Lucky for us, or me, at least, Michael lives within walking distance of the Montmarte neighborhood. Montmarte just might be my favorite area of Paris. It's further north than most of the big attractions. It has a alternative, colorful, artsy feel to it and I was excited to be back close to my old stomping grounds (my hostel a couple of summers ago was in this neighborhood).
Hopefully I'm not a super annoying 'guide' to Laura. I get so excited when I know where I am, and what things are, and where they are in relation to others. I love translating, and helping to order, and recommending delicious things to eat. It's all great fun.
Michael recommended a cafe for us to grab some breakfast at. We successfully found tartes aux fraises (one of my all time favorite things to eat) and I ordered a little miniature Parisian cafe au lait to accompany it. Something about being in Europe (or France) makes me drink coffee... Something I found interesting were that to-go prices were ridiculously cheaper than prices paid for sitting at their cafe. Naturally, we got our goodies to go and sat on a park bench just a few meters away. Laura fell in love with my tartes and I was proud :)
One of the things I remember most about two summers ago was walking to the Sacre Coeur. A bunch of us from the hostel would go up to the steps there and drink wine every night. We took a different path every time, but all that was important was that we were going up. At the top of the hill, that's where the Sacre Coeur is. So we started taking random paths here and there, climbing stairs and walking up hills. Finally we got to a super touristy area that's kind of at the base of the Sacre Coeur. There are of course many souvenir shops but also many art shops with Parisian posters and metal placards, as well as French cookie shops and other yummy things. My memory proved correct and we turned a corner to gaze up at the Sacre Coeur. I think it is such a fantastically pretty building. The hill it's on is the highest lookout point in Paris so you also have an incredible view of the huge city. I could sit on those steps for hours. It's one of my happy places in the world where I just feel very much at peace, very content with where I am, very settled to live in that one moment. There are so many interesting people out, the view is so great, and there is almost always live music going on. Today was no different. The steps were swarmed and we took a seat front and center. It's kind of like watching a show up there. Soon, we started to see real shows. There was this guy juggling a soccer ball who was REALLY good and did so many crazy tricks I didn't know were possible it kind of blew my mind. His grand finale was climbing a street light pole while balancing the ball on his head or something, getting to the top, then hanging from his arms and continuing to juggle. It was INSANE. He did this show, with slight variations, every 20 or 30 minutes or so. The crowd loved him. There was also this guy playing guitar who was trying really hard to compete with Awesome Juggler. The crowd wasn't feeling him so much but he invited other people to come up and sing with him. Some of the other people were great and very entertaining and it was kind of sad/funny how much more the crowd reacted to the guest singers.
Eventually we peeled ourselves off those cozy steps and walked down the hill that sprawls in front of the Sacre Coeur. I knew we were close to the Moulin Rouge, so I led us through the red light district next. We stopped for crepes, naturally, and soon I was staring up at that beautiful old red windmill again. I feel so incredibly jaded that I'm seeing all these things for the 3rd or 4th time. But, still, every time, the sights still take my breath away. That probably has something to do with why I'm so madly in love with this city.
After spending a lazy day meandering some of my favorite streets, we headed back to Michael's where he told us to meet him around 6 or 7. He was going to give us the key so we could go out for the evening and come back when we liked. We arrived just after 6 to find that Michael was not home and thus, we were locked out. Micheal didn't show up for another 45 minutes, and found us waiting on his doorstep like lost puppies. Once inside though, we took care of some little details and then headed out soon after.
And we were headed to....watch the US/England World Cup game!!! I wish the States was as into soccer/football at Europe is. Watching football games in Europe in bars and/or pubs is such a fun experience, but the vibe just isn't the same in the States. So I am REALLY excited that we're here during the World Cup games, especially the opening games! We went back to Rich's pub, the Frog, to find it more or less packed. The game didn't start for another half an hour so we were hoping we'd find a place to sit by then. I asked Rich how we were supposed to find a table and he told us to go wait at the bar and he'd find us one. Ten minutes before the game started, we were seated close to a TV with delicious microbrews in hand. We were sharing a table with a group of other people also watching the game - it was kind of a beer hall feeling. Then exciting things happened: 1) A CouchSurfer that offered to host us that I'd invited to the game showed up with his friend, and 2) Karly came!!!!! My cousin Karly is studying abroad in Paris so we were of course planning on meeting up. I don't have a phone though, so I'd told her that I'd be at this bar around 8 or 830 for the World Cup game and that she was more than welcome to come. But, I didn't know if she was actually going to show up or not. So sitting in this bar in Paris and having your cousin walk in is pretty freaking exciting!! Karly's boyfriend ended up meeting up with us as well, so we had a great little group going. Once Karly was there, a pitcher of beer was definitely in order.
