关注【璐璐的英文小酒馆】+小助手【luluxjg2】获取全文稿 Hi, everyone and welcome to our Christmas Special. 欢迎来到酒馆的【圣诞特辑】. Now you probably notice that usually with these seasonal specials, I would be the only one doing the recording. But today, we're going to connect with 安澜. And as some of you probably already know, 安澜went back for the holiday, finally. So hi, 安澜. Hi, Lulu, hi, everyone. So finally back with your family. Yes, after 3 years, I'm finally back in the UK with my family. And tell us how do you feel? Sure excited. Very excited. To be honest it's a bit strange being back in the UK after such a long period of time, and obviously there's lots of changes in those 3 years which don't need to mention. But I'm really really excited, spending my time with my family and my friends and also getting ready for Christmas. You must really feel like the festive mood in London, right? Because I mean in China it’s not really a thing. Yeah, absolutely, all the decorations are up, all the shops now are quite busy with people doing their last minute Christmas shopping. It's really festive. We've done Christmas episodes before, so I’m quite curious as in what do you want to talk about today? Today I thought what we could do, we could talk about one of the main figures for Christmas and that is, of course, Father Christmas. Father Christmas? You mean Santa Claus? No, Santa Claus is in America. Father Christmas is what we traditionally call. 所以你们的圣诞老人叫 Father Christmas. That's pretty cute. And either way, it's the same person. Pretty much. They come from different routes, but generally the idea of a Father Christmas or a seasonal gift giver comes from Saint Nicholas. Yes, I've heard of Saint Nicholas, so sometimes people would nickname him, Saint Nick. Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of children. Patron saint其实就是有点像守护神的这种感觉. 孩子的守护神, that's why he brings the gifts. Yep. The original story is that Saint Nicholas was a bishop in modern day Turkey, and he would secretly deliver bags of gold so that poor girls could have a dowry and get married. Dowry 是嫁妆, so the gifts weren't gifts. They were just literally bags of gold. They were just bags of gold, and back then there were no chimneys so he used to through the window. I would like to be waiting for Christmas by the window and just have some strange man chuck bags of gold at me. I know it's a bit strange. And to be honest, the original story a lot of people have forgotten. There is one tradition that we still observe. People really generally forget where it comes from. At Christmas time it can be traditional to give gold chocolate coins to children. 那种巧克力金币. That was from the tradition when Saint Nicholas used to actually give bags of gold. Yeah. I see. And Saint Nicholas, how did saint Nicholas become Santa Claus? Basically it was through the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, they celebrate Saint Nicholas's day, which is in early December, but they call him Santa Claus. And obviously if you know history, a lot of American tradition was actually affected…was originally from the Netherlands. You think that New York was originally called New Amsterdam. True. 对, 美国它有很多风俗是最开始是从荷兰这边过去的, so now they call it Santa Claus. Yes. But getting back to Father Christmas, there's always been a figure associated with Christmas all the way back to the 17th century when actually he was banned. For what? I thought Father Christmas was harmless and it's not even religious. He just brought gifts and toys. That's precisely why it was banned. In the 17th century we had the puritans and they actually banned Christmas because they said it was nothing to do with religion. It was just a pagan holiday. It was just an excuse for people to have fun.

