It's not really fair to compare Californian houses and Swedish houses. Swedish houses are made of wood, heavily isolate to take its inhabitants through the cold winters. But sometimes I wonder what the main purpose of a Californian house is. Most of them look like huge garages with a little house on top or on the side... (if you generalize heavily) The most important inhabitant of the house seems to be the car (or should I say cars) . Considering the amount of snow and ice in the winter, you would think that Swedish houses should take a little more care of the poor cars...
Anyway, when we were going to buy our house here in in California a couple of years ago, I realized after awhile that I was turning down a lot of them mainly because they didn't look like... "houses" (we ended up getting a "garage-house" - I was heavily pregnant and we couldn't wait for a house-house to get on the market... and it has a great floor plan, even though you can't see that from the outside).
I've gotten used to Californian houses by now, actually thinking some of them look really nice (especially the really big one... the mulitmillion dollar houses... why is that!). But during my recent quick trip to Sweden I was once again reminded about "Houses" and how nice it is with different colors instead of the cafe latte color of most houses in this state. How about this?
Or this!
I wonder how much the air freight cost would be for a wooden Swedish house...?
4 comments:
oh ja tack! jag tar gärna ett sånt hus ;) Vet precis vad du menar med detta!
kram
Yes, I agree and like the Swedish houses better. And old country farm houses in central Texas!
Well, I guess in this respect I have been Swedenized. I prefer a Swedish house with wooden floors and mats and not wall-to-wall carpeting. Also, I will never enter a house without taking off my shoes. We did that when we were children because my father learned this when he was in Japan after the World War II. So, I was already Swedenized in that respect. This business of coming in off the street after having walked on who knows what and walking throughout the house or apartment with street shoes as is done in the USA, is simply uncivilized and unhygenic. It is a practice which you, as a Swede, have a sacred duty to explain to your American neighbors. Tell them it cuts down on their life expectancy if they wear their shoes in the house. You can tell them a study was done on this at Karolinska Sjukhuset or something. :)
The interesting thing is that most of my friends here actually take off their shoes! Not so during my year in Illionis. Maybe the Californians have read the study from Karolinska Sjukhuset! ;-)
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