Recipes

Today is the REAL last day. After a week and a half (which is 3-4 days longer than originally expected), gathered all of our stuff and finally began to clear the way for Daniel/Helen/Hakan to have their living room back. I have had such an amazing time here. I've accomplished all my goals for coming to Sweden and there are so many reasons that I want to come back. I really hope I can stay in touch with all of the family here and that it begins a trend that better connects the stateside Matsons with the trans Atlantic Jonssons. That would be really fantastic. I am really sad to go though, I will seriously miss these peopel a lot. With any luck, I can drag them to Seattle! The slower pace and having 2 full weeks here has made a huge difference. I had time to get sick and recover! We had time to not worry about doing anything except for bar hopping some days and picnicing other days. It was very leisurely and I felt like we really got to experience doing the everyday things that they do here in Stockholm. So it was really an amazing experience for me.

We packed pretty easily and spent the morning with Helen, Daniel, and Lynn. Sadly, Hakan was at work so we didn't really get to say bye to him :( The other night, at girls' night, Helen had said she would gather the recipes of all the Swedish food we'd eaten and give them to us because I told her I love to cook. She said it would be a good project for her but I had no idea if she was serious and if so how long it would take her to do this. But, this morning, she handed both Laura and I notebooks with pages and pages of recipes for everything Swedish we ate while we were here! Every pastry, every Swedish food court item, and her mom's Swedish meatball recipe!!!!! This was more than I ever could have asked for, it was a perfect gift and token of my time here. I am in love with this little journal and cannot wait to go home and try cooking/baking everything!!! I was a little overwhelmed that she had taken the time to hand write everything out for us, even using measurements in tablespoons, cups, etc. So so so nice!! I am positively ecstatic about this.

I took a little family picture with Daniel and Helen and then it was time for final hugs and goodbyes, which was pretty sad for me. Helen and Idun walked us halfway to the train station. After we parted ways, we grabbed some typical Hilary-Laura-Train-Food (baguette, meat, cheese, juice, bananas). Getting into town, we met a guy named Henri who decided he was bored and wanted to interview us. So that was fun; we've heard Swedish people are pretty reserved (they're described pretty similarly to Seattlites) but a couple of people have struck up conversations with us, which is great.

We made our first train with no problems, and I felt a strange sense of familiarity at the Copenhagen central station. Obviously I've been here a couple times before, but it's still pretty amazing to me that I can pull in to CPH central station and feel like I'm coming back to somewhere I know.

We then made it onto our night line train, where we'll spend 12 probably miserable hours before arriving in Frankfurt, Germany. This journey is probably really going to suck, but it's the last big push before we drag all our stuff to CDG airport...