关注公众号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】来获取更多拓展内容和全文逐字稿, 如果你喜欢【新词特饮】这个节目, 不要忘记关注主播来听听我们其他的精彩专辑。 So as a consumer, do you think you have experienced trading down？ In today's Buzzword Mix, our buzzword is Trading Down. Having been through 3 years of the pandemic, I think most of us have experienced or are still experiencing some degree of financial struggles, since pay cuts and job losses have pretty much been the norm since the outbreak. 三年大疫, 再加上经济下行等等大环境的影响, 其实全世界人民的日子都过得紧巴巴的。国内从前几年开始就已经有人提到了消费降级, 其实这个概念并不是中国特有。 In today's buzzword, let's talk about this concept in English, trading down. Trading down or down trading refers to the practice of switching from expensive products or brands to cheaper alternatives in a bid to conserve cash. Trading down或者down trading指的就是消费者为了节约花销, 从expensive products and brands转向cheaper alternatives, 更便宜的替代品，这不是消费降级, 又是什么呢？ As people are struggling with their personal finances, everyone's focused on maintaining a tight leash on expenses and cutting down on discretionary spending. 在大家钱包吃紧的情况下, 很多人都会选择从discretionary spending非必要消费这个方面首先进行down trading, 消费降级。 Down trading or trading down in this sense is a tool that consumers can use to shield their finances. As consumers turn price-sensitive, bells and whistles no longer appeal. 这就意味着当广大的消费者都变得更加price-sensitive, 对价格更加敏感, 这个时候那些花里胡哨的功能、新款就没有什么太大的吸引力了。 Products which meet the basic requirements are preferred over those that are perceived to be value-adding. 与其弄上一大堆增值的玩意儿, 不如就是基本款更受欢迎。 And when consumers downgrade, they are more likely to scout for value-for-money goods. And this is true whether for small-ticket consumption items or if they're buying bigger items like cars or durable goods. 不管是在卖日常用品, 还是到大件的, 比如说电器甚至汽车, 大家都会更关注 value-for-money 性价比. Now you probably have read a lot of articles talking about the situation in China, but what about the situation in other parts of the world？ According to McKinsey’s latest European Consumer Pulse Survey, carried out from September to October this year, they have surveyed the views of respondents in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK, and they have observed the following trends among consumers. 根据九、十月份麦肯锡做的一个关于欧洲消费者调研里的数据, there are a few key findings, and you can check if as a Chinese consumer, you feel exactly the same. Number one, most people are concerned about rising prices. 大部分的人都对于物价的不断上涨表示担忧。For 58% of European consumers, increasing prices are their no.1 worry. Number two, economic confidence has dipped. 因为各种内外部的因素, 消费者普遍对于经济形势信心下滑, this is much worse than even the first 2 years of Covid, consumer pessimism is higher with 43% of people expressing doubt about economic recovery.

Hi everyone. Welcome back to Happy Hour, 欢迎回来酒馆. I'm sure a lot of you know that we have released a new course a while ago- The Bluffer's Guide to Shakespeare【莎士比亚扫盲班】. 我知道有很多听我们节目的小伙伴已经买了这个专辑, 而且有人已经听完了, 还觉得意犹未尽, 还问我们有没有下一季, 这个可能就是一季的事了. So I thought today I invite my co-developer 安澜 and we can get a little bit more into personal life of Shakespeare. Hi, 安澜. Hi Lulu, hi everyone. You know we spend all this time telling the stories from Shakespearean plays, one thing that I feel a little bit regretful is that we weren't gossipy enough. Yes. To be honest, there's a lot we can gossip about, particularly when it comes to Shakespeare. But before we start gossiping, it's important to note that a lot of Shakespeare's life is very uncertain. Still enigmatic. There are still a few kind of mysteries around Shakespeare. One of the biggest mysteries is his loves. His loves? His loves, plural. He's love interests. His…那些风流往事. Exactly. And a question that many scholars are asking nowadays was Shakespeare actually gay? Okay. We're going to answer that question, well, we're going to try to talk about that in today's show. Mhm. But either way we are going to explore the private and personal love lives of Shakespeare. Yes. I mean, you would imagine that he hadn't somewhat of a colorful love life or at least love interest because he was able to create all those really 狗血 stories. Pretty much. The thing that we are certain about is that Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, he was only 18 and she was 26. That we talked about in our episodes. 我们在专辑里面和专辑发刊词里面都说了, 他娶了Anne Hathaway, 安妮·海瑟薇, 跟现在女明星的名字是一样的, 他们跟Anne Hathaway取的. Yeah. 而且是姐弟恋, she was 26. He was only18. Yes, so even back then, that was seen as quite an age gap, I would say. Quite unusual. Quite unusual. And also the wedding apparently was very rushed as according to the records she gave birth to their daughter 6 months later. 