The sun doesn’t seem to go down. This is Stockholm in June, when the leaves on the trees are bright green, and the people are beginning to plan for their upcoming July holidays. I live here. My bicycle awaits me, pumped and ready to ride me to the movie theater, or to the Chinese store, to buy some bok choy and unsweetened soymilk. Stockholm is somehow not a bike-packed city like Copenhagen, and I don’t understand why not. Maybe it gets too icy here in the winters, but I think it just isn’t part of the culture. But the Swedes did invent the helmet that inflates to protect the skull on impact, like an automobile airbag.

When I first moved here in 1992, nobody spoke Swedish to me. Now, in the shoe stores, in the movie theater, at the colorful subway stations, people would be surprised if I didn’t speak Swedish. That is how much society has changed in the last 24 years. There are still a lot of people with blonde hair, especially in the center of Stockholm, where housing is prohibitively expensive, but now the city is also full of people from all over the world. Immigrants of all types make up this multi-cultural society. Stockholm is no longer the provincial capital of the north. Now there is bok choy and unsweetened soymilk to be had, and plenty of Swedish vegan cookbooks in the bookstores.

This morning I read the news about the heinous shootings in Orlando. I have never been to Florida, so it seems very foreign here from Sweden. It is illegal for a person in Sweden to carry a gun, unless for a specific, legal purpose, such as hunting or at shooting ranges. Here, there is little resistance to change. For example, the new Swedish money: the government says we need new coins and bills, and then suddenly there are new coins and bills. The green, differently sized 200 kronor bill is an entirely new invention. I imagine how long it would take for people to accept a new $200 bill in the USA.   Why is it that Sweden is progressive and that change is accepted as normal? Right now, I am at the university library, doing my writing and reading surrounded by the studious students. Is it the sign of an educated society, where universities are free? Or is it because this is still a small country of just about 10 million people, so change is easier.