- You think it's perfectly normal to eat lunch at 11:00 AM.
- You have a burning desire to eat pea soup and pancakes on Thursdays.
- When entering the post office, a bank, a drug store or any state or community office you automatically start looking for a queue number.
- You think it's normal to wait in a queue just to get a queue number.
- A deep *sigh* is a part of your normal conversation, just like "mmmh" and "grmph".
- Silence is fun!
- While visiting friends, it is common that everyone will remain quiet and watch TV together.
- Temperature of 160 Fahrenheit (+70C) in a sauna it's too damn cold, when it's 75 Fahrenheit (+25C) outside it's too damn hot.
- Just because it's -40 Fahrenheit (also -40 in Celsius) outside and last night it snowed over two feet, it still doesn't mean anybody will miss work or school that day. There are no excuses. Shoveling snow for two hours just to get the car out of the driveway is no excuse for being late, either.
- You think it's just normal to get any degree of education, up to a doctorate or professorship, totally free of charge and be fed healthy and tasty food at school. Therefore you naturally bitch about the food and skip classes.
- A natural part of any business negotiation is being completely naked with a bunch of strangers in a hot room. (in a sauna that is)
- Your porch looks just like a combined shoe and overcoat shop.
- A stranger smiling at you must be either a)crazy b)drunk c)foreign d)probably all of the aforementioned simultaneously
- You go on a sea cruise only to a)buy tax-free alcohol for nearly the same price as with taxes in liquour stores b) buy tax-free beer for nearly the same price as with taxes in liquour stores c )buy tax-free cigarettes for nearly the same price as with taxes in any stores d) party till you puke!
- The only reason you get off the cruise boat once you've reached Sweden is the MacDonalds near the harbor.
- You think it's absolutely normal that alcohol and wine is only sold in goverment monopoly stores and other stores are not allowed to sell beer after 9:00PM in the evening. Yet alcohol is served in restaurants until 4 in the morning.
- You think smoking is a terrible habit and demand smoke-free restaurants, yet still smoke a pack a night when you're drinking in that same restaurant.
- You don't want to enter a taxi if it's not a Mercedes-Benz since it's still going to cost the same price even if it is a Volvo etc.
- You think it's perfectly normal that a mile in a taxi costs 30 euros (50 bucks).
- You are actually very interested in the current wife / girlfriend / passing out in the middle of a singing gig / striptease show / beating of his wife or gf / jail sentence of some washed-up 1980's wolrd champion ski jumper who's turned a miserable alcoholic and keeps making a total ass of himself and thus you keep talking about his latest headlines with your co-workers.
- You think Conan O'Brian looks just like a left wing presidential candidate.
- You honestly think it is possible to remain as impartial to everything as Switzerland when instead of being surrounded by a buffer of friendly nations like the yodlers or living in the Alps which really takes the punch out of any invading army's efforts, you share the longest european borderline with a former superpower who have often tried to occupy your country and whose country has been in a continous state of turmoil for more than a decade. (And for those not good in geaography, I'm talking about Russia)
- You are so punctual that one could check one's clock from the moment you arrive to work/meeting/anywhere.
- You only voted "yes" to European Union because you were promised cheaper food, lower taxes and cheaper cars. You got none but all the prices doubled when changing to euro. Wages didn't.
- You feel that being two minutes late when coming to a meeting is totally unacceptable.
- If you come at 6:05PM to meet your friends who you were supposed to meet somewhere at 6:00PM you'll find no one there and feel terrible because you've let your friends down.
- You think that it is not enough to agree to meet a friend at a certain time and day: the meeting still has to be veriied by calling the friend on the day of the meet.
- Loafers and white tennis socks are a totally acceptable combination.
- On religious holidays you get drunk.
- You rather stay at home and drink than go to a bar and drink.
- You find it perfectly normal to actually want to go to a summer cabin in the middle of nowhere to be eaten by mosquitoes and to drink booze.
- You would never ever go drunk driving in your car but driving a moped or a skidoo while totally plastered you have no problem with, no matter what the law might say about it.
- If a 50cc scooter (which you're allowed to drive when you're 15 years old but cars not until you're 18 years old) is restricted by the law and the factory to only go 25mph, you will tune it up to go 75mph and leave the original brakes untouched.
- Paying a mortgage on an average house takes a major cut off both your and your wifes paycheck for the next 35 to 50 years.
- Temperature around 40 Fahrenheit (+5C) is considered very nice and pleasant springtime weather.
- You have your thick winter clothes on in April even though there is a 75 Fahrenheit(+25C) heatwave because it IS April and April is a COLD month.
