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...
Showing posts with label Sweden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sweden. Show all posts
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Skansen
Today is our "bonus" day in Stockholm! This is because instead of beginning our disgustingly long train journey to France we had some extra time to spend here due to the train fiasco situation.
As a form of payment, I spent the morning cleaning as much of the apartment as I could. I tried to consolidate my things, thoroughly vacuumed the living room, entry way, kitchen, and kitchen rug, dusted some of the tables and the area above the TV, put the clean dishes away and rinsed and put all the other dishes in the dishwasher or washed them. Daniel was amused by this and every time I finished a task he would come up to me grinning and say, "Aw, you didn't have to do that!" (Once it was already done!) I didn't mind at all though, it's really the least I could do after taking up space there for the last week and a half!
I wanted to use today to go to the Djurgarden which is a huge island with lots of famous things on it. It has the Nordic History Museum, the Tivoli theme park, the Astrid Lindgren Pippi Longstocking park, the Skansen outdoor museum, and the Vasa museum. I had heard good things about the Vasa museum and about Skansen, but Daniel said we should go to Skansen. He then asked if it would be OK for he and Lynn to come, which of course it was! I wasn't sure if they were maybe getting sick of us and needing their space, so I was more than happy that he was interested in coming along with us and hanging out for the day. It's also a bonus for us because not only do we get to spend time with him and Lynn, but Daniel knows so much history so I figured it would be especially great to have him tour us around this outdoor museum.
The museum is supposed to show how Sweden was a century or two or three ago. There are lots of old traditional buildings/houses/barns/store houses/shops/workshops/etc. It definitely reminded me of the outdoor museum in Switzerland but I liked this one a lot better. It seemed more compact and interesting somehow. We got to watch glass blowing in one of the work shops! And the bakery shop had yummy pastry looking things. I tried vanilla bulle which was amazing. It was dough with powdered sugar with a huge dollop of vanilla in the middle. Powdered sugar got everywhere; it always does. I also found a workshop where they were making traditional northern Sweden flat bread, which was also really good. The buildings and gardens and herb gardens were all really cool to see, and there were also old phone booths and rune stones around! Then there is a part of the outdoor museum that is pretty much a zoo but only for "Nordic" animals found in Sweden and Scandinavia. That was probably my favorite part because the animals were so cool. Since spring just happened, everything had babies. We got to see baby pigs, baby rabbits, baby geese, baby moose, and baby bears! So many babies! The baby pigs were soo cute. The rabbits were obviously cute, just so fluffy looking. They had some rabbits that are the largest breed or rabbit in the world. It's called the Flemish Giant Rabbit or something like that. They're monstrously huge!! Seeing a moose was really cool because I remember Leif telling us about moose and how dangerous it is to hit a moose with your car because they're so big they can hurt/kill you. So I really had wanted to see a moose and here I finally got to. Another one of the coolest animals were these huge gray seals. They were enormous and were sprawled out sleeping in the sun. Then we went past Nordic wild boars and bison and found our way to the bear pits. The bear cubs must have been a few months old because they weren't that tiny anymore. But the bears here were way more active than the bears we saw in Switzerland, so that was really fun and cute. The cubs were adorable and kept waking the mommy bear up. The three of them followed her around and eventually pretty much tackled her and pinned her on her back so the three of them could suckle. It was really funny. Then we went to try to find the wolves! Daniel spotted them - they were just laying down, but still, it was really cool to see a wolf!!
After Skansen, we went to Lynn's father's house, where we had been invited for dinner (we're so lucky). Apparently Daniel had told Lynn's brother and father about us and Lynn said we had a really good reputation to live up to! Flattering :) We got beer on the way but as soon as we stepped inside Lynn's father offered us a cold beer. Can't say no to that, especially since I'm pretty much healthy now. Honestly, I'd be surprised if my health improved much more over the next couple of weeks. Lynn's dad, Morton, got a new grill last summer and was really excited to start using it again. He grilled pork and beef and served it to us with homemade barbecue sauce and tzatziki sauce. As if that, served with great red wine, wasn't enough, there were also good vegetables, and asparagus and carrots that I want to try to recreate when I get home. The asparagus was simply sprinkled with Parmesan cheese and cooked, but the carrots were cooked in salt water and then put in an olive oil and vinegar mix and were really good!! I'm always excited to learn new ways to cook vegetables, so I probably seemed a little nerdy because I kept asking Morton how he did this and that. He very nicely explained to me what he did though, so I am really excited to try making them when I get home.
Dinner, aside from food, was great fun. Conversation flowed easily and Daniel was pretty entertaining. I am really glad that we were invited because it was just a really easy going, pleasant, enjoyable night. After dinner, we moved inside where the chatting continued. Daniel got a call about Sandra crashing Hakan's car (very not good) and spent a while talking about that. I finally decided to break that conversation up by asking Daniel to teach me how to open a beer bottle with a lighter. That's a trick I really want to know how to do. I tried learning in Poland but I couldn't get it. Daniel tried showing me and I was so close to getting it - but it didn't quite work still! But after that intermission, Daniel and Morton switched to Swedish and started talking about politics, I think, and Lynn and Laura and I moved outside again and kept up the girl talk in English. Girl talk, that's another thing that's universal I think.
Eventually I went inside to get my last bottle of beer and tried opening it with the lighter again. But this time, I got it!!Super exciting!
Finally we started making our way home around midnight and took public transportation until it stopped running at which point we settled for a taxi. Daniel likes to announce how happy he is a lot which I adore. We finally made it home and everybody was quite happy and in good spirits. With no more Mad Men to watch, we actually went straight to bed, so that tomorrow we'll actually be able to get up early and pack for real and begin the trek down south.
Quotes:
"Hilary, man, I'm gonna shoot a hug at you!" - Daniel, before giving me the most genuine hug I think I've gotten this whole trip :) And yes, he calls Laura and I "man" and "dude" frequently. We are dudes here.
Accomplishments:
Opened a bottle with a lighter.
As a form of payment, I spent the morning cleaning as much of the apartment as I could. I tried to consolidate my things, thoroughly vacuumed the living room, entry way, kitchen, and kitchen rug, dusted some of the tables and the area above the TV, put the clean dishes away and rinsed and put all the other dishes in the dishwasher or washed them. Daniel was amused by this and every time I finished a task he would come up to me grinning and say, "Aw, you didn't have to do that!" (Once it was already done!) I didn't mind at all though, it's really the least I could do after taking up space there for the last week and a half!
I wanted to use today to go to the Djurgarden which is a huge island with lots of famous things on it. It has the Nordic History Museum, the Tivoli theme park, the Astrid Lindgren Pippi Longstocking park, the Skansen outdoor museum, and the Vasa museum. I had heard good things about the Vasa museum and about Skansen, but Daniel said we should go to Skansen. He then asked if it would be OK for he and Lynn to come, which of course it was! I wasn't sure if they were maybe getting sick of us and needing their space, so I was more than happy that he was interested in coming along with us and hanging out for the day. It's also a bonus for us because not only do we get to spend time with him and Lynn, but Daniel knows so much history so I figured it would be especially great to have him tour us around this outdoor museum.
The museum is supposed to show how Sweden was a century or two or three ago. There are lots of old traditional buildings/houses/barns/store houses/shops/workshops/etc. It definitely reminded me of the outdoor museum in Switzerland but I liked this one a lot better. It seemed more compact and interesting somehow. We got to watch glass blowing in one of the work shops! And the bakery shop had yummy pastry looking things. I tried vanilla bulle which was amazing. It was dough with powdered sugar with a huge dollop of vanilla in the middle. Powdered sugar got everywhere; it always does. I also found a workshop where they were making traditional northern Sweden flat bread, which was also really good. The buildings and gardens and herb gardens were all really cool to see, and there were also old phone booths and rune stones around! Then there is a part of the outdoor museum that is pretty much a zoo but only for "Nordic" animals found in Sweden and Scandinavia. That was probably my favorite part because the animals were so cool. Since spring just happened, everything had babies. We got to see baby pigs, baby rabbits, baby geese, baby moose, and baby bears! So many babies! The baby pigs were soo cute. The rabbits were obviously cute, just so fluffy looking. They had some rabbits that are the largest breed or rabbit in the world. It's called the Flemish Giant Rabbit or something like that. They're monstrously huge!! Seeing a moose was really cool because I remember Leif telling us about moose and how dangerous it is to hit a moose with your car because they're so big they can hurt/kill you. So I really had wanted to see a moose and here I finally got to. Another one of the coolest animals were these huge gray seals. They were enormous and were sprawled out sleeping in the sun. Then we went past Nordic wild boars and bison and found our way to the bear pits. The bear cubs must have been a few months old because they weren't that tiny anymore. But the bears here were way more active than the bears we saw in Switzerland, so that was really fun and cute. The cubs were adorable and kept waking the mommy bear up. The three of them followed her around and eventually pretty much tackled her and pinned her on her back so the three of them could suckle. It was really funny. Then we went to try to find the wolves! Daniel spotted them - they were just laying down, but still, it was really cool to see a wolf!!
After Skansen, we went to Lynn's father's house, where we had been invited for dinner (we're so lucky). Apparently Daniel had told Lynn's brother and father about us and Lynn said we had a really good reputation to live up to! Flattering :) We got beer on the way but as soon as we stepped inside Lynn's father offered us a cold beer. Can't say no to that, especially since I'm pretty much healthy now. Honestly, I'd be surprised if my health improved much more over the next couple of weeks. Lynn's dad, Morton, got a new grill last summer and was really excited to start using it again. He grilled pork and beef and served it to us with homemade barbecue sauce and tzatziki sauce. As if that, served with great red wine, wasn't enough, there were also good vegetables, and asparagus and carrots that I want to try to recreate when I get home. The asparagus was simply sprinkled with Parmesan cheese and cooked, but the carrots were cooked in salt water and then put in an olive oil and vinegar mix and were really good!! I'm always excited to learn new ways to cook vegetables, so I probably seemed a little nerdy because I kept asking Morton how he did this and that. He very nicely explained to me what he did though, so I am really excited to try making them when I get home.
Dinner, aside from food, was great fun. Conversation flowed easily and Daniel was pretty entertaining. I am really glad that we were invited because it was just a really easy going, pleasant, enjoyable night. After dinner, we moved inside where the chatting continued. Daniel got a call about Sandra crashing Hakan's car (very not good) and spent a while talking about that. I finally decided to break that conversation up by asking Daniel to teach me how to open a beer bottle with a lighter. That's a trick I really want to know how to do. I tried learning in Poland but I couldn't get it. Daniel tried showing me and I was so close to getting it - but it didn't quite work still! But after that intermission, Daniel and Morton switched to Swedish and started talking about politics, I think, and Lynn and Laura and I moved outside again and kept up the girl talk in English. Girl talk, that's another thing that's universal I think.
Eventually I went inside to get my last bottle of beer and tried opening it with the lighter again. But this time, I got it!!Super exciting!
Finally we started making our way home around midnight and took public transportation until it stopped running at which point we settled for a taxi. Daniel likes to announce how happy he is a lot which I adore. We finally made it home and everybody was quite happy and in good spirits. With no more Mad Men to watch, we actually went straight to bed, so that tomorrow we'll actually be able to get up early and pack for real and begin the trek down south.
Quotes:
"Hilary, man, I'm gonna shoot a hug at you!" - Daniel, before giving me the most genuine hug I think I've gotten this whole trip :) And yes, he calls Laura and I "man" and "dude" frequently. We are dudes here.
Accomplishments:
Opened a bottle with a lighter.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Pastries & Lisbet
I'm a little sad. We've been here about twice as long as we've been in any other country but today is our last day and it's kind of just somber. It's been so much fun, and I have no idea when I'll see these people or this country again. I will find a way back though, for sure.
