Turks, Vikings and POTUS

“Oh! You mean Switzerland!” he replied with full confidence.

I had no words to say to him after that. That was it. This was the ultimate level of the famous confusion that’s been haunting me all my life right there.

It was 2012. I was living in Stockholm back then. Me and my best friend travelled to Amsterdam to watch the football game between Netherlands and Turkey for the World Cup Qualifiers. On the matchday, we were on the train towards Amsterdam Arena. It was full of people with orange, red and white jerseys. Turkey and Netherlands fans all together, everyone was excited to be there to see the game in a potentially full (by the look of the crowd on the train) stadium.

As you do (or don’t) know, Turkish people are everywhere. Wherever you go in the world, you’ll find a fellow Turkish living there for sure. History proves that Turks were nomads and they liked to move and migrate a lot. I think they still do, in a different way and for different reasons. Well, I’m a an example myself, living an expat life in my third foreign country in the last 16 years.

Although it’s not a miracle to bump into Turkish people abroad, whenever that happens to us, we always tend to get excited for some reason. “Did you hear them? They speak Turkish. They are Turkish” you whisper to each other. In a moment like that, a group of three Turkish fans spotted us from across. They looked at us like “Those guys are Turkish, but we’ve never seen them before. Probably they came from somewhere else”.

Because that’s the thing. If you live abroad and you are Turkish, you tend to hang out together all the time, and you know almost everyone in that community. (If you are Turkish and reading this, you know exactly what I mean.)

“Hey guys! Where did you come from?” asked one of them in Turkish without hesitation. Me and my friend looked at each other and I answered “We? We came from Sweden this morning. For the match.”

Like his first question, without any sign of hesitation or question mark in his head, he responded immediately: “Nice! From Zurich?”.

In order to increase his chances to guess where we came from, he just picked the most popular and crowded city in that country, which he thought was the correct one in his head. Well, it wasn’t. Because he thought about the wrong country. He fell into the trap that most people have fallen at least once in their lives.

“No, not Zurich.” I said with a cheeky smirk on my face. I didn’t want to be rude and correct him. I just skipped that part and answered him with a cynical tone “We came from Stockholm”.

And right there at that moment, his response was the final nail on the coffin: “Oh! You mean Switzerland!”, he replied and corrected (!) me instead with full confidence.

After hearing his answer, I started to question myself. “Was I the one who was wrong, could it be possible that I confused those two countries?”, I asked in my head. For a millisecond, I forgot where I came from, where I was living my life for the past 4 years: Sweden! Of course I wasn’t wrong! But that guy was having the ultimate confusion, and ironically, he was 100% sure that he was right.

Fun fact: Did you know that each year, 120,000 people search on Google to see whether Sweden and Switzerland are the same country? I was shocked when I found that out. Because I always thought this was something special to my people and my language.

Searching about this topic (yes, I have some time in my hands these days), I came across the news where US President Joe Biden mixed up Sweden and Switzerland on one of his speeches recently. Funnier than that, Sweden actually responded to that on their official website for tourism with this hilarious video. They must be really fed up!

There it was! There was an official announcement directly from the “Vikings”, explaining the difference between Sweden and Switzerland to all the nations in the world, including Turks, even to POTUS (especially to him)! “Finally no one would ever confuse those two countries again after this informative video” I thought to myself.

Not a chance! I’m 100% sure Sweden and Switzerland will always be mixed up, not only in my country and by my people. Everywhere in the world! And this topic will never stop catching my interest (maybe I’ll even write a short story about it. Wait! I think I just did!). There will always be a selective perception process going on in my head since Turkish and Swiss cultures have a very special place and a big influence in my life.

P.S.: If you just read the story and saw nothing wrong in that last sentence, it means that you are still confused and Sweden’s informative video didn’t really work on you.