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April 20, 2013

One More Flight

Here’s the thing. I can’t believe that we got away with only one session of this… IMG_2088 And, really, it wasn’t bad at all. We slept fine as it was a very quiet and small airport. We took a bus ride to the airport in the middle of the night. It was awesome because the bus had moose lights and we could see everything anyway. We didn’t see any moose, though. Darn it! Speaking of traveling, here are some interesting numbers for you. These represent ONLY major legs of our tip, not all the “touring about” that happened in between and at each place. We took: 5 rental cars, 7 taxis, 4 boats, 10 planes, 8 trains, 12 busses Metro rides – Too many to count. And leg power… We only have ONE more, long plane ride left!!!!!!!!!!!
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April 18, 2013

The Bradley Girls

Sofia, Anava, and Nili! Our Swedish/Israeli  family… Sofia has 4 kids, 2 of whom have finished serving in the Israeli Army and are living in Israel and 2 who are here in Sweden with her. We had a blast staying with her and the 2 girls at their place in Eskilstuna. Being with family is always so refreshing, relaxing, and easy. Thank you, Sofia, for picking us up at the airport, making us very welcome, the good laughs, the talks, the delicious food (especially the Swedish meatballs), and for being so incredibly sweet! We love you! Huaa? IMG_1897
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April 17, 2013

A Long Walk

What a beautiful day to spend with my sister-in-law! Eskilstuna is an hour west of Stockholm. The scenic town where they live is situated on a river. Here are a few photos I took on our long walk today. I’ve also added a few from a walk we went on by the lake near here when we arrived a couple of weeks ago.
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April 16, 2013

Fika

In the kitchen on our first evening in Are, Therese says, “In Sweden we drink coffee. All the time we drink coffee. Do you guys drink coffee?”  Of course we drink coffee.  We’re from Washington.  In our family, at least, we mostly drink coffee in the morning and then let the caffeine fade out of our systems for the rest of the day. It’s nice to have God’s Gift for the Morning able to do its good work again each day.  In Sweden they also have coffee with breakfast, and after dinner.  Maybe even with lunch.  Fika comes mid-morning and mid-afternoon.  These are the times that you have a cinnamon roll and then seven!! different kinds of cookies with your coffee. If you want to do it the traditional way, put a sugar cube between your teeth and suck the coffee through it.  I always thought filter coffee was made by a drip machine, and who knew that Pastor Phil’s Christmas cookie party isn’t the only event that could send me into a sugar coma. Anyway, when in Sweden, do as the Swedes do, and as you might imagine, we are now immune to the effects of caffeine.  I guess we will have to do some sort of detox before we return to home and to work! IMG_1867
Written by in Sweden, The Big Dad 0 Comments
April 15, 2013

Off Season in the Land of the Vikings

Traveling during the off-season has more benefits than drawbacks unless you are in Stockholm and it is closed for renovation. Off-season means less crowds, shorter lines, better prices, and cooler temperatures. In most places we have visited there have been a few closed sights, but we just moved on and saw it as an opportunity to save money. We adopted the ‘not meant to be’ attitude. (Did I already blog about this??) As we near the end of our trip, and we are closer to high-season than ever, we grabbed a train to Stockholm hoping to see a few of its highlights. The weather wasn’t ideal, but that didn’t deter us. Fog and mist actually make interesting pictures. (It’s hard to take a bad picture when you can hardly see the subject matter.) Well, long story short – We had a fun day in Stockholm anyway. We shopped for touristy stuff, sat in the VW rally car (right before it shipped off to race in Portugal for the weekend), discovered the coolest science fiction bookstore, enjoyed fika in Old Town, and took lots of artsy fartsy pictures.
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April 14, 2013

Ostersund

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! We also spent a day at Jamtli, a living historical farm. As you can see from photos, it really is a big deal to sit in the sun when it finally comes out.  
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April 12, 2013

Fredagsmys

Yah, pronounce that one!  It goes like this: free udugs myeese and means Cozy Friday.  Fredagsmys is another tradition we may need to import.  It amounts to a mix up of family night and taco Tuesday. Our friends Tobias, Therese, Filip, Jakob and Oskar taught us to observe this tradition, and here is my recommendation:  If a Swede offers to make you tacos, accept with as much enthusiasm as you are capable of.  They are going to be filled with the usual stuff made of avocados, vegetables and dairy products.  The ingredient that the Mexicans are not able to include, no matter the level of authenticity, is moose.  In our experience, as of this last Fredagsmys, ALL excellent tacos are made with moose!

IMG_1994

Written by in Sweden, The Big Dad 0 Comments
April 11, 2013

Are (pronounced Oera) Ski Resort

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!
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