We spent the early afternoon walking about Sundbyberg (Helen/Daniel's neighborhood) with Helen. She showed us the pastries that Sam had recommended to me. One was called kanelbulle and is a cinnamon roll, and then we also tried one Helen recommended that was a vanilla heart. Like the dough was heart shaped with powdered sugar and the middle of the heart was filled with vanilla creamy goodness. Helen was so surprised that we didn't have any of these amazing pastries back home. Probably a good thing for my health that we don't though. After we bought the pastries we walked to Sandra's apartment which is pretty close by. Turns out she is giving her little puppy Harley back in a couple of days, and this was our last real chance to see her. So we sat in the sun and ate our pastries and chatted with Sandra and watched Harley run around for a little bit. Then, Sandra, uber-busy as usual had to go nanny.
Helen showed us to a cafe where they serve princess cake, another pastry Sam recommended (she is good at these recommendations). Princess cake is a huge layered chunk of deliciousness topped with green marzipan. I took pictures, obviously, so sorry for the lame description. We then parted ways with Helen and headed into town, full of sugar and nothing else.
We decided to go to the Central Station to reserve our train seats from Stockholm to Copenhagen. But we told the lady that our end destination was Bordeaux, France. She looked at the route we had decided on and informed us that the trains we wanted to take were fully booked and there was no way to get on them. GREAT. We literally spent at least an hour talking to this poor woman, who was so patient, kind, and helpful. You know how you pull numbers and wait for the desk to light up with your number above it? She just turned hers off and spent what felt like forever helping us find a way to Paris. The problem was that high school just finished this week for the year, so there's tons of kids in Europe traveling for the summer, not to mention...it is June now. Which means Laura and I are now in the masses of travelers instead of in the off season, like how it started off. Which was now 2.5 months ago. Crazy.
It was a big complicated mess, but essentially, to get to Bordeaux the easiest route would be to go Stockholm - Copenhagen - Koln - Paris - Bordeaux. 4 transfers. We could book seats to Copenhagen, but Copenhagen to Koln was fully booked. And France has like cut off it's train system information from the rest of the world, so you can't reserve domestic French train seats until you're IN France. So there was a possibility we would get to Paris and NOT be able to make it to Bordeaux the same day. And we didn't have a CouchSurfer set up for Paris, only Bordeaux. And it's like a solid 24 hours on a train to get to Paris, so there wasn't really time to find one in case we got stuck in Paris. So what we ended up doing was booking seats to Paris leaving Thursday from Stockholm (arriving Friday in Paris). We hoped Helen/Daniel/Hakan would be OK with us staying an extra night...we needed time to find an "on-call" CouchSurfing host in Paris and to update our host in Bordeaux. So nothing was working out how we planned, but I think it will all work out. We will have to go from Stockholm - Copenhagen - Frankfurt - Paris, which is slightly less direct but hopefully it'll all work out. Bleh.
By the time we finished at the train station, it was time to go to Lisbet's where we'd been invited for dinner. Lisbet is my great grandmother Mor Mor's cousin's wife. A little bit hard to grasp at first, but she is somebody that my grandparents and parents had met so I was excited to meet her too! And Laura and I will never say no to a home cooked meal :)
Finding Lisbet's place was very easy and she was such a sweet and lovely host. She started us off with a glass of chilled white wine and we quickly began talking about traveling, which was pretty much the dominant subject the whole evening. Lisbet has done a lot of traveling and is still taking at least 3 big trips per year. That is how I want to be when I grow up! Always traveling. It was very easy to talk to her about our adventures and hear about her plans. The actual dinner was also a really interesting experience for me. For the first time in my life, I tried caviar!!!! I am SO proud of myself!!! I don't even think my family will believe me on this one. It was actually pretty good, much saltier and less fishy than I was expecting. Lisbet served it on kind of a graham cracker toast kind of bread with yogurt sauce and chopped red onions. So that was a very brave and exciting gastronomic experience for me! The main course was raw salmon with a salsa verde sauce and a white sauce (which was all very good). There were also some delicious vegetables to go along with everything. Seriously, home cooked meals when traveling is like the best thing that could ever happen. Overall, I am so glad that I got a chance to meet with Lisbet to chat about travels! I think I've now met everybody my grandma recommended I should meet that still live in Sweden, so it's been an ideally successful visit here!
We stayed at Lisbet's for a solid three hours, and finally we left to go home and break the news to Helen/Daniel that we needed to stay another night...haha. They of course were fine with it, but we've just been here longer than planned so I was starting to feel kind of badly like...maybe they want to be able to walk through their living room again?
Daniel, Lynn, and Hakan were about to watch the movie "Leon" which is actually the real name of the movie called "The Assassin" in the States. I don't know when or where but I definitely saw that movie (rare for me) but it's a really good movie. While we all watched that, Laura and I worked on figuring out the CouchSurfing situation for Bordeaux/Paris. By the end of the movie, we'd done as much as we could do. When the boys and Lynn went to bed we of course stayed up and watched more Mad Men. Sadly, we finished the second season so...pretty impressive how we powered through that haha.
Quotes:
"I'll get another bottle; these bottles are so small!" - Lisbet, regarding our wine consumption
We spent the early afternoon walking about Sundbyberg (Helen/Daniel's neighborhood) with Helen. She showed us the pastries that Sam had recommended to me. One was called kanelbulle and is a cinnamon roll, and then we also tried one Helen recommended that was a vanilla heart. Like the dough was heart shaped with powdered sugar and the middle of the heart was filled with vanilla creamy goodness. Helen was so surprised that we didn't have any of these amazing pastries back home. Probably a good thing for my health that we don't though. After we bought the pastries we walked to Sandra's apartment which is pretty close by. Turns out she is giving her little puppy Harley back in a couple of days, and this was our last real chance to see her. So we sat in the sun and ate our pastries and chatted with Sandra and watched Harley run around for a little bit. Then, Sandra, uber-busy as usual had to go nanny.
Helen showed us to a cafe where they serve princess cake, another pastry Sam recommended (she is good at these recommendations). Princess cake is a huge layered chunk of deliciousness topped with green marzipan. I took pictures, obviously, so sorry for the lame description. We then parted ways with Helen and headed into town, full of sugar and nothing else.
We decided to go to the Central Station to reserve our train seats from Stockholm to Copenhagen. But we told the lady that our end destination was Bordeaux, France. She looked at the route we had decided on and informed us that the trains we wanted to take were fully booked and there was no way to get on them. GREAT. We literally spent at least an hour talking to this poor woman, who was so patient, kind, and helpful. You know how you pull numbers and wait for the desk to light up with your number above it? She just turned hers off and spent what felt like forever helping us find a way to Paris. The problem was that high school just finished this week for the year, so there's tons of kids in Europe traveling for the summer, not to mention...it is June now. Which means Laura and I are now in the masses of travelers instead of in the off season, like how it started off. Which was now 2.5 months ago. Crazy.
It was a big complicated mess, but essentially, to get to Bordeaux the easiest route would be to go Stockholm - Copenhagen - Koln - Paris - Bordeaux. 4 transfers. We could book seats to Copenhagen, but Copenhagen to Koln was fully booked. And France has like cut off it's train system information from the rest of the world, so you can't reserve domestic French train seats until you're IN France. So there was a possibility we would get to Paris and NOT be able to make it to Bordeaux the same day. And we didn't have a CouchSurfer set up for Paris, only Bordeaux. And it's like a solid 24 hours on a train to get to Paris, so there wasn't really time to find one in case we got stuck in Paris. So what we ended up doing was booking seats to Paris leaving Thursday from Stockholm (arriving Friday in Paris). We hoped Helen/Daniel/Hakan would be OK with us staying an extra night...we needed time to find an "on-call" CouchSurfing host in Paris and to update our host in Bordeaux. So nothing was working out how we planned, but I think it will all work out. We will have to go from Stockholm - Copenhagen - Frankfurt - Paris, which is slightly less direct but hopefully it'll all work out. Bleh.
By the time we finished at the train station, it was time to go to Lisbet's where we'd been invited for dinner. Lisbet is my great grandmother Mor Mor's cousin's wife. A little bit hard to grasp at first, but she is somebody that my grandparents and parents had met so I was excited to meet her too! And Laura and I will never say no to a home cooked meal :)
Finding Lisbet's place was very easy and she was such a sweet and lovely host. She started us off with a glass of chilled white wine and we quickly began talking about traveling, which was pretty much the dominant subject the whole evening. Lisbet has done a lot of traveling and is still taking at least 3 big trips per year. That is how I want to be when I grow up! Always traveling. It was very easy to talk to her about our adventures and hear about her plans. The actual dinner was also a really interesting experience for me. For the first time in my life, I tried caviar!!!! I am SO proud of myself!!! I don't even think my family will believe me on this one. It was actually pretty good, much saltier and less fishy than I was expecting. Lisbet served it on kind of a graham cracker toast kind of bread with yogurt sauce and chopped red onions. So that was a very brave and exciting gastronomic experience for me! The main course was raw salmon with a salsa verde sauce and a white sauce (which was all very good). There were also some delicious vegetables to go along with everything. Seriously, home cooked meals when traveling is like the best thing that could ever happen. Overall, I am so glad that I got a chance to meet with Lisbet to chat about travels! I think I've now met everybody my grandma recommended I should meet that still live in Sweden, so it's been an ideally successful visit here!
We stayed at Lisbet's for a solid three hours, and finally we left to go home and break the news to Helen/Daniel that we needed to stay another night...haha. They of course were fine with it, but we've just been here longer than planned so I was starting to feel kind of badly like...maybe they want to be able to walk through their living room again?
Daniel, Lynn, and Hakan were about to watch the movie "Leon" which is actually the real name of the movie called "The Assassin" in the States. I don't know when or where but I definitely saw that movie (rare for me) but it's a really good movie. While we all watched that, Laura and I worked on figuring out the CouchSurfing situation for Bordeaux/Paris. By the end of the movie, we'd done as much as we could do. When the boys and Lynn went to bed we of course stayed up and watched more Mad Men. Sadly, we finished the second season so...pretty impressive how we powered through that haha.
Quotes:
"I'll get another bottle; these bottles are so small!" - Lisbet, regarding our wine consumption
Monday, June 7, 2010
Girls' Night
When we finally got up we just went straight back to watching Mad Men. Maybe a little bit pathetic, seeing as to how we're in Stockholm and everything but...first of all, I'm still getting better. Second of all, nobody was home and we didn't know what we were going to do today. I figured we would just rest (i.e. watch Mad Men) until somebody came home and/or called and then we would figure out some sort of plan.
Daniel came home sometime in the early afternoon. He told us that Hakan had called a hot air balloon company this morning but hadn't been able to reach them. Hakan had been helping us last night try to see if we could work an hot air balloon ride into our trip here, because that would be super cool! He said he'd call this morning, but when we woke up he was gone. So I thought it was so nice of him that he remembered to call anyway. All three of them are so sweet! Helen called and We decided we'd meet up with her around 530.
We met up with her in the center square and Sandra was with her, so that was fun because we haven't gotten to see Sandra very much. She is super busy and has a lot going on in her life right now so we only see her for bits and pieces here and there. When we parted ways with Sandra, Helen had taken it upon herself to help me find a traditional Swedish plate! We went to a couple of department stores and in the first one, the plates were great but they were also ridiculously expensive. Like 250 crowns (~8 SEK to $1 USD) for a single plate. But then we went to another store and I found a pretty cheap plate than Helen says is very traditional. I'll take her word for it. Also, in this store, I found something very exciting for Hilary the Cook. It's an olive oil and vinegar flask that just screams Sweden to me, because it's so cute and well designed. It's hard to describe but I am in love with it. I get my plates because I "have to" for my collection (I do like it, I just also like to complain about it), but I also try to find other small/light things from countries. This is definitely my Swedish thing.
