Left-Hand Traffic, Kids Toys and the Master Race

I recently had the joys of attending a kids theatre puppet performance of "Bu och Bä", two Swedish sheep that the kids just love. It was actually a late birthday present from my Girlfriend to me. We have a soft spot for "Bu och Bä", not only did I read them when at the very beginning of my Swedish education but we have been slowly supplying them to my Girlfriend's niece who has taken to them like the proverbial duck to water.

Now, the performance took part in the Teater Bambino, which is actually connected to a toy museum of sorts, which is also connected to the Spårvagnsmuséet, basically the Swedish transport museum. So two museums and a kid's show all for the price of one. Bargain.

In typical Swedish fashion we had to remove our shoes before entering the theatre, which was a first for me, but the performance itself was most enjoyable. Lots of sheep japes and songs and some poor kid who managed to get freaked out after approximately thirty seconds and left, never to be seen again. Once we'd retrieved our shoes afterwards it was time to hit the Toy Museum.

Now, as someone who grew up playing with Lego, especially Space Lego and then Technical Lego, and Star Wars figures, if a toy museum tries to have somewhat contemporary toys and fails to have any of my favourites then it has failed. This museum failed. OK, some bits were "interesting", but only in that "its Sunday afternoon, what else am I going to be doing anyway?" sort of style.

The best was saved, however, for the transport museum section. Yes, there was the usual selection of old and decrepit trains which seemed to maintain a strange hold over me even though none of them were really culturally relevant to me - they'd all been taken out of service before I moved here in late 1999. What amazed me was, well, a lack of shall we say "cultural sensitivity".

At some point in the twentieth century the good chaps in charge of Stockholm's public transport decided to call themselves "Stockholms Spårvagnstraffik". Then some bright spark decided that they should shorten this to the much snappier "SS". Now fast forward a few years until the mid-fifties, a decade after the Nazis had ravaged and slaughtered so many innocent people across Europe, much of it under the watchful gaze of the Schutzstaffel, the dreaded "SS".

DIDN'T IT CROSS ANYONE'S MIND THAT MAYBE A REBRANDING OF STOCKHOLM'S SS MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA? Seriously, it beggars belief that years after the Second World War there were still trains in Europe branded like this:

Apologies for the return of the crappy cameraphone pictures. Much like my experience in the toilets of a local school, I hadn't been expecting to take any photos that day. It was only when I got to Teater Bambino that I found out the Theatre/Museum arrangements.

But still, I just can't understand why things didn't get changed? Is it because Sweden "got off lightly" in World War 2? The same reason as to why Sweden felt the need to supply at no cost a handy handbook to the War, snappily titled "... om detta må ni berätta ..." just in case people forget what happened. Possibly because Sweden is just about the only country in Europe where people possibly could forget what had happened.

Image from www.levandehistoria.org

Even now, sixty years on, the idea of calling something "SS" would be ripped apart in my native United Kingdom. Hell, even for logistical reasons, when you want someone to put your company's name into google you don't want to get thousands of sites discussing the mass murder of Jews and other minorities in one of the most disgraceful acts in Europe for centuries, if not ever. Yet at the museum right now they have a collection of photos from the fifties, the decade during which the Tunnelbana was born and hence required new trains to have "SS" painted on them, and you can clearly see "SS" on the trains as if it is the most normal thing in the world. Trains like this one:

Perhaps I am being overly sensitive. I don't know. Let's just say that I find it MIGHTY STRANGE and then we can leave it at that.

One final thing I did enjoy seeing was a tram with a sign on the back telling people to vote "no" for the move from left-lane traffic to right-lane, in other words from the correct, cultured. sophisticated method to that of the scum of modern society. Apparently they voted "no" and the Government still pushed through the changes anyway a decade later. I think there's a lesson in there for all of us.

M Panda