Hejsan!

Not that long ago my folks asked me if I was still taking morning walks. Yep, pretty much every day, even in the rain. It's good to get out of the house. I don't often see that many other people while I'm out though. But the other day I was out and came upon an older gentleman out walking his dog. He said something to me — in Swedish, of course.
    So I smiled and said: "Ursäkta mig, kan du tala engelska?"
    He switched effortlessly to English and we fell in step with each other. He said he had remarked that it seemed like a spring day today (it was warmer than usual. So we got to talking as we walked closer to the beach. He'd been living in the area for 35 years. We commented on the crazy state of the world. I told him what my family was up to and mentioned that I'm trying to pick up and use Swedish whenever possible.
    He told me of a couple — a Swedish woman married to an Englishman — and in 30 years the Englishman never bothered to pick up Swedish. I was aghast. I told him I'd recently met a woman who said it took her a good three years to get comfortable with Swedish. (It was in her third year that she using other than the present tense).
    We reached a parting of the ways and I shook hands with him, telling him my name.
    His name was Raymond.
    Afterwards I thought: so much for the stereotype of Swedes being aloof to strangers.