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...
