These keep getting longer, but Carl was much too interesting for me to cut our conversation much. I’ve now covered Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Australia, South Asia, the Middle East (on hold), and Ghana (coming soon!). South America seems like the next step. Or maybe Texas.

http://tyglobalist.org/onlinecontent/blogs/carl-sandberg-14-uppsala-sweden/

Excerpt:

There are meatballs on the menu the night I sit down with Carl, but they are more than one inch in diameter and not served with lingonberry jam, and thus do not count as Swedish meatballs.

But that’s okay. Carl is Swedish enough to satisfy the rigorous VG requirements even without brown sauce or pickled cucumbers. (I’ve been craving meatballs since I began writing this blog post.) As my classmate in a course that integrated politics, economics, and philosophy, he could be relied upon to bring the Swedish perspective into any debate.

Fun fact: Sweden’s most notable philosopher, Emanuel Swedenborg, not only has Sweden in his name, but is known for claiming he’d entered the spirit world with God’s permission, starting a new branch of Christianity, and influencing such luminaries as Kant, Goethe, Borges, and Helen Keller. Johnny Appleseed—who was a real person, it turns out—was also a Swedenborgian missionary.