Why does Stockholm love Brooklyn?

Known for its clean air, green spaces, and watery aspect, Stockholm may not, at first sight, have much in common with the gritty New York borough of Brooklyn. But look closely at certain areas of the Swedish capital, and you can spot a strong and growing Brooklyn takeover.

Self-study activity:
Watch this three-minute video clip from the BBC series Stop/Start and say whether the statements below are true or false.

The activity is suitable for intermediate students.

1. The Swedes have a cosmopolitan spirit.
2. This love for Brooklyn lost momentum in 2008 and 2009 because of the financial crisis.
3. Bar Brooklyn has greatly contributed to the cultural life in Stockholm.
4. Brooklyn Breweries is a Swedish brewery.

 Swedes have this love for Brooklyn. You see a special relationship with New York. It comes from the movies, the books, the arts, the culture. It is just exploding in this area.
I think Swedes always had a love affair with New York City, we’ve always been international. We grew up that way, and we’ve always been looking for influences in other parts of the world and New York to us I think it’s a concentrate all those influences and that’s why we like it so much.
I think this movement really took speed around 2008 and 2009 with the financial crisis because people started looking you know to the more basic, more natural things in life. I think when this happened we saw Brooklyn or the things that would happen there sort of, you know, sort of a symbol for this type of ideology.
Brooklyn- Stockholm is similar in many senses.
In music, the art and culture.
Me been living here for around 50 years, seem quite a change.
I went to Brooklyn a couple of years ago to visit a brewery and it’s a great place to go to.
This part of Stockholm used to be quite seedy a few years ago and recently a lot of cultures moved in and you can see it with a lot of art galleries, the music, the restaurants and Bar Brooklyn’s contributed a lot to this change. There’s a sort of fantasy about New York and Brooklyn through movies and TV and culture and books even. I think that is the one thing about Sweden and particularly this area of Stockholm is that you have people that are into their culture and I think the Bar Brooklyn sort of encompasses what we try to do and making the culture from New York come to Stockholm and Brooklyn Breweries is actually going to open their own brewery in Stockholm and that’s going to again enhance this old feel of this love for Brooklyn.
We’re going to make a whole range of craft beers.
Brooklyn and Brooklyn larger especially it’s really popular in Sweden. It’s actually the biggest market outside New York City. New Carnegie is a new brewery at Arenastaden in central Stockholm. It is a joint venture between Carlsberg Sweden and Brooklyn and some private investors. Swedes tend to really be curious and really take on new influence and we also love to travel and one of our greatest destinations is actually New York and more and more it’s becoming also Brooklyn.
Brooklyn represents sort of an intersection, the meeting between rural and urban or earthy and urban, and I think this is something Swedes at the moment particularly in Stockholm I guess are very much like it.
Breakfast burrito, yeah, that’s Brooklyn for me.

Key:
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