Love /
Swedish Love for Poland [46]
I found Swedes quite different temperamentally from Poles!
First off, Poles are Catholics and Swedes overwhelmingly unaffiliated
Lutherans who typically keep a healthy distance from the Church,
particularly the young.
Although Swedes too had long been the butt of jokes here in the
US during the latter half of the 19th century, e.g. "the dumb Swede-
My name is Jan Jansson, I come from Wisconsin", Sweden after WWII
became one of the most envied nations on earth, both economically and
socially.
Sadly, Poland was still considered a backwater until perhaps only the middle
of the 1990's.
However, there are also a number of positive similarities as well. For example,
both Sweden and Poland produced some of the finest world class cinema
during the post-war period. Sweden gave the world Bergman and Mai Zetterling,
Poland gave us Wajda, Andrzejewski, and Polanski.
