The Rawness

When I arrived in Amsterdam, I went to my hotel, the Pulitzer. I must say, the hotel itself was worthy of being a tourist attraction, it was that beautiful.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="448" caption="View From The Front of Hotel"][/caption]

This picture is the Canal and dock that are situated directly before the front door of the hotel.

The actual front door of the hotel is below:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="448" caption="Hotel Front Door"][/caption]

It all had a very Old World flavor to it, especially the quaint design of my room and the courtyards:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="448" caption="My Room"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="448" caption="Courtyard"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="448" caption="More Courtyards"][/caption]

It was set up very much like a maze, with access to various courtyards. The hotel is so beautiful that it is listed as one of the places to see in the book 1,000 Places to See Before You Die: A Traveler’s Life List. I didn’t know this little tidbit until after I got back home and purchased the book, so I was totally unprepared for the beauty of the hotel when I arrived.

The duration of my stay was from Sunday night to Thursday morning. However, most places were dead. Unlike Stockholm, which was pretty much jumping every night of the week during the summer, Amsterdam is very much dead. The partying happens from Thursday to Saturday, and to a lesser extent Sunday, which is still a party night but not that jumping. There was only one really good place that Sunday night, called Jimmy Woo, which from the outside seemed like an incredibly nice hotspot. Like my first night in Stockholm, I went out early, dressed to the nines, stepped to door and…was totally dissed for not being on the guestlist. Mentioned the usual stuff, that I was from NY, on my own, ready to spend money, I was a record producer, everything. They did not budge. As I said before European guestlists are tough. Much tougher than the average NY guestlist. In fact, if you look at reviews of the club online, you’ll see most of the spot focus on how hard it is to get in and what a general disappointment it is once you enter, as it seems most of the people inside focus on showing off and profiling. I went to another club named Paradiso, had a so-so time. It’s supposed to normally be a good club, but on the night I went they chose to have a surprise pageant for Mr. Gay Amsterdam or something, so it was filled with homos that night. Yay.

From Monday to Wednesday, everything was DEAD. One of the funny things about Amsterdam, Americans have a stereotype about it being an all-day, all-night party and expect Dutch people to be these hard-partying degenerates, but the only people really acting crazy and walking around stoned on space cakes were American and British tourists so far as I could see.

Dutch people are surprisingly chill and laid back. They seem unfazed by the Red Light District. I saw mothers and young daughters being led through the Red Light district walking between the rows of whores in the windows like it was the most normal thing on earth. I even saw what seemed to be a field trip of young boys and girls walking down the corridors of whores (whorridors?) standing in windows. It was all old hat to them. They weren’t at all judgmental and believed in live and let live, yet Dutch people didn’t really seem to partake in all the vices so much themselves, or at least not the legal ones.

Even if you have no plans to patronize a prostitute, everyone needs to go to the Red Light District just to see it for themselves. It is a bona fide tourist attraction for all races, ages and genders. And there are some pretty good bars there too (my favorite being T’Loosje). What I really didn’t expect though was how anxious I got when walking around there (and it probably didn’t help that I was walking around somewhat drunk). I mean, shortness of breath, discomfort, paranoia, the whole nine. I walked briskly and was afraid to look any of the whores in the eye. And I’m not normally a shy guy or a prude. I remember the old vice-ridden, pre-Giuliani Times Square vividly from growing up where my friends and I would talk to whores for kicks, and I’ve been to plenty of strip clubs, but somehow seeing it so open, accepted and blatant in the daylight had an unexpected effect on me. Suddenly all my years of Catholic repression kicked in and I actually thought of my devoutly catholic mom strangely enough. I had a very acute Catholic morality attack and felt strangely panicked.

All that sexual energy concentrated in one area, and it wasn’t at night, in a dark smoky room or a crowded, dimly lit nightclub, it was in bright and broad daylight for everyone to see. And the passageways with the whores were very, very narrow with a rows of prostitutes in windows on either side of you, staring at you, banging on the glass to get your attention, or sometimes even opening the door to yell in your face to get you to buy sex, and the best way I could describe the experience was sexual claustrophobia; a really cramped narrow space with flesh visible in every direction, plus I’m absorbing all the intense, hungry sexual energy from all the men around me, all the emotionally detached, money-hungry energy from the whores and all the muutal contempt flying from everyone toward everyone else like stray bullets in a free-for-all shootout.

In America we prefer everything compartmentalized: sleaze is reserved for exclusively sleazy areas and nighttime hours.  You go to a strip club, massage parlor or a ho stroll, and it will usually be in a venue dedicated exclusively to vice and nothing but.  Then after you finish there you return to your normal daytime life and the two worlds never have to overlap.  It;s a setup perfect for creating hypocrites and double lives.  But in Amsterdam’s Red Light district, the world of vice was less stigmatized and fully integrated into the normal daytime life rather than hidden away in dark alleys and smoky backrooms, and it was the open merger of the vice world with the square, normal world in full daylight that caught me off-guard rather than the actual vice itself.

Once my Catholic relapse wore off, I was able to enjoy the rest of my time in the Red Light District. I often underestimate how profoundly screwed up and repressed my 9 years of Catholic schooling made me. I wasn’t sure for 15 minutes whether I wanted to be revulsed by the whores, titillated by them or whether I pitied them. Once my episode wore off, I went back to my usual self and stopped judging them altogether. The way I got that strange little panic episode to wear off was to force myself to keep eye contact with every whore I passed and force them to break eye contact first. I regained my sense of power over myself. But it’s amazing how just the aura of unrestricted female sexuality can mentally and biologically disorient us men if it comes in strong enough doses. Men who truly believe they rule the world and not women are utter fools.

