Mark is an easy person to feel comfortable with and it was nice to see that he had given some thought to what he wanted to say before I interviewed him.  I guess I should have realised that he would want to change some of the interview as we talked about so many things, without much structure. The result is that the bold type is mine and the italics are used for Mark´s story, in his own words.
 
I started off by asking how he came to be in Sweden and he related an interesting story.

Unlike many expats my decision to move to Sweden was made for personal reasons, a typical cross culture love story. I can still remember the pinnacle point in my life when living in Nice France, I stood behind the Hotel Negresco, in Rue De France and agonised over my choice of either staying in France, moving back to England or moving to Sweden. 3 months later I moved to Sweden with my daughter Amondine.

Mark drove toEnglandin his illegal Mini Cooper S (of course) and made the legal arrangements to move to Sweden.

Unfortunatel,y I missed the boat to Sweden, having mentally managed to interpret 20:00 as 10 o´clock in the evening. I could do those things then, and even overtake the police on the English motorway while driving with zero papers. Me becoming overexcited around road-police was very amusing for Lisbeth. Who ever ever gets nervous in Sweden?, I too wanted to be totally cool.

He had only lived in France for 2 years but found the French mentality easygoing, enjoyable and exciting. Mark moved into Lisbeth´s flat in Paradisgatan (a name promising great things) in Masthugget. She had told him it had a fabulous view over town. Well, it did, but not quite as fabulous as the Med overlooking the Promenad des Anglais.

I moved here on October the 4th 1978, having missed the boat from England , so I had to drive up through Holland ,Germanyand Denmark with Amondine, very romantic but absolutely mad with the home made safety belt I had constructed for Amondine.

I arrived at the German ferry terminal 10:30 and 25 years later on, our office was situated 50 yard saway, so much for my pioneering qualities. However what I lacked in geographical prestige I had certainly achieved on the cultural front. Whether expats or political refugees, or just lovers moving over a border, it´s not so much a physical but psychological journey that we have in common. My starting point, my self identification point, and my guilty conscious point,  was a Roman Catholic background, public school, run by Benedictine monks, and a rather conservative expectant background, which in Sweden, for all the expense of the education, has always seemed like a waste of investment. I admit this might not arouse any deep sympathy, and, in a way the starting point is irrelevant, it´s the journey and who we end up as, which becomes our common denominator. And perhaps all that has gone before it, is after all relevant.
 
Of course cultural integration was not a word we used, integration consisted of learning how it was done in Sweden. And in the beginning, much to the despair of my family in England , who grew tired of “how good it was in Sweden", life in this honeymoon period, was a very good building process. Life was much simpler, with much less socially structured behaviours to follow. There was a so cia l goodness, people were laid back, didn´t get overexcited, they were very good at listening, and I made friends through work.

After a couple of weeks Lisbeth helped me find a cleaning job at Billhäll. We needed the income as Lisbeth was studying. We looked after Amondine at first, but then found a really good “dagmamma" Eileen Jones, who was the first ballet dancer at Storan.
 
Then came SFI, (Svenska För Invandrare) which was incredible, I got paid to study Swedish!! I also made some very interesting friends from Brazil ,Argentina ,Uruguay , and even Morocco. I learnt how to communicate through a toilet system, great to know if you´re being tortured in a prison camp. I learnt how to eat monkey, maggots, flies and anything else that moved, in the natural history museum in Slottsskogen, courtesy of my friend and personal guide Edwardo Palunmbo.  

A very nice lady at Arbetsförmedlingen gave me two jobs, having studied Swedish!! The first one  was to look after alcoholics, petty criminals, and one really nasty one, at the Hotel Klippan, yes a hotel, these alcoholics really had it made. I worked in the reception and can still remember “Göteborgs Lasse", the towns most notorious nasty guy, walking back in the middle of the night, with his little black tool bag after a busy night shift. Now I was beginning to learn how Sweden worked.

My Arbetsförmedlingen lady friend, then found me a job at the Göteborg´s Universitet. The norms of working at the university audio visual department were actually not too unlike the norms of the Alcoholic hotel. However I met my first real working friends at the audio visual department, many were VPK (Vänster Partiet Kommunister) orientated, which was very new for me and I learnt a lot more about Swedish culture. They were very good hearted people and they represented my first meeting with Sweden.

In that youthful new period I did make my mark, once by one sitting on the copying machine and accidentally copying my nude posture, onto the most vile green paper. The combined effect was not pretty, in fact I screamed out in horror as the papers fell onto the floor. But, I did become a hero for making people laugh so much that no one could do any work for the rest of the day.

