The enemy.

- "I could never live in New York", he says.

We are at a Zurich restaurant with my girl friend, her collegue and her partner.
- "It's too chaotic, you can't trust people, and people never show up in time. You have to fight all the time."

I've heard this criticism before, from Swedes going abroad basically anywhere.
- "I kind of like that", I say hesitantly, as I realize it needs a deeper explanation.

- "You like the fight?", he says almost accusingly.

- "Not the fight, I like that everything isn't settled. I know it's a jungle, it's a lot more fluid.", I realize that this goes down to the very root of why I don't want to live in small town Europe. Why my parents never liked living in Sweden and why they always wanted to move back.

-"You will see, if you move there", he says very sure that someone who grew up in Scandinavia could never like it in New York.

I've been in New York for almost 4 months, I guess it would be very different if we ever moved there. I would miss my friends of course, lately I've been very dismissive of Sweden and Europe, a bit unfairly I must admit. But the passing away of my parents changed something very fundamental inside me. Suddenly it all became clear to me, why they never felt at home in Sweden, why they always wished they had gone back to India, which I never understood back then.

In Europe you never trust the outsiders, it's nothing racial or malicious. It's just the mentality of isolated societies. America is just the least isolated of them all, and we happened to be immigrants.