As I’ve mentioned before, Dutch people are incredibly tall. Average male height is 6’3 and average female is 5’7. I am 6’2 and was often meeting women who were my height with flats. Also, this is not something that is specific to the native Dutch race, the tallness was across the board and noticeable among Dutch citizens of all races. This upshoot in height among the Dutch is a relatively recent phenomenon, within the past 50 years if I remember correctly (I’m too lazy to look it up right now, sorry), so the change seems to be affecting all races there across the board. I actually saw more of the tall, blonde stereotype that people expect to see in Sweden in Amsterdam.

And everyone rides bikes. Everywhere. Even to the bar or nightclub it’s common to see men and women arriving and departing on bicycles, even if dressed ultrastylish. At 4 AM I’d see packs of guys and girls riding drunk from the bar. There are somewhere between 1.5 to 2 bikes per person there. And people tend to buy shitty ones for cheap because it’s common for them to get stolen. It’s not often I saw a really nice bike around, and I was told that fear of theft was why.

Since the nightlife was dead, I did most of my socializing in quiet bars doing early evening drinking. I met a lot of interesting people while sitting around drinking outdoors. First, Dutch people are very, very intellectual on average in comparison to the average America, at least among the people I met. They are very intellectual, both the guys and the girls, and it took some getting used to for me. In NY, I’m used to vapid conversation, and I feel like I have to dumb things down a lot. It’s not so much about what people know here, it’s that I feel there is a profound lack of intellectual curiosity in NY (I don’t want to generalize and say all of America, because I haven’t seen much of the rest of America sadly). No one is interested in anything. People don’t read books. People don’t like discovering new music or studying history, except for hipsters, and they just do it to be cool and show off and be pedantic I find. In Amsterdam, I readlly encountered a lot of intellectual curiosity. I never had to dumb down anything. This was especially jarring with speaking to women there, because here in NY I just grew used to the average woman not having much of anything interesting to say except for celebrity gossip and shoes and the latest restaurant openings. Or which Sex and the City character she was.

In Amsterdam, I found myself debating with guys about Afrobeat music, which Iggy Pop album was the best, the music Iggy Pop and David Bowie made in Berlin, the current state of hip-hop, race, culture, and other topics on a very deep level. It was funny to hear them describe dating in Amsterdam as well. Many people expect Dutch women to be really easy because they somehow think the Red Light district and drug policies are a reflection of the average Dutch person’s behavior. In actuality, they aren’t. They’re very nice, and are very willing to hang out and talk to a strange guy for hours just to be friendly, then leave without exchanging personal information. And as a guy, the Dutch men said, you don’t expect anything just because a woman is talking to you for hours. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Even dates don’t necessarily mean anything. The guys told me that they often go out on dates, sometimes four or five dates in a week, and they don’t walk into them with any expectations of getting laid. Dutch girls are just very nice and friendly and are willing to give most decent guys at least one date to feel them out.

A guy I met said that sometimes the conversations were so nice that he was happy just going on multiple dates because of the nice people he’d meet and that any sex that happened, if it happened, was just a bonus. And they are very skilled at conducting engaging conversation I found. I personally had debates with women there over favorite philosophers (Neitschze vs. Voltaire vs, Rousseau) and who was the most brilliant scientist (Tesla vs. Einstein vs. Newton). One guy’s girlfriend told me how she enjoyed reading the works of great intellectuals from centuries ago because she found it important to be reminded of how every supposedly novel thought you’ve ever had and patted yourself on the back for today was already thought up centuries ago and expressed a million times better already. The reason she found this process important is because she felt we all need to periodically intellectually humble ourselves and keep ourselves grounded so as not to become too narcissistic.  From many people this would have made me roll my eyes and come off pretentious, but she had a sincerity that sold it.

I explained to the guys I met how NY dating is different than Dutch dating. Dutch girls are very nice and will rarely blow you out of the water rudely from the very beginning. They are very approachable. The downside to this friendliness is that it isn’t always easy to tell if they like you sexually or are just being nice. You sometimes have to be very patient to find out. In NY, though, women are so incredibly rude and rarely feel the need to be nice to you unless they want something from you, so when you are a guy here and you simply don’t get dissed after introducing yourself, you are halfway there. She must be at least somewhat intrigued to even let you utter a follow-up sentence. If she smiles and reciprocates conversation and asks you questions about yourself, you know she must like you. If she returns your phone calls, makes a date with you and doesn’t flake out beforehand, you have crossed a major hurdle and sex is almost a sure thing, if not on the first date then at least by the second or third, so long as you don’t do something utterly retarded like shit on yourself spontaneously or say something exceedingly boneheaded. Because the initial screening is so damn tough, the positive is that just getting your foot in the door is a good indication that she is sexually interested.