My other little almost-coup, came when I was responsible for cleaning up the Göteborg Universitet symbol, as the original no longer existed, the shield in the middle then got two extra little marks which neatly formed MW, my initials. No one saw the difference, and my graffiti on the Göteborg Universitet symbol would have been a coup, if I had just kept my mouth shut.

Otherwise people working at the university were very confined, boxed in by internal fighting over the annual budgets, internal fighting over peoples power and incompetence, and internal fighting over defining and guarding their own defined positions.          
However I did find some exceptional people to work for, one was Professor Brånemark, who discovered that titanium could be accepted by body tissue. So I filmed his first dental operations as he developed the technique.  
 
Then came my entrance into the video branch, partly with an advertising company, called Isakssons, IVP, these people were not like the University people, the work pace was running, and the business idea was to create wealth. It was a bit like diving into the ocean and then learning to swim, having studed film and TV in London, I knew more then they did, or so I thought, and indeed so did they. No one knew about the word culture, no one even used the word. In a way we were very creative, we worked fast, and the personal turn-over looked more like a rev-counter. However amongst some steady information company videos, I did manage to produce one very sexy commercial about South African or Israeli fruit, one or both were politically dodgy at the time. However, the Billhälls customers never got to see my masterpiece that would have surely inspired them, in preference to a much more proper information video. The customer from the local fruit and veg. market fainted when he saw his logo and my up-market sexy English production.  

Learning about the communication culture at the same time as one is living it, was not easy. It´s essential within a creative framework to have a basic understanding or a subconscious agreement about, what is a good idea and how to express it. Working at Isakssons became a mess, and I became a personal statistic. Unfortunately I only saw it as total and personal failure.

However by pure stubbornness or personal pride, I decided to continue with video, and actually managed to take over some of Isakssons old customers. Hammargrens were genuinely impressed with my engagement as I expressed my shock one night, at seeing their fireworks. My expression of “Fuck my brown boots" actually caught their imagination and it became a standard introduction phrase.

However having solved one cultural problem by working for myself, I came into another. By working for myself I could solve customers problems and I really liked that. I learnt by doing, when to express an creative idea, and how to solve other peoples ideas. I had a great par tn er with Rolf Malm at CEMK, one of those smarter advertising agencies, which unfortunately came to an end years later. They lost their Lätt & Lagom contract, but also after a large local TV development contract hit the wall and my final verbal expression of “we fucked up" was interpreted as a conflict remark, and not as the positive team building inspirational remark, it was intended to be. It´s amazing what minor cultural expressions can affect.

The real difficulties which I felt affected my chances of building a future within the video branch was not so much my incompatibility with Swedish forms of expression but not being able to form an association with other players in the market. Perhaps one affected the other, being able to socialise around the coffee table was just as important then, as it is now, known to be.

Being able to run around and make company video productions might have deemed one to have some sort of ability to do something else. Unfortunately that´s not how the system works in Sweden, not without a good network. Unlike in France where it is considered unprofessional to make personal  recommendations for a job. In Sweden it´s the opposite, 90% of jobs are placed by personal or professional networks. One needs to fit into the mould directly, preferably with a formal education that reflects the needs of the position. But, more than that one needs to have a perfect understanding and harmonising and even liking the Swedish working interaction. This is necessary since the personal interaction in a flat working environment is much more demanding.
 
In 91/92 the market dropped in Sweden, it really hit the Video branch, and new people wanted to work for free in this so called luxury branch. I studied International marketing at IHM. IHM was a gold mine for creativity. Unfortunately, not a gold mine for getting marketing work at that time in the market, but a great help in order to analyse and create directed communication.  So the final solution ended up moving away from video to become a designer, and dig up my old art skills. To start off, I did this mad thing, yes it was mad, in fact my friend and copy writer, managed to spin the argument by demonstrating this madness was in fact proof of my creativeness. Great piece of copy writing!!   

Because of Double Culture, Göteborg university asked Mark to look at a programme to help speed up the new European multicultural work place. A condition was that he studied cross cultural communication at the university, to use the programme.

Now equipped with an education in cross cultural communication, he currently works with a combination of marketing, media and cross cultural communication. He feels there is a huge cross cultural need and that there is definitely a lot of potential in this field. In terms of marketing this means appealing to a wider, diverse audience and making use of the differences.

