[Rutabega]

About your bus trip--I am living in Sweden and for the past eight months have been taking a Swedish class three hours a day, five days a week with twenty-two arab refugees. Some of these people are lovely people, who I have gotten to know pretty well, and they are clean and smell fine. Some, however, smell so rank that I have to sit in class and breathe through my mouth for hours. Repulsive, repulsive, repulsive. It seems to me that the level of deodorant directly corresponds with the level of education (in my class, not in the US, and Swede's are incredibly clean and fresh smelling folk!); the refugees from more middle class backgrounds, regardless of age or country of origin (Iran, Iraq, Albania, China, and the ex-Yugoslav countries) don't smell, but the rest wear their stink like a coat. ICK! I wish I could think of a kind way to tell them that assimilation would be much easier if they would only wear anti-perspirant and BATHE!

[danamco]

Hejsa Rutabega:
I'm Swedish as well, but living in U.S.! I know the problem with the refugees home pretty well, as we still have an apartment in Malmoe and goes there frequently. When you take the bus, you would think your were in the U.S., because there are more colored ethnic people on the buses than there are white Swedes. One time I took a business trip to Poland via ferry from Ystad-Stettin. On the return from Stettin I boarded the ferry about 9 PM and went to the cafeteria which was mostly empty. Next morning arriving Ystad, I got the biggest surprise because at the exit to the gangway there were hundreds of refugees coming through Poland from Yugoslavia waiting to get on shore. Because I could show my "Tre Kronor" passport, I was whizzed through the crowd by the Pass Polisen!
However, I still think the women are leaking the odors more than men, probably because of their monthly periods?