For a perfect example of how the grass is always greener on the other side, one of the men in the group I met heard my description and unlike his friends thought NY sounded 1,000 times better. He was like “Wow, you mean I don’t have to talk about deep, intellectual topics or have probing conversations or keep wondering if she is just being nice or is interested?” “No,” I responded. “If she lets you stick around and have a conversation in NY, she’s interested. And if you make it to the first date stage and she hasn’t flaked, you have a solid chance at sex.” “Man, that sounds like heaven!” “Don’t you think that sounds a little empty and shallow?” another guy in the group asked. “It just seems like such an empty interaction. I like our girls here and the substance they have to their character.” “Screw that,” the first guy said. “I’m getting too old and impatient to do a bunch of fucking dates a week. NY sounds way better.”

Go figure.

Anyway, one last post coming up in this series and I’ll leave this vacation topic alone. In the final part, I’ll talk about how Europeans view other Europeans, how they view Americans, and most importantly, how they view the “Muslim problem,” which seems to be the main issue of the moment on the continent.

Recommended Reading:

Partying:

Here in NY, most clubs are open until 4 or sometimes later, but by then it’s usually dead. Only the really hard partiers or desperate losers trying to mack on whatever is left are still out at 4. A bulk of the party is already out the door before closing time hits, except for a few stragglers, unless it’s just an exceptional party.

In Stockholm it’s different, almost everyone stays until closing and parties hard until the end. At the clubs that are open until 5 AM, when 5 AM hits the club is as full as ever, and may even be at peak capacity still. And no one budges. The music stops, and people just stand around and some people even try to go back to the bar for a last drink. The bouncers have to force everyone out, and reluctantly they leave, but they just stand outside continuing to drink, smoke, continue conversation and maybe do some last minute macking outside. Some people move on to find an after hours party, where I drew the line since I still wanted to get some sleep and actually do daytime sightseeing too.

I found the nightclub hip-hop to be way better in Stockholm than in NY. In NY, some parties still play some great hip-hop, but overall the more mainstream, trendy places play predictable, low-risk boring stuff. It’s usually only the latest and biggest hits, with some really played-out old school rap. A hip-hop party in NY usually plays the same 12 old-school hip-hop songs, unless you are checking out a backpack underground hip-hop party where someone like Stretch Armstrong is spinning. In Stockholm, the range of hip-hop music had a lot better range, from stuff you’d hear at an underground hip-hop party to the really good new mainstream club-bangers blended seamlessly together.

My favorite club there was F12, which wasn’t in the Stureplan area so I didn’t need to have booked a Paris runway show or sell my firstborn child and left testicle to get in, yet it was still stylish, plus the crowd was still beautiful but much more down to earth and the music was great.  You can see a picture of it below:

I heard an incredible house track get blended seamlessly into 50 Cent’s “I Get Money” immediately followed by the old school ultra-obscure gem “We Rap More Mellow” by the Younger Generation, which you can play below, and made it work:

My theory is that many of these European DJs learn hip-hop better than their NY counterparts and try harder to think about making a really deep and eclectic playlist out of an inferiority complex. Every hip-hop fan I met there kept telling me how I must be so disappointed by the DJs and hip-hop I hear in Sweden and how much more progressive and eclectic the hip-hop I hear in NY clubs must be. I didn’t have the heart to tell them the truth.  They try harder because they imagine things to be so much better than they actually are in places like NY, the so-called Mecca of hip-hop.

I made sure to befriend a ton of Swedish people, both guys and girls, so that I’d have people to take me out sightseeing or for early evening drinks in the following days. One of the first things you should do, and that I didn’t figure out until a few days in, is to get a prepaid phone or prepaid SIM card to put into your existing phone, so that you’ll have a local number to make calls on and text people you meet. Having people call you at your hotel is unreliable and it’s not a good idea to give people an international number to call you at since it will end up being expensive for both of you. Get a prepaid phone as soon as possible and give out the number to as many cool people as you can and make them your tour guides in the city. These people were also helpful because they filled me in on Swedish culture (that’s how I found out about Systembolaget) and got me on guest lists at the more exclusive clubs. This tip worked so well that I’d recommend it to people on all vacations. Get a local cell phone number to give out as soon as possible.

Even better is if you can befriend people who live in Stockholm but aren’t originally from there but are instead from a nearby city like Gothenburg or the “boonies.” These type of people are great because they will know Stockholm well and often be just as savvy as a Stockholm native, but way friendlier and down-to-earth, which is saying a lot because I already found Stockholm people to be nice, at least to tourists.

Thanks to people I met and kept in touch with, I was able to get into more exclusive clubs like Berns hotel and Village, both of which were packed to the gills with beautiful people, almost to the point you couldn’t move, and had great, GREAT music, with people drinking and dancing up a storm. And really, REALLY drinking. Everyone I was with, even the daintiest girls, were drinking faster and more than me and pushing me to keep up. In no time at all the party would be all tore up.

I think I realized another reason people drink so much when partying in Stockholm, which I’ll describe in the next section below.

Swedish men and women on the make:

A reader Helena asked me on a previous post, “Dude, you have female readers – what are the guys like physically? Is that 6ft+, blond Adonis stereotype that’s making me particularly eager about my upcoming tour of N.Europe true?” Well, yes and no. I expected to see a Viking stereotype in Sweden of huge, blond giants. The guys were not quite as tall as I expected (Amsterdam fit that look more actually). But they were as good-looking as rumored. So many people had incredibly chiseled features and great cheekbones. Lookswise many of them hit the genetic jackpot, and they all dress with a high level of Euro trendiness, like a Zara or H&M mannequin come to life. Great looks, well-tailored clothing, very metrosexual air about them…but they may take it too far for your tastes depending on what kind of woman you are. For example it’s not uncommon for guys to be so vain they wear men’s makeup. And I was told by some women that it’s trendy now for straight guys to make out with other guys while out drinking. A woman told me about her straight friend that would go out with her, get smashed, make out with a guy, and still swear he was straight afterward.

