Dear Sweden, Thank you for getting me addicted to caffeine...

Coffee is awesome! It's amazing! It wakes you up and makes you alert and prepares you to tackle the day. Like a full-on, head-first, 15-yard-penalty-inducing tackle. Listless, lifeless, and lugubrious laborers are transformed into productive, prosperous, and popular plebeians (job status unchanged) with just a few sips at any time of the day. You see what I just did there? That's alliteration, and the use of two Oxford commas in one sentence. Coffee helped me do that. It turns non-morning people into moderately functioning people in the morning hours. Drinking 3-5 cups a day reduces your risk of Alzheimer's and dementia later in life. Seriously. Good work Finland. And they should know; they drink a whopping 12 kg of coffee per person per year. The most in the world. Did I mention that coffee is great, fantastic, life-changing?! It helps me type this so fast. I'm such a fast typist!

I consider myself a fairly regular consumer of caffeine, as I get a cup of some of the worst tasting coffee ever brewed in Madison pretty much every morning when I (eventually) arrive at work. If you play around with that world map at all, you'll see that Sweden (and all of Scandinavia) ranks right up there for most coffee consumption. "I like coffee. I'll probably fit right in," thought naive and ill-informed Eric. You don't realize how much 8.2 kg of tea/coffee per year is until you get into this fairly standard routine of every Swede:

0800-0830: Arrive at work. First cup of coffee (C1).
0830-0930: Start work. Ramp up your morning (C2).
0930-1000: COFFEE BREAK. Now we're talking (C3).
work until lunch...
1230-1330: Lunch. Followed by cup of coffee (C4).
1430-1500:           2nd COFFEE BREAK. I'm not making this up (C5).
1600:           One more to finish off the day (C6).

That's a normal day. I can imagine some people thinking, "Yeah but 6 cups of coffee really isn't that much." Sure, if you're drinking that weak shit we Americans are used to you'd be right. But Swedish coffee is strong, like Bruce-Banner-you-don't-want-to-see-me-when-I'm-angry strong. These guys are effin' buzzin' all day long. Anyway, that's enough writing about it. What I really wanted to do was present everyone with this picture, which represents the greatest office attribute anyone could ever utilize:

The Get-Your-Fix-Here 8000...is what it should be called.

This machine represents everything great about the Swedish office. It's sleek, shiny, makes great coffee, and doesn't make you wait. I think I'm in love...I mean, just look at the selection it gives:

Fresh-brewed and instant. with sugar, milk or both.

yes.

Cappucino. Something called Wiener Melange (delicious). Chocoffee should be a cereal. And on and on...

Yes!

YES!

And the best part? It doesn't cost a single kronor.

To wrap it up, Sweden has this whole workday thing down. A free, unlimited source of caffeine and lots of breaks during the day.

If you're going to invest that much money and time into drinking coffee, you better have a damn good place to do it. Here's a picture of the breakroom at our office.

Talk about a Swedish stereotype...

Skål!