- You wear a t-shirt and shorts in July even though there is a 40 Fahrenheit(+5C) cold wave because it IS July and July is a WARM month.
- You keep driving your motorbike every day in the summer even though it rains every other day and is cold and unpleasant all of the other times because you've paid a real expensive motorbike traffic insurance and you're not letting any of it go to waste! Besides it IS considered "summer" if there is not much snow on the ground!
- You wear socks and sandals at the same time.
- You only have two facial impressions: happy and blank.
- Snow and subzero temperatures do not mean that one would not drive one's bicycle.
- You get nervous if the bus or the train is two minutes late.
- Your wife watches tv as you tend to the children.
- You think it's perfectly normal to just keep on walking without saying a word, with eyes front, if a stranger has asked you something in the street.
- You've been engaged for five years and never gave any thought to actually getting married.
- No one you know has ever even heard of anything as silly as "not having premarital sex".
- You're evangelic-lutheran because everyone else is but you visit the church only when someone dies or gets married. Your idea of praying is bowing your head so that people can't see how off-sync you are moving your lips and mumbling very quietly while all the church-going grannies in the audience repeat the prayers that you never bothered to learn in the first place. When singing verses and hymns you remain quiet and lipsync better Brittney Spears who you are just thinking about naked. You pretend to put a handful of money in the collection bin but only drop two 5 cent coins in order to make the coins make a sound when they hit the other coins so people won't think you're cheap.
- Your wardrobe consists of 20 different shades of black and gray.
-It is not possible to have a business negotiation on a Friday afternoon and it is absolutely not possible to have any business relations any day in August since no one is at the office.
- You're supposed to pay a 186 euro annual (over 200bucks) "Television fee" for having a telly even if you couldn't care less about the stupid documentaries and Swedish language bullshit that is on the goverment channels and you'd rather just watch the other (advertisement funded) channels like everyone else. If you have some old piece of junk telly at your summer cabin where the tv programs are barely visible, you are supposed to pay extra.
- Since the TV programs are now digitized, you're supposed to buy a digi converter or a digi-television. The analogue broadcasts will be stopped soon even though the analogue tech is there and opearational and it doesn't cost all that much to keep its broadcasting units running.
- You don't find it strange to see french softporn and german hardcore in television.
- Playing the Nokia tune makes you and everyone else in the room stick a had in your pocket to see if yours is vibrating.
- You are really interested in the new mobile phone models and you want to make sure yours is the latest hightech model. You change your phone twice a year just to make sure you've got the latest model.
- When your co-worker asks you to have a drink after work you know that is going to contribute in an all-night bar-o-rama and a terrible hangover the next day.
- So many of your friends have the same first names that you call them all by their last names. Some of them you met in the army and, well, come to think about it, you don't even KNOW their first names.
- It's not a merit of any kind to have been in the Army. Pretty much everyone has. That doesn't stop everyone from bragging about their army memories after six beers in the sauna. Especially the few wussies who didn't go and who would otherwise be laughed out of the sauna. After the next few beers every pencil pusher and lazy medic strangely mutates into a peacetime war hero next only to Arnold in "Commando" in their memoirs of the boot camp.
- You go to the movies in good time so you get to watch the advertizements. Heck, you've paid for it so you're gonna watch every second of it! Yet you cannot wait for the ending scene to actually end and by the time the first credits roll in, half the audience is queueing to get out of the theater (no queueing numbers, though. Strange) and the operator stops the film half way through the credits.
- You think 10 euros (15 bucks) is a decent price for a cup of regular coffee and a small cinnemon roll. You never stop to think that you're getting paid 8,12 euros minus taxes per hour minimum fee so that coffee just cost you an hour of your life. Hope it tasted good.
- You drink at least a gallon of coffee every day at home, work, cafeterias, gas station bars, at your friends houses and so on. (No, it's not that strong stuff you get in Turkey) Plus a gallon of beer if it's weekend.
- A single slice of tomato on one piece of lettuce is considered a salad.
- When you are going to a grocery store, you first sort out your plastic grocery bags in order to know which ones you can reuse while shopping and which ones you will use as trash bags.
- You pay more for a hamburger meal than a large pizza in a nice restaurant and you still go for the burger.
- You think it's normal that last names starting with a "V" and a "W" are mixed in the phone book. A vee is a vee no matter how you write it, right?
- You don'say A to Z but A to Ö because Z is not the last letter of the alphabet, instead it's followed by several letters with umlauts (Å,Ä,Ö)that have their own names.