When I got my first taste of Stockholm nightlife, I was shocked at how shy Swedish men seemed. The women there were absolutely stunning, and the guys seemed to just stand in the corner with their friends, stare inappropriately and just drink without uttering a word or making a move. By 2 or 3 AM though, it would be a totally different story.

The guys would drink to get liquid courage and then turn into total sleazebags. It was like Jeckyll and Hyde. They’d come up behind girls, looking visibly drunk and dancing horribly, and start grinding and thrusting on their asses. I heard guys actually open a conversation slurring things like “Hey baby, wannaaaaa fuuuccckkk…” and other off-the-wall things. They’d drink to get courage, but overdo it and just get sloppy instead, and sloppiness combined with total lack of game is a disaster.

I also saw guys use pickup lines, but not to be ironic or funny, but dead serious, like “Is your daddy a thief? Because he took the stars from the sky and put them in your eyes.” Keep in mind, it wasn’t bad on purpose to be cheeky or get a laugh, it was said in total earnest. Some Stockholm women I met set it wasn’t uncommon for them to be horny, break down and give a Stockholm guy a chance, and bring him home only to realize he couldn’t even get it up because he drank himself into oblivion (another way the liquid courage thing can backfire). So even though many Swedish guys are great-looking, their horrible lack of game often outweighs any benefits their looks give them. A female tourist even said to me “I find these guys so good-looking but they never approach and when they do the conversation is so revolting.”

Something else this trip made me realize. Growing up, we black people used to always joke about white people and their inability to dance. Especially during the late 70s and early 80s whenever we saw them try to dance to old-school hip-hop music and the R&B of the era. But now that we have generations of white people who have grown up exposed to hip-hop or have been around it for multiple decades, I have to amend that statement: white MEN on average can’t dance. I saw Swedish women doing everything to hip-hop from two-stepping, booty shakes, grinding like a stripper on a pole, the works. I already noticed the phenomenon here in the States with white women, but now I’m convinced it’s international. Apparently enough exposure to hip-hop brings out the skanky dancer in any woman, regardless of race or culture. White guys on average however, except the exceptionally cool ones, still don’t get it. They either don’t dance, dance ironically for laughs, try to dance seriously and can visibly be seen to count steps in their mind while biting their lip hard thanks to the excessive concentration, or worse, drink a bunch to get enough nerve to dance and just end up really making asses of themselves once they lose both their inhibitions and their motor coordination at the same time. If I had to give some advice to white men worldwide, it’s this: learn a simple two-step rhythm. Just learning something so simple can go such a long way and fill up a huge gap in your game.

The people I met while partying would be the same people who I hung out with during the day, so I made several groups of friends that I’d hang out with throughout my time there. They were a great resource of information as they explained Stockholm interactions to me. Just like the Swedish men are reserved and need to drink up to get courage, the Swedish women are similar, except due to the fact that they’re beautiful women it doesn’t really exhibit itself as social awkwardness the way it does with men. But Swedes would tell me that it wasn’t uncommon for a Swedish woman to be drunk and touchy-feely at the bar or club, but she would likely be shy to meet up with you again sober in the daytime the next day. She’d instead most likely tell you were she was going to be that night, and you’d meet again at night and continue where you left out, with both of you drunk and uninhibited. Eventually it would move on to daytime dates. Despite how touchy they can be when drunk, they are a very hands off people when sober. They are not as comfortable touching strangers the way Americans are.

Stockholm men, according to women I spoke to, are very judgmental of a girl who approaches a man, or a girl they see making out with a guy or getting a phone number. It is very easy to get labeled a slut there, and supposedly guys will waste no time spreading bad things about a girl. One girl even told me how she hated this, because she’d think a guy would appreciate having the burden taken off him to approach women all the time, but alas, that isn’t that case. So despite the reputation for Swedish women being among the most progressive feminist women in the world, there is still a stigma about women approaching a man first there, unlike here in the States where women can publicly be as sexually aggressive and forthcoming as a drunken sailor on leave and still suffer little in terms of reputation.

So it seems that both genders there use drunkenness to unleash inhibitions and do things they normally wouldn’t feel comfortable doing even more than we Americans do. Since they are more inhibited when sober, they have to get more drunk to counteract it when they hang out. I could be wrong about this theory though. Two Swedish women also told me that Stockholm girls, when on vacation as tourists, suddenly become as aggressive as the Stockholm guys back home. They said it’s due to the fact they can’t be as aggressive back home for fear of ruining their reputations, and also because when abroad in America in places like New York they know they’re hotter than all the natives and it makes them go crazy. (They claimed in America only L.A. gave serious competition)

This aversion by Swedish guys to being approached by women wouldn’t be so bad if they themselves seemed to have a clue what they were doing when they approached women, but on average they were horrible. Not only would they do those cheesy pickup lines I mentioned above, they’d also do things like “How you doin’?” like Joey from Friends. And keep in mind, this is delivered totally straight, not the least bit tongue in cheek. Apparently even though Swedish people like speaking to each other in Swedish, when it comes to pickup lines and curses they think it sounds cooler to deliver them in English (it doesn’t).