In media and advertising you need to have a deep understanding of the soul of a culture and be very aware of what is motivational.  This is not something that you learn by reading. People working in the media have this ability in relation to their own culture but when you move outside of this you become aware of the the enormous differences.
 
One of the things that Mark (and others) found difficult here in Sweden was being asked “why did you come to Sweden?" This can be a very personal question for some people and they may not want to answer. Mark felt that this was a bit like sticking a hand up in his face. In the end he did reply with some quite imaginative answers. Mark feels that generally Swedes are not all that interested in small talk. They “cut to the chase" and feel a direct question like this is acceptable. This does not allow you to have your own dignity. Mark said that you would not ask this sort of question in collective cultures (such as in Asia). In these cultures the concept of “face" is the oil between people and if you don´t have this then you don´t support the mutual self esteem with other people and your honour will be lost. Sweden is more of an individualistic culture which develops its honour by listening, not interrupting much and not invading peoples privacy.  

When socialising Mark has learned that it is not really the thing to disagree. Everyone assumes and needs everyone else to think the same as they do, face in Sweden is based upon non-confrontational, compromising, and a listening stance. At home he was taught, to be able to confront, but in a very non-confrontal manner. He likes to socialise with a variety of different types of people and cultures in Gothenburg, something that he would never have gained in his home town. He has actually been told that he will never be Swedish. Mark didn´t really know whether to take this as a compliment or not! At first he thought being Swedish was the gateway to building or becoming part of Swedish team, but later on he realised he had become Swedish, in the formalities and disciplines of working relations, but still very English in his humour and conversation. 
 
Mark has 4 children and he has a variety of interests. He used to play tennis regularly, since he was 11, that´s how he met Lisbeth, playing a tennis competition in Menton. But playing against the same people for about 10 years was just too much, even after some extremely funny times. He uses his leisure time to create things. He is very interested in design and likes rebuilding and remodelling his house and boat. They moved there in 1983 and have made quite some changes since then. They used to sail a lot and he enjoyed this. They own two boats. Mark is very proud of his family. He feels his children have been fantastically successful and most of all at how they really help each other.
 
I asked Mark if he would recommend Sweden as a place to live. He answered that work wise he thought it was a fantastic place. He feels it is a good place to bring children up in and he appreciates the fact that the school system works well. He does feel that Göteborg has become more international since he moved there. He feels he needs friends who have been through the process of living in different places. He has a lot of contact with MIG* but he does not feel that this organisation is international enough. He feels that Sweden is a good place in which to set up a company. The administrative processes goes quickly and if you take command over these you can push forward.
 
The Swedish society has been accentuated by its political tradition and as a relatively new society, the Puritanical working ethics still has its influence. Our" live to work or work to live" option is not a discussion. People who push themselves forward do not fit in, there deemed as untrustworthy. One moves forward by being “duktig" (clever and working hard)  Almost all types of conflict are avoided (let´s talk about something else). Shy people are accepted in Sweden, and do not stick out in any way. This is the “norm". It is important to be accepted and to be liked because we need to talk business on the same level. In business the Swedish way is the best way, and one separates your professional and private lives. Good working relationships are held by understanding the hierarchy which is very difficult to detect as bosses try to comply with the Swedish “Lagom" and equality characteristics.  
 
After all the things that have happened in Mark´s life I asked him where he was just now. He replied that life, just now, is wonderful. He loves what he is working with, which includes all his life and working experiences. He is currently working with an advertising agency called Grand River , and a mobile application development company. He also helps his daughter who is a Swedish jewellery designer, (cornelia.nu) and sees a great potential in cross cultural communication.
 
One thing that Mark feels is essential for him is a good network. He used the Mexicans in the US as an example of this. They have lived in the US for a long time but they have not created new networks and they have lost their home base. 
 
It is easier living in Sweden these days, there is a greater availability of international news and access to foreign TV stations, integration has created a social depth of life. But like many other people that moved into different cultures, ones home culture loses its appeal as a retirement venue after so many years. He is no fan of Bergman, prefers Fellini, not much of a fan of Football either, prefers, rugby, not much of a fan of Swedish TV programs, prefers English or so called foreign programs, but he loves all art, prefers Swedish design, building things, and learning about anything and everything.
 
The fun in life is a good point to conclude this interview with Mark. He is a family man and a person who likes a lot of social contact and he works hard and is full of interesting ideas, but he feels it is very important to have fun in whatever he does.
 
* MIG is Marknadsförening i Göteborg (Göteborg Marketing Organisation). For more information see http://www.mig.se/ (Swedish only)