Everything is bigger in Sweden...

Everything is bigger in Sweden. Well, at least compared to Switzerland (in comparison with the gigantic country on the other side of the Atlantic things in Sweden are quite moderate). But compared to Switzerland many things are bigger here.

Firstly, the area of the country is bigger, Sweden is about eleven times bigger than Switzerland. That is as long as the Alps aren't flattened out at least...

Secondly, the people are bigger. Both taller and fatter. When we came back to Sweden this summer we were struck by how "fat" people here are compared to people in Switzerland. And how much people here eat. Downtown, people were eating ice cream like crazy (ok, it was really warm and sunny) as well as big American muffins. Then we went to Ikea and had meatballs. In Switzerland the normal portion is ten meatballs. Here it's 15! And the guy in front of me didn't think that was enough - he ordered 20!!! Generally speaking, Swedes eat more and hence are fatter than the Swiss people.

Thirdly, the packages of butter, flour, sugar, yeast, baking soda, yogurt and so on are bigger here than in Switzerland. The normal size of a bag of flour or sugar is 2 kg here compared to 1 kg in Switzerland, and sometimes they even sell 5 kg bags of flour here. And the vanilla sugar as well as the baking soda comes in cans or boxes containing far more than the pathetic portion bags they sell in Switzerland. For me, who loves to bake this is a blessing. I'm not constantly running out of flour or baking soda. Pictures of the small packages in Switzerland can be found here.

Then there are things that are at least as big in Switzerland as in Sweden, like friendship and beautiful nature. And when it comes to high mountains, Switzerland has the biggest ones, without competition.