Welcome back to the Europeans, a podcast that talks about the continent of Europe in all of its glorious and messy diversity.

On which note, it seems that this week the internet discovered the custom in Sweden and other Nordic countries of announcing to your guests like,

okay, we're going to eat now, but the guest isn't actually invited to the meal, even though they're at your

house. And they either get sent to another room while everyone else eats, or they get made to watch

at the table while you and your family eat. Like the guest doesn't get any food.

Well, my first question is, is this actually true?

Whenever I see these things on the internet, I always think, is this just something that used

to happen?

Does it still really happen?

Well, there was a lot of debate about the extent to which this does still get practiced.

Even though a lot of Swedes of our age do seem to have experienced it at some

points in their lives, including the Swedish pop star, Zara Larson.

Well, if it's happened to Zara Larson, then I totally believe it. Okay, I'm convinced it sounds

very odd. Am I going to alienate all our Swedish listeners now? I hope not, because we did

ask last week all of our listeners to tell their

Swedish friends to listen to their podcast. So hopefully there are loads of Swedes listening to this.

And I'd love to hear from them about their experiences of food and hospitality. But my favorite

tweet about this was captioned on my way to my Swedish friend's house. And it was a photo of a woman

wearing a jacket made of

Ziploc bags that were filled with sandwiches so that she didn't have to go hungry. It was very

funny. Anyway, leaving aside the question of whether people feed their guests or not, have you been,

Dominic? Oh, I'm fine. I'm just a big ball of snot at the moment, so probably the less

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