Side story: The Frog has vodka+caramel and vodka+strawberry shots. I hate vodka. I don't like taking shots. Laura loves caramel. Laura likes taking shots. Laura wanted to take shots. I said, I'll make you deal - I'll take a shot if the US scores a goal. I was sincerely planning (but not hoping) that we would get annihilated by England. Long story short, the US scored (which is when we found out how many US fans were in this English pub) and we had to order shots too. Rough life.
All in all, it was a really fun night and I still kind of can't believe that this stop over in Paris happened so spontaneously. I mean, we were really planning on being in Bordeaux right now. But yesterday and today have just been fantastic. Our train to Bordeaux leaves tomorrow before 8 AM, so a little bit after the game ended, we headed home. On the way out, Rich said he'd show us "Paris proper" later this week, so hopefully that will happen! First though, we've got beaucoup du vin rouge pour boire!
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Michael - CS #21
I don't know if I really slept at all on that overnight train. They're such a great idea, in theory. But with 6 people including 1 sick, coughing child, and 1 crying baby and the window that never seemed to shut letting the loud whooshes of the night come in - it was near impossible.
After the night train to Frankfurt we had to take another 3.5 hour train to Paris. On that train, we met a girl named Cathy from Oregon who was living in France and I had her give me some quick French lessons on things that I knew were drifting away from my foundation. That was good. I flipped through Laura's phrase book to make sure I knew how to say all the basic things (I was pretty sure I did...I just get nervous) and soon I was feeling ready for a trial run.
We arrived at Gare de l'Est and I was so freaking excited to be in Paris again. It was really warm and sunny and everywhere you look there are boulangeries and patisseries and crepes and other delicious things. It's hard to explain how or why I love this city so much. We had really good intentions of going all the way to Bordeaux today but we knew that trains to Bordeaux might already be fully booked. We'd coordinated with a CouchSurfing host in Bordeaux in case we DID make it, and also with a host in Paris in case we got stuck. After talking with a ticket person (IN FRENCH!) and learning that there were no trains to Bordeaux until Sunday our decision was made for us.
Side note: the French have an awful reputation of not speaking English to you. But they also have a reputation of starting to speak English as soon as they here you aren't perfectly fluent. So I was not sure how my rusty french would go over.
I don't know if the woman I spoke to did not know English, did not want to speak English, or did want to speak English but knew I was trying to practice my French (or some other possibility), but she spoke in French with me the whole time and I got the information I needed.
I got to use my French a number of other times for little things here and there - figuring out how to use a payphone (always a challenge for me in foreign countries), ordering crepes (obviously the first thing I ate), buying metro tickets (oh, good story), etc.
Metro ticket story: Paris has expensive tourist passes for like 9 euros for a day. It covers zones 1-3. I asked the tourist office if there was any cheaper way of getting around (individual tickets are 1.6 euros). They said no. I felt like they were lying. I went to the Paris ticket seller booth and saw a sign that said 1 day pass, zones 1-2, 5.6 euros. Half the price! And we had no reason to go to zone 3, because seriously, what's in zone 3? Practically everything is in zone 1. So I was able to buy us the way cheaper all day unlimited passes which we then commenced to use profusely.
We had to check our bags because our host was not home and not picking up his phone. It cost 5 euros a bag (!!!) so we only checked our big bags and I was stuck carrying my green bag and my Baby (my bag of breakables with dying handles) all day.
On our way to go see the city...finally. After 2.5 months of traveling, after 24 hours of commuting, after practically no sleep and little food - but still, I was excited beyond belief so running on adrenaline was no problem.
Then I realized it was Friday, and I just happen to know that the Louvre is free on Fridays for people under 26 after a certain time. So that's where we went first. It was about 3 when we got there and free entrance didn't start until 6. So going off of pure memory, I led us to a neighborhood close by that I remembered having cheap, yummy crepes. I was pretty sure I had gotten to the neighborhood and we stopped at the first crepe place. After I'd finished eating, I pulled out my trusty travel journal (that I got right before I was in France almost 2 years ago). I flipped through what I wrote during August 2008...and found a line scrawled that some street had great crepes. I looked at where I knew we were on my map...and saw that the street I had written down 2 years ago intersected with the street we were on, just half a block up. I had made it on memory!!!
