Relaxation

When I finally awoke from my slumber, Leif was making us breakfast. All of this was almost too much kindness to take in! I said thank you a million times but those two small words never felt sufficient to express my gratitude. Leif was making eggs and bacon and brought out bread, butter, and juices to accompany it all. Needless to say, it was delicious. Again well fed, I was prepared for the day.

Laura decided to stay home while Leif took me out and about to learn about my roots. Laura has also been trying to recover from a cold so she was more than fine with having a day of nothing to do except read (I finally got her to start reading Outlander!). Leif took me to the harbor where essentially all Swedes living in southern Sweden emigrated to America from. It is one of the deepest harbors in Sweden and Leif said he thinks voyages were made across the ocean probably once a month. There is a monument there commemorating the people from Sweden that emigrated. It is a man, looking across the ocean, holding the hand of a woman, looking back at Sweden, and a suitcase. Leif said that Norma and Howard visited here too and it is so cool to me to be seeing the same thing so many years later.

After the harbor, we drove through a number of small, typically traditional Swedish towns. Most of the houses out here are painted a deep, dark red color that I love. I think the name of the paint color is Nalu Red...I need to get the exact name because I would love to paint something that color someday. We passed by the high school that Eva and later Sandra attended, and also drove past where Eva works. It was a pleasant day and we even got some patches of blue sky and sunlight in! It was quite nice to spend time with Leif asking random questions and having him tell me other stories and tidbits of information about our family and about Sweden.

When we got home I felt exhausted. Off the top of my head, I didn't really have anything to be exhausted about - I'd just slept soundly for a luxurious amount of time. But, I've also been traveling for 9 weeks and am getting over a cold and for the first time in months I don't have to cook for myself, or worry about maps, or what the exchange rate is, or any of the normal city-couch-surfing-traveling things that I'm always highly in tune with. I figured I'd just take a quick nap and wake up when I was ready. Well, I woke up two and a half hours later! I can't even remember when I took a nap that long and that restful in the middle of the day. The best part was that I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything. It was a perfectly quiet day, there was nothing to disturb me, nobody waiting on me, nothing else that I felt like I should be doing.

I finally had the presence of mind to wake up and went to the couch in the living room. Eva came in and promptly served Laura and I a glass of red South African wine before inviting us to dinner. Dinner was again delicious, and the dogs again got some gourmet mashed food out of it! The dogs are so cute and funny; it is really great to be around playful little animals again.

One thing that Leif told me about during our car ride today was that Helen, who lives with her boyfriend Hokam and her brother Daniel, had written a letter to an apartment makeover TV show; the TV show thought it was really interesting that she was living with her brother and, long story short, her apartment was selected to be renovated and aired on TV! The result of this is that all three of them were kicked out of their apartment for a week after telling the TV show people what they had in mind for the living room. Then the TV show's designers and carpenters and everybody else whipped it into shape, also redoing Daniel's room as a surprise as well as the kitchen as a surprise for Helen, the only female in the apartment. This all happened last August I think, and getting on this show is equivalent to winning a lottery of sorts because everything the show does to your apartment, you get to keep. Helen, Daniel, and Hokam's flat thus got around 15 thousand euros of free stuff (paint, carpeting, kitchen table, wall paper, flat screen TV, etc)!!! The show aired in February and Leif had a DVD of it that we wanted to see. We were about a third of the way through it when the DVD stopped working for some reason.

It was at this point that Eva, who owns a business selling products that help maintain peoples' health and has had traditional and Thai massage licenses for the last ten years, offered to give Laura and I massages. YEAH! After 9 weeks of carrying our bags, nothing could have sounded better than a massage!!! I let Laura go first so I could continue to enjoy the anticipation, and in the mean time Leif, who never gives up, resorted to pulling up the aired apartment makeover TV show online. We watched the rest of the show on the computer and it was so funny to see how surprised Helen, Daniel, and Hokam were at the end of the show!! Especially Helen's reaction was just so excited and overjoyed, it was really funny to watch. It's also really exciting that we'll be there in a couple of days and will see this sweet apartment for ourselves!

Then, it was my turn for a massage...oh hallelujah. Eva has a whole separate massage room in the house, with a real massage table, candles, soft music, etc. The room even smells relaxing. She then proceeded to give me hands down the best massage of my life. It was so careful and so thorough and I felt like jelly afterward. It was funny to compare it to the massage I got at the baths in Budapest, although it was so different it was difficult to compare. Eva started with my back, working on the knots I'm sure are there from carrying my big bag. Then she did my limbs one by one and ended with a face and neck massage. It was glorious. I am one super lucky kid.

Coming out of my massage daze, I found Laura and Leif in the TV room with 4 ice cream sundaes on a platter. This all must sound like one huge dream (which it pretty much was), seriously it just kept getting better. We popped in a movie ("Bruno") which Leif seemed excited that I hadn't seen yet. The movie was thoroughly trashy and pretty fun; it was a great, brainless way to laugh. I thought it was super funny though that Leif voluntarily watched it because it totally seems like college boy humor and I love that he laughed as much as I did during it!

After that, we continued our movie night but switched it up to bloody gore. Leif put in Hannibal Rising and I'm quite proud of myself for getting through that movie! It was definitely good, but more disturbing, violet, and bloody than I usually go for. After our movie night, I finally went to bed which was a little difficult due to that wonderful nap earlier...


Quotes:
Leif: "It is about a homosexual."
Eva: "He is a gay!"
(Trying to describe to me what the movie "Bruno" is about.)

Accomplishments:
Saw where my ancestors came from.
Took a nap.
Got the most amazing massage ever.

Travel Tip:
Let your body sleep if it needs it.