In the mid-90s I temporarily lived for three months in Bagarmossen.

It was a ground-floor one-room apartment with a Stockholm shower near the subway. Every time the trains stopped, the screams of the brakes could be heard traveling up from the underground. You had to get used to it.

Bagarmossen seemed to me to be a kind of parody, a cross-section, of the worst of Sweden. A glance across the square usually gave the following scenario: The hollow-eyed people slowly strolled by with their comically ugly, but always newly purchased, clothes. Extra prices and offers from Vivo. A kiosk signs with the only hope left of squeezing a big win from other people's lost deposits.

It was the "Sweden" of Bingo-Lotto-Ullared-MTV-kiosk-literature.

Horrible, but a dream to reach today.