Dial A Swede With This Free International Hotline

In case you've been feeling the travel bug's bite as of late, consider this new service perfectly tailored for those needs. In a shockingly pleasant surprise, Sweden has announced its free international hotline The Swedish Number. No, this is not an Saturday Night Live commercial parody — although I expect one any day now. This is a real life service providing thousands of curious folks with information about a country most of us haven't really researched a whole lot. Think of it as a real-life Wikipedia entry that you can experience any day of the week.

The Swedish Number is a wanderlust's heaven. You just call the number provided in their ad and you will be connected to a real life Swedish person who will give you all the information you need about their country. Don't worry, you won't be calling some random person who is sleeping on a Sunday afternoon — the people you are calling are all volunteers! Swedish residents signed up for the app that lets them safely and quickly connect to inquisitive folks like you and me. Turns out that only after one day of being live, the app received close to 7,500 calls (most of them from the United States and Turkey).

This was the brain child of the Swedish Tourism Association, in hopes that they could get more people interested in visiting the glorious country. If you ask me, they never needed an ad, because Sweden has been on my list of places to travel since forever. Either way, pick up your phone and dial the following to find out more!

Even the number is made to be helpful by actually spelling out +46 771-SWEDEN. This way, if you forget the number, you can always figure it out. I don't see the United States jumping on this trend since their tourism factor has never been a problem. I say this as a person who immigrated here with high expectations and movie references out the yang!

All you do is dial and wait to be connected to people like Elizabeth Eriksson (no relation to the phone brand as far as I am aware).

Just imagine your call getting picked up in one of these picturesque towns with beautiful views. It's really enough to get me to visit as is. Or how about their snow covered forests, perfect for cross country skiing and taking amazing photographs.

Yeah. That's the money shot right there. OK, I guess it's been decided. I'm going to visit ASAP. Let me just save up as much money as I possibly can right now because I will be staying there for a while. And for those who don't know what you can ask the kind folks volunteering in Sweden, just refer to the below image. Nothing is off limits as long as you use your judgement and are polite.

Here's the full video explaining the service below:

Images: Youtube, Pixabay