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="201" caption="Some catchphrases don't translate abroad"][/caption]

And it only got worse from there. Some women asked me if I ever heard of The Game. I asked them why. Apparently the pickup culture is huge there. Huge. Neil Strauss’s book is a huge phenomenon there, but they follow it too literally. They just learn it like a script and run around doing opinion openers (a trick Neil Strauss used where a man starts an interaction by asking a female her opinion on some random topic). The women were laughing about how Stockholm men have been going crazy about the book and all using the exact same routines from it verbatim, asking opinion openers left and right. And now that Strauss’s next book is coming out soon over there, the women were worried about all the new bad routines they’d have to deal with soon. Even girls who didn’t specifically know about the book The Game felt something was up. For example, two non-Swedish European tourists asked me in a nightclub, “Why is everyone here asking our opinion about stuff?” I left a party with one guy to go to another party that was open until 5 at a club called Village. When we got there he asked me “Do you know a book called The Game?” Then he started talking about opinion openers, and how they just don’t work when said in Swedish. (I think the gist of what he was saying is that the Swedish language makes them even more long-winded than usual)

He also told me about his time in New York, and how he was surprised at how the people there, especially the guys, weren’t dressed anywhere near as well as he expected, and how the quality of women were disappointing. I told them that contrary to popular belief, while New York has some of the most stylish and beautiful people in the world due to sheer volume of population, per capita there wasn’t as much hotness and style as people I met in Europe seem to think. The average New Yorker, while maybe more stylish than a local yokel in smalltown America, was not a fashion plate.

Another thing that surprised him was how much muscle was valued in men in America. He said he hated American men and their muscles and how that made them a big deal with women in New York while he was there. (He was super-lean, like a top model) Apparently Stockholm women don’t like big muscles. One Stockholm woman told me they’re even afraid of big muscles. I met another Stockholm guy who had a great physique, and he told me he couldn’t get dates because of his muscles, to the point where he wanted to move because he loved working out and didn’t want to get super-skinny just to get girls. You can be slim with lean muscles, but mass is a no-no.

A girl told me that Stockholm guys watch what they eat more than the women and that it’s not unusual for them to starve themselves to stay skinny; they can be downright neurotic about it. I wonder if there’ll be a public campaign there about eating disorders for men the way there is here for women. That being said, as a man who is horribly obsessed with his own weight, I had to give them props on their incredible thinness. I was a little envious at their lack of body fat. I mean I’m considered a slim guy and I felt pretty fat there.

All is not lost though. There was a sizable minority of Stockholm guys with a strong cocky swagger, an alpha male vibe and good natural-seeming game. These guys were very smooth and laid-back and had great social skills. These guys were extremely cool and seemed to do really well in Stockholm. So don’t think the picture I painted above describes 100% of Stockholm men I met. The beauty of the bad game of a majority of Stockholm guys is that it gave a huge advantage to the minority of Stockholm guys (and tourists) who were smooth and had good game. Just being able to hold a conversation without being sober and intimidated or drunk and crass was huge to the women there.

Recommended Reading:

More stuff on Stockholm:

Drinking:

Liquor is extremely expensive there.H ard liquor drinks came out to about $20 USD a pop or more, beers came out to $10 USD. It’s not just a currency exchange thing either, I think even for Swedish people it’s not exactly cheap. If you’re American and are dealing with the shitty state of the US dollar, the problem is even worse.

My solution was to buy bunch of liquor for the hotel so that we could “pregame.” I’d spend all day walking around Stockholm sightseeing, expecting to spot a liquor store at some point and buy liquor then. I never saw one. By my third day, after two nights of spending a lot of money at bars and nightclubs, I asked someone, and he explained it to me. The government has a monopoly on the sale of alcohol, so you can only get it from the nonprofit, government-run liquor store Systembolaget. There are only a handful of them in the city. From Systembolaget’s own website, in their own words, this is their mission:

Having a monopoly is a good start. It means we can maintain a more comprehensive product range, more rigorous.

One reason only
The retail monopoly exists for one reason only: alcohol related problems are reduced if alcohol is sold in the absence of a profit motive. Our mandate obliges us to help limit the medical and social damage caused by alcohol and there by improve public health. Total alcohol consumption levels shall also be kept low by limiting availability by steering the retail outlet network and opening hours. Systembolaget also differs from other companies in that we are brand-neutral and do not engage in active marketing in an attempt to boost sales. Systembolaget also provides information on the risks associated with alcohol consumption.
Our responsibility
Systembolaget’s mandate is based on consideration for public health. Our goal is to establish a healthy drinking culture, whereby everyone can enjoy Systembolaget’s drinks without harming either themselves or other people. Systembolaget shall use its
expertise to inform customers both about the effects of the various drinks on people’s health and about their taste characteristics. Systembolaget shall inspire people to take an interest in what they drink and to adopt a healthy attitude towards alcohol.

Our mandate
Systembolaget’s mandate is to limit the medical and social damage caused by
alcohol and thereby improve public health. For Systembolaget, this means:
- restricting availability through
- the number of stores
- opening hours
- retail rules
- not attempting to maximise our profit
- not promoting additional sales
- being brand-neutral
- providing a high standard of customer service
- being financially efficient

Our vision
Systembolaget shall establish a healthy drinking culture, whereby we can enjoy
Systembolaget’s drinks without harming either ourselves or other people.

