feel like he knows we can handle getting all of our necessary work done before heading out.
With the assigned work, the first few weeks we also felt a bit hesitant directly editing his website or other online listings, since often he would let us do it before even looking it over. He obviously checked them the next day or at the start of the next week, but it felt like a lot of trust letting us write, edit, and publish pages on the official company website. That sounds silly since that is a big part of any marketing job, but this field is new to me, and I was tasked with this pretty early on in the internship. But again, now that I am a little over halfway in, it is nice to feel so trusted and almost on the same level (communication-wise) as the CEO of the company. Nowadays, this trust comes in the form of remote days while our supervisor is away on business trips. He’ll give us general tasks at the beginning of the week, and for the few days we are on our own, we can just do what we feel is right and check in with him the next week. This is very similar to what I talked about in my last blog, but again I am getting more comfortable with this as time goes on.