Walking around Uppsala one can't help but notice the enormous amount of baby carriages, child seats on bicycles and little infants everywhere. At first I thought it might just be in my head, but I'm not the only person to notice it. It was then that I remembered a few years ago when I visited Stockholm there were a lot of pregnant women. Admittedly it took longer than it should for me to realize that those two observations were of the same event.

There's a store in town that I pass by rather frequently that claims to be a US fashion store. I finally indulged my curiosity and went in to see how authentic their merchandise really is. And wow, no self respecting American would be caught dead in those clothes. It was more like a caricature of American clothing, taking the idea of in your face and/or amusing slogans like shirts from Abercrombie and Hot Topic and making them pointlessly blunt and not funny at all (unless you can appreciate the irony of it). One of the jackets they had was covered in corporate logos, like you would expect a racecar driver to wear. Now I know Americans have a reputation for being consumer driven, but we don't wear advertisements on quite that level. I don't know what I was expecting to find going in there, maybe pink polo shirts, flippy skirts and ugg boots, (though uggs are quite practcal here) maybe something that would make me step back and realize that how easily definable American fashion is. But nope, they got it all screwed up. On the other hand, there was an American food store in Stockholm that I visited that had it right on the money: peanut butter, root beer, Lucky Charms and Gatorade.

Some of the things that I notice are different I think are more a product of being from the Southwest specifically than simply from being an American. No smoothies or other semifrozen beverages here. Not quite the ideal climate for it, but back home you can enjoy an Eeegee's any time of the year.
No drinking fountains in Uppsala, possibly in all of Sweden. I'm still having trouble fathoming that. That might not be so shocking for someone on the East Coast but for a Tucsonan it's torturous.
As expected, no Mexican food. I asked if there were any Mexican restaurants in town, and I was told there were "one or two." I don't think I've ever been told that with a straight face before. The best I could do was a Mexican pizza, and they couldn't even get that right.
Most everything closes at 10PM here so if you want a late night snack you're out of luck. This comes as a particular shock considering my last days in the US when I went out to Denny's or IHOP at 3AM. Good times.