It sounds good, but I’m kind of skeptical on any law that exists to protect people from themselves. After finding out about this law, a lot of Swedish activity I noticed previously suddenly made sense to me. I remember reading about how during the Prohibition in America, public drunkenness was worse because people had to do most of all of their drinking at the public speakeasy. Drinking at home was difficult, and access to liquor was almost impossible except through illegal means, so when people went to the speakeasy they would hit the liquor hard because it was too difficult to drink any other time of the day or at any other places, then stumble home stinking drunk.

An anonymous commenter at a Swedish blog describes the situation as thus:

I don’t agree with Systemet one bit. For those living outside Sweden who think it’s a good idea try living with it before passing judgement.

Try living with the fact that if you decide at 5pm on Saturday to have guests over for dinner and wine that Systemet already closed at 3pm. Forget about buying anything on Sundays, Systemet is completely closed. Unlike in the US where liquor stores are typically closed on Sunday, usually wine or beer can be bought at grocery stores, convenience stores (ie 7-11), beer stores, and wine stores.

Oh, and want to try out that tequila you had in Mexico that was so good? Forget it. You have to choose between the two or three that Systemet imports (and Systemet imports the most vile crap I’ve ever tasted). Getting anything special has so much red tape that people just avoid it.

What about that draught beer machine you saw in Denmark that’s also available in the rest of the EU? Forget it. Unless Systemet has approved it you can’t buy it here, and the company who makes it will refuse to ship it to Sweden (and any beer that’s made for it).

Since you’re from the US here’s an example of where this breaks down? You know all of those very good wines from California and Washington State? Unless it’s a huge wine company (ie Gallo) you won’t find them here, and when you do you have to pay a lot more than usual for mediocre wine.

Government involvement and regulation is perfectly fine with me, but Systemet is not the correct answer. The correct answer is to license individual stores/outlets for the sale of alcohol (this includes online). Don’t decide what is imported nationwide, let the individual businesses decide based on their clients. If the business is located outside of Sweden but still within the EU then the sale should be governed by EU law, not Swedish law.

While the Systembolaget monopoly is not the same as an all out prohibition, it does really restrict how and when you can get drunk, which is why I think when people in Stockholm get a chance to drink at a bar, restaurant and nightclub, they are really overboard with it. At a party here, you see at the end of the night people who are drunk off their ass, people who are just moderately drunk, people who are just tipsy, and people who are sober. In Sweden almost everyone at the end of the night was seriously wasted. And since very few people drive to parties, there’s no need to worry about designated drivers.

So I’m not really sure how this monopoly goes toward promoting safe drinking. Maybe Sweden was just that much worse before the monopoly, and what I’m seeing is the improvement, but currently they are still some hard drinking motherfuckers. Even the classiest, ritziest looking people were drinking until sloppy drunk. I remember partying at the Berns hotel (ridiculously awesome spot, if you can get in. Highly recommended.), and when it hit 3 AM, watching the partygoers try to navigate themselves down the stairs at once. It was comical to see hundreds of people who drank themselves into oblivion try to all walk down a narrow outdoor staircase at once when they’re unable to even walk a straight line.

The public drunkenness is outrageous. Walking back to my hotel, I’d just see people straggling drunk in the street all over the place. A block from my hotel as the sun was rising I had to step over two decked out girls laying on their backs laughing and screaming hysterically, unable to even stand up and walk. They just laid on their backs, cackled, and screamed at the sky, then made a futile effort to stand up before falling back and cackling all over again. Apparently no one is afraid of getting raped there.

My recommendation would be to get as much liquor as allowed from duty-free at the airport before getting to your hotel, and after arriving, map out the Systembolagets in town, find the closest one to you and re-up there periodically, so that you don’t have to depend strictly on the bars and nightclubs to get drunk.

Part 3 about Swedish partying and Swedish men will be up in a few hours

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I’ve been putting off this post for a while because there was just so much to cover. My plan was to wait until I had enough time to write a long post about the whole trip, but because such an opportunity appears to be nowhere in sight, my new plan is to just break it up into multiple posts. My trip was in three phases: Stockholm for three days, Amsterdam for four, then back to Stockholm for another four days.

Keep in mind that these generalizations are based only on 7 days of exposure, so I’m sure there are plenty of flaws based on snap judgments, but I think overall many of the generalities can withstand scrutiny. But for people with more experience on Sweden, feel free to jump into the comments section to correct me or expand on my points.

I’m woefully untraveled. My flight to Europe was the longest trip I’ve ever taken by air. I left NY with a three hour layover in Finland. Then flew into Stockholm.

I was drained from the flight and immediately took a nap on arriving. As soon as I woke up, I hopped on my laptop, looked at my list of cool places to eat and drink and party and figured out how to get to those places using Google Maps. I walked from my hotel to the obnoxiously rich and hip Stureplan area and ate at East restaurant. This was the moment where I discovered exactly how weak the US dollar currently is and how expensive Stockholm is, as a single roll of sushi and a beer cost me $50. Once I properly figured out the conversion rate and was mortified, I realized I’d have to be careful or I’d end up overspending by a huge amount on this trip.