With that accomplished, we wandered around a part of town called Ostermalm which we hadn't really explored yet. We ended up practically walking into a giant market food hall that coincidentally Laura and I were planning on going to Saturday before Laura made me come home and stop dying. Helen promised us this was REAL Swedish food, like the kind of thing she would eat, and I got a little taster-sized portion of something that ended up being DELICIOUS. It was a cabbage leaf wrapped around minced meat and was served with mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam. They serve a lot of things here with mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam. Lingonberry jam is delicious and reminds me a lot of cranberry sauce.
If you look up "things to do in Stockholm" you will see suggestions for "just go to design shops in Sweden. Just do it." As we passed random design shops on our evening stroll, we stopped in to admire and look at and play with all the funny things. Everything here seems adorable and very well designed. It's all just cute. Too cute. I've never been into a store like that with so many practical everyday things that are so pleasing to look at. Then these stores also have things that you wouldn't necessarily think of but once you see them you're like, "that is genius!" It's lots of fun to window shop in these stores.
At this point, we decided that we would have a girls' night. This was pretty much our last night in Sweden since tomorrow we have dinner plans with Lisbet and we're leaving on Wednesday. We went to another one of Helen's favorite bars which is famous for it's cheap (read: reasonably, by USD standards) priced drinks. I still think my system would have collapsed under more beer and wine was twice as expensive so I ended up drinking cider for the night. It was almost as cheap as the beer and it was clear pear cider. Not only was it delicious, but since it was clear liquid I told myself it was probably good for me. Also, people drink cider all the time here! In the US it's not very common, I don't even think you could find it at most bars, but here it's like a normal drink option.
We proceeded to have an incredibly fun(ny) night filled with girl talk and laughter and Helen-Language. She explained that sometimes when we say things, she hears them in her head totally differently. So as we were talking she kept being like, "what? did you just say ...." And she without fail always heard something outrageously funny! We were trying to tell Helen the story of the Slovakian boy (long story, also, not my story) and Helen heard "slow walker" and then made up a hilarious urban-dictionary-esque definition of what a slow walker was. That might have been the funniest thing of the night. It was such an amazing night, I love hanging out with her! It's just fun non-stop. Sam had recommended Swedish chocolate and pastries to me so before we got to the bar we got some chocolate. Helen said she loves to get chocolate with her friends and then go to a bar and just eat the chocolate they brought with their beer. You can totally get away with that in Europe because once they seat you and you order, the wait staff leaves you alone because they don't really work for tips. It's actually so nice, just to be left in peace and never felt rushed or like they're trying to get you out of your seat as soon as possible. I'm going to miss that dining style a lot back home. We tried to find Laura a Swedish boy in between laughing about other random things but that didn't work out very well.
Finally, we decided to call it a night and head home. A stop at 7-11 was necessary though to get more chocolate. It was here that a boy named Bjorn started talking to Laura and Helen and I got our hopes up for a second, but alas, Laura was not so much into Bjorn from 7-11. By the way I have a huge thing against going into American shops, but I justify my trip to 7-11 because all I got was Swedish chocolate.
When we got home, Helen went to bed (like a smart person) and Laura and I...guess what we did. No really, guess.
Aww.... you got it. We watched Mad Men again until I think 3 AM when Laura decided we should go to bed.
Quotes:
"My internal GPS is off." - Helen, a classic comment when trying to find her way somewhere.
"You can't turn your back on girls' night!" - Helen, when I tried to only have one or two ciders.
Daniel came home sometime in the early afternoon. He told us that Hakan had called a hot air balloon company this morning but hadn't been able to reach them. Hakan had been helping us last night try to see if we could work an hot air balloon ride into our trip here, because that would be super cool! He said he'd call this morning, but when we woke up he was gone. So I thought it was so nice of him that he remembered to call anyway. All three of them are so sweet! Helen called and We decided we'd meet up with her around 530.
We met up with her in the center square and Sandra was with her, so that was fun because we haven't gotten to see Sandra very much. She is super busy and has a lot going on in her life right now so we only see her for bits and pieces here and there. When we parted ways with Sandra, Helen had taken it upon herself to help me find a traditional Swedish plate! We went to a couple of department stores and in the first one, the plates were great but they were also ridiculously expensive. Like 250 crowns (~8 SEK to $1 USD) for a single plate. But then we went to another store and I found a pretty cheap plate than Helen says is very traditional. I'll take her word for it. Also, in this store, I found something very exciting for Hilary the Cook. It's an olive oil and vinegar flask that just screams Sweden to me, because it's so cute and well designed. It's hard to describe but I am in love with it. I get my plates because I "have to" for my collection (I do like it, I just also like to complain about it), but I also try to find other small/light things from countries. This is definitely my Swedish thing.
With that accomplished, we wandered around a part of town called Ostermalm which we hadn't really explored yet. We ended up practically walking into a giant market food hall that coincidentally Laura and I were planning on going to Saturday before Laura made me come home and stop dying. Helen promised us this was REAL Swedish food, like the kind of thing she would eat, and I got a little taster-sized portion of something that ended up being DELICIOUS. It was a cabbage leaf wrapped around minced meat and was served with mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam. They serve a lot of things here with mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam. Lingonberry jam is delicious and reminds me a lot of cranberry sauce.
If you look up "things to do in Stockholm" you will see suggestions for "just go to design shops in Sweden. Just do it." As we passed random design shops on our evening stroll, we stopped in to admire and look at and play with all the funny things. Everything here seems adorable and very well designed. It's all just cute. Too cute. I've never been into a store like that with so many practical everyday things that are so pleasing to look at. Then these stores also have things that you wouldn't necessarily think of but once you see them you're like, "that is genius!" It's lots of fun to window shop in these stores.
At this point, we decided that we would have a girls' night. This was pretty much our last night in Sweden since tomorrow we have dinner plans with Lisbet and we're leaving on Wednesday. We went to another one of Helen's favorite bars which is famous for it's cheap (read: reasonably, by USD standards) priced drinks. I still think my system would have collapsed under more beer and wine was twice as expensive so I ended up drinking cider for the night. It was almost as cheap as the beer and it was clear pear cider. Not only was it delicious, but since it was clear liquid I told myself it was probably good for me. Also, people drink cider all the time here! In the US it's not very common, I don't even think you could find it at most bars, but here it's like a normal drink option.
We proceeded to have an incredibly fun(ny) night filled with girl talk and laughter and Helen-Language. She explained that sometimes when we say things, she hears them in her head totally differently. So as we were talking she kept being like, "what? did you just say ...." And she without fail always heard something outrageously funny! We were trying to tell Helen the story of the Slovakian boy (long story, also, not my story) and Helen heard "slow walker" and then made up a hilarious urban-dictionary-esque definition of what a slow walker was. That might have been the funniest thing of the night. It was such an amazing night, I love hanging out with her! It's just fun non-stop. Sam had recommended Swedish chocolate and pastries to me so before we got to the bar we got some chocolate. Helen said she loves to get chocolate with her friends and then go to a bar and just eat the chocolate they brought with their beer. You can totally get away with that in Europe because once they seat you and you order, the wait staff leaves you alone because they don't really work for tips. It's actually so nice, just to be left in peace and never felt rushed or like they're trying to get you out of your seat as soon as possible. I'm going to miss that dining style a lot back home. We tried to find Laura a Swedish boy in between laughing about other random things but that didn't work out very well.
Finally, we decided to call it a night and head home. A stop at 7-11 was necessary though to get more chocolate. It was here that a boy named Bjorn started talking to Laura and Helen and I got our hopes up for a second, but alas, Laura was not so much into Bjorn from 7-11. By the way I have a huge thing against going into American shops, but I justify my trip to 7-11 because all I got was Swedish chocolate.
When we got home, Helen went to bed (like a smart person) and Laura and I...guess what we did. No really, guess.
Aww.... you got it. We watched Mad Men again until I think 3 AM when Laura decided we should go to bed.
Quotes:
"My internal GPS is off." - Helen, a classic comment when trying to find her way somewhere.
"You can't turn your back on girls' night!" - Helen, when I tried to only have one or two ciders.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Archipelago & Motorcycles
Good news: I feel much better today! Still not amazing, but definitely on the upswing now.
We made it out of the house and to the harbor by around 11 AM and found the boat company that we wanted to use. There are so many boats lining the multiple harbors that I was nervous it would take a while, but with good directions from Helen and Hakan it was quite easy. After buying our tickets, we found a dock to sit on in the sun for about 20 minutes before lining up to get on the boat.
The tour we decided to go with was a 3 hour round trip island tour with an English guide. Although I really wanted to get out and walk around and spend time on the islands, I figured I was still recovering and it would be best to just admire the beauty from the water and have a nice day in the sun learning about the islands. The boat ride was not quite what I expected - the company combined two different tours into one. So inside the boat, there were rows of tables with white table cloths and buffets set up for people that had paid for the "brunch tour". Everybody else was standing outside around the boat. Then there were speakers placed around the boat. If you weren't within two feet of a speaker though you couldn't hear the guide at all. I spent a while close to various speakers but it turns out the guide was really less than memorable. Still though, the weather was beautiful and the archipelago was gorgeous!! I would love to come back to Sweden and to a much more thorough tour of the archipelago and spend more time on individual islands. Another reason to come back :)
We stopped by the food festival again since it was close by. I got some samples but didn't see anything that looked Swedish that was cheap so we didn't get any food. It had a really fun atmosphere that kind of reminded me of Seattle Center a little bit. Also, since today was their national holiday, there were TONS of Swedish flags out. People were wearing t-shirts with the flag on it, carrying them around, putting them on their boats or outside their restaurants. Everywhere was blue and yellow.
After the boat tour, we went back to the apartment to check in. Daniel and Hakan had told us that they would take us on their motorcycles!!!! Very excited about this. However, Daniel said he needed some time to rest since he just got back from work. Laura and I wanted to make dinner for them, so we said we'd just make dinner first, while he napped, and then after dinner we could go riding. Which works out here in the summer since you have full day light until 10 or 11.
I went to the grocery store alone while Laura worked on CouchSurfing stuff. It took me a while to find all the ingredients I wanted since I don't speak Swedish. Most of the time I could figure out the general sections of the store, but unless something had a very distinct picture on it I didn't always know what it was. The other more challenging thing was knowing how much of something came in a package. Anyway, I stumbled through it and came home with ingredients to make two pizzas, one Hawaiian type pizza with meat and pineapple and mozzarella on it and one Greek pizza with feta cheese, kalamata olives, and red onions. I've never made pizzas on my own before so it was a pretty fun artistic adventure. Then, since I bought a ton of garlic to help me get better I had a lot left over that I wanted to find something to do with. I got a baguette figuring that making garlic bread probably just meant mixing minced garlic with olive oil or butter or something you can spread on bread. Laura took over operation garlic bread. It was so nice to spend time in the kitchen playing with all the ingredients. I told Helen and Laura that especially pizzas feels kind of like finger painting as a kid, except here you get to eat it when you're done. Rolling the dough, spreading the sauce, placing the ingredients in whatever design you want. It's really fun. We let Hakan know dinner was ready and roused Daniel from his sleep and had a super cute little family dinner. Everybody said it was really good (Helen said it was the best homemade pizza she's ever had) which was nice but I know things could have been better. At any rate, it seemed like a great success, everybody said they were full and happy and seemed very appreciative. And it was really fun to sit with all 5 of us, because usually somebody is working or at school or busy with their lives doing something else.
Helen was kind enough to volunteer to do dishes so the rest of us could get on with our motorcycling. Helen busted out this awesome 1980's motorcycling suit that she was going to let me borrow. I put on the pant suit and jacket and helmet, but Daniel vetoed the pants saying that jeans were more comfortable to ride in, and then he also vetoed the helmet because it was ugly. He looked pained that I even thought about wearing it out of the house, he just said, "No, no, please...don't do this" as he took it off of my head.
