I guess you haven't spent a lot of time in the Nordics.

some random articles: https://sweden.se/life/society/a-cashless-society https://interestingengineering.com/sweden-how-to-live-in-the...

Nope. Their cashless culture is one of the reasons I hope I never do go to Scandinavia.

What are the other reasons?

I knew a (great) artist who spent almost her whole life in Norway and Sweeden. Shes in her nineties, speaks a half dozen languages, worked for Norwegian public TV. That is to say she's walked in the highest echelons on Nordic society.

Talking to her, she'd often bemoan that the prejudice that Nordic societies are very conformist is true.

Which is in line with what Ive experienced with Nordics

If I were to look for it, I don't think there's a single country on Earth where I couldn't find a smorgasbord of social conformism that I strongly dislike.

It's a social glue that holds every culture together, and it never has to make much sense.

But there are different amounts and different quality of conformism. The Nordic (as in Germany northward) one is particularly insistent on crushing deviations from the zeitgeist (German word).

Disagree. There is just nonsense conformism that you like, and nonsense conformism that you dislike. Every culture, including various subsets of American/Canadian/British/French has enough sacred cows that you will be in a world of crap for transgressing over.

What differs between them is not how much crap you'll be in, but the shape of the cow. You like it, I dislike it, and you'll feel like you aren't pressured to conform, while I'll feel like the world around me is utterly insane.

Having lived in the UK, US, Sweden, and worked extensively in the Netherlands and India, I can comfortably say that conformism exists everywhere. It doesn’t take the same shape everywhere, but it certainly colours the place and the culture. Scandinavia is not a bad place to live by any measure. I can list a host of reasons why either place would be uncomfortable to live in. But one of my key takeaways from my experience is that different places are culturally different, but different isn’t necessarily bad, just different. Don’t dismiss a place until you have been there.

Of course there is some degree of conformity everywhere, but having lived in many different places myself, there are stark differences.

The woman I mentioned speaks six languages because shes lived in as many countries, including the African and the European Mediterranean coast. Her's was a comparison.

Also, all of the countries you listed are Nordic except for India. India, of course, is an extremely rich country, three times the size of Europe with lots different sub-groups. Who were you with in India? The ruling class Brahmins? The English educated children and grandchildren of the mandarin class? Or amongst the day to day laborer?

For India, all of them listed.

Norway is also really not a fan of cash, so they’re doing all they can to phase it out, especially during the pandemic.

SWIM also carefully avoids electronically paying for tobacco because that info, despite the theoretical separation, may be golden to insurance corps..

You must have hella change laying around.

If you always carry your change with you and spend it whenever possible, your coin quantity will remain pocketable.

You gotta be committed enough to hand over a twenty dollar bill alongside a quarter, when paying a $19.17 bill for example. Rather than take in 83 cents you take in 8 (and score a dollar.)

I don't know about him, but my Safeway has a change machine up front. You can either get the total in cash, minus commission, or store credit for the whole amount.

My bank in germany has a machine, where I can put them in to be transfered to my account. (but I think I only ever did that once)

In euroland bills start at 5 euro, below it is all coins. So when paying cash you get a lot of 1 or 2 euro coins as change.

I change those coins into 5 euro bills whenever possible, stores always want change. Small coins go into a big jar that we use to tip people like the pizza delivery guy.

If the jar gets too full I simply donate the jar as is to a charity I know.

Not much, because I also pay in coins in exact amounts.