When I first arrived at the Stureplan area, I was taken aback at how beautiful the women were. Even the average girl working in a 7-11 convenience store looks like a model. No homo, but I have to admit that even the guys are really good-looking. They’re just a very beautiful people. You just can’t help but notice it. I’d love to figure out why this particular country has hit the genetic jackpot the way it has, but right now I have no clue. While the tall, blonde stereotype is a myth (there are a lot of bleached blonds, but the population of Stockholm was not particularly tall, I’d say Amsterdam fit that tall, blond stereotype more than Sweden), the beautiful women stereotype is not exaggerated in the least. I think I saw a total of two fat chicks in my whole time there, and I’m sure they were probably tourists or transplants or had some kind of thyroid issue.

The interesting thing about the sheer volume of beauty is that it really reminds you how relative beauty is, and how the human mind can adapt to and get bored by anything. First off, if I was a woman in Stockholm and I was a 6 or 7, I would either immediately move or kill myself. By my third day there a 7 would be more likely to make me do a double take than a 10. After being immersed in Stockholm for three days, my mind adjusted to the new beauty standard surrounding me. I reached a point where an average girl got my attention more quickly than a beautiful one because they were such an anomaly. The thought that popped in my mind when I saw an average women there was “Wow, I actually forgot they made women like you.”

Even as a tourist, I still observe and process everything in terms of how it relates to human nature, so in Stockholm I couldn’t help but notice certain things in how people interacted with each other there. I think people are somewhat numb to beauty there, which works in the favor of men in some interesting ways. Allow me to illustrate by going on a slight detour in my narrative. Be patient, I’ll tie it back into my original point by the end of this post.

At the hottest clubs in Sweden there is a strict guestlist policy, similar to what NY used to have. Currently in NY, the exclusivity of nightclubs have been ruined by the bottle service epidemic, which has replaced the old guestlist and tastemaker standard that used to get you entry:

Bottle Service has become the standard (and I don?t mean that overrated Andre Balazs hotel in Los Angeles either) for most high-end clubs all across the bubble. It has been popular in Miami and NYC for at least ten years, but my sources tell me it is currently popular in many C-grade cities and they even offer it in many D-grade cities as well. The advantages are still there, primarily, Bottle Service allows a group of Investment Bankers, Hedge fund guys, commercial real estate jerkoffs, or any type of weesh 9 to 5 guys the ability to enter a club with out too much hassle. But there are many problems that Bottle Service brings to nightclubs in general and nightlife in particular. There are also a few more reasons why I am not a big fan of Bottle Service.The Crowd Bottle Service Brings

In the 2000′s we have seen a corporatization of nightclubs. Now when you go to a nighclub everyone is some kind of corporate jerkoff. Interesting people are no longer found in Nightclubs. The artists, writers, intellectuals, underground DJ’s etc have been effectively priced out of the nightclub with bottle service. The only people that can afford it are the Investment bankers, real estate types, and Celebs (and of course, underworld figures). That is why when you walk into a club you see so many striped shirts that you think you are seeing some kind of 3-D optical illusion. The funny thing is that these are the type of guys who would have never gotten into a club in the old days (nights) when you were picked out because of how you looked, dressed, if you had connections, or by reputation. So today, clubs are full of people that normally would have been standing in line in nights gone by.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are shades of this bottle service epidemic in Stockholm, but it does not dominate the scene quite like it does in America’s big cities. Unlike New York City, true exclusivity is still practiced in Stockholm, and not just exclusivity in terms of your wallet like in NY.

But as I was saying about beauty and how people in Stockholm seem numb to it, in NY getting into a club is not just judged on how much money you’re willing to spend in the form of bottle purchasing, but also on the standard of beautiful women, as in are you a beautiful women or at least in the company of a ton of beautiful women? Actually, just being a woman in general is enough here, regardless of beauty. If she’s beautiful that’s just a bonus. This makes the nightclubs in NY horrible because the tone is set early that women are set up on even more of a pedestal than usual, and that pedestal only gets higher if the woman is beautiful. Plus you’re surrounded by simps with bottle service incessantly trying to bribe these beautiful women with free liquor to pay attention to them, which just elevates their egos even further, makes them more unattainable and unwittingly makes the social situation worse for all the men there, including themselves.

This creates a Prisoner’s Dilemma situation in top nightclubs in NY. In game theory scenarios, prisoner’s dilemma problems are those where it’s in the best interest for a group of people with a common goal to cooperate. But since there is no guarantee of getting everyone in a group with a common goal to cooperate, people start defecting. Once one person defects, everything starts unraveling as each remaining player is forced to make a choice: if I stick to my sound, rational principles as everyone else around me is acting illogically and defecting, I guarantee myself a loss, whereas if I also act irrationally and defect, I’ll sell out my principles and pride and contribute to the overall shittiness of the situation, but at least I have the possibility of salvaging some type of victory.

The current nightclub situation in NY creates a variant of this which I call the Simp’s Dilemma. A guy with decent game may want to stick to his principles regarding social interaction and not behave like a simp (running around and giving women free liquor, boosting their egos needlessly, all the while lowering his own value). He may have a much superior social strategy of laying back and relaxing, acting smooth and aloof, confidently presenting himself as a prize, and not lowering your value by displaying any neediness through bragging for attention or bribing for affection. But the problem is, these superior social strategies only work if a decent amount of other guys in the social setting are behaving similarly. This is just like in the classic snitching scenario of prisoner’s dilemma, where not snitching only works if everyone else doesn’t snitch either. One you know someone else may snitch, your only option to salvage any semblance of a victory is to snitch first and at that point it becomes a race to the bottom to see who can lose the least.

