Learning from Sweden means learning to triumph - it seems that, at least from the German perspective, this could well be the gist of the perception of the Swedish school system as an ideal following the PISA study of 2000 as well as the motto under which Germans took educational trips into the Scandinavian country during the "after PISA" era. Following a comparative restrospective look on the reactions to PISA in both countries (1) and the characterization of the German image of Sweden (2), the idealized or transfigured image of Sweden commonly held in Germany is set against both the by no means unrestrictedly ideal realities of the Swedish school system on the basis of recent studies (3) and the findings from the PISA study and the IGLU study of 2006 with regard to the results achieved by Swedish boys and girls in the fields of reading competence (IGLU/PIRLS 2006) and of scientific competence (PISA 2006), in particular. Furthermore, current trends and developments in Swedish educational policy make it increasingly harder to project educational and pedagogical desiderata onto Sweden's edcuational system (4).