Day 2219: NOT THE SAME

LEGIT MISTAKES I HAVE MADE IN SWEDISH

(AND HOW TO AVOID THEM)

1. 

 

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3.

 

4.

 

5.

 

6.

 

7.

 

8. 

 

9. 

 

10.

 

BONUS 11. 

(NOT ME WHO SAID IT, THANKFULLY)

Day 2215: Dual Wield

As of April I have two nationalities, British and Swedish. I always used to envy people with two nationalities, like they were exotic. But now I am one of them it all feels a bit odd. I am an imposter! I don't feel Swedish. Actually I don't really feel British any more, either. Maybe that's what it really means to be a citizen of multiple places; not belonging neatly in any of them. Some people have three or more citizenships. I imagine this to be a bit like Voldemort's horcruxes, the more you have, the more you dilute your original self. 

Of course becoming a citizen of multiple places doesn't involve murdering people to split your soul in pieces so that the Swedish part can reside in an old goblet. It's always best not to follow the allegory train too far down the track. To the depot of surrealism. In actuality there are many positive sides to being a dual citizen, having a wider world view, meeting new people, trying a different job market, being equally as baffled by politics but this time in a different constellation, not needing a visa for some journeys, rubbing the new leathery sheen of your European passport in your worried remainer friends' faces...WHO DOES THAT?! Not me.

While the horcrux idea might sound a bit negative, becoming a dual citizen is not a happy fun time party. You have to live a long time in a country where you don't understand all the words in the sentences being said and you have to do a lot of smiling and nodding that occasionally ends with eight people waiting for a response to a question that sailed over your head. You have to leave your friends and family who know you very well and construct a foreigner personality, which is a bit like a plastic veneer that gets kind of brownish age scum over time, and latch on to other foreigner personalities who eventually turn into friends who bond with you over mutual WTF? about the new place you all live in. You have to navigate guilt feelings like a fucking rally driver every time you visit home and nobody wants you to leave. Actually sometimes you wonder yourself why you are leaving. You must endure nobody getting your joke references to 90's British TV shows. Even if you meet other British people they probably didn't grow up in exactly the same time/place bubble as you and they don't know about the time everyone thought Neil Buchannan from Art Attack was dead but it was just a stupid internet rumor or that time when Peter Andre overdosed on bananas or that time Brian Harvey from E17 ate too many jacket potatoes and ran over his own head with a car. Conversely you also start using new culturalisms in the old motherland and nobody understands why you're crooning "Jaaa. aaa. aaa. aaaa." like a seal, or wearing birkenstocks around the house, or covering your ears with your hands when a tube train approaches or an ambulance drives past.

That's not to mention the beaurocratic hell involved in being a dual citizen. Jobs and institutions don't understand your foreign education and likewise people back "home" (except it's not any more) don't understand the new paperwork from Foreignland. When you apply for citizenship it costs money and it costs what can only be described as a fucktonne, that's 2000 fuckpounds in USA parlance, of time. My application took 17 months. It should have taken longer but the Swedish foreign office panicked on the originally scheduled Brexit date in March and rushed it through. Friends from other countries are at 20 months and counting. The current time estimate for process is 3 years. Some friends who are abroad were rejected for being abroad, despite handing their application in years ago when they were not abroad. Whoever processed my application wanted a year's worth of payslips for my 6th year of residency, even though I became eligible for citizenship at 4 years. The process itself is a great mystery, the level of professionalism and expediency displayed by the foreign office suggests a great deal of divination by moose entrails and casting of 5-kronor coins into the mälaren for luck.

At the end of all the difficulty though, it is extremely rewarding to be able to dissasociate yourself from the worst of both countries by brazenly waving your alternate passport in the air and yelling "I don't live there!"