- On the springtime at the former communist "celebration of work" day you will, like everyone from all social classes, go out and get really drunk on champagne and have a huge outdoor festival in every city while no one really gives a rats ass about why there was such a party in the first place.
- You think it's normal that there are several rock festivals every wekend in the sumemrtime.
- It's not socially acceptable to be rich and succesful. If you win a million or two in the lottery you wouldn't be caught dead telling anybody about it. You keep the same job and same house and same clothes and same furniture and all you do is you change your car to a new boring Toyota and lie to all your neighbours how the partial payments are killing you and how it's jsut the "prices starting with" model even though you bought the biggest baddest model and had it debadged.
- You can never ever say anything positive about anything you own because you cannot make others jealous and it would not be considered polite. Even if you bought a new SL Benz you should keep whining about how it was too expensive and how your hair gets in your eyes when driving with the top down and how you just should have bought a Toyota like your friends and so on. Even if you lived in the presidential palace you'd have to whine about it being cold and how you can never ever have a moment of peace in there and how the tapestry is the wrong colour.... Yet other people, on the other hand, cannot possibley say a single negative thing about any of your possessions. It's like a contest, the other party keeps saying good things about your car/house/wife/shotgun/motorbike and you keep putting it down and saying how it is rusty/needs complete remodeling/keeps bitching about your drinking/isn't any more accurate even though it's carved/costs an arm and a leg in upkeep etc etc.
- You have been suckered by the goverment to having a temporary 133% luxury tax on new cars since 1958 and a temporary 50e road tax since 1994. Now it's 2006 and you're still paying both temporary taxes, soon to be joined by an emission tax. Since the two aforementioned "temporary" taxes, absurd gasoline prices (82% of gas price is tax) and insurance costs have taken your every remaining euro, you are forced to drive a 20-year old polluting unsafe piece of rusted crap without even a catalysator like 700,000 others. That's 30% of the cars in the country. You don't burn the parliament house or have a revolution, you pay your taxes before the due date like a good citizen and just bitch and moan about it to a pint of beer in the pub.
- If you have the nerve to try to drive a reliable and everlasting, economical, ecological low-emission high-mpg diesel passenger car such as a MB W124 diesel sedan, you are punished by an 80e (100 bucks) diesel tax. The fact that nowadays the price of diesel and gasoline is almost the same has nothing to do with that and it will likely never be revoked. If you have a MB S124 (station wagon) with a diesel engine and you remove the rear seats, your tax is ten times lower. You just pay up and bitch about it to yourself.
- In order to evade car taxes you do the strangest things to your car like remove seat belts, remove seats, weld seats to the floor, install walls in your STW, replace windows with steel plates (1960's), install lead weights in your trunk, make the ceiling higher, cut a hole to the roof and glue on a ski box, replace seats with hard wooden seats that are uncomfortable and therefore considered temporary seats, turn seats facing backwards, weld the bed of a pickup to be a few inches longer, turn a camaro or even a Cadillac Fleetwood into pickups (yes, you read right), volunteer for a car-orientated speed limit of 50mph even though same cars are allowed to drive 80mph on the freeway, or in the extreme cases you might even buy a 3,5 metric ton (luxury car tax weight limit stops at 3,5 tons and heavier are tax free) extended Chevy Van bus behemoth when all you would have needed was a small seven-seater, and at all this time never for a moment come to think that replacing laws or the parliament would be a smarter thing than replacing the seats of your car with plywood planks.
- You drive around eastern Finland with a gas-guzzling Mustang using smuggled Russian poor quality polluting 92 octane gasoline because it's still cheaper than driing a small economical Jap diesel van...
- You run out of a a 210 Fahrenheit sauna steaming and either roll in the snow naked or go skinnydipping in the lake via a hole sawed in ice and actually enjoy it.
- You drink a case of beer and then ask your friends for more.
- You don't think it's strange that alcohol is valued so high that many people keep their bottles in plain sight in the bookshelf of their living room. Sometimes even EMPTY bottles!
- It seems to make sense that a bottle of alcohol is a good present and a valued gift, even in politics and among high ranking business executives.
- You're not allowed to drive until you're 18 but no one really minds if you drink or shag when you're 13.
- You feel that hitting a moose with a car is a typical way to die.
- It no longer bothers you that the sun doesn't go down at all in the midsummer and never shines in the midwinter.
Perhaps I do need a change of scenery since most of this sounds like everyday life to me...
Then again so I guess it does to everyone here.I found a shorter list in Finnish on a website so I translated it and made up plenty of new points.... Take that, Conan O'Brian!.
i took the rear seat off my 124T 
Yesterday evening at 1130PM 
