Last night I went to a friend’s place for dinner who lives in student housing on the fringe of this Malmo neighborhood whose name translates to ”rose garden.” It has a bad reputation but when I hear people talking about it, I don’t ever hear of anything too horrible going on there. True, there were big riots there at one time in the recent past, but I’ve heard that the instigators were NOT from Rosengård. This area happens to have a lot of immigrants living in it, so I guess it is possible that racist or xenophobic people could think badly of it. Honestly, I wasn’t wandering around outside for long at all en route to my destination, but from what I could see from the bus, it didn’t look bad. Sweden feels safer than the US, where I feel like you always have to be on your guard a little. I am also in Sweden, but it still feels less threatening somehow… Anyhow, maybe I will go back to Rosengård before I leave Sweden, because disparaging places you’ve never been just propagates ignorance.
