Picnics & Boxed Wine

Today the only thing on the agenda were picnics! Yes, picnics, plural.

The first picnic was with Helen, Daniel, Lynn (Daniel's girlfriend), and the dog, Idun. Helen has a real picnic basket with little plates and cutlery that it just too cute. We packed up that and brought a blanket and headed out. I can't get enough of this sun, it feels like we've been under rain clouds for a month, so I am soaking up this vitamin D! As we were leaving I saw Daniel holding something and I was like, "Is that backgammon?" and it was. Super funny because I hardly know anybody at home that plays backgammon, but I love it. Walking to the park Daniel was an amusing sight to behold. He is hardcore, very rock and roll, but also is into classic country. So he comes off as a kind of bad ass hard rock cowboy and it's hilarious. On the way to the park, you could see his tattoos and he was smoking a cigarette and had a bandanna around his long blond hair...and then he had a dog bone in his back pocket and was holding a game of backgammon. It was a very endearing combination.

At the park, Daniel and Lynn played backgammon, Laura read on her Kindle, I looked at H&M magazines that Helen had brought, and Helen tried to tan (after claiming she was the whitest person, which is false, because it's hard to beat the translucent pale of both Laura and my skin). Soon Sandra came to join us with her little puppy Harley and Harley and Idun played together endlessly. They both had so much energy, it was quite a show to watch them go at each other and wrestle, especially because Idun is about 3 times Harley's size! So cute!

It seemed like a great day for a salad, so Helen took us to a grocery store with a salad bar and we got food. We brought it all back to the apartment and I made a salad dressing that I was very happy with. Super simple, but still so nice to create.

Later it was time for picnic #2 which was at a different park with a bunch of Helen's classmates. People in this park had little miniature grills that were so cute. I've never seen grills quite like it, they were just small aluminum rectangles with a few coals and a grate on top. Very convenient, minus the whole part about them creating black rectangles where green grass used to be...oops. We had a fantastic barbecue though, we grilled sausages we got earlier, and had fresh strawberries, crackers and cheese, and wine in these adorable picnic sized wine glasses.

We stayed long enough to witness "Swedish baseball" before wandering away. Swedish baseball was super weird, we had no clue if they were keeping score, when team's switched sides, or really anything else. People tossed a ball to themselves (no pitchers) and more than one person could be on base at a time. Really bizarre!

Then we took our container of boxed wine and meandered along the water, stopping at various benches to have a glass or two. We ended up sitting in front of the city hall for a while which is a really gorgeous building. However, when I asked Helen where we were she said she didn't know, and then she asked somebody in Swedish obviously what building we were in front of. They said city hall ... and later I read that the city hall building is one of Stockholm's most prominent land marks! So I think Helen may have looked a little silly to that person she asked where we were that night! Hahaha.

With our wine finally gone, we went to one of Helen's favorite bars. It was pretty comical because we were three girls sitting by ourselves, and after about 30 seconds a pack of three guys came up and started talking to all of us. We stayed at the bar until about 1 but it took us a really long time to get home because public transportation had stopped running. When we finally made it home it was around 230 AM. One of my favorite things about Stockholm is that the sky never gets fully dark. I know this happens in the summer in the northern countries, but I've never really seen it before. But it is just so cool, even at 230 AM, the sky is not pitch black. In fact, one part of the horizon still looks like the sun is setting, it stays a light blue the entire night. Then the sky fades to a darker blue, but never completely black. One of the consequences of this is that it's really easy to lose track of time, because it looks like what I consider to be about 9 PM ALL NIGHT. Helen was shocked that it was 230 AM though which I found really funny.

By the way, I think I've seen more tattooed people here than I have on this whole trip so far; maybe even more than I see in Seattle. There's a lot of tattoos. Also, people chew tobacco a lot. I don't think I know anybody who does that, but here it's incredibly common.


Quotes:
"GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY THIRD COUSIN!" - Helen, to some guy that put his arm around me. Hilarious.