At this point, I've got to be honest. I was feeling pretty damn clever. Back in my Paris, speaking French, jumping off a train on no sleep and knowing what museums are free and where the food is. It's a GREAT feeling. I need to live here.
After that, we were within walking distance of the Notre Dame. It was here that we realized that both of our cameras were dead. Hilarious considering the weather was beautiful and we had all day metro passes so we'd be going to see as much as we could. After that we headed to the Eiffel Tower which was majestic and gorgeous as always. There we saw some really good street performers dancing. Usually I feel like only guys do street dancing, but this group had a girl who was also really good! I wish I could dance...at all.
After the street performers, I really wanted to go to the fountain close by and sit with my feet in the water. I love doing that. But...right now there is no fountain because Paris has set up a huge outdoor screen for the world cup games and the whole area is fenced off and labeled "FIFA FAN FEST." Pretty cool! Except that there's no fountain :( Tons of people were sitting outside though watching the opening day of the world cup. I wish the States like soccer as much as Europe.
So, by now it was time to head back to the Louvre to get in for free. Laura and I are not huge museum people, especially by this point on our trip, and I'm just jaded having been to the the Louvre 2 or 3 times already. This resulted in the fastest whirl wind and totally under appreciative tour of the Louvre ever. We saw the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and that was pretty much it. A little lame but whatevs. If we really want to go back, we'll be here next Friday too :)
After the Louvre we went back to Gare de l'Est, called our host from Bordeaux to say we weren't coming and tried again to call our host here in Paris. When he didn't respond, again, we walked until we found a McDonald's. We sat outside stealing their internet and trying to Skype our host and check for possible back up hosts on CS. Finally we got through to him and found out he was home, so we went back to the station to retrieve our huge bags and took the metro to his stop. But the story doesn't end there. He said he lived really close to the metro, but Google maps told us to go the completely wrong direction. So we walked around lost with all of our freaking stuff for at least half an hour. Then I finally started using my French once again to figure out how to get us to his place. A nice shop man helped me and let me use his phone. After 15 minutes of having the shop man help me and letting me get through to our host (who said he was too tired to come and pick us up...a 10 minute walk away) I didn't want to leave without buying anything. The closest and cheapest thing in sight was a beer and I was hot, tired, thirsty, and frustrated, so that sounded great. No idea if it's legal to drink on the streets here but I picked up all my bags and drank my beer on the way to host's flat. His name is Michael by the way.
Michael turned out to be a really nice guy from Mauritius working as a train engineer here. He made us a great little pasta dinner with chopped green onions and really tender beef. We picked up a bottle of red Bordeaux wine to go with it. Happily fed and not carrying all our bags around the evening was going much better. By now I think it was around 11 or so, but we had all day metro passes so I wanted to keep doing stuff!
When I was here two summers ago I stayed at a hostel where I met Rich who was in the process of moving from England to Paris at that time. He works at an English pub here so I thought we could go see his bar and see if he was working. It was a Friday night so I figured he would be. His bar turned out to be really cool and really huge. It's also a microbrewery and they brew six different beers on site. Rich was working, but he didn't recognize me at first which was prettttty awkward. But it has been almost two years and my hair was up instead of down. I tried a dark beer (cleverly called "Dark de Triomphe") and Michael, who agreed to come out with us, got a ginger beer. Both were pretty delicious. It was really fun seeing Rich and I chatted with him on our way out and he asked if I was watching the world cup games. I said I really wanted to see the US/England game and asked if the Frog (his pub) was showing it. He said of course it was, so I think we'll be back tomorrow.
Then we began the slow trek back to Michael's flat...couldn't have asked for a better first day in Paris. It was a fantastically full day for not even knowing for sure 24 hours ago that we were going to be here. Love this city. Love it.
Accomplishments:
Speaking French again and still knowing my way around :)
After the night train to Frankfurt we had to take another 3.5 hour train to Paris. On that train, we met a girl named Cathy from Oregon who was living in France and I had her give me some quick French lessons on things that I knew were drifting away from my foundation. That was good. I flipped through Laura's phrase book to make sure I knew how to say all the basic things (I was pretty sure I did...I just get nervous) and soon I was feeling ready for a trial run.
