Normal, Verdana, 12

You are enthroned on memories...

 

Christos Papahristodoulou, 2022

Preface

 

Once upon a time, there was an idyllic country up in the Nordic countries where everything worked perfectly and caught the eyes of the whole world, for "glory thy name flew over the earth" as its national anthem says. Most admired the country's incredible welfare system, strong democracy, meticulous justice, outstanding honesty, exceptional engineering skills, and fairytale nature. Some were probably jealous of the country, but the vast majority dreamed of copying at least a small part of this amazing country.

I had not planned to write this book. Everything was decided in the spring of 2022, when I retired. As a pensioner, I had hoped to be free and do things I didn't have time to do before and not write a book. But, since Sweden today is not the same unique country I dreamed of more than 50 years ago and that I experienced during my early days, I decided to write "You are enthroned on memories..."

The title fits perfectly with my personal experience of the country's "ancient days" during my first ten to fifteen years in Sweden, and my "memories" are revived by the development of the last decades. “You are enthroned on memories..." is an exciting and one hundred percent true story about myself!

More than 50 years ago, when I was a young boy in Greece, I dreamed of moving here and "living and dying in the Nordic countries". I learned Swedish myself and emigrated 43 years ago.  And during all these years, I have experienced my dream and am grateful for everything Sweden has given me. But I have become increasingly sad and disappointed at how this beautiful idyll has been destroyed and transformed into an ordinary country.

 

 

Västerås, summer 2022

Christos Papahristodoulou

 

1.             Start

 

It wasn't really clear when my interest in Sweden was awakened. It probably all started in the 1960s. 

I was born and raised in Amfilochia, a small coastal town in western Greece. The city, like the whole country, was very poor at the time and many emigrated from there to West Germany, or Australia to make a living and create a better life for themselves. The country was ruined, first by the second world war and then by the bloody civil war that ended a few years before I was born.

In the late 1950s, before I started elementary school, the Swedish organization Save the Children built the first kindergarten in my town. It was the city's finest building, across the sea, surrounded by flowers and playgrounds. Many of my childhood friends who came from poor families went to "Swedish kindergarten" and told me how nice they had it with a lot of food, candy and toys. I nagged my mother about why I didn't go there. But it didn't work because we weren't as poor as other families with children.

For a seven-year-old who had not experienced it, the "Swedish kindergarten" had just stuck in his head. Still, when I'm there on holiday and walk along the beach street, I look at the beautiful and elegant building that is functional just like in the 1950s.

In the early 1960s, my interest in football grew. All the children there played football in the streets. At the same time, the Greek radio began to report on the major football matches of the Greek league and almost all children and adults sat next to a radio set to listen. There was no TV and we just dreamed about how the goals were scored. On Mondays, we used to buy sports newspapers to see all the beautiful goals in black and white colors of course.

The Greek sports newspapers also reported on Italian Serie A matches and other football news from the neighboring country. When AC Milan won the European Championship in 1969 against Ajax by 4-1, I was really impressed. A newspaper had a report on AC Milan where the Swedish Kurt Hamrin played, i.e. the same player who scored a fantastic goal against West Germany during the 1958 World Cup. Among other things, it was written about the world-famous Swedish trio, Gren-Nordhal-Liedholm, who had played in the team a couple of decades earlier. I thought it felt exciting and very great and suddenly I started cheering for the team where many Swedes had played. AC Milan has been my favorite team ever since. On the west coast, you could listen to Italian radio's shortwave broadcasts and follow Milan's matches. Although the broadcast quality was not good and the language was a major obstacle, it was possible to follow the players' names without any problems.

In the early 1970s, when I was in high school, I was very interested in geography and especially in the geography of Western Europe. There were not so many Western European countries at the time and every country, or group of neighboring countries, was the subject to every geography lecture. Eastern Europe, on the other hand, i.e. the socialist countries that belonged to the Warsaw Pact, we spent less time on. Greece belonged to Western Europe and in addition, the country was ruled by a military dictatorship that hated "communism".  

When we came to the Nordic countries, I was really fascinated by all of them that were reasonably identical, democratic, peaceful and with a very high standard. I was mainly hooked on Sweden. The author of the book told of a fairytale world, where, for example, the Prime Minister rode public transport or cycled and bought food at grocery stores like other ordinary people. And if you were lucky, you could also meet the king in the middle of Stockholm. The book stated, among other things, that Sweden was one of the world's richest countries with incredible natural resources such as ore, forests and hydropower. In addition, some of the most well-known Swedish industrial companies were mentioned, such as Volvo, Scania, SKF, Ericsson and ASEA. There you could also read about the cold and dark winters, the bright summer nights, the very high taxes and welfare, and about the country's long peace and neutrality. It was simply too much to be true. I was fascinated.

During the 1960s and 1970s, apart from football, many young people played with scooters, usually handmade, which were driven by roller bearings. At home in the basement, I had also built my own. For some reason, all the children thought that the roller bearing was made in German. It was a friend, whose parents had emigrated to West Germany to work, who told us that roller bearings were manufactured in West Germany.

But, for safety's sake, after the geography lecture, I looked carefully at the large front wheel roller bearing and then I noticed that it said "SKF". In the geography book it said that SKF was a Swedish company and my friend must have been wrong. What SKF meant, however, I had no idea and it took several years later to find out that this particular product was an ingenious Swedish invention.