So Helen let me borrow some jeans and shoes more appropriate for riding a motorcycle than anything I brought and Daniel gave me a covered helmet that he approved of. Then Laura rode with Daniel and I jumped on behind Hakan and we set off. Needless to say, it was so much fun!!!! I love riding motorcycles. It's always a treat since it happens so rarely. There was still really good daylight and they were of course careful with us. They took us all through the Stockholm country side which was really cool because we hadn't seen that part of Stockholm at all yet. Every once in a while Hakan would say something to me like, "are we going too fast?", "that's where the king lives," or "there's a special island just for dogs over there." Very helpful haha. We stopped eventually by some water somewhere and stretched our legs. Then we continued and went on a mission to find Daniel some coffee. We tried a couple of different places that were both closed and finally stopped at another place that was about to close. They didn't have coffee either so the boys settled for a Coke and we sat there for a few minutes.
On the way back, we stopped at one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Stockholm. It's an UNESCO World Heritage site - the whole neighborhood - because it's a really good example of Sweden's functionalism architecture. I personally thought the houses were really ugly but functionalism was an important architectural movement in the 30's and 40's I think and this neighborhood was kind of the guinea pig and the model neighborhood.
As we went home, the sun was setting and the air was clear. It was perfect; it was such a good feeling. We made it back safely and unpeeled all of our motorcycle clothes and helmets. Then we plopped ourselves down and settled in for a night of more....MAD MEN! Good times. We made it onto Season 2 so now it's new for both Laura and I which is great. We're super addicted. It could be a problem.
We made it out of the house and to the harbor by around 11 AM and found the boat company that we wanted to use. There are so many boats lining the multiple harbors that I was nervous it would take a while, but with good directions from Helen and Hakan it was quite easy. After buying our tickets, we found a dock to sit on in the sun for about 20 minutes before lining up to get on the boat.
The tour we decided to go with was a 3 hour round trip island tour with an English guide. Although I really wanted to get out and walk around and spend time on the islands, I figured I was still recovering and it would be best to just admire the beauty from the water and have a nice day in the sun learning about the islands. The boat ride was not quite what I expected - the company combined two different tours into one. So inside the boat, there were rows of tables with white table cloths and buffets set up for people that had paid for the "brunch tour". Everybody else was standing outside around the boat. Then there were speakers placed around the boat. If you weren't within two feet of a speaker though you couldn't hear the guide at all. I spent a while close to various speakers but it turns out the guide was really less than memorable. Still though, the weather was beautiful and the archipelago was gorgeous!! I would love to come back to Sweden and to a much more thorough tour of the archipelago and spend more time on individual islands. Another reason to come back :)
We stopped by the food festival again since it was close by. I got some samples but didn't see anything that looked Swedish that was cheap so we didn't get any food. It had a really fun atmosphere that kind of reminded me of Seattle Center a little bit. Also, since today was their national holiday, there were TONS of Swedish flags out. People were wearing t-shirts with the flag on it, carrying them around, putting them on their boats or outside their restaurants. Everywhere was blue and yellow.
After the boat tour, we went back to the apartment to check in. Daniel and Hakan had told us that they would take us on their motorcycles!!!! Very excited about this. However, Daniel said he needed some time to rest since he just got back from work. Laura and I wanted to make dinner for them, so we said we'd just make dinner first, while he napped, and then after dinner we could go riding. Which works out here in the summer since you have full day light until 10 or 11.
I went to the grocery store alone while Laura worked on CouchSurfing stuff. It took me a while to find all the ingredients I wanted since I don't speak Swedish. Most of the time I could figure out the general sections of the store, but unless something had a very distinct picture on it I didn't always know what it was. The other more challenging thing was knowing how much of something came in a package. Anyway, I stumbled through it and came home with ingredients to make two pizzas, one Hawaiian type pizza with meat and pineapple and mozzarella on it and one Greek pizza with feta cheese, kalamata olives, and red onions. I've never made pizzas on my own before so it was a pretty fun artistic adventure. Then, since I bought a ton of garlic to help me get better I had a lot left over that I wanted to find something to do with. I got a baguette figuring that making garlic bread probably just meant mixing minced garlic with olive oil or butter or something you can spread on bread. Laura took over operation garlic bread. It was so nice to spend time in the kitchen playing with all the ingredients. I told Helen and Laura that especially pizzas feels kind of like finger painting as a kid, except here you get to eat it when you're done. Rolling the dough, spreading the sauce, placing the ingredients in whatever design you want. It's really fun. We let Hakan know dinner was ready and roused Daniel from his sleep and had a super cute little family dinner. Everybody said it was really good (Helen said it was the best homemade pizza she's ever had) which was nice but I know things could have been better. At any rate, it seemed like a great success, everybody said they were full and happy and seemed very appreciative. And it was really fun to sit with all 5 of us, because usually somebody is working or at school or busy with their lives doing something else.
Helen was kind enough to volunteer to do dishes so the rest of us could get on with our motorcycling. Helen busted out this awesome 1980's motorcycling suit that she was going to let me borrow. I put on the pant suit and jacket and helmet, but Daniel vetoed the pants saying that jeans were more comfortable to ride in, and then he also vetoed the helmet because it was ugly. He looked pained that I even thought about wearing it out of the house, he just said, "No, no, please...don't do this" as he took it off of my head.
So Helen let me borrow some jeans and shoes more appropriate for riding a motorcycle than anything I brought and Daniel gave me a covered helmet that he approved of. Then Laura rode with Daniel and I jumped on behind Hakan and we set off. Needless to say, it was so much fun!!!! I love riding motorcycles. It's always a treat since it happens so rarely. There was still really good daylight and they were of course careful with us. They took us all through the Stockholm country side which was really cool because we hadn't seen that part of Stockholm at all yet. Every once in a while Hakan would say something to me like, "are we going too fast?", "that's where the king lives," or "there's a special island just for dogs over there." Very helpful haha. We stopped eventually by some water somewhere and stretched our legs. Then we continued and went on a mission to find Daniel some coffee. We tried a couple of different places that were both closed and finally stopped at another place that was about to close. They didn't have coffee either so the boys settled for a Coke and we sat there for a few minutes.
On the way back, we stopped at one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Stockholm. It's an UNESCO World Heritage site - the whole neighborhood - because it's a really good example of Sweden's functionalism architecture. I personally thought the houses were really ugly but functionalism was an important architectural movement in the 30's and 40's I think and this neighborhood was kind of the guinea pig and the model neighborhood.
As we went home, the sun was setting and the air was clear. It was perfect; it was such a good feeling. We made it back safely and unpeeled all of our motorcycle clothes and helmets. Then we plopped ourselves down and settled in for a night of more....MAD MEN! Good times. We made it onto Season 2 so now it's new for both Laura and I which is great. We're super addicted. It could be a problem.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Sickness & Mad Men
Well, we had yet another late morning and I feel absolutely awful. Laura came up with a great plan for us to do everything we want to do over the next 3 or 4 days. It's been sunny all week, but when I looked up the weather for next week it was supposed to be cloudy and possibly rainy Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. So now I am a little worried that we won't be able to do everything I want to do even though we have had so much free time and late start mornings.
We headed out to an outdoor market that's only open on Saturdays. However, I was coughing for the whole metro ride and when we got to the market stop I could not stop coughing and my eyes were watering and I felt like I was dying. Then Laura had to play Mom and told me we should just go home and that it would be OK to have a down day. I told her I'd been doing everything I could not to get sick, taking garlic, and drinking tea, drinking OJ by the liter. I asked her what else I could possibly do to get better and she said, "REST". I said, "Something fun that will help me get better." But she insisted that I needed rest so I finally gave in and we went straight back home. I securely fastened myself to the couch and we both sat in front of the TV watching most of the 1st season of Mad Men.
Mad Men...is great. Luckily for us, Hakan has the entire 1st and 2nd season, and I've only seen the first two episodes of the first season. Laura's seen the whole first season but was fine watching it again. We got through I think about 7 hours (7 episodes). It's crazy addictive and the more I watch the more I love as the story gets more complicated. I've wanted to watch the show for a long time, or at least since I saw a couple of episodes at Lindsay's in NYC last December. So, as far as being sick goes, drinking soup and orange juice and having a Mad Men marathon wasn't the worst thing in the world.
Eventually the gang came back home, and Daniel, Hakan, Laura, and I watched a Dane Cook performance. I'd already heard probably 1/3 of the jokes, but it was pretty funny. I like Dane Cook, but the best part for me was how hard Daniel and Hakan were laughing, it was really funny.
And that was the whole day. We literally did nothing except watch hours and hours of Mad Men and Dane Cook. It was great.
We headed out to an outdoor market that's only open on Saturdays. However, I was coughing for the whole metro ride and when we got to the market stop I could not stop coughing and my eyes were watering and I felt like I was dying. Then Laura had to play Mom and told me we should just go home and that it would be OK to have a down day. I told her I'd been doing everything I could not to get sick, taking garlic, and drinking tea, drinking OJ by the liter. I asked her what else I could possibly do to get better and she said, "REST". I said, "Something fun that will help me get better." But she insisted that I needed rest so I finally gave in and we went straight back home. I securely fastened myself to the couch and we both sat in front of the TV watching most of the 1st season of Mad Men.
Mad Men...is great. Luckily for us, Hakan has the entire 1st and 2nd season, and I've only seen the first two episodes of the first season. Laura's seen the whole first season but was fine watching it again. We got through I think about 7 hours (7 episodes). It's crazy addictive and the more I watch the more I love as the story gets more complicated. I've wanted to watch the show for a long time, or at least since I saw a couple of episodes at Lindsay's in NYC last December. So, as far as being sick goes, drinking soup and orange juice and having a Mad Men marathon wasn't the worst thing in the world.
Eventually the gang came back home, and Daniel, Hakan, Laura, and I watched a Dane Cook performance. I'd already heard probably 1/3 of the jokes, but it was pretty funny. I like Dane Cook, but the best part for me was how hard Daniel and Hakan were laughing, it was really funny.
And that was the whole day. We literally did nothing except watch hours and hours of Mad Men and Dane Cook. It was great.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Fotografiska
Still not feeling fantastic today. We left the house very late again and went to the harbor to see about taking a boat tour. However, it was too late in the day, we decided to try to get up early another morning and come back for the boats. So we walked around the old town for some souvenir shopping and I couldn't find a plate I liked. Frustrating - but this is the LAST plate I need! Thank goodness.
Then we went to the Fotografiska which is a photography museum that just opened in Stockholm like 2 weeks ago, so it's very new!! I think this was one of my favorite museums I've been to on this whole trip - it was so cool. There were 4 different exhibits and I really enjoyed all of them. I feel like usually I only like one or two exhibits, but seriously everything here was so great and interesting to me. The exhibits were "A child is Born", "The Birthday Party" (Vee Speers), "Life of a Photographer" (Annie Liebovitz), and "Bodies". I don't remember who did the "A Child is Born" pictures but they are really really famous photographs. They were published in Time magazine for the first time 20 or 30 years ago. The exhibit had amazingly magnified, colorful, poignant pictures of what goes on in a female's body to have a child. I was blown away by the exact moments that were captured; for example, there was a picture of the millisecond the fertilized egg attaches itslef to the placenta. It was incredible - you should go google those pictures if you're unfamiliar with them, they're truly stunning. "The Birthday Party" was all portraits of children holding or using a single prop. It was about the imagination of children and what they want to be when they grow up or what they pretend to be or what they're scared of being. It's of course open to interpretation but the pictures were really intriguing. There was one picture of a rather plain looking girl but when you look at her hands by her side you see scissors in one hand and a braid of (her) hair in the other. The exhibit also had pictures of kids dressed up in gas masks, or holding a gun, and of a boy dressed as a ballerina, and a girl dressed like a wealthy middle aged woman. Really strange but cool. Then there was the Annie Liebovitz exhibit which was just awesome. I really like her stuff, and she was kind of the main feature of this museum. There were close to 200 of her photos there as well as a video talking about how she chose pictures for her book. What was most interesting was that her book (and this exhibit which is based on the book) combines her professional pictures with her personal pictures. So you see a famous picture you've seen many times next to a series of photos she took of her father with her niece at the beach. It was really great. The last exhibit was cool but was my least favorite. It focused on the abnormalities of the human body, and it was just kind of bizarre.
