Swedes have seriously kick-ass coffee and not-super-sweet baked goods that they usually enjoy during fika. Work stops for fika (at my husband's office, they fika 2x a day - once in the morning and once in the afternoon. I'm thinking this is about average for a Swedish firm?). You fika with your friends in the home. You can fika in the garden. You can fika in public places too. You can take fika in the forest. My son's preschool class, although they are too young for coffee take fika when they go out into the forest for "uteförmiddgar" (literally: outside mornings). For children of his age, it entails sitting down in a forest clearing and eating sandwiches, buns and drinking milk or juice. The word is an important one to know if you come to Sweden because you will probably be invited to fika at some point.
I think it's a nice practice. When I worked in La Paz, Bolivia, my workplace had a late afternoon equivalent of fika called "tecito" (translation: a little tea) during which we drank tea and ate Bolivian pastries.
As a person who had been working in some pretty intense NYC work environments, I thought it was great and it gave me a chance to get to know my co-workers better in a more relaxed setting. This casual setting also gave me a chance to significantly improve my Spanish and my Swedish (I have worked in Sweden too) language skills.
Some fire-breathing American live-to-work folks might find this practice during the work-day wasteful. Then again, those sort of Americans are exactly the sorts of folks that really don't need any of the caffeine from fabulously strong Swedish coffee or the sugar from the baked goods!
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| This is a fairly typical "fika bord" (fika table). Drat that I couldn't find an image with kanelbullar (cinnamon buns YUM) |
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