Balsam does not mean Shampoo

Many of us foreigners who move to Sweden like to tell stories of the horrible mistakes we’ve made in the grocery store.  Two of my friends made a cake with yeast because they couldn’t tell the difference between that and baking powder.

Besides making mistakes in good and bad food products, my most memorable mistake was buying what I thought was shampoo.  For one month I went around with greasy hair thinking there was something wrong with the water or air around here until I found out that my bottle that said, “balsam” translated to “conditioner.”

So when you see one of us foreigners walking around Sweden with bad hair carrying around food that you would never eat yourself, please remember how it would feel if you couldn’t read anything and hand that person the green striped milk and the decent yogurt (2 of the toughest things to figure out with a lot of trial and error).

Thank you.