After the museum, we didn't really have anything else we really "wanted" to do so we just went grocery shopping and home. I made a really fun dinner for myself that happened because I picked out ingredients that I felt like eating and put them all together, though I'd never had this combination before. I made rice with sauteed peppers, garlic, and chunks of avocado. It was warm and delicious and hopefully will help me get better very soon.
Then Laura and Hakan and I watched the movie "Into the Wild" which was SUCH a great movie!!! If you haven't seen it, you should watch it. I don't want to ruin anything but....AH, sooo good. That's your homework: go watch that movie (after you look up pictures from "A Child is Born").
Then we went to the Fotografiska which is a photography museum that just opened in Stockholm like 2 weeks ago, so it's very new!! I think this was one of my favorite museums I've been to on this whole trip - it was so cool. There were 4 different exhibits and I really enjoyed all of them. I feel like usually I only like one or two exhibits, but seriously everything here was so great and interesting to me. The exhibits were "A child is Born", "The Birthday Party" (Vee Speers), "Life of a Photographer" (Annie Liebovitz), and "Bodies". I don't remember who did the "A Child is Born" pictures but they are really really famous photographs. They were published in Time magazine for the first time 20 or 30 years ago. The exhibit had amazingly magnified, colorful, poignant pictures of what goes on in a female's body to have a child. I was blown away by the exact moments that were captured; for example, there was a picture of the millisecond the fertilized egg attaches itslef to the placenta. It was incredible - you should go google those pictures if you're unfamiliar with them, they're truly stunning. "The Birthday Party" was all portraits of children holding or using a single prop. It was about the imagination of children and what they want to be when they grow up or what they pretend to be or what they're scared of being. It's of course open to interpretation but the pictures were really intriguing. There was one picture of a rather plain looking girl but when you look at her hands by her side you see scissors in one hand and a braid of (her) hair in the other. The exhibit also had pictures of kids dressed up in gas masks, or holding a gun, and of a boy dressed as a ballerina, and a girl dressed like a wealthy middle aged woman. Really strange but cool. Then there was the Annie Liebovitz exhibit which was just awesome. I really like her stuff, and she was kind of the main feature of this museum. There were close to 200 of her photos there as well as a video talking about how she chose pictures for her book. What was most interesting was that her book (and this exhibit which is based on the book) combines her professional pictures with her personal pictures. So you see a famous picture you've seen many times next to a series of photos she took of her father with her niece at the beach. It was really great. The last exhibit was cool but was my least favorite. It focused on the abnormalities of the human body, and it was just kind of bizarre.
After the museum, we didn't really have anything else we really "wanted" to do so we just went grocery shopping and home. I made a really fun dinner for myself that happened because I picked out ingredients that I felt like eating and put them all together, though I'd never had this combination before. I made rice with sauteed peppers, garlic, and chunks of avocado. It was warm and delicious and hopefully will help me get better very soon.
Then Laura and Hakan and I watched the movie "Into the Wild" which was SUCH a great movie!!! If you haven't seen it, you should watch it. I don't want to ruin anything but....AH, sooo good. That's your homework: go watch that movie (after you look up pictures from "A Child is Born").
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Third Cousins
Not much to say about today other than that it was awesome! Hanging out with my third cousins here in Stockholm is better than I could have imagined.
Today, for the first time in what feels like ages, we had SUNSHINE!!!!!
Daniel, who is really into history, took Laura and I into town and guided us around telling us bits and pieces of information about the area and buildings. I think he was holding back a little though because he didn't want to sound nerdy or bore us with his 'lecturing'. Around 1, we decided that no, it wasn't too early to have a beer. We found a cafe and tried a Swedish beer there and got into a good conversation.
Then we moved on and kept walking. Soon we found another cafe with a sunny, huge, outdoor cafe in the middle of a great people watching square, and decided to stop again for another beer. The conversations flowed so easily and we just chatted and laughed for hours. A bit later, Helen met us at this bar and after one more drink we moved on.
Sandra had called and she also works at a bar, so we headed to her bar next. Now I had officially met all three of my third cousins here! We again sat outside and had some beer and ordered some food and just kept on chatting and laughing. Soon, Linn (Daniel's girlfriend) came to meet up with us. Eventually, we decided to mosy on over closer to home to Daniel's favorite local bar.
At some point at this last bar, I looked at my watch and realized that is was 10 PM! I literally had not looked at my watch before that since that first beer around 1 PM. It stays so light outside here that I had completely lost track of time, I was shocked at how late it was! That just goes to show how much fun we were having!
People here seem very curious about Laura and I. My favorite part of the day though was when people would ask, "Oh, so how do you know Helen?" and I could respond, "Yeah, we're third cousins, no big deal..." And then they look kind of surprised! Somebody else asked what I was doing in Sweden and I told them I was trying to find/meet/get to know my family here. And then I said, "check!" as in 'I have accomplished this!' and when the guy looked a little confused Daniel chimed in, "We're 3rd cousins!" For some reason it just makes me so happy to be here with them and tell people how we are related. I can't get over how cool it is that our great great grandfather was the same person. It's such a long journey from Sweden to the States and I think it's amazing that I've kind of circled back and made it here to meet the family line that stayed in Sweden. I'm just continually amazed and elated by being around and getting to know them.
Helen and Daniel are also excellent hosts, they are so excited to show us around and do things with us and keep telling us that we need to say if we're bored or tired or want to be alone. We have to keep assuring them that this is perfect - we're not here to visit churches and museums and try to do everything there is to do in Stockholm. I'm here to hang out with them, and I'm quite sure I'll end up seeing some of the best parts of Stockholm along the way :)
Sandra and her new puppy Harley came and met us at the bar a little bit later, and we stood outside playing with Harley for a while before finally walking home.
In truth, we saw very little of the actual city today. But I think it's a huge accomplishment just drinking beer in the sun with your third cousins all day. Today was absolutely great.
Today also though is the beginning of June. This is quite sad because it means I am home in 22 days. Most US companies give you only two weeks of vacation time. I think the fact that I'm sad about coming home in three weeks might cause some problems for me later in life...It's weird too because we only have Sweden and France left, so the pace will be much slower. Also, if you were just normally working, have 3-4 weeks off to play in Sweden and France would be a great vacation, so it's amusing to me that we have this special time to spend in the last two countries at the end of a rather fast paced 9 week back packing trip. It almost feels like it's piecing two different trips together, if that makes any sense.
Anyway, I hope I will be able to come back to Sweden and I REALLY hope that our generation will stay in touch. That would just be inexplicably awesome.
Quotes:
Far too many, I wouldn't even know where to begin...everything was just funny today.
Accomplishments:
See above.
Travel Tip:
Take advantage of shaved legs and sunshine and wear skirts!!!
Today, for the first time in what feels like ages, we had SUNSHINE!!!!!
Daniel, who is really into history, took Laura and I into town and guided us around telling us bits and pieces of information about the area and buildings. I think he was holding back a little though because he didn't want to sound nerdy or bore us with his 'lecturing'. Around 1, we decided that no, it wasn't too early to have a beer. We found a cafe and tried a Swedish beer there and got into a good conversation.
Then we moved on and kept walking. Soon we found another cafe with a sunny, huge, outdoor cafe in the middle of a great people watching square, and decided to stop again for another beer. The conversations flowed so easily and we just chatted and laughed for hours. A bit later, Helen met us at this bar and after one more drink we moved on.
Sandra had called and she also works at a bar, so we headed to her bar next. Now I had officially met all three of my third cousins here! We again sat outside and had some beer and ordered some food and just kept on chatting and laughing. Soon, Linn (Daniel's girlfriend) came to meet up with us. Eventually, we decided to mosy on over closer to home to Daniel's favorite local bar.
At some point at this last bar, I looked at my watch and realized that is was 10 PM! I literally had not looked at my watch before that since that first beer around 1 PM. It stays so light outside here that I had completely lost track of time, I was shocked at how late it was! That just goes to show how much fun we were having!
People here seem very curious about Laura and I. My favorite part of the day though was when people would ask, "Oh, so how do you know Helen?" and I could respond, "Yeah, we're third cousins, no big deal..." And then they look kind of surprised! Somebody else asked what I was doing in Sweden and I told them I was trying to find/meet/get to know my family here. And then I said, "check!" as in 'I have accomplished this!' and when the guy looked a little confused Daniel chimed in, "We're 3rd cousins!" For some reason it just makes me so happy to be here with them and tell people how we are related. I can't get over how cool it is that our great great grandfather was the same person. It's such a long journey from Sweden to the States and I think it's amazing that I've kind of circled back and made it here to meet the family line that stayed in Sweden. I'm just continually amazed and elated by being around and getting to know them.
Helen and Daniel are also excellent hosts, they are so excited to show us around and do things with us and keep telling us that we need to say if we're bored or tired or want to be alone. We have to keep assuring them that this is perfect - we're not here to visit churches and museums and try to do everything there is to do in Stockholm. I'm here to hang out with them, and I'm quite sure I'll end up seeing some of the best parts of Stockholm along the way :)
Sandra and her new puppy Harley came and met us at the bar a little bit later, and we stood outside playing with Harley for a while before finally walking home.
In truth, we saw very little of the actual city today. But I think it's a huge accomplishment just drinking beer in the sun with your third cousins all day. Today was absolutely great.
Today also though is the beginning of June. This is quite sad because it means I am home in 22 days. Most US companies give you only two weeks of vacation time. I think the fact that I'm sad about coming home in three weeks might cause some problems for me later in life...It's weird too because we only have Sweden and France left, so the pace will be much slower. Also, if you were just normally working, have 3-4 weeks off to play in Sweden and France would be a great vacation, so it's amusing to me that we have this special time to spend in the last two countries at the end of a rather fast paced 9 week back packing trip. It almost feels like it's piecing two different trips together, if that makes any sense.
Anyway, I hope I will be able to come back to Sweden and I REALLY hope that our generation will stay in touch. That would just be inexplicably awesome.
Quotes:
Far too many, I wouldn't even know where to begin...everything was just funny today.
Accomplishments:
See above.
Travel Tip:
Take advantage of shaved legs and sunshine and wear skirts!!!
Monday, May 31, 2010
Roots
My day started by taking one last bath before we leave Kyrkhult, and I even shaved my legs - so I'm officially a girl again.
I had my last two Danish pastries for breakfast (yum) and did some 'computer-errands' that had been accumulating while Leif flipped through pages and pages of family history stuff. Leif had told me a couple of days ago that the way the United States Matsons connected with the Swedish Jonssons was because Uncle Bob (my Grandpa Howard's brother) placed an add in a newspaper around the area he thought our Swedish family was from. It was an add looking for descendants of Jons Mattisson. One of Leif's aunts saw this ad and brought it to Leif's attention. They were pretty sure they were the people being sought after. Leif then wrote a letter to Uncle Bob, but he did not have Bob's exact address, just that Bob lived in Monmouth, Illinois. As Leif was going through his folder of family papers, he showed me a copy of the letter he sent to Uncle Bob! That was really cool to read! Amazingly (or maybe not amazingly, Monmouth is tiny) the letter did reach Uncle Bob and from thereon the two branches of the family had established a connection. Without email though this connection took at least a year to form though I think. That part does seem amazing to me - imagine just placing an add and wondering for months if anybody will actually see it, and then sending a letter to Monmouth wondering if it will ever reach the right person that hopefully still lives there. It's pretty incredible.
Leif also found some typed up documents explaining rough facts about Jons Mattisson and his second wife and their children. It was from an internet site so I want to go read more on the site. Some of the details seemed hard to line up with each other, and I have a lot of questions but have still been able to piece a fair amount together.
Leif also was kind enough to draw out family trees of the Mattissons in the States and the Jonssons in Sweden so that I could refer back to them as I continued learning about different people and places.
