Midsommar in Sweden

We ate pickled herring last weekend!

Yes, we've been slow to post about our adventures at the Swedish Midsommar holiday because it deserves such a detailed recap. And, quite frankly, the two-day celebration was exhausting, but so much fun.

So what is Midsommar exactly, besides the middle of the summer (or the first day of the summer in America)? Midsommar is a pre-Christian holiday to celebrate the summer solstice. It's a bigger celebration in the Nordic countries than in mainland Europe, which is likely due to the exaggerated length of the summer days. It seems the Church tried to Christianize it, but didn't have as much luck as they did with the winter solstice. Our Swedish teacher mentioned that the Midsommar traditions in the times of the vikings involved a lot of drinking and resulted in "fertility parties." Funny translation, but you get the point. She also mentioned that this resulted in a lot of fatherless children being born every March. The superstitions of magic and fertility continued to be associated with the festivals over the years, but today the festival is known mostly for silly singing, dancing and lots of drinking.

Scott came home to tell me that we had plans for Midsommar after attending a work happy hour and dinner event a few weeks ago. We were invited to join his co-worker, Per, and Per's wife, Katarina, at their cabin in the Archipelago, along with a dozen of their friends and family members.

Even the trip to the cabin was a real treat! It was arranged that we would be picked up in a boat by Bjorn, another party-goer who gave us a great water tour of the places we've only seen from land thus far. We passed through the lock and dam in record speed (we were told), so we took extra time to take the scenic route through a gorgeous area of town.

We couldn't have asked for better weather. Warm and sunny with a slight breeze. Plus good company, we had the perfect ingredients for a beautiful Midsommar.

While docking at the cabin on Storholmen, we were greeted by the sight of a gorgeous cabin on a hillside of plants and wildflowers. The table down by the water was already set for lunch, and we helped unload the boat and introduced ourselves as guests continued to arrive. (Meeting two Annas, two Pers and two Bjorns made remembering all of the names a little easier!)

We sat down to our Midsommar lunch a bit unsure of what we were getting ourselves into. The meal consisted of three types of pickled herring (mustard, onion and Archipelago flavors), fresh potatoes, boiled with dill and seasoned with sour cream and chives, and knacka bread (flat and crisp like a cracker) with butter and cheese. Honestly, I think we were both pleasantly surprised to find that the pickled herring was not as bad as it sounds - we even LIKED it! The entire meal was delicious, in fact. To drink, everyone was poured a small glass of beer, as well as tall shot glasses filled with a traditional liquor called snaps. This particular bottle of snaps had a very mild flavor, perhaps most similar to a spiced rum like Captain Morgan, but the taste was not too strong, even though the alcohol hits you quickly. The snaps was good as well, although it is a good thing we sipped it slowly, because there were many songs sung throughout the meal - each followed by a shot/sip of snaps!

Following lunch, we joined a steady parade of people marching toward the communal Midsommar celebration. The community gets together to cover a Maypole with greenery and flowers, then raises the Maypole to dance around. A band plays traditional songs and people sing and dance around the pole. The songs are comparable to the chicken dance and the hokey pokey as far as the lyrics and dances. Our companions commented that Swedes are known to be extremely reserved, then once a year they all show up at a gathering place and do silly dances with strangers. They all think it's ridiculous, but since it's okay to loosen up for one day a year they all take advantage of the atmosphere. It was obvious that everyone was having a great time.

The rest of our time on the island was spent socializing, playing games, being spoiled with incredible meals and tipping back a few glasses of wine. (There are more great pictures of the festivities in our Picassa Web albums.) We went out in the midnight twilight to sing a ghostly song in front of the "haunted castle" on the island. Turns out the "ghosts" were throwing a pretty decent party on the grounds of the run down castle, so we kept our distance, did our best to avoid the flocking teenagers, sang our song, and went on our way.

All in all it was an excellent weekend. We are still pretty excited that we were able to celebrate this holiday with a bunch of Swedes, and couldn't thank our host and hostess enough. It was so much better than watching from a distance.

