You may have recently heard that the Swedish curling team just beat the Canadians at the World Curling Cup in Canada. Guess what? That Swedish curling team is from Ostersund. Cool, huh? It’s kinda in the middle of nowhere, but, hey, they have some fun sports. Here’s one we got to participate in. There’s frozen water EVERYWHERE!
Therese and Jeb go way back. Therese was an exchange student from Sweden when Jeb was a High School senior in Oregon. They spent all their free time that winter skiing together at Mt. Bachelor. Therese also spent most days before and after school with Jeb and his sister. They ate a lot of cereal and watched Yogi Bear re-runs. We have stayed in touch all these years and the day finally arrived that Jeb “made it to Sweden”. Therese and Tobias have 3 super cute boys. Filipe 9, Jakob 7, and Oskar 4. What fun to see them here in Sweden in their home. Tak, Therese and family, for a very fun week!
Here they are from right – Therese, Jeb, Jennifer, Scott, and Carol – 
We flew from Hamburg to Stockholm where we were picked up by my sister-in-law. We spent 2 days with her and I will write more about that later after we go back to spend more time with them! Let’s skip ahead to Thursday, though, when we took a train north for 7 hours to a ski resort town called Are where we met up with friends. Are is the largest ski area in Northern Europe and it just so happens that our friends have a ski-in/ski-out condo there. They spend every winter weekend and holiday there and we were lucky enough to join them. Are is the same lattitude as Mt. McKinley, Alaska. Situated on a large lake, the town is an athlete’s paradise. Jeb would especially be very happy here with all the snow kiting and paragliding. The Joe Ollsson Invitational, Big Air competition, was also being hosted that weekend so we had great night time entertainment right outside the windows. Some of us got to ski a few days and that is always a very good thing! (Poor Levi had a bad accident on his second run of the first day and was out the rest of the time. He has been such a trooper despite the situation.)
P.S. He is walking again and will be OK!
“Let’s just go down to see the bridge one more time.” We checked under the beds, took out the garbage, heaved on our packs, and checked out of the apartment. After catching the metro to the other side of the river we also decided we couldn’t resist one more visit to the bakery we had discovered earlier in the week. Sitting in that sweet café, we spent every last Crown we had, then huffed it all the way back up the hill to the train station, but not without first walking on the bridge one last time!
A few interesting facts about Prague\Czech Republic:
According to the Guinness World Records, Prague Castle is the largest ancient castle in the world.
Prague was the seat of The Holy Roman Empire during the 14th century.
The Jews of Prague have a very long history here. There are in fact 7 Synagogues in Prague.
Mozart conducted is own premier of Don Giovanni in 1787. He loved it here so much that he learned Czech and spent much of his time here along with other famous composers.
Jan Hus lived and taught reformed theology 100 years before Martin Luther, and got himself burned at the stake for it.
Franz Kafka, the famous author, was born and lived here.
The Velvet Revolution and Divorce are key terms in its history and you should look them up.
Immolations and Defenestrations mark times of turmoil. (Other terms some of you should look up…)
People who remember the not-so-far days of communism say that when ‘Big Brother’ was here life was grey.
Puppetry is a large part of Czech culture. It played an important role in preserving the heritage and language of the Czechs during the years that others ruled here.
The Black Light Theater was invented here.
It can get VERY cold in Prague and the best thing to do on days like that is stay in and read.
The history of the city of Prague begins with a fairy tale story. Legend says that the Princess Libuse, hoping he would help her yield sturdy heirs to the throne, chose a ploughman to be her groom. She stood on the hill overlooking the valley and foretold of a beautiful city that would one day become the city of Prague (Czech word for ‘threshold’). It would indeed sit on the very threshold of many cultures and stories. The city is therefore layered with the architecture of the Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical, Art Nouveau, and so on. Unlike many European cities, it was spared during WWII and remains intact. Prague is breathtaking!
To be honest, I really don’t want to try to describe it to you. It is so much like a fairy tale that I think I would spoil it for you and you wouldn’t believe me anyway. The best I can do is to tell you it is like Disneyland, but a real-life size city that has a thousand years of history instead of amusement rides.
It has a 600 year old astronomical clock that still ticks and bongs, classical theaters, underground jazz clubs, outdoor markets and musicians, shops selling beautiful things, extremely friendly people, excellent food, pastries, and beer… it’s a near perfect place. Just like Disneyland.
Country boy Jeb even felt comfortable in this city. The people seem normal. Maybe it’s the public displays of affection? I agree that it is a romantic city. How can one resist a kiss in such a place?
Gilly is English. Steve is American. They met while studying French during their year of Study-Abroad in France. They now live in Old Basing, just south of London. We know them through the Grunwald Guild in Plain and their son, Aidan, is friends with Levi and Rebekah from the summers he’s spent there.
Their gorgeous home and generous hospitality have been such a blessing to us! Our time here came as a much needed break in our travels. We’ve been able to push the PAUSE button on our “wandering” and go-go-go schedule. They don’t seem to care that we have been sleeping in until ungodly hours and showing utter laziness ALL day. They keep feeding us delicious food and letting us walk their sweet chocolate lab, Whistler.
(Oh yeah, did I mention that they speak English in this country and that the Sakakinis shop at Costco? This is as close to home as we’ll get for the next 6 weeks.)
Thank you, Steve and Gilly, for your warm welcome and letting us crash at your amazing place. It has been so wonderful. You are the best and we look forward to seeing you this summer in Plain.
Sarah the Logistics Queen had quite a load of work arranging visit dates and the transport between them for the last bit of our trip. As time draws shorter, arrangement of the last destinations becomes more interconnected, so a flurry of research and reservations have been necessary. Visits to England, Prague, Amy in Hamburg, Therese, Tobias and kids in Ostersund, and Sofia and the girls in Stockholm, then our final departure from Paris are finalized and the kids and I are so grateful for a Queen who has cheerfully accomplished it for us! 
We caught the train early in the morning from Basingstoke to Waterloo Station – just a 40 minute ride and we were in the heart of the city where
England swings like a pendulum do
Bobbies on bicycles, two by two
Westminster Abbey, the tower of Big Ben
The rosy red cheeks of the little children –Roger Miller
The last part was particularly true!
I have to say that it was so much fun taking Jeb and the kids into London, a place I have been many times. In fact, I spent part of a summer in London the year I met Jeb. It isn’t an overwhelming city as long as you figure out the metro and what you want to see. By now, we are quite museumed out so we chose just a thing or two to see like the wing in the National Gallery featuring the likes of Monet, Serat, Manet, and Van Gogh.
What else does one do in London? Go to the theater of course! How could we not see Monte Python’s Spamalot in the land of King Arthur and his Knights?
London was one of the places where I booked a hotel in advance since I knew it would be very late by the time we got out of the play. We did arrive late to the hotel. The power was out and they had forgotten to make the second and extra bed, which actually didn’t even exist. The nice lady who was working the counter couldn’t even find extra blankets – strange since it was a nice place. Politely, we demanded our money back the following morning (because of the bed situation, not the power outage) and they actually gave it all back. Wow! What did we do with an extra 60 pounds in our pockets? Go to the movies in Leicester Square, eat out, and shop at Harrods where we didn’t actually buy anything, but had a great time looking. Can you believe Levi didn’t even want to go in? “Do we have to shop?” It didn’t take more than an escalator ride and Harrods had him spellbound. He was the one that we had to pull away.
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