Travel Reference
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While chocolate rules, licorice and gummy candies are also popular. Black
licorice
(lakrits)
is at its best here, except for
salt lakrits
(salty licorice), which
is not for the timid. Black licorice flavors everything from ice cream to chew-
ing gum to liqueur (see “Drinking,” earlier). Throughout Scandinavia, you'll
find stores selling all varieties of candy in bulk. Fill your bag with a vari-
ety of candies and pay by the gram. Look around at the customers in these
stores...they aren't all children.
We travel all the way to Scandinavia to enjoy differences—to become tem-
porary locals. You'll experience frustrations. Certain truths that we find
“God-given” or “self-evident,” such as cold beer, ice in drinks, bottomless
cups of coffee, hot showers, and bigger being better, are suddenly not so true.
One of the benefits of travel is the eye-opening realization that there are lo-
gical, civil, and even better alternatives.
While the materialistic culture of the US is sneaking into these countries,
simplicity has yet to become subversive. Scandinavians are into “sustainable
affluence.” They have experimented aggressively in the area of social wel-
fare—with mixed results. Travel in high-tax/high-government-service Scand-
inavia can rattle capitalist Americans. The people seem so happy and the soci-
ety seems so genteel. Fit in, don't look for things American on the other side
of the Atlantic, and you're sure to enjoy some thought-provoking stimulation
and a full dose of Scandinavian hospitality.