In the Simp’s Dilemma, the fact that you are surrounded by desperate guys showing off in flashy ways, boosting girls’ egos with desperate behavior and monopolizing their time by keeping them at their tables and drowning them in free booze, you are now faced with the choice of sticking to your guns and getting a guaranteed loss since it’s hard for your game to cut through all that simping, or join in playing the simp game to a degree, which might get you to hook up with a woman but lower your value and self-respect in the process. This means that you now lose even if you win because although you’ve managed to meet a woman and salvage a phone number or date, every step of the process will be excruciating because you’ve started off the dynamic by establishing yourself as a trick from the very start (A trick is a desperate, needy guy that needs to spend his hard-earned money to buy affection and attention from women). And also, the mere fact that you’re in a place so full of simps and tricks often makes people assume you to be a simp by association before you even open your mouth, simply because that is the default mode of a vast majority of men present.

Here’s a simpler analogy of Simp’s Dilemma: imagine an auction item that you want, but are determined to get a good deal on and buy on your terms. Now picture the moment the item comes up for bidding, a bunch of desperate yahoos start bidding furiously on it and driving the price up. Your original strategy of playing it cool, even though it was sound, is now useless, because it only works if others do the same. Now your choices are to give up on getting the item or acting more like the desperate bidders, which may get you the item, but on really shitty terms, which will make you feel like a sap even if you win and ruin your enjoyment of said item, since you lowered your dignity to get it and overpaid for it horribly.

Now some people think that the Simp’s Dilemma works to the benefit of NY women, but even they are losers in the end, because while they get the short term benefit of free drinks and fawning, ego boosting attention, in the long run they end up just meeting a bunch of supplicating men they can easily dominate that offer no challenge. This is why I hear women here constantly complain of the lameness of their dating options in NY. Women like the existence of these guys to subsidize their liquor intake and boost egos, but not as their main pool of dating options.

In Stockholm however, I saw large groups of model-caliber women routinely getting turned away by bouncers for not being on the guestlist. Women that could have easily waltzed into any club in NY, no matter how exclusive, based on sheer hotness, were routinely shot down by bouncers who didn’t even look at them twice. Beauty in a woman does not seem to equal automatic worship in Stockholm. This is the opposite of NY, where simply having a vagina regardless of beauty leads to worship, and a woman can be overweight and a homely 6 yet still have an attitude like she just booked the cover of Vogue magazine.

Also, in NY, I can often use some gift of gab to get into a club, especially if I’m all by my lonesome. And if worse comes to worse, bribing is also an option. Or I can pretend I’m going to buy a bottle and conveniently disappear after getting escorted in if I really want to get devious. In Stockholm, though, I’d sometimes get turned away from hot clubs despite trying everything. I’d bring up that I was by myself, I’d mention I was from NY, I’d dress to the nines, none of it worked. But even more interesting, even bribes didn’t work, which really shocked me. They would be adamant about the guestlist policy. I’ve heard both sides of the guestlist argument from Swedes; some would say that the guestlist is real, others would say that the guestlist was a fabrication used to keep undesirables and the uncool out. I’d say based on my time there that it’s a combination of the two. But the guestlist does truly exist to a degree because I did see some people who got turned away come back with the proper guestlist name and gain entry just minutes later. It’s definitely not a total fabrication as some people claimed.

So basically, compared to NY, there is a lot less simping going on in Stockholm. Women are beautiful but way more down to earth in terms of egos, making them way more approachable. And you don’t have a bunch of bottle service simps approaching women constantly while displaying low value and desperation and boosting their egos by buying them drinks. Well, it happens but not to the same degree and the dynamic is slightly different, as I’ll explain in part 2. Sadly, all these factors don’t help Swedish guys all that much because despite this ideal scenario, this perfect storm of social conditions, they really have on average no game at all. Zero. This also I’ll get into tomorrow.

The Stureplan area gets badmouthed by many Swedes for being excessively shallow and money-obsessed, and I can see their point, especially when compared to the more down-to-earth bohemian places you find in southern Stockholm, but because I come from New York City where the situation is much, much worse thanks to bottle service and excessive beautiful woman worship, I found it be a breath of fresh air in comparison. If you want to get an idea of what a Stureplan crowd looks like, you can check out this photo gallery here. Unlike the club photo gallery you find on a NY club website where they find a dozen or so hot women and take repeated pictures of them to create the illusion that they represent the caliber of the average woman in attendance at the club, the pictures in the gallery I linked to really do represent the caliber of the average women you can expect to see in a Stureplan club.

Once I got the hang of Stockholm, I started making friends left and right, and I started getting into places either with their connections or by just showing up to places extra early while they were still dead and the bouncers weren’t being very exclusive yet and just waiting for them to fill up. Places I went to included Sturecompagniet, Spy Bar, Hell’s Kitchen, F12, Village, Berns Hotel, East Restaurant, Sturehof Bar and some other places I don’t remember the names of.

I’ll follow up tomorrow with more insights about social interactions, how Swedish men behave and how Swedish people party in general. After that I’ll get into the class warfare in Stockholm between various sections (very big deal there), liquor availability and the difficulty in assessing and penetrating Swedish culture. I really found the country to be fascinating in its social dynamics.

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This piece from The Onion is pretty old (1999), but it’s a classic. Click the blurb below to read it: