Combining all the political party conferences, Almedalens is a week long bastion of open political debate and discussion on topics as wide ranging as climate change, inner-city poverty and the future of Kosovo. Political leaders stroll the cobbled streets of Gotland's medieval capital, Visby, in chinos and polo necks, ever ready to respond to greetings and polite questions from their citizens. Security is barely to be seen.
I was there with colleagues to launch an informal network of civil society leaders covering 'northern Europe': the countries around the Baltic sea, plus Belarus, Russia and Iceland. We were hosted by the Governor of the island in her beautiful residence, a homage to tasteful artwork, modest opulance and pastel colours.
Following the meetings our hostess held a gathering of Swedish civil society leaders in her spacious garden. Of the many charming people there, the most interesting was a guy in a baseball cap wearing a sandwich board declaring his ability to rap in five languages (Swedish, English, Persian, Spanish and Portuguese), on receipt of a donation. We discussed hip hop and social activism, before he gave me a display of his impressive lyrical talents (in English).
Sweden is of course famous for its enlightened social model and beautiful blond people. But it's also quite pious. I spoke with many young and attractive volunteers of a large tee-totallers' association, referred to as a 'temperance organisation'. They have 48,000 members, each of whom have taken the vow not to drink alcohol. I was stunned to hear of the movement's popularity, though upon reflection realised that this highlighted my origins in a binge-drinking culture. Alcohol is responsible for the majority of violence in rich countries, and yet in the UK there are no recognised popular movements against it, whilst there are for similar common scourges such as fatty foods or CO2. I toyed with the idea of not drinking for a while myself, but before I'd made up my mind someone had bought me a beer.
My second revelation came in the unlikely form of Max Hamburgare, Sweden's answer to McDonalds. It was clean and tastefully decorated; its smiling staff suffered none of the chronic acne typical of their British counterparts; bean salads and fruit were given equal prominence to chips on the menu; and most impressively of all, each choice of burger clearly showed how much CO2 it was responsible for. I went for a 'green burger', which weighed in at a modest 0.2 grams; Carlo tucked into the standard beef burger, costing a whopping 1.6 grams of the evil stuff. Probably equal to one hundredth of a second of my flight home.
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