Sweden: IKEA, meatballs & cashless

I'm here in the land of yellow and blue, of DIY furniture, meatballs and in some ways the future.

I arrived in the city of Gothenburg on Monday afternoon after taking the bus from Norway, only 3.5 hours. Ive come to visit a friend, Terese and a friend from London, Claire, is joining us.

I've told Terese ever since I left Australia I was coming to visit and I'm so glad I managed to get here! Even if just by a whisper.

After picking Claire up we went to have a late lunch stopping in at a cute little cafe, something we remarked that London doesn't really have.

Yesterday was the first advent of Christmas and finally it's ok to start eating all the Christmas food. Terese explained to us all the special days in the Swedish advent calendar.

After talking about Christmas food Terese bought us this Christmas buns or breads that are eaten on the 13th of December. They are called Lucy buns and made with saffron. They were very tasty.

Afterwards we had a walk about town looking in st ...... List the places

Tonight we went back to Terese's for dinner. We had Swedish tacos, which are eaten every Friday apparently. It must be a Scandinavia thing because Norway do the same thing. They were very tasty.

We stopped in at a bottle shop first to pick up some wine. They also have strict laws here, the bottle shops are owned by the government you can only buy at certain times and certain places.

And you can only buy the wine and spirits at the bottle shops. As my Norwegian friends also tried, terse tried to convince me that goon wine was really good in the Nordic countries haha.

It was pretty good. I also ashamedly found Australian wine in what looked like a juice carton! Whilst here we also bought Glub, which is a Christmas hot drink. You hear it over a stove and put almonds and raisins in it.

We had this for dessert with gingerbread biscuits with blue cheese on them. This was not a favourite of mine haha, but Claire liked them.

Renting - Terese was telling us about how renting works here. You have to go in a waiting list to rent in different areas and wait for a house to come up. Most places are owned by the government.

I'm the city there is like a 10 year waiting list! She also said the things like hearing are all centrally controlled in apartments. Residents can only turn the temperature down or off, but not up.

I thought that was super weird haha. She also explained that unlike the rental houses in Australia, you treat your rental property as your own. If you want to put up shelves, just do it.

I'd definitely like to learn more about how this all works. These are the reasons I travel. I love learning about how other cultures live and work.

Cards only - I read recently on co.exist.com that in the next 10 years or so Sweden could become the first country to eliminate cash and become a card only country.

I asked Terese about this, but she wasn't aware of it. She knew that card was favoured and very easy to use. Claire mentioned that she had seen a restaurant today that advertised they were a cashless restaurant.

I thought it was a great idea, but Terese pointed out that if hasn't stopped people from being mugged. She said that with apps were in use where you could move money with the use of phone numbers. People had been forced to move money while being threatened to their attackers account. I guess criminals will always find a way. But a great option if you can't spilt a bill!Read more