We arrived at Gare de l'Est and I was so freaking excited to be in Paris again. It was really warm and sunny and everywhere you look there are boulangeries and patisseries and crepes and other delicious things. It's hard to explain how or why I love this city so much. We had really good intentions of going all the way to Bordeaux today but we knew that trains to Bordeaux might already be fully booked. We'd coordinated with a CouchSurfing host in Bordeaux in case we DID make it, and also with a host in Paris in case we got stuck. After talking with a ticket person (IN FRENCH!) and learning that there were no trains to Bordeaux until Sunday our decision was made for us.
Side note: the French have an awful reputation of not speaking English to you. But they also have a reputation of starting to speak English as soon as they here you aren't perfectly fluent. So I was not sure how my rusty french would go over.
I don't know if the woman I spoke to did not know English, did not want to speak English, or did want to speak English but knew I was trying to practice my French (or some other possibility), but she spoke in French with me the whole time and I got the information I needed.
I got to use my French a number of other times for little things here and there - figuring out how to use a payphone (always a challenge for me in foreign countries), ordering crepes (obviously the first thing I ate), buying metro tickets (oh, good story), etc.
Metro ticket story: Paris has expensive tourist passes for like 9 euros for a day. It covers zones 1-3. I asked the tourist office if there was any cheaper way of getting around (individual tickets are 1.6 euros). They said no. I felt like they were lying. I went to the Paris ticket seller booth and saw a sign that said 1 day pass, zones 1-2, 5.6 euros. Half the price! And we had no reason to go to zone 3, because seriously, what's in zone 3? Practically everything is in zone 1. So I was able to buy us the way cheaper all day unlimited passes which we then commenced to use profusely.
We had to check our bags because our host was not home and not picking up his phone. It cost 5 euros a bag (!!!) so we only checked our big bags and I was stuck carrying my green bag and my Baby (my bag of breakables with dying handles) all day.
On our way to go see the city...finally. After 2.5 months of traveling, after 24 hours of commuting, after practically no sleep and little food - but still, I was excited beyond belief so running on adrenaline was no problem.
Then I realized it was Friday, and I just happen to know that the Louvre is free on Fridays for people under 26 after a certain time. So that's where we went first. It was about 3 when we got there and free entrance didn't start until 6. So going off of pure memory, I led us to a neighborhood close by that I remembered having cheap, yummy crepes. I was pretty sure I had gotten to the neighborhood and we stopped at the first crepe place. After I'd finished eating, I pulled out my trusty travel journal (that I got right before I was in France almost 2 years ago). I flipped through what I wrote during August 2008...and found a line scrawled that some street had great crepes. I looked at where I knew we were on my map...and saw that the street I had written down 2 years ago intersected with the street we were on, just half a block up. I had made it on memory!!!
At this point, I've got to be honest. I was feeling pretty damn clever. Back in my Paris, speaking French, jumping off a train on no sleep and knowing what museums are free and where the food is. It's a GREAT feeling. I need to live here.
After that, we were within walking distance of the Notre Dame. It was here that we realized that both of our cameras were dead. Hilarious considering the weather was beautiful and we had all day metro passes so we'd be going to see as much as we could. After that we headed to the Eiffel Tower which was majestic and gorgeous as always. There we saw some really good street performers dancing. Usually I feel like only guys do street dancing, but this group had a girl who was also really good! I wish I could dance...at all.
After the street performers, I really wanted to go to the fountain close by and sit with my feet in the water. I love doing that. But...right now there is no fountain because Paris has set up a huge outdoor screen for the world cup games and the whole area is fenced off and labeled "FIFA FAN FEST." Pretty cool! Except that there's no fountain :( Tons of people were sitting outside though watching the opening day of the world cup. I wish the States like soccer as much as Europe.
So, by now it was time to head back to the Louvre to get in for free. Laura and I are not huge museum people, especially by this point on our trip, and I'm just jaded having been to the the Louvre 2 or 3 times already. This resulted in the fastest whirl wind and totally under appreciative tour of the Louvre ever. We saw the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and that was pretty much it. A little lame but whatevs. If we really want to go back, we'll be here next Friday too :)
After the Louvre we went back to Gare de l'Est, called our host from Bordeaux to say we weren't coming and tried again to call our host here in Paris. When he didn't respond, again, we walked until we found a McDonald's. We sat outside stealing their internet and trying to Skype our host and check for possible back up hosts on CS. Finally we got through to him and found out he was home, so we went back to the station to retrieve our huge bags and took the metro to his stop. But the story doesn't end there. He said he lived really close to the metro, but Google maps told us to go the completely wrong direction. So we walked around lost with all of our freaking stuff for at least half an hour. Then I finally started using my French once again to figure out how to get us to his place. A nice shop man helped me and let me use his phone. After 15 minutes of having the shop man help me and letting me get through to our host (who said he was too tired to come and pick us up...a 10 minute walk away) I didn't want to leave without buying anything. The closest and cheapest thing in sight was a beer and I was hot, tired, thirsty, and frustrated, so that sounded great. No idea if it's legal to drink on the streets here but I picked up all my bags and drank my beer on the way to host's flat. His name is Michael by the way.
Michael turned out to be a really nice guy from Mauritius working as a train engineer here. He made us a great little pasta dinner with chopped green onions and really tender beef. We picked up a bottle of red Bordeaux wine to go with it. Happily fed and not carrying all our bags around the evening was going much better. By now I think it was around 11 or so, but we had all day metro passes so I wanted to keep doing stuff!
When I was here two summers ago I stayed at a hostel where I met Rich who was in the process of moving from England to Paris at that time. He works at an English pub here so I thought we could go see his bar and see if he was working. It was a Friday night so I figured he would be. His bar turned out to be really cool and really huge. It's also a microbrewery and they brew six different beers on site. Rich was working, but he didn't recognize me at first which was prettttty awkward. But it has been almost two years and my hair was up instead of down. I tried a dark beer (cleverly called "Dark de Triomphe") and Michael, who agreed to come out with us, got a ginger beer. Both were pretty delicious. It was really fun seeing Rich and I chatted with him on our way out and he asked if I was watching the world cup games. I said I really wanted to see the US/England game and asked if the Frog (his pub) was showing it. He said of course it was, so I think we'll be back tomorrow.
Then we began the slow trek back to Michael's flat...couldn't have asked for a better first day in Paris. It was a fantastically full day for not even knowing for sure 24 hours ago that we were going to be here. Love this city. Love it.
Accomplishments:
Speaking French again and still knowing my way around :)
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Recipes
Today is the REAL last day. After a week and a half (which is 3-4 days longer than originally expected), gathered all of our stuff and finally began to clear the way for Daniel/Helen/Hakan to have their living room back. I have had such an amazing time here. I've accomplished all my goals for coming to Sweden and there are so many reasons that I want to come back. I really hope I can stay in touch with all of the family here and that it begins a trend that better connects the stateside Matsons with the trans Atlantic Jonssons. That would be really fantastic. I am really sad to go though, I will seriously miss these peopel a lot. With any luck, I can drag them to Seattle! The slower pace and having 2 full weeks here has made a huge difference. I had time to get sick and recover! We had time to not worry about doing anything except for bar hopping some days and picnicing other days. It was very leisurely and I felt like we really got to experience doing the everyday things that they do here in Stockholm. So it was really an amazing experience for me.
We packed pretty easily and spent the morning with Helen, Daniel, and Lynn. Sadly, Hakan was at work so we didn't really get to say bye to him :( The other night, at girls' night, Helen had said she would gather the recipes of all the Swedish food we'd eaten and give them to us because I told her I love to cook. She said it would be a good project for her but I had no idea if she was serious and if so how long it would take her to do this. But, this morning, she handed both Laura and I notebooks with pages and pages of recipes for everything Swedish we ate while we were here! Every pastry, every Swedish food court item, and her mom's Swedish meatball recipe!!!!! This was more than I ever could have asked for, it was a perfect gift and token of my time here. I am in love with this little journal and cannot wait to go home and try cooking/baking everything!!! I was a little overwhelmed that she had taken the time to hand write everything out for us, even using measurements in tablespoons, cups, etc. So so so nice!! I am positively ecstatic about this.
I took a little family picture with Daniel and Helen and then it was time for final hugs and goodbyes, which was pretty sad for me. Helen and Idun walked us halfway to the train station. After we parted ways, we grabbed some typical Hilary-Laura-Train-Food (baguette, meat, cheese, juice, bananas). Getting into town, we met a guy named Henri who decided he was bored and wanted to interview us. So that was fun; we've heard Swedish people are pretty reserved (they're described pretty similarly to Seattlites) but a couple of people have struck up conversations with us, which is great.
We made our first train with no problems, and I felt a strange sense of familiarity at the Copenhagen central station. Obviously I've been here a couple times before, but it's still pretty amazing to me that I can pull in to CPH central station and feel like I'm coming back to somewhere I know.
We then made it onto our night line train, where we'll spend 12 probably miserable hours before arriving in Frankfurt, Germany. This journey is probably really going to suck, but it's the last big push before we drag all our stuff to CDG airport...
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...
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.
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