Then Leif and I headed out again (Laura chose to stay home and Eva was at work) to go see some important places. We saw the house where Jons Mattisson was born (and where Per, Leif's grandfather was also born we think), and the original house is still standing and being lived in! But, because it is currently being lived in we couldn't get too close to it or really stop to take a picture of it. Then we also went to go see where the big red house used to be (there are pictures and paintings of this house because it was exceptionally nice for its time). Per lived in the big red house but later (when they didn't live there anymore) the house burned down. This is really sad, as it would be wonderful to see how pretty it is in real life. All that's left are some of the stones from the foundation. Now, there is a summer house built close by the foundation on the same site that is hardly used and not in our family's possession anymore. There is also a barn that hasn't been touched in ages. There are no windows in it anymore and inside there are broken down tools and wheels all the same shade of dust covered brown. On the inside of the window sill there were some bones which was really weird and kind of creepy and gross! One bone looked like a leg bone and still had what appeared to be an animal's paw on one end. Another bone there was the better part of something's spine! EW! Especially after seeing Hannibal Rising the other night this was a very weird thing to see!
The site is surrounded by meadows and forests and for as far as the eye can see, Jons Mattisson used to own all of this land. It is quite sad that our family doesn't own all of it anymore because it is a lot of beautiful trees and forested area.
Some of our other stops included the cemetery where Leif's grandparents are buried as well as the town that his grandmother and step-grandfather moved to when they left the big red house. Leif referred to this town as being 'forgotten by God' and it certainly appeared that way. There was however a sign with English on it explaining that in the 1930's this town was where people mined and worked with granite. Apparently the town used to be a pretty happening place 80 years ago. It had a train station and two shops (which was a big deal back then) - but now it really does look pretty forgotten and grown over.
The other places we went I will need Leif to give me the proper spellings of but essentially we drove around the streets where all of our ancestors grew up. Everybody stayed pretty close to home, so the entire area we drove through was the stomping grounds for many people related to Jons Mattisson. It was sunny out today so it was a very big treat to drive around and see the Swedish countryside where my family came from! I am very thankful to Leif (who took the entire day off work) for showing me around and teaching me what he could!
When we arrived back home, it was time for Laura and I to pack our bags. We decided to head to Stockholm today rather than tomorrow or the next day or Christmas because it will be easiest for us to get picked up on the other end this evening. It will work out very well because Hokam, Helen's boyfriend, will pick us up at the train station, and Eva gave us a map of Stockholm, so tomorrow we will wake up already in the city with a map! It will be like magic! (We usually spend so much time looking for a map the first day in a new city.) After we had packed, we had an early dinner which Eva had prepared before going to work. Tonight our lucky meal was a delicious traditional Hungarian dish of chicken in a paprika sauce with potatoes and some Hungarian food that kind of reminded me of a mix of beans and noodles. However I have no idea what they are called because they're Hungarian and nobody knew the translation. Neither Laura nor I had ever seen anything like them before, but they were good!
After dinner, I took some time to sketch out a Matson family tree for Leif and Eva and used Facebook to show them pictures of my generation of cousins and second cousins. There are some family reunion pictures posted so that was helpful in showing what everybody looks like now. I hope that they found it at least a little interesting what everybody looks like and what we're all up to (I gave them extremely brief summaries of our lives) stateside.
Then, since the generosity never seems to end with Leif and Eva, Leif drove Laura and I to a train station an hour away because a high speed train passes through there that would get us to Stockholm in 3 hours. We told him that wasn't necessary, but he insisted on making our trip as simple and as smooth as possible. We got to the train station about half an hour before the train arrived and Leif stayed with us until it showed up. I will really miss Leif and Eva and their incredible sense of hospitality! It was a simply amazing few days of rest, delicious food, baths, massages, movies, and desserts. It was a perfect little break and now we are healthy, clean, and refreshed: ready for our last 3 and a half weeks! Especially our 'rock and roll week' ahead :)
We arrived at the station to find Helen waiting for us. We began chatting and laughing immediately and soon Helen stopped and announced that she didn't know quite where we were. This was really funny because Eva had told us stories about how Helen gets lost very easily. Helen had to call her boyfriend Hokam and soon we had cash (finally) and found our way to the car. They gave us a mini tour of Stockholm by dusk on our way back to their flat, pointing out important places here and there. It will be unusual and cool for us to wake up in Stockholm tomorrow morning already with a map and a slight glimpse of what the city is like! We're not quite starting from square one, which will be nice.
I was really excited to see their flat after watching the TV show about redesigning their place. It is a really cute apartment and I think the TV designers did a great job! Helen, who is clearly her parents' child, immediately started making us grilled sandwiches and putting out multiple varieties of juice out on the table for us (at 11 PM) all because we told her we just needed a tiny little snack! She also brought out yogurt and cereal and milk, just in case. Too cute. It is pretty funny and a little strange meeting somebody when you've just hung out with their parents for three days. I arrived knowing about her parents, her ancestors, her hometown, and even what her apartment would look like! It's also interesting to me because family is so important to me so that, in a way, I gauge how close I am to people by how much I know about their family. People's families tend to explain quite a lot about them. Anyway, it's kind of a funny feeling already knowing so much about Helen (and Daniel and Sandra) before meeting them, but in a nice way. I don't know them all personally yet, but I know that we both came from the same great great grandfather. That just blows my mind when I think about it!!!
Quotes:
"Did they, like, move the doors or something?" - Helen, trying to get us out of the train station :)
"Usually I just walk and hope for the best." - Helen, on crossing the street (super funny, since I often accidentally do the same thing...)
Hokam: "Don't you guys have a four flags?"
Helen/Laura/Hilary: "Six flags?"
Hokam: "When I was growing up there were only four, ok!?"
Accomplishments:
Saw where my great great grandfather was born!
Travel Tip:
Check if your train has a required seat reservation. We didn't do this, and our train did have a required seat reservation. Luckily for us, the ticket checker guy forgot to come back and make us pay for it!
I had my last two Danish pastries for breakfast (yum) and did some 'computer-errands' that had been accumulating while Leif flipped through pages and pages of family history stuff. Leif had told me a couple of days ago that the way the United States Matsons connected with the Swedish Jonssons was because Uncle Bob (my Grandpa Howard's brother) placed an add in a newspaper around the area he thought our Swedish family was from. It was an add looking for descendants of Jons Mattisson. One of Leif's aunts saw this ad and brought it to Leif's attention. They were pretty sure they were the people being sought after. Leif then wrote a letter to Uncle Bob, but he did not have Bob's exact address, just that Bob lived in Monmouth, Illinois. As Leif was going through his folder of family papers, he showed me a copy of the letter he sent to Uncle Bob! That was really cool to read! Amazingly (or maybe not amazingly, Monmouth is tiny) the letter did reach Uncle Bob and from thereon the two branches of the family had established a connection. Without email though this connection took at least a year to form though I think. That part does seem amazing to me - imagine just placing an add and wondering for months if anybody will actually see it, and then sending a letter to Monmouth wondering if it will ever reach the right person that hopefully still lives there. It's pretty incredible.
Leif also found some typed up documents explaining rough facts about Jons Mattisson and his second wife and their children. It was from an internet site so I want to go read more on the site. Some of the details seemed hard to line up with each other, and I have a lot of questions but have still been able to piece a fair amount together.
Leif also was kind enough to draw out family trees of the Mattissons in the States and the Jonssons in Sweden so that I could refer back to them as I continued learning about different people and places.
Then Leif and I headed out again (Laura chose to stay home and Eva was at work) to go see some important places. We saw the house where Jons Mattisson was born (and where Per, Leif's grandfather was also born we think), and the original house is still standing and being lived in! But, because it is currently being lived in we couldn't get too close to it or really stop to take a picture of it. Then we also went to go see where the big red house used to be (there are pictures and paintings of this house because it was exceptionally nice for its time). Per lived in the big red house but later (when they didn't live there anymore) the house burned down. This is really sad, as it would be wonderful to see how pretty it is in real life. All that's left are some of the stones from the foundation. Now, there is a summer house built close by the foundation on the same site that is hardly used and not in our family's possession anymore. There is also a barn that hasn't been touched in ages. There are no windows in it anymore and inside there are broken down tools and wheels all the same shade of dust covered brown. On the inside of the window sill there were some bones which was really weird and kind of creepy and gross! One bone looked like a leg bone and still had what appeared to be an animal's paw on one end. Another bone there was the better part of something's spine! EW! Especially after seeing Hannibal Rising the other night this was a very weird thing to see!
The site is surrounded by meadows and forests and for as far as the eye can see, Jons Mattisson used to own all of this land. It is quite sad that our family doesn't own all of it anymore because it is a lot of beautiful trees and forested area.
Some of our other stops included the cemetery where Leif's grandparents are buried as well as the town that his grandmother and step-grandfather moved to when they left the big red house. Leif referred to this town as being 'forgotten by God' and it certainly appeared that way. There was however a sign with English on it explaining that in the 1930's this town was where people mined and worked with granite. Apparently the town used to be a pretty happening place 80 years ago. It had a train station and two shops (which was a big deal back then) - but now it really does look pretty forgotten and grown over.
The other places we went I will need Leif to give me the proper spellings of but essentially we drove around the streets where all of our ancestors grew up. Everybody stayed pretty close to home, so the entire area we drove through was the stomping grounds for many people related to Jons Mattisson. It was sunny out today so it was a very big treat to drive around and see the Swedish countryside where my family came from! I am very thankful to Leif (who took the entire day off work) for showing me around and teaching me what he could!
When we arrived back home, it was time for Laura and I to pack our bags. We decided to head to Stockholm today rather than tomorrow or the next day or Christmas because it will be easiest for us to get picked up on the other end this evening. It will work out very well because Hokam, Helen's boyfriend, will pick us up at the train station, and Eva gave us a map of Stockholm, so tomorrow we will wake up already in the city with a map! It will be like magic! (We usually spend so much time looking for a map the first day in a new city.) After we had packed, we had an early dinner which Eva had prepared before going to work. Tonight our lucky meal was a delicious traditional Hungarian dish of chicken in a paprika sauce with potatoes and some Hungarian food that kind of reminded me of a mix of beans and noodles. However I have no idea what they are called because they're Hungarian and nobody knew the translation. Neither Laura nor I had ever seen anything like them before, but they were good!
After dinner, I took some time to sketch out a Matson family tree for Leif and Eva and used Facebook to show them pictures of my generation of cousins and second cousins. There are some family reunion pictures posted so that was helpful in showing what everybody looks like now. I hope that they found it at least a little interesting what everybody looks like and what we're all up to (I gave them extremely brief summaries of our lives) stateside.
Then, since the generosity never seems to end with Leif and Eva, Leif drove Laura and I to a train station an hour away because a high speed train passes through there that would get us to Stockholm in 3 hours. We told him that wasn't necessary, but he insisted on making our trip as simple and as smooth as possible. We got to the train station about half an hour before the train arrived and Leif stayed with us until it showed up. I will really miss Leif and Eva and their incredible sense of hospitality! It was a simply amazing few days of rest, delicious food, baths, massages, movies, and desserts. It was a perfect little break and now we are healthy, clean, and refreshed: ready for our last 3 and a half weeks! Especially our 'rock and roll week' ahead :)
We arrived at the station to find Helen waiting for us. We began chatting and laughing immediately and soon Helen stopped and announced that she didn't know quite where we were. This was really funny because Eva had told us stories about how Helen gets lost very easily. Helen had to call her boyfriend Hokam and soon we had cash (finally) and found our way to the car. They gave us a mini tour of Stockholm by dusk on our way back to their flat, pointing out important places here and there. It will be unusual and cool for us to wake up in Stockholm tomorrow morning already with a map and a slight glimpse of what the city is like! We're not quite starting from square one, which will be nice.