还是奉子成婚. Probably, but again, we're not one hundred percent sure. However, the one thing that we do know about is Shakespeare was probably an absentee father and husband. They lived in Stratford while Shakespeare spend his time in London. Remind me how far away is Stratford? It's quite far. It is, mile-wise I'm not too sure, but nowadays it probably takes 2 hours by car. So back then it must have taken a lot longer. Back then probably a whole day trip. A day or even 2 days. So basically they were kind of like not separated in that way, but in the actual fact they were separated, 也是属于长期分居的这种状态, 就是丧偶式育儿Anne Hathaway. Some people thought did Shakespeare really love Anne Hathaway, because there's a famous story that when he died, he left his second-best bed to his wife, not the first best bed, his second-best bed. What? that was so calculating, why not the best bed？ That's really the question. On the surface, it appears like you didn't really care, but to be honest, he could also be the fact that Anne Hathaway would get most of his possessions. And also the second best bed was probably their bed in back in those days, if you were rich enough, you may have your bed in your living room as a piece of furniture, but also for guests. So you have the best bed for guests, but their actual bed that they used was probably the second best. That's actually they’re romantic if you think about it. If you think about it in that way. But again, we're not 100% sure. But obviously we're not just here to talk about him and his wife. Yes. That will be too orthodox for Shakespeare. But Shakespeare wrote a lot of love, sonnets, poems. So it was a time of plague in London, so Shakespeare couldn't perform. He couldn't open theatres, so he stayed at home and wrote sonnets. One of the key figures in these sonnets… The dark lady. The dark lady. Why is it the dark lady? Is it because the mysterious? Is it about the mystery or is it actual skin color？ Again. we're not 100% sure. Mhm. We're not even 100% sure if she existed, and if she existed who was she. Now

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来酒馆，找小助手【luluxjg2】索取全文稿啦~ Hi, everyone. And welcome back to Famous Brits Under the Microscope. 欢迎大家回来【英伦名人八卦堂】. 1. 迄今为止，嘴最"毒"的英国首相非他莫属！ 2.早餐就开始喝烈酒，这样的***你放心吗？ 3. 国际政坛出名的老烟枪，胖酒鬼和大毒舌，却被BBC评为历史上最具影响力的人。 4. 考试不及格，心仪专业落选，却不妨碍他拿诺贝尔文学奖。 5. 日不落的余晖，战火中的绅士？这位首相收到的争议比你褒奖多一百倍！好奇么，来听节目就知道说是是谁啦！ Hi, everyone. And welcome back to Famous Brits Under the Microscope. 欢迎大家回来【英伦名人八卦堂】. Hi, 安澜. Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone. It’s been a while since we did this particular segment. Yeah, it's been quite some time, hasn't it? And who are we gonna talk about today? Well since it's Famous Brits Under the Microscope, I thought that today we could talk about the greatest ever British person as voted by the public and the BBC. The greatest? it's a man, and it's not fictional? He is not fictional, no. I have a few names in my head. I'm not sure. Well, he was also known as the British bulldog. Are we gonna talk about Winston Churchill? 丘吉尔 the British bulldog. Is it just because of how he looked? Well, partly is. I think it's also temperament, but there were also quite a few propaganda posters during the war that showed him as a bulldog. And I think he does actually look a little bit like a bulldog. Churchill was a very complex sort of character, wasn’t he? It's not really a simple black and white like he's a good or bad person. No. Churchill, I would say very much was a man of his time, so he had views which nowadays we would not agree with, and some of these habits like his drinking and smoking, it's hard to really support nowadays. Yeah. He is hardly the poster child or poster boy for healthy living or political correctness now. Exactly. But that doesn't mean that he was not a fascinating character to talk about. Exactly, to be great doesn't necessarily mean you have to be a perfect person. Exactly. So, let's get started. Let's start with his family background. Yeah. Winston Churchill was born in 1874 and he was born to a rich aristocratic family. And not a lot of people know this, but despite the fact that he's known as very much a British person and very patriotic British person, he was actually half American. What? Churchill? Yeah, his mother was an American. All right, because you sort of pictured Churchill as the quintessential British person. Oh yeah, but he was half American. Later in his life, he actually became an honorary American citizen. 就是荣誉美国公民. Yeah. I see. And I've heard that he wasn't really doing that well in school. He was not a very good student. No, he was actually quite bad student.