I also asked my father, who was a teacher and always had an objective and rational view of various things, if everything in the geography book about Sweden was true. I was a little unsure because some inconvenient facts in the school books that the dictatorship did not like, were censored, while other favorable facts were exaggerated. His answer was that since it is a school book that has been approved by the authorities, it must be true! 

At the same time, my father told me that my older cousin Dimitris, who had moved to Sweden a few years earlier, used to come on holiday to Greece. If I wanted to know more about Sweden, I should go with my family up in the mountains in the summer, where his mother lived (who was my father's cousin) and talk to him. He tried in some way to lure me there, because I didn't like to go to the mountains, especially during the summer. And he succeeded. We had an old house in the mountains and the whole family went there.

Of course, it felt very exciting when I met my older cousin. I wanted to get as much information about Sweden as possible and asked everything between heaven and earth. When I told him that in my dreams, I would like to move there in a few years, his response was cold and decidedly negative. He told me that Sweden was simply not good for me, even though the country's description in the geography book was correct. He probably wasn't willing to take care of me in Sweden. In addition, he was afraid of the dictatorship in Greece every time he visited his mother and siblings, I was told by my father. There were many Greeks who were political refugees in Sweden at the time and fought against the dictatorship and he was also a suspect. 

Of course, I was very sad and wanted to go back to the beach in Amfilochia where I felt best, with fish, swimming and playing football with my friends. I have always loved the blue sea, while the forest and the mountains are not for me. In the last 50 years, it was only once more time that I visited this village in the mountains, even though my siblings and cousins have tried to convince me to go there. The disappointment probably remains when I associate my father's village with my cousin's advice against moving to Sweden.

The years passed and the interest in Sweden cooled down a bit. Instead, I spent a lot of time on my passion, football. I remember how happy I was when my two favorite teams, Milan and Leeds, met in the European Cup Winners' Final in 1973 in Thessaloniki. Unfortunately, my dreams of a football life were shattered by my father's firm words. I had to forget that I was going to be a professional footballer. I should instead concentrate on my studies, period!

The year 1974 was an eventful year. It started wonderfully when ABBA won the Eurovision contest song. It was the first time Greece participated. The country was still ruled by the dictatorship and the festival was not broadcast on Greek television. My sister and I listened to the radio instead. When we heard ABBA's "Waterloo", both she and I decided that they would win! It was actually very embarrassing when the Greek jury did not give any points to Sweden. They probably did not dare to give points to a country that had been so critical of the dictatorship. 

During the 1974 World Cup in West Germany, I was very happy of the Swedish national football team. It was actually the first time I could watch football on a color TV in a cafeteria in Athens. It was so magnificent when I saw the yellow-blue colors! I was very impressed by the Swedish performance. I remember cheering and screaming with joy when Ralf Edström scored that fantastic goal against Germany and all the eyes in the cafeteria looked at me so strangely. Some people asked if I was Swedish! 

In mid-July, while I was studying to participate in the national tests for the universities, a war between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus broke and the dictatorship in Greece introduced general mobilization. Several hundred thousand people were called in, including my older brother and my good friend from high school, Nikos, who was a little older than me. There were fears that Turkey would invade the country. No one knew if we would have national exams and I decided to go to Amfilochia which was a safer place, where my parents and my younger brother were on vacation. I shall never forget that day in Athens. It was 44 degrees and the traffic was chaotic when at least a couple of million people wanted to leave the city. It was not only reservists who went to various military bases around the country, but also young people, women and the elderly who sought refuge in their home areas, mainly in the west.

Fortunately, after a few weeks, the hostilities were suspended, Turkey occupied the northern part of the island and the dictatorship fell. The transitional government then recalled ex-Prime Minister Karamanlis, who was living in exile in France at the time, to save the country. A few days earlier, I went back to Athens and I was part of the huge crowd that waited for Karamanlis for hours along the stretch of the airport towards Syntagma Square.

I took the national exams in August and was accepted to the Athens School of Business and Economics, much to my father's delight. However, my good friend Nikos, who did not have the opportunity to study when he defended the country for several weeks, did not pass the exams. He started working and saved some money because he had decided to move to Sweden, which he did in the autumn of 1975.

In late summer of 1974, I met a Swedish couple one day in central Athens. They walked ahead of me and on their backpacks, they had sewn Swedish flags. I stopped them and congratulated them for the Swedish national team's performance. The boy was interested in football and I took the opportunity to talk a little about the Swedish team Åtvidabergs FF, because they reached a semi-final but were knocked out by Bayern Munich on penalties in the UEFA Champions League.

I took it for granted that Åtvidabergs FF would be from Stockholm and I asked if it was true. In Greek, the team is called Atvidaberg and I pronounced it that way in English as well. He laughed and of course pronounced it as "Å" and told me that it is actually a small town in southern Sweden. It was impossible for me to understand how a small Swedish town could win the Swedish championship in football, play against Bayern itself and lose on penalties! On the geography book's small Swedish map, this city was missing. Then he took out his own little map and marked where the city is located, since the city was not on his own map either. I then realized that this must have been outstanding in European football and only in Sweden can it happen!

Even when I visited the School of Business and Economics library later, where a larger map of Sweden was located, I could not find the city. It must have been quite small, I thought. A few years later, when I visited the Swedish embassy in Athens, the secretary showed me on the large map that hung on the wall of the embassy, where the city was located. I was told then that the city was a little bigger than my home village of Amfilochia, whose football team played in Division 4 in Greece...