I was really excited to see their flat after watching the TV show about redesigning their place. It is a really cute apartment and I think the TV designers did a great job! Helen, who is clearly her parents' child, immediately started making us grilled sandwiches and putting out multiple varieties of juice out on the table for us (at 11 PM) all because we told her we just needed a tiny little snack! She also brought out yogurt and cereal and milk, just in case. Too cute. It is pretty funny and a little strange meeting somebody when you've just hung out with their parents for three days. I arrived knowing about her parents, her ancestors, her hometown, and even what her apartment would look like! It's also interesting to me because family is so important to me so that, in a way, I gauge how close I am to people by how much I know about their family. People's families tend to explain quite a lot about them. Anyway, it's kind of a funny feeling already knowing so much about Helen (and Daniel and Sandra) before meeting them, but in a nice way. I don't know them all personally yet, but I know that we both came from the same great great grandfather. That just blows my mind when I think about it!!!
Quotes:
"Did they, like, move the doors or something?" - Helen, trying to get us out of the train station :)
"Usually I just walk and hope for the best." - Helen, on crossing the street (super funny, since I often accidentally do the same thing...)
Hokam: "Don't you guys have a four flags?"
Helen/Laura/Hilary: "Six flags?"
Hokam: "When I was growing up there were only four, ok!?"
Accomplishments:
Saw where my great great grandfather was born!
Travel Tip:
Check if your train has a required seat reservation. We didn't do this, and our train did have a required seat reservation. Luckily for us, the ticket checker guy forgot to come back and make us pay for it!
Sunday, May 30, 2010
The Peninsula
Once again we woke up to another delicious breakfast of eggs, bacon, and hash brown type things.
Today was the day for us to go on a Swedish road trip! Our first stop was at the cemetery where both Leif's and Eva's parents are buried. Today is Swedish Mother's Day so they had prepared vases with pretty flowers. It was a very peaceful and well kept cemetery, probably the nicest one I've been in. It almost looked like a park, with lots of grass, well manicured lawns, benches, and lots and lots of flowers. Almost every headstone had fresh flowers places in front of or next to it, and even the grave stones seemed more unique than what one would typically find in a cemetery. Also, the gravestones weren't places in uniform rows, but the cemetery was slightly hilly and the headstones seemed to line the walking paths. It was a calming experience and I am glad I got to go with them to place the flowers.
Then we drove for about two hours back towards the direction of Denmark. We arrived in the town called Hoganas which is where Gunvor lives. Gunvor is my father's second cousin (Leif's first cousin) and her daughter Anna is my third cousin. Anna is older than me but I'm not sure of her age.
Hoganas is an adorable little beach town that is quite popular in the summer, and Gunvor lives right on the Nordic Sea. Her house is literally on one side of the road and the beach and water is on the other; it's amazing! When we arrived at her home, she welcomed us with a perfect summery salad with bacon bits, cucumbers, and pineapple pieces. After the delicious salad, Gunvor wanted to show us around the entire peninsula, which is supposedly one of the most beautiful areas of Sweden. We unfortunately had crummy weather, but seeing as to how Laura and I are used to Seattle and always prepared with our rain jackets, it really wasn't that big of a deal. Everybody kept apologizing to us about the weather, but some clouds and rain don't dampen all of the beauty of the areas we visited! Leif and Eva drove with Gunvor and Laura and I drove with Anna. It was a great pleasure to talk with Anna and I found it amusingly coincidental that she studied finance, like me, and French, like I wish I had. She spent about two years living and working in various parts of France, but now works as a hotel contractor for Spanish hotels.
Gunvor lives on the west side of the peninsula, so we first headed up north along the west coast. We passed through the small towns of Strandbaden and Nyhamnslage. We got out of the car at Krapperup where there is a small castle with a moat around it and gorgeous gardens. Even though it wasn't sunny, the garden grounds were really pretty and the walking paths led us around lakes, over bridges, to fountains, and around the castle. Then we got back in the car and drove farther up north to Molle, which is another small harbor town very popular among Swedish tourists in the summer. Nobody else wanted to get out of the car in the rain, so I popped out long enough to take a picture and then sat back down in the warm and dry car. Next we went to the tip of the peninsula, which Leif says is his favorite spot in the world! On a clear day you can see Denmark across the water, but today the horizon blended into the clouds. You could still see pretty far and there was more than 180 degrees of water spread out before me. The jagged rocks and lighthouses and tiny sailboats fighting the wind were all extremely picturesque. After this, we headed back down the eastern side of the peninsula passing through Arild, where I was told Norma and Howard stayed for a night in one of the hotels. Last, we passed through Skaret on our way back to Hoganas.
On Mother's Day here in Sweden, as well as on a few other holidays, Swedish people all hoist the Swedish flag. I think it's a cool idea, and today driving around nearly ever house was flying the blue and yellow flag. I just thought this was an interesting observation and tradition.
Back at Gunvor's house, Anna brought out a map of the area we had just toured and people explained to me exactly where we'd just been. Anna let me keep the map, which is both great for my collection and quite helpful in accurately spelling all the places we visited today! They were all very gorgeous so I would love to come back in the summer sometime and see all of these things again in the sun :) Hopefully I will be back someday!
While we were looking at the map and chatting, Gunvor was in the kitchen heating up homemade quiches. In case you didn't know, quiche is one of my favorite foods! One quiche had cheese and ham in it, and the second quiche was just made with a special Swedish type of aged cheese. They were both delicious, but I had to go back for seconds of the Swedish cheese quiche. It was just too good!
All of a sudden, it was 7 PM - I hardly realized how late it had gotten! I ended up falling asleep for most of the two hour car ride back to Kyrkhult, but I tried to keep my eyes open as much as I could to appreciate the beautiful Swedish country side with all the cute red houses!
We got home around 9 PM and relaxed for a bit until it was time for another movie! Leif said he had another one he thought I would like, and I told him it just better not have as much blood at gore as Hannibal Rising. So tonight we watched K2, and it was really good! Way less bloody and a great adventure movie. Though for the record I would prefer my dad to stick to Mt. Rainier and not attempt K2.
By the way, these restful days have allowed me to fully recover from my slight cold and I have almost completely stopped coughing. Yay! These slower paced days are working out quite well for me :)
Quotes:
"Summer comes on Tuesday." - Leif
Accomplishments:
Met more family!
Toured a gorgeous part of Sweden that I would never be able to have seen via the typical trains and buses routes we usually take.
Travel Tip:
Look at a map; know where you are.
Today was the day for us to go on a Swedish road trip! Our first stop was at the cemetery where both Leif's and Eva's parents are buried. Today is Swedish Mother's Day so they had prepared vases with pretty flowers. It was a very peaceful and well kept cemetery, probably the nicest one I've been in. It almost looked like a park, with lots of grass, well manicured lawns, benches, and lots and lots of flowers. Almost every headstone had fresh flowers places in front of or next to it, and even the grave stones seemed more unique than what one would typically find in a cemetery. Also, the gravestones weren't places in uniform rows, but the cemetery was slightly hilly and the headstones seemed to line the walking paths. It was a calming experience and I am glad I got to go with them to place the flowers.
Then we drove for about two hours back towards the direction of Denmark. We arrived in the town called Hoganas which is where Gunvor lives. Gunvor is my father's second cousin (Leif's first cousin) and her daughter Anna is my third cousin. Anna is older than me but I'm not sure of her age.
Hoganas is an adorable little beach town that is quite popular in the summer, and Gunvor lives right on the Nordic Sea. Her house is literally on one side of the road and the beach and water is on the other; it's amazing! When we arrived at her home, she welcomed us with a perfect summery salad with bacon bits, cucumbers, and pineapple pieces. After the delicious salad, Gunvor wanted to show us around the entire peninsula, which is supposedly one of the most beautiful areas of Sweden. We unfortunately had crummy weather, but seeing as to how Laura and I are used to Seattle and always prepared with our rain jackets, it really wasn't that big of a deal. Everybody kept apologizing to us about the weather, but some clouds and rain don't dampen all of the beauty of the areas we visited! Leif and Eva drove with Gunvor and Laura and I drove with Anna. It was a great pleasure to talk with Anna and I found it amusingly coincidental that she studied finance, like me, and French, like I wish I had. She spent about two years living and working in various parts of France, but now works as a hotel contractor for Spanish hotels.
Gunvor lives on the west side of the peninsula, so we first headed up north along the west coast. We passed through the small towns of Strandbaden and Nyhamnslage. We got out of the car at Krapperup where there is a small castle with a moat around it and gorgeous gardens. Even though it wasn't sunny, the garden grounds were really pretty and the walking paths led us around lakes, over bridges, to fountains, and around the castle. Then we got back in the car and drove farther up north to Molle, which is another small harbor town very popular among Swedish tourists in the summer. Nobody else wanted to get out of the car in the rain, so I popped out long enough to take a picture and then sat back down in the warm and dry car. Next we went to the tip of the peninsula, which Leif says is his favorite spot in the world! On a clear day you can see Denmark across the water, but today the horizon blended into the clouds. You could still see pretty far and there was more than 180 degrees of water spread out before me. The jagged rocks and lighthouses and tiny sailboats fighting the wind were all extremely picturesque. After this, we headed back down the eastern side of the peninsula passing through Arild, where I was told Norma and Howard stayed for a night in one of the hotels. Last, we passed through Skaret on our way back to Hoganas.
On Mother's Day here in Sweden, as well as on a few other holidays, Swedish people all hoist the Swedish flag. I think it's a cool idea, and today driving around nearly ever house was flying the blue and yellow flag. I just thought this was an interesting observation and tradition.
Back at Gunvor's house, Anna brought out a map of the area we had just toured and people explained to me exactly where we'd just been. Anna let me keep the map, which is both great for my collection and quite helpful in accurately spelling all the places we visited today! They were all very gorgeous so I would love to come back in the summer sometime and see all of these things again in the sun :) Hopefully I will be back someday!
While we were looking at the map and chatting, Gunvor was in the kitchen heating up homemade quiches. In case you didn't know, quiche is one of my favorite foods! One quiche had cheese and ham in it, and the second quiche was just made with a special Swedish type of aged cheese. They were both delicious, but I had to go back for seconds of the Swedish cheese quiche. It was just too good!
All of a sudden, it was 7 PM - I hardly realized how late it had gotten! I ended up falling asleep for most of the two hour car ride back to Kyrkhult, but I tried to keep my eyes open as much as I could to appreciate the beautiful Swedish country side with all the cute red houses!
We got home around 9 PM and relaxed for a bit until it was time for another movie! Leif said he had another one he thought I would like, and I told him it just better not have as much blood at gore as Hannibal Rising. So tonight we watched K2, and it was really good! Way less bloody and a great adventure movie. Though for the record I would prefer my dad to stick to Mt. Rainier and not attempt K2.
By the way, these restful days have allowed me to fully recover from my slight cold and I have almost completely stopped coughing. Yay! These slower paced days are working out quite well for me :)
Quotes:
"Summer comes on Tuesday." - Leif
Accomplishments:
Met more family!
Toured a gorgeous part of Sweden that I would never be able to have seen via the typical trains and buses routes we usually take.
Travel Tip:
Look at a map; know where you are.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Leif & Eva | Heaven
Before leaving Jan's flat, I cooked for myself for the first time this entire trip. It felt so nice to create something again, even though it was just a small snack. I boiled my two potatoes and sauteed my cute little diced shallot. When the potatoes were done, I set them on some aluminum foil, buttered them a little bit, put some dollops of left over sour cream with green onion dip (from vegetable pancake dinner night), poured my shallots over them, and wrapped the foil up. They smelled amazing and I couldn't wait to eat them!
Jan took us all the way to the train station and it was a little bit sad to leave him. He has definitely been one of the easiest hosts to get along with naturally, and it felt like we'd all been friends far longer than 72 hours. Jan babysat our bags while Laura and I went on a Danish pastry hunt. I spent my last kronors on 4 delicious looking pastries.
The train ride to Bromolla (where we were to be picked up by Leif) was very quick and the only eventful thing that happened was that I gave into the aromas of my potatoes and they were a deliciously satisfying snack!
I think traveling should be partially about self exploration. I believe it is probably inherently that way for many people, but it's especially good to be aware of it. I have known that I am 1/4 Swedish for as long as my parents have told me my heritage, but I've never had any contact with my extended family who still live in Sweden up until a couple of months ago. Regardless of whether or not meeting any of this family would be possible, I wanted to use this trip as an opportunity to at least go and see the country where I (partially) originally came from. I don't think many American travelers visit Scandinavia in general or Sweden in particular, and I also like to travel off the beaten path a little bit. So I have been very excited to visit Sweden for quite some time. My grandmother Norma was able to put me in touch with Leif and Eva who live in Kyrkhult, a small town about a 4 to 6 hour drive south-ish from Stockholm. Leif is my father Eric's second cousin, which means his children (Daniel, 28, Helen, 25, and Sandra, 21) are my third cousins. Aside from Leif's family, I have also been in touch with Gunvor, another second cousin to my father, who lives across the way from Denmark in a town called Hoganas. Once in touch with Leif, he generously offered for both Laura and I to come stay with his wife and him for as long as we like...even until Christmas! At first I was very surprised by this offer, I figured my new found relatives would want to maybe meet up for a day or an afternoon or a meal, but I was not expecting them to suggest hosting both Laura and I for a few days! I wanted to get to know my family though and this was a perfect opportunity, so I very happily accepted their offer. That was a few weeks ago, and I have been looking forward to meeting them since then! Finding out you have 'new' family doesn't happen every day! Family is really important to me and I like learning about my family's history and my roots, so staying with them was a very special offer.
Leif picked us up in a car (another car!) from the train station and drove for about 20 minutes until we arrived at his adorable home, where Eva was inside cooking us something that smelled AMAZING and two little fluffy dogs were eagerly jumping on the newcomers! They had a whole bedroom prepared for us - imagine that, our own personal space and a separate mattress for each of us! There was even a TV in the room and a huge bowl of chocolates and candies. There were two bathrooms in the house, one upstairs and one downstairs. Laura and I were staying downstairs and Leif and Eva sleep upstairs, so it even felt like we had our own bathroom. As if all of this wasn't overwhelming enough, the downstairs bathroom had a BATH TUB in it, and Eva had left little bath packages (with bath fizzies and bath gel) on big, clean, terry cloth towels on each of our mattresses. We were in heaven. A Swedish countryside heaven. With new family. And dogs. And a bathtub.
After putting my bags down I sat down and began playing with the elder dog, Wayne. Soon Wayne was curled up in my lap, soaking up the attention, and Leif came in to tell me that he wanted to give us a quick tour of the house and that if I didn't just stand up I'd be sitting there for two days with Wayne in my lap! After becoming familiar with the house, Eva asked if we had any laundry we wanted to wash. LAUNDRY? Yes, please! We happily unloaded all of our stinky, over used clothes that we've been wearing for days and had enough to do I think three loads. By the time Eva announced that dinner was ready she had already put some of the filthiest things in to wash. Before dinner we had an aloe vera juice shot - you read it right. I didn't know aloe vera could be produced in a drinkable form, but you really do take a shot of the juice and it is supposed to work wonders for balancing your stomach and helping digestion. So that was fun! And then...
Dinner...in case you can't imagine our completely overwhelmed and excited evening thus far, Eva had prepared a home cooked meal of traditional Swedish meatballs - and not the kind you can just go buy at IKEA. These meatballs were to die for, and they were accompanied by the literally the best gravy I have ever had. And I've had a lot of gravy in my life, because I love gravy. There was also a salad and boiled potatoes to balance the meal out, and for the first time in months Laura and I both had the pleasure of drinking milk. Ahhhh I forgot how much I love milk!!! This incredible feast was followed up by fresh, homemade rhubarb pie with vanilla whipped cream (and more milk). Seriously, we were in heaven.
The dogs here, Wayne and his daughter Gucci, are also spoiled - so it's not just Laura and me. The best depiction of this was after dinner when there were a few Swedish meatballs left. Leif and Eva split them evenly on their plates, added some potatoes, lovingly mashed them all up together, and even poured gravy on it. And then gave it to the dogs! Those dogs live well, let me tell you! That is some high quality dog food right there!
After dinner, Leif brought out some old family pictures for me to look at. I think these are photos that Norma has sent him over the years. The most entertaining pictures for me were one of my parents with Erica in 1986, and another one of Great Grandmother Mor Mor with Grandpa Howard, Uncle Al, and a tiny little baby cousin Andrew! I told Leif Andrew wasn't quite that small anymore...
We migrated to the living room and lounged on the couches while the rain and wind picked up and we were officially greeted to Sweden with a thunder and lightning storm. These are always very exciting to me because in Seattle we very, very rarely get storms like these. In fact, the only place I really see these storms is when I'm visiting Grandma at the lake house, so it was quite fitting that I got to watch another storm with Leif and Eva.
Once the storm calmed down, I treated myself to a long bath complete with one of the bath fizzes Eva had left for me. I was so incredibly happy to be in a house, in a bathtub, full of delicious, traditional home cooked food, surrounded by incredibly sweet, caring, and funny relatives. It was a huge treat that I am so incredibly thankful for. Getting out of the bath, I did feel a bit like I had been a dirty, malnourished, exhausted, sickly child now that I was clean, well fed, and prepared for a solid night's sleep with no schedule for the next day save for fully recovering from this cold in the countryside and learning more about my family. It was perfect.
Quotes:
"You must have an easy weekend and rest, because Daniel says you will be having a hard rock and roll week next week." - Leif
Accomplishments:
Met family!
Travel Tip:
If it is at all possible to get out of the big cities, to spend time in the country side, or to meet family living abroad, you should do it.
Jan took us all the way to the train station and it was a little bit sad to leave him. He has definitely been one of the easiest hosts to get along with naturally, and it felt like we'd all been friends far longer than 72 hours. Jan babysat our bags while Laura and I went on a Danish pastry hunt. I spent my last kronors on 4 delicious looking pastries.
The train ride to Bromolla (where we were to be picked up by Leif) was very quick and the only eventful thing that happened was that I gave into the aromas of my potatoes and they were a deliciously satisfying snack!
I think traveling should be partially about self exploration. I believe it is probably inherently that way for many people, but it's especially good to be aware of it. I have known that I am 1/4 Swedish for as long as my parents have told me my heritage, but I've never had any contact with my extended family who still live in Sweden up until a couple of months ago. Regardless of whether or not meeting any of this family would be possible, I wanted to use this trip as an opportunity to at least go and see the country where I (partially) originally came from. I don't think many American travelers visit Scandinavia in general or Sweden in particular, and I also like to travel off the beaten path a little bit. So I have been very excited to visit Sweden for quite some time. My grandmother Norma was able to put me in touch with Leif and Eva who live in Kyrkhult, a small town about a 4 to 6 hour drive south-ish from Stockholm. Leif is my father Eric's second cousin, which means his children (Daniel, 28, Helen, 25, and Sandra, 21) are my third cousins. Aside from Leif's family, I have also been in touch with Gunvor, another second cousin to my father, who lives across the way from Denmark in a town called Hoganas. Once in touch with Leif, he generously offered for both Laura and I to come stay with his wife and him for as long as we like...even until Christmas! At first I was very surprised by this offer, I figured my new found relatives would want to maybe meet up for a day or an afternoon or a meal, but I was not expecting them to suggest hosting both Laura and I for a few days! I wanted to get to know my family though and this was a perfect opportunity, so I very happily accepted their offer. That was a few weeks ago, and I have been looking forward to meeting them since then! Finding out you have 'new' family doesn't happen every day! Family is really important to me and I like learning about my family's history and my roots, so staying with them was a very special offer.
Leif picked us up in a car (another car!) from the train station and drove for about 20 minutes until we arrived at his adorable home, where Eva was inside cooking us something that smelled AMAZING and two little fluffy dogs were eagerly jumping on the newcomers! They had a whole bedroom prepared for us - imagine that, our own personal space and a separate mattress for each of us! There was even a TV in the room and a huge bowl of chocolates and candies. There were two bathrooms in the house, one upstairs and one downstairs. Laura and I were staying downstairs and Leif and Eva sleep upstairs, so it even felt like we had our own bathroom. As if all of this wasn't overwhelming enough, the downstairs bathroom had a BATH TUB in it, and Eva had left little bath packages (with bath fizzies and bath gel) on big, clean, terry cloth towels on each of our mattresses. We were in heaven. A Swedish countryside heaven. With new family. And dogs. And a bathtub.
After putting my bags down I sat down and began playing with the elder dog, Wayne. Soon Wayne was curled up in my lap, soaking up the attention, and Leif came in to tell me that he wanted to give us a quick tour of the house and that if I didn't just stand up I'd be sitting there for two days with Wayne in my lap! After becoming familiar with the house, Eva asked if we had any laundry we wanted to wash. LAUNDRY? Yes, please! We happily unloaded all of our stinky, over used clothes that we've been wearing for days and had enough to do I think three loads. By the time Eva announced that dinner was ready she had already put some of the filthiest things in to wash. Before dinner we had an aloe vera juice shot - you read it right. I didn't know aloe vera could be produced in a drinkable form, but you really do take a shot of the juice and it is supposed to work wonders for balancing your stomach and helping digestion. So that was fun! And then...
Dinner...in case you can't imagine our completely overwhelmed and excited evening thus far, Eva had prepared a home cooked meal of traditional Swedish meatballs - and not the kind you can just go buy at IKEA. These meatballs were to die for, and they were accompanied by the literally the best gravy I have ever had. And I've had a lot of gravy in my life, because I love gravy. There was also a salad and boiled potatoes to balance the meal out, and for the first time in months Laura and I both had the pleasure of drinking milk. Ahhhh I forgot how much I love milk!!! This incredible feast was followed up by fresh, homemade rhubarb pie with vanilla whipped cream (and more milk). Seriously, we were in heaven.
The dogs here, Wayne and his daughter Gucci, are also spoiled - so it's not just Laura and me. The best depiction of this was after dinner when there were a few Swedish meatballs left. Leif and Eva split them evenly on their plates, added some potatoes, lovingly mashed them all up together, and even poured gravy on it. And then gave it to the dogs! Those dogs live well, let me tell you! That is some high quality dog food right there!
After dinner, Leif brought out some old family pictures for me to look at. I think these are photos that Norma has sent him over the years. The most entertaining pictures for me were one of my parents with Erica in 1986, and another one of Great Grandmother Mor Mor with Grandpa Howard, Uncle Al, and a tiny little baby cousin Andrew! I told Leif Andrew wasn't quite that small anymore...
We migrated to the living room and lounged on the couches while the rain and wind picked up and we were officially greeted to Sweden with a thunder and lightning storm. These are always very exciting to me because in Seattle we very, very rarely get storms like these. In fact, the only place I really see these storms is when I'm visiting Grandma at the lake house, so it was quite fitting that I got to watch another storm with Leif and Eva.
Once the storm calmed down, I treated myself to a long bath complete with one of the bath fizzes Eva had left for me. I was so incredibly happy to be in a house, in a bathtub, full of delicious, traditional home cooked food, surrounded by incredibly sweet, caring, and funny relatives. It was a huge treat that I am so incredibly thankful for. Getting out of the bath, I did feel a bit like I had been a dirty, malnourished, exhausted, sickly child now that I was clean, well fed, and prepared for a solid night's sleep with no schedule for the next day save for fully recovering from this cold in the countryside and learning more about my family. It was perfect.
Quotes:
"You must have an easy weekend and rest, because Daniel says you will be having a hard rock and roll week next week." - Leif
Accomplishments:
Met family!
Travel Tip:
If it is at all possible to get out of the big cities, to spend time in the country side, or to meet family living abroad, you should do it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)