全文稿获取：微 【luluxjg2】 In today's Buzzword Mix, our buzzword is Cougar. 最近那些buzzword我们讨论都是一些比较严肃的社会话题. So today let's keep it light-hearted and talk about a pop culture slang. Cougar is an actual English word. Originally it refers to a type of big cats, c-o-u-g-a-r, cougar的本意就是美洲狮, 是一种大型的猫科动物, but it has an entirely different meaning in pop culture. Put simply, a cougar in slang terms is an older woman who seeks a romantic or sexual relationship with men who are significantly younger. 就是大家都很熟悉的在老友记里演Monica的那一位, she actually started in a comedy show called Cougar Town. 她就曾经主演过一个长达六季的喜剧叫做Cougar Town. 这个词也是有很多的争议, 有一些人认为他是赋能女性的, 而且甚至是女权主义的, because women are taking control. 其实你想想看我们说的杀猪盘, 那个里面的older women一般都是受害者, but cougars they are the predators. They enjoy younger men. 但也有人会觉得这其实就是一个misogynistic male fantasy, 其实它的根基还是男权社会里面的一种幻想，带着不少的情绪。

【Geek Time】-“极客”时间，和“科技宅”Brad一起聊神秘有趣的“黑科技”“高科技”“硬科技”。欢迎关注公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】，可以查看更多精彩内容，查看英语全文稿哦~ Welcome back to Geek Time Advanced. Hello, Lulu. How are you doing? Hi, Brad. I'm doing OK. I'm rather to have a more in-depth conversation with you about utopia and dystopia. Alright. Where do you want to start? Brad, you're a geek, and you watch or read a lot of Sci-Fi, right? Mhm. Why do you think so many Sci-Fi works tend to create these utopian/dystopian world? I think when you think about science and technology, these people are creating science or using science and creating technology as a way to create a better world, which lends itself into creating a utopia, right? We want to make our lives easier. So when you think of science, Sci-Fi and the future, that's where we want to be, we want to be going to this utopian world. However, a lot of the times technology has some bad effects which actually brings us into a dystopian world. I mean, you see all of these Sci-Fi works. They have their own …obviously their own view or their own perspective. Some are definitely darker than others. You have the more sort of like darker, for example, like Terminator that sort of view where humans are going to be just wiped out. Definitely like, yeah, when you look at Sci-Fi the… you have those worlds where people are on the brink of annihilation, you want like …the creator, the writer of these stories is trying to warn us about the possibility of all these bad things. Occasionally, you have someone with a more optimistic view. There's Tomorrowland which is a… it's a more recent film, but they have an older like TV series about it, but like Tomorrowland is kind of like this future utopia where we don't really have politicians so much as the leaders are scientists. So there are kind of more optimistic views of the future as well. They’re are just few and far between. I mean, you come from more of a STEM background. Do you believe that if scientists were to rule the world rather than politicians, you think that will make it a better world or the other way around? I think it would be a little bit better. I don't necessarily think that it will be a utopian society. I just think that if the people who are in charge of science, education were scientists, there's going to be a lot better society overall. I don't really think that politicians necessarily should be in charge of everything. I think that there needs to be people who understand the science in charge of that. But there are many mad scientists as well. There's the whole mad scientist idea, but like not all scientists are mad scientists; and so you're not going to have one person controlling everything. You'd want a coalition of scientists in that way. They can prevent there are rogue scientists here and there. And even with politicians being in control of everything, there are still going to be mad scientists. That's true. But I guess then that's why you have the ethics committee. Scientists are not just talking about can we do it. It's also talking about should we do it. Of course, we should. I don't think you should be in power because that sounds scary. By the way, all of these like Terminator or last time you mentioned Logan's Run, those are relatively old or classic works of dystopian world. What are some the recent Sci-Fi dystopian stories that you have read or watched? I think some of them were… recent ones can almost be worse, like you've got Hunger Games which is kind of like it's in the future and that you have all these districts and the kids…they choose kids from every district to go and… In a Battle Royale situation. Yeah, exactly you had the Battle Royale movie probably was like 20 years ago or so. Now you have a Hunger Games which is a similar but it’s its own story. Then The Handmaid's Tale, of course, which I think is probably one of the most scariest things. I can see this actually happening in the world in the future. You have these many women in the world who can't have .

关注【璐璐的英文小酒馆】+【luluxjg2】获取全文稿 Hi, everyone. And welcome back to Geek Time. 欢迎回来【 Geek时间】. Hi, Brad. Hey, Lulu. Brad, I can I propose a topic today? Sure. So when I watch Sci-Fi films and TV series or Sci-Fi related books, it's quite often that you see these books or works, they're trying to portray a world that is almost like heaven on earth. Everything's perfect, everything is regulated, everything runs smoothly, nothing ever goes wrong. Yeah. So that's like the idea of utopia. Utopia. Let's talk about that, shall we? OK. I guess we can kind of start with what exactly is utopia, just like you mentioned, right? It's a perfect society. But when you look at Sci-Fi, there's few different ideas behind it. There's like ecological utopia is where everyone kind of lives in a perfect balance with nature. There's more economic utopias where the economy is running without any… it's running self-sustainably. But when you look at the word, utopia, it's kind of an interesting thing. In Greek, it means no place. So it kind of like there is this idea that it's perfect, but it can never exist. First of all, let's slow down a little bit here. OK. So utopia, in Chinese we translated usually into 乌托邦. 很有意思, 就是中文里面乌托邦, 前面的乌是子虚乌有的乌, so it's like Brad said no place, but it's actually a play on word because it can actually also mean good place? Yeah. And then originally, ages and ages ago, there was a book called Utopia, so that sort of started that idea of this perfect world. And like Brad was saying, 乌托邦有很多种, 比如说 ecological eutopia, 主要是跟生态系统的整个的非常的和谐的一个状态, 或者是economic utopia where economy is self-sustainable. A few years back, you remember there was a quite popular animated film called Zootopia. OK. Yeah. I've watched most of it. I haven't seen the ending though. Yeah, but the idea was also that all these animals no matter if they’re meat eaters or plant eaters, they live…they're supposedly living in harmony. It's like animal heaven on earth animal version. Yeah. But what about the scientific or technological utopias in Sci-Fi films? Okay. Yeah, like when we look at Sci-Fi utopias, usually something to do with science and medicine or technology that helps bring about this utopian place. So you mean, like science and technology are super advanced, and people like never get old, never get sick and never die that's sort of thing. Yeah, it could be that technology has become super advanced and we don't have to worry about things. Occasionally, it might just be less advanced but that we've learned to use that technology to kind of sustain life in a sustainable way. Like a… you can look at Star Trek, Star Treks Federation is kind of based on this utopian society where we no longer use money. We can create everything that we need and people that want to can devote their life to the exploration of space. We go out and try to create this federation with all the other planets out there. Yeah. But having said that, having talked about the idea of utopia which is having on earth perfect world, I've also noticed that in these works, almost all of them, they're not like comedies, they're not like stories about these perfect world, it's almost, always about these supposed utopias turned into hell on earth. It's turning into a dystopia. 这个在中文里叫反乌托邦或者叫敌托邦, dystopia. So what is the idea of a dystopia? Basically, when you look at Sci-Fi, every utopia is a dystopia. Because when you're getting into this idea that there is a utopia, you watch how it slowly devolves over the course of the film, either by the means of the technology or by the means of someone else who is subverting the technology to do terrible things. When we look at it and a classic version of a dystopian society, there is a good example which is Logan's Run, one of the first science fiction movies I watched as a kid. The whole society is built as this utopian society. The movie itself is set after the world that's been fairly destroyed by a nuclear war. Everyone lives in th

"欢迎来到英文小酒馆的迷你双语板块【Buzzword Mix】-新词特饮，短短几分钟，让不同段位的你掌握最新最地道的英文谈资！ 关注公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】，获取更多有趣节目内容和文稿哦~" In today's Buzzword Mix, our buzzword is Tech-life Balance. Tech means technology. Now I'm sure over the years you've heard of the expression work-life balance, 这些年我们一直都在说work-life balance, 工作和生活的平衡, which basically is about how to maintain a balance between our work and personal life. But nowadays, as we're getting more and more reliant on modern technology as we’re hooked on our smart devices and the internet, we now have to worry about a new type of balance, which is tech-life balance. 不过随着我们所有人越来越依赖于现代的这些科技, 特别是智能设备和网络, 现在我们要关心的就不光是work-life balance, 还有今天的buzzword, tech-life balance, 科技与生活的平衡。 The expression tech-life balance has been circulating for the past few years or so, because with the increasing popularity of social media, for many, the internet and other forms of electronic communication are not just tools, but a personal space that we somehow ‘inhabit’; and it’s practically impossible to imagine life without them. 这也是因为随着现在智能设备以及社交媒体的越来越发达, 他们已经远远的超过了一个简单的科技工具, 而成为了我们每天生活甚至我们的身份和个人空间的一部分。 Tech-life balance is an expression that's now been adopted to describe the daily challenge facing all digital natives and most digital immigrants. 这里说到了两个概念, 我们原来也提到过 digital native, people who have never known a world without mobiles and the internet. 在中国来讲基本就是95后出生的人, 他们被叫做 “数字原住民”. Because ever since they were little, they already lived in the world with internet. And if you were born before that, then you are digital immigrants. 在这之前出生的人被叫做 “数字移民”, because they can still remember the old days without the internet and all these modern technology. And the struggle to maintain tech-life balance is on how to use technology to our advantage, but not to the detriment of real life. 而所谓的科技生活的平衡, 也就是怎么样能让现在的这些网络科技为我们所用, 但是又不过度的侵蚀和影响我们的线下生活。 If you think about it, technology or tech can cover practically all of the bases that it was once necessary to leave the house for, many of us no longer have to be in the office to continue working. Especially during the past few years when work from home became the norm. We can send emails, take phone calls, hold meetings, write and submit reports all from wherever we happen to be during the course of a day, making our work hours potentially limitless; and perhaps even more significantly, tech is supreme in our personal lives too. We can play games, stream movies and TV, catch up on the latest gossip, discuss debate, socialize, do the weekly shop, plan a holiday…the list is endless, and all this whenever, wherever, and without ever having to come into contact with another real touchable person face to face. In fact, for me, personally, my life is, I would say about 90% online. 现在不管是工作还是个人生活中, 我们都可以通过现在的这些technology, 完全不用接触到活人就可以做很多的事。 And it's because of this, it is even more challenging to maintain tech-life balance, because the boundary between technology and your actual life is often blurred; But of course being overly reliant on all these technology and let them run your life has its problems. That's why there are a few things you can do and try to maintain some level of tech-life balance. No.1, stop double screening. Double screening这个概念相信很多小伙伴都非常熟悉. Have you ever caught yourself using a computer and a smartphone at the same time？ For example, when you're watching a movie on your computer, you are still on your phone playing a game at the same time. This looks like multitasking, but in the long run it can be bad for your attention and productivity. This can also over stimulate your brain and you may suffer from information overload.

《小酒馆·大世界》-世界各处的文化和精彩，在小酒馆触手可得哦~ 欢迎关注公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】，可以查看更多精彩内容，查看英语全文稿哦~ In the previous episode, we talked to William about his life in Sweden, and we're gonna continue with that topic today. Do they have laws about household chores? Like who does the dishes and all that? I would say it's quite equal I think. I think in a young family, both parents… they’re home at different times, like one might be working one might be home, so they both know how to cook, they both know how to clean, because they have to share the responsibility. But that doesn't seem to be any problem. I’ve never known of any problem with it. I’ve got a young daughter and when her boyfriend they are living together and they share, and it seems to work. And they can't usually rely on their parents like young couple they can't really rely on their parents for to take care of their baby, right? That's correct. I mean, most of the young couples they are both working and probably their parents are also working, so the grandparents of the kids are working. So they rely a lot more on the service of day cares which is called dagvård in Swedish, and kindergarten and they go to kindergarten quite early, very early because both young couples need to work. This is an expensive place to live. Yeah, how expensive we talking about constantly here, northern European countries are very, very expensive, exactly how expensive. I would say very, very expensive. You lived in Geneva. One of the more expensive places in the world. Is it more expensive than Geneva? I would say people in Sweden they live for the most part from paycheck to paycheck. I would say most Swedes especially young to middle aged Swedes don't have a lot of money in savings. They live well, but they don't normally have a lot of money. It's an expensive place to live. But is it also because they have very good social welfares? So there's always multiple safety nets so that they don't have to have a lot of savings. There are excellent social welfare. The education system is free, Medicare, medical aids for Swedish citizens, Swedish residents is free. It's a very small amount, you have to pay upfront and then that same treatment continues for until they fix you. In that respect it’s quite cheap; but the day to day life, the cost of living…is very high. …is quite expensive. Yeah, one of the things I noticed when I first went to Sweden is I noticed a lot of young people had exceptionally gorgeous apartments. I really couldn't figure this out. I thought maybe everybody's got rich parents. But then I found a new word and I think it's the origin of the word rent, as in paying the rent, because the word “ränta” in Swedish means interest, like the interest on the loan. And they only when they buy an apartment or a house, they are only paying off the interest. They're not paying off the principal. Oh, not the principal. Not a capital. No, no. But does that mean they still…well, from my perspective, then they still don't own it, though, because if they always have that principal that they have yet to pay, if they're only paying interest. That's right. And the ideas you move up the property ladder, you buy a piece of property, you pay the interest on your loan, the property appreciates, and when you sell it, you sell it for a profit, and then you move the profit into the next place and so on. I see. Seems to work. I was actually gonna ask you about homeownership, so I guess that makes it easy for people to buy and own… to get their… Homeownership is really easy, buying property in Scandinavia is very, very simple, it’s very straightforward, it is. The other thing that I'm really curious to know is that so far we have been grouping Scandinavian countries together, but I'm sure for Swedish people, in general, they don't feel like they're the same as their neighbors like Norwegians or Danish. No. It's like within the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, within Norway, Finland, and Iceland to a lesser extent. There

《小酒馆·大世界》-世界各处的文化和精彩，在小酒馆触手可得哦~ 欢迎关注公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】，可以查看更多精彩内容，查看英语全文稿哦~