Solo flights

It looks like Scott's flight has landed in Minneapolis on time, which means he's likely already on his way to meet up with the guys by now. I know he's hoping to see as many friends as possible, former co-workers, his parents, who will be driving up from Iowa, and also my family during the weekend. Plus, he has his work conference tomorrow morning, a birthday party tomorrow evening, a 5K race on Saturday and a number of runs planned throughout the weekend. I can only hope he'll have time to check a few items off of the mile-long shopping list we put together. Have fun and good luck getting everything done, Scott. Don't forget to enjoy a meal at Chipotle for me.

When I was talking to my mom earlier tonight, I realized that this is really the first time I've been this far from friends and family on my own. Even when I studied abroad in Spain during college, I was lucky enough to meet my wonderful girlfriend Toni in the Minneapolis airport before we left for our program. So it was kind of cool to think that this weekend marks my first solo flight. Also kind of strange.

Tomorrow is my last day of SFI class before we break for the summer. We're having a potluck to celebrate, and everyone is bringing a traditional dish from their homeland. I wasn't about to attempt baking an apple pie, and State Fair foods seemed out of the question, so we'll be enjoying my best rendition of my mom's pasta salad instead. Cheers to summer!

There's Norway that Oslo is better than Stockholm

After our return from Copenhagen both Miranda and I have turned critical eyes toward our surroundings here in Stockholm. We noticed that we had been ignoring many of Stockholm's less glamorous parts, but even now we still believe that Stockholm should come out on top. We hope that our review of Oslo and Bergen is objective and fair, but for those of you that don't want to dig through all the details, Stockholm wins again.

Let's start with Norway in general. The countryside is beautiful. Start with the green rolling hills along the Mississippi, add in endless miles of coastline, and then start climbing up the foothills into an amazing mountain range. The land is rocky and isn't good for much, but it makes for some incredible scenery.

Then we'll head over to Bergen. As previously stated, we took the train from Oslo to Bergen. It departed around 11:10 at night and arrived at 7:00 the following morning. I think they could have made the trip faster, but arriving at 7:00 was plenty early. Each seat came with a brand new fleece blanket, an eye mask and ear plugs, all of which were greatly appreciated. We did our best to sleep, but it was just our luck that our seats were against the back wall, meaning we couldn't recline. We tossed and turned all night, and the one good thing about that is that we had a lot of opportunities to check out the view. Other than the miles of tunnels, which alone were incredible, we were always rewarded with an amazing view. And thanks to the northern latitude, we had decent light for the entire trip.

Bergen used to be Norway's biggest and most important city as it was the trading center off to the west. The Norwegian farmers and fisherman would bring their goods to the port where English traders would come to exchange more refined items like tea, beer, and manufactured products. We couldn't tell a difference, but rumor has it that the Norwegians on the west coast are quite talkative and are great at bargaining while Norwegians from the south and the east tend to be fairly quiet and reserved. Bergen had some of the craziest narrow and crooked roads we've ever seen, and we just couldn't get enough of the tiny houses. The mountains looked like exaggerated bluffs, and after looking around for just a few minutes it was no surprise that the Norwegian settlers ended up in Decorah, Iowa. We spent the day visiting everything that was reachable on foot, far more than we should have tried to see. The city was quite cool and by six at night we were exhausted...only five hours to burn until our train departed for Oslo! Our pictures of Bergen can show the highlights better than I can describe, so head on over to Picassa and check them out.

Unfortunately there were a few downsides to Bergen, which we later found out extended to Norway in general.

First, the prices. Norway makes Sweden seem cheap. Two good hamburgers and one Coke without refills at a sit-down restaurant by the piers? Try $75. You'd think as a math major I could have done the math before placing the order...and sadly, those were the cheap options. As an additional slap in the face that restaurant wasn't even airing the European Cup, which was the first thing we asked the waiter and the only reason we even took a seat!

Second, Norwegian business accepts credit cards, but a lot of places don't accept international cards. We even got turned away at McDonald's while trying to track down a cheap meal!

Third, Bergen was ridiculously touristy. We're not talking about free souls wandering around in their tennis shoes with a backpack and a camera. We're talking about groups of 50 people stepping off a bus, lighting a cigarette, then following the tour guide holding a sign up in the air. Two or three buses would have been fine, but I swear there were at least 25 of these groups clogging up central Bergen. Back to number two. Why wouldn't a touristy town like this accept international credit cards?

Fourth, drugs. I've seen a few small drug exchanges at bus stops in downtown Minneapolis but have never seen anything like what we saw in Bergen. We had wandered into a big park in a ritzy area of town. The apartments lining the park were by far the nicest of anything we had seen in town, and most of the people passing through the park seemed fairly well off. But there were also two groups just sitting in the sunshine, openly selling drugs. I sat there, watched one man walk up to four guys on the hilltop, pull a large bag full of white powder out of his coat, shake hands and walk away. In the next five minutes 20 people ranging from their late teens to kids in their 20s showed up in backpacks, chatted for 30 seconds, counted out their bills, exchanged and stashed goods, shook hands, and went their way. Miranda and I went to sit in another area of the same park and as I was about to sit down I noticed cigarette butts that I didn't want to sit on. I looked for a clear spot and noticed multiple syringes pushed into the dirt. We didn't stick around long after that. I guess drugs are actually a pretty big problem in Norway. Most Swedes have told me that few Swedes have ever even come into contact with marijuana until they head to America to study, but as soon as you cross into Norway you're faced with some pretty rough stuff.

We filled the rest of our night in Bergen at a sports bar and enjoyed watching the Netherlands dominate the soccer match. After digging our goods out of a storage locker at the train station we hopped a 10:50 train back to Oslo, this time with reclining seats. I tried to stay awake to see some of the mountains on the way out of town, but after about an hour I closed my eyes and didn't open them again until we rolled into Oslo at 6:30 in the morning. We were bummed to leave Bergen without taking a fjord tour, but you need more than 18 hours in town to pull that off.

We took our time getting everything pieced together off the train and completed the two-mile hike across town to our hotel (yellow castle-like building in the photos), hoping to leave our bags there until we could check in. Turns out the room was ready, so we checked in at 7:30, cleaned up, took short nap, then went downstairs to enjoy the continental breakfast. After a small lunch of cold cuts from a grocery store in Bergen the day before, the over-sized breakfast buffet was more than welcome, even if we shouldn't have been allowed to enjoy it until the following morning. Miranda even thought it was the best part of the trip!

We hiked through the city center and checked out a random free museum. As you'll see from our photos, central Oslo is amazing. As you move from the center to the water, the Aker Brygge area, you pass by a bunch of new architecture. Apparently it was an old shipyard that was replaced with new buildings, and in my mind it was done very well. I had often defended Stockholm saying Stockholm doesn't need to add new architecture, but after seeing that part of Oslo I'm starting to wonder.

Once again, you can see most of what we did from our photos, but here are a few major highlights. The first was the ski jump up on the mountain over town. Wow. Vigeland's Park, the sculpture garden. Never seen anything like it. I could spend a lot of Saturdays just laying around in that park. Lastly, the Sweden vs. Spain match shown on the big screen. We showed up five minutes early to get a seat (the place was half empty for the Germany vs. Croatia game two nights before), only to find a packed park with 500 people waiting to get in. Luckily we found a spot on the hill where we could still see the game.

Low-lights, Sweden losing to Spain in the 90+2 minutes of injury time. Seriously! Completely checking out at a grocery store only to have our international credit cards denied. They had to switch lanes while I ran down two blocks to a 7/11 to withdraw some cash. Once again, more drugs. The window where druggies went to get clean needles and condoms wasn't a big deal. The woman with the signs of meth all over her face just a block away was. There were also a few "interesting" groups keeping the police busy outside the train station. Lastly, we took a tram ride through a non-touristy area of Oslo, only to see a pretty dirty area similar to what we had seen in Copenhagen.

Obviously Oslo and Stockholm are different. The lake and sea around Stockholm and the mountains around Oslo just can't be compared. Otherwise, Oslo has more extremes than Stockholm. Vigeland Park and Aker Brygge are areas that would really add to what Stockholm already has going for it. But if those come with dirty streets, run down buildings, graffiti and drug problems just outside the city center, it's just not worth it.

Another birthday post!

Between Miranda's dad, my mom and my sister Katie, we've got a lot to celebrate in June. So without further ado, happy birthday Katie!

My birthday posts have been a bit sappy lately. I can easily write a sappy post about my sister, but I'm not really in a mood for that tonight. She's not really into sappy stuff either, so instead I'll just tell you a little bit about her. Katie, if you want my poor attempt at a tear-jerker, let me know and I'll happily write it for you.

David and I did our best to make sure Katie grew up in our shadows. Instead, Katie chose her own route from what I can see she's really excelled along the way. She has dreamt of living near a warm beach for as long as I can remember. Needless to say, Luther wasn't her top choice, but I'm pretty sure that she was happy with the fact that she ended up studying there. The year after I graduated from Luther I returned to visit and found out that I was now known (even among my friends) as "Katie Striegel's brother." By the time she was a sophomore she had shed the title "Striegel's sister!" It's hard to explain what that means exactly, but even though I rejected my new title like any self-important big brother should, it still made me incredibly proud. It felt like I was being honored due to my association with a well-known, well-respected celebrity.

As for what she's up to now, after around six months in San Francisco and about a year back in Iowa she made a more permanent move out to San Diego to study acupuncture and Oriental medicine. Her boyfriend Adam followed a few months later and it seems like they're enjoying life in California. Right now they're both living up in La Jolla, just a few minutes from some pretty sweet beaches. Definitely living the dream. I'm jealous.

How does this tie to Sweden? Even though she wasn't the first to move out of the Midwest, she was the first to decide that she was going to move west, and like my brother, she helped provide the courage I needed to move over here.

Once again, happy birthday Katie.

Photo update

Thanks to the European Cup, Swedish classes and a backlog of blog posts to write, we haven't been able to write our review of Norway. We have Swedish class tomorrow night and plans to celebrate midsummer, the most celebrated of Sweden's holidays, with a coworker and his friends on Friday. With everything going on we hope to have something written about Norway by the end of the weekend.

We have half of our photos from Norway posted in Picassa, so check them out. We'll at least do our best to finalize the Bergen and Oslo photo albums tomorrow.

On another note, I have held back regarding the European Cup. The excitement around the tournament is pretty contagious. Due to the typical American's lack of interest in soccer I'll keep it short, but Sweden just got knocked out of the tournament in a pretty ugly loss to Russia. Now I have a bright yellow shirt that won't see much action until the World Cup qualifying matches. The Netherlands and Germany are both looking strong, and since I'm half German and a quarter Dutch, I have no qualms about jumping on their bandwagons!

Glad Fars Dag

We also didn't get any Father's Day cards in the mail before leaving for Norway, but we were fortunate to get to talk with both fathers on Father's Day. Our phone connection with Iowa was pretty poor, probably due to the fact that Iowa City's cell phone towers couldn't handle all of the calls made because of the floods. We did have a few minutes of clean communication before finally saying our goodbyes and calling Miranda's dad. Sounds like both men have been working their tails off lately. Miranda's dad has been working ridiculous overtime in the last few weeks and my dad has been pitching in to help clear out the basement of the University of Iowa's main library before flood waters swept everything away.

We both wish that we could have been with our dads last Sunday. Personally, I wish one of them could have grilled me a perfect burger that only a dad knows how to make, and Miranda wishes that could have happened at the lake, where her dad was spending the day. I guess we'll have to wait another year or two for that. Until then, Happy Father's Day. We love you both!

Happy Birthday Mom!

As promised, I'm writing a post-dated post for my Mom's birthday. I don't want to include too much of what I said on Mother's Day, but I didn't go back to reread what I wrote last month, so sorry for any repeats.

It's pretty fair to say that I wouldn't be here if it weren't for my mom. Literally, due to the whole she gave birth to me argument, but also figuratively. I applied for the job in Sweden without her knowledge, but she was nothing but encouraging from the moment I told her that I had applied. There were plenty of reasons not to move...close family, good friends, aging grandparents, etc., but no matter what concern I voiced, she steered me in the direction of making the trip. Like a good mother, she put my thoughts first, wanting to make sure that I followed my dream and didn't let this opportunity slip away. At the same time, it's hard to imagine how hard it must have been to try to convince one of her children to move to an unknown land that's so far away. And she was enthusiastic about it the entire time! Thanks, Mom. Then again, maybe she just wanted to get rid of me... ;)

Mom has had a rough few months now. Over two months ago she felt a sudden knee pain. The pain only got worse over the following days (weeks?). She dealt with it for a while but finally gave in as and went to the doctor. The specialist she saw said it was pretty bad...something he only saw about twice a year...the bone in the knee was dying due to lack of blood flow. Apparently it's usually caused by a traumatic injury, something else I can't remember that didn't apply or a stress fracture, none of which she's ever knowingly had. The remedy? Six weeks on crutches with absolutely no weight on the knee, then come in for a checkup, and after that either rehab or a knee replacement. Six weeks! Apparently it isn't getting worse, which means she can expect a slow recovery and lots of rehab. She was pretty bummed as she was planning to visit all three children this summer...relaxing in California, hiking around Portland and walking the many streets of Stockholm. She's able to walk a little now, but the doctor advised against any travel that would put a lot of stress on her knee, so two trips will need to be rescheduled. I'm obviously bummed as well, but I would rather have her recover with a healthy knee than have her risk making the injury worse by coming to visit.

I hope she has a relatively fast and painless recovery, and hopefully our readers will keep her in their thoughts as well. If you can't tell, I think the world of her, and hope the knee problems didn't prevent her from enjoying her birthday.

Need a reason to celebrate Flag Day?

Well, now you have a reason to celebrate on June 14th...it's my (Scott's) Mom's birthday. I'll do my best to write a proper birthday post on Monday, as well as write a proper Father's Day post and write a completely biased review of Oslo, Bergen and the train ride between the two. For now, I just want to say Happy Birthday Mom!

I've decided to back-date this post and tomorrow's Father's Day posts to make sure the dates line up. Hope that doesn't confuse anybody!

Rain drops keep falling on my head

This photo was taken on one of the pedestrian bridges we walked during my SFI class field trip yesterday. The scenery was beautiful, despite the rain. Many of us were surprised by this particular field trip though, because we literally just took a walk. It was nice, but the lack of Swedish was unusual. The group started out at the Royal Theatre, but that was only the meeting point. We passed a few museums and a castle along the walk as well, but didn't stop to talk about anything. Oh well. At least we were able to enjoy the fresh air and a few good laughs about the "field trip." The 7 km of exercise was pretty nice, too.

Now I'm off to go track down Scott in Oslo. We'll have a full report of the trip next time you hear from us...and hopefully it won't include more rain, which the forecast is currently showing. Have a great weekend!

Travel plans

Tomorrow morning my coworkers and I are flying to Oslo, Norway, for a day of accounting training (fun, I know). Miranda will be flying over in the afternoon and we'll be turning my boring day of training into a whirlwind tour across another European country.

Thursday night we'll hop a train to Bergen which takes us "over the roof of Norway." This refers to the fact that we'll start at sea level in the south-east part of Norway, go over/through a large mountain range, and end at sea level on Norway's west coast. It's supposed to be one of the most incredible train rides in the world. Hopefully I can stay awake to see some of the scenery. After a day in Bergen we'll hop a night train back to Oslo where we'll stay through Sunday. Both cities are built in a fjord, so I'm hoping we can take a boat trip to explore the fjords a bit. I've hear that the Bergen fjord is supposed to be amazing.

We didn't book a sleeping car for the train trips and we won't have access to showers until Saturday afternoon. We'll probably be pretty crabby and might not smell the best once we return to Oslo, but that's what backpacking is all about, right? I'll pack an extra bar of deodorant, just in case.

I'm looking forward to meeting the crazy Norwegians (as the Swedes call them), especially now that I can understand a little Swedish. I guess the languages are similar enough that a Swede and a Norwegian will communicate with each other in their own tongue without any problems. They can read each the other language as well, even though most words are spelled differently. There are a few words with completely different meanings that often lead to slight confusion, but considering that Miranda and I will probably stick to English, I'm not going to go into that.

One of my highlights will be watching the European Cup in a Norwegian pub on Saturday. Think World Cup soccer restricted to European teams...it's kind of a big deal here. I'll be wearing Sweden's colors, and I hope I don't catch too much grief from the locals, especially since Norway didn't even qualify.

On top of that, I have another trip in the works. I received an email inviting me to Minneapolis for an actuarial seminar in two and a half weeks. I talked to my boss and, because it's something I need for my exams, he encouraged me to go and also let me know that work would cover my travel expenses. So I'll be in Minneapolis between June 26 and June 30. I'm just beginning to make plans, but have already started by putting together a shopping list, and will do my best to get in touch with as many people as possible. Miranda's jealous, and I must admit that I'll be coming home much sooner than expected, but it worked out so perfectly that I just couldn't pass it up. I'm pretty excited, but I also feel guilty for leaving Miranda here alone. Oh well, I'm sure she won't feel too guilty about spending a few weeks in Minnesota later this summer while I stay here to work and study Swedish.

Finally, we're working on a week-long getaway in July. Currently eying Prague, Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest. More on that to come.

The source of the blasts

I got an email from my mom last week saying that although we had talked a lot about the dynamite blasts rocking our building, it didn't really register until she saw the photos that the digging and blasting were directly under our building.

Visit the Picassa album and you'll see that we took a tour of the caverns below our building. Apparently they're building a huge underground water tank to store water pulled from the lake. Storing it under ground will stabilize the water temperature between seasons and will obviously remove the heating effects of the sun. So what's the point in that? Apparently they'll use this water for heating and cooling in a bunch of area offices and hospitals. These underwater caverns will do the initial warming in the winter and keep the water cooler in the summer, making the entire heating and cooling process more efficient. Pretty cool, eh?

If you didn't notice, the caverns are huge. Mom was jokingly worried about having something like that built in the rock below, but based on the success of the subway tunnels and all of their underground garages and the like I'm not worried. It's actually quite cool. The blasting and digging should be done by the end of the month, then they'll work on putting in the pipes, the heating and the cooling system. I think Miranda will miss the surprise of each dynamite blast, even if they did always happen in the exact same ten minute window each evening.

If you care to comment, feel free to tease Miranda about her photo. Doesn't she look like Garth from Wayne's World?

A birthday rain check

Saturday birthdays are always the best...unless you have to work, of course. Today is my dad's birthday, but unfortunately overtime called and he didn't have the option to turn it down. We gave him a call this afternoon and found him out on his lunch break over the noon hour. It sounds like his crew is handling quite a mess, involving many broken pipes/lines, so he'll likely have to work until late tonight. Hopefully things will clear up sooner than later.

Anyway, Dad, happy birthday! I'm glad we got a hold of you, even if we did have to interrupt your lunch break. I know you were looking forward to a nice dinner tonight, but I'm sure you'll get a rain check from your fellow diners. Enjoy the remainder of your birthday weekend. At least you still have Father's Day to look forward to, right?

The Swedish Chef

Dining out at night here in Stockholm can get pretty pricey. The same dish at lunch will often cost at least twice as much at dinner. It's one reason why we've taken to cooking more these days, and I've found myself online hunting for recipes more and more lately. We've had quite a few culinary successes, including broccoli quiche, spaghetti carbonara, southwest omelettes, fresh vegetable stir-fry, chicken and rice with curry sauce, chicken cordon bleu and Swedish pancakes. And in the baking section, I've tackled chocolate cake, pop-overs, cinnamon sugar muffins and chocolate cookies. Something that turned out not-so-well: a sad-looking tuna pasta salad.

One of my favorites so far has been chocolate cookies, which resulted from improvising, after a failed attempt at finding chocolate chips in the grocery store. (Chocolate chips are one ingredient I wasn't expecting to have trouble locating...so I'm still not sure if chocolate chips are not sold here, or if we were just at a lack-of-chip store.) Honestly - and, yes, this is a bold statement - we agreed these were better than the cookies at the Minnesota State Fair! Perhaps I'll be opening my own booth...

Another favorite, and the only Swedish recipe of the bunch, is the pancakes. Swedish pancakes are not fluffy like American pancakes, and are typically served as a lunch item, topped with lingonberry jam and whip cream. You could also sprinkle with sugar, top with fruit or break out the good old American maple syrup. So I though we'd share the Swedish pancake recipe we tried and liked:

Swedish Pancakes
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups milk
2 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. sugar
2 tbsp. vegetable oil

To prep: Mix the dry ingredients. Add milk alternately with dry ingredients, a little at a time. Add oil and mix thoroughly. Beat eggs until light and fluffy before adding to mixture. Refrigerate at least 2-3 hours, or overnight, if you're planning on having them for breakfast. To cook: Preheat, then lightly butter 6" skillet or pan. The skillet is ready when a drop of water sizzles on it and the butter will melt, but not burn. Pour enough batter onto pan to completely cover the surface. After 1-2 minutes, check to see if pancake can be turned over by gently loosening around the edge with a spatula. Flip when lightly browned underneath.

We definitely recommend trying the jam and whip cream topping for the truly Swedish taste. The sugared pancakes were good as well. Let us know what you think if you give them a try.

We also recommend taking a peek at this clip of The Swedish Chef for a little inspiration. And if you were wondering, no, he's not really speaking Swedish.

Enjoying the sun

Stockholm has this wonderful picnic culture, and now that the weather has been nice we've been doing our best to make that part of our lives. The city is full of water, but thanks to the rocky islands there really aren't many beaches...yet the people seem about as anxious to get in the sun as the beach bums of L.A. So what do they do? People grab their bathing suits, picnic blankets, coolers and grills, and head to the parks. Walk past a park on a Saturday, or even any open plot of grass, and you'll have a hard time walking 10 feet without changing directions to walk around the next sunbathing couple. Burgers are cooked, beers are consumed, soccer balls are kicked, and everybody just seems to have fun relaxing in the sun.

Even the weeknights give way to a lot of grilling. There are always at least three picnics on the hillside below our apartment...probably because people aren't allowed to use charcoal grills on their apartment balconies, but still...it's just cool to see people out relaxing and enjoying the sunset.

So as I said, we've been doing our best to enjoy the sunshine lately. A few weeks ago we bought a lime green mini-Weber grill (made in the USA!), and just gave it its inaugural burn last week. As you can see from our photos, the hill behind our apartment makes for a pretty nice picnic spot. The grill is a very good size, and is easily portable which is a huge bonus. The downside is that the grocery store didn't sell lighter fluid, so I had to buy some sort of lighter block. I prefer lighter fluid, but I guess this will force me to learn the art of charcoal stacking. And another note, for those of you non-grillmasters out there (like me), be sure to take off your red-tinted sunglasses before cooking burgers...otherwise the burgers will always look undercooked.

Over the weekend we toured the parks on foot by taking a six-mile stroll along the Stockholm Marathon course. Perfect day for a spectator...horrible day for the runners. The 75 degree weather pushed the leaders six minutes farther back than expected, meaning the average runner was probably destroyed. The run also starts at 2:00 in the afternoon...apparently that used to be the cooling point in the day. Now it's the mid-day heat. For the runners' sake I hope they change to a 7:00 a.m. start in the future.

On Sunday we took to the park ourselves. The sun was nice, but the soccer kids showed up late in the day and we couldn't stand the flying soccer balls for long. We'd logged a few hours on the ground, and a few seconds in the very cold water, so after catching a few stray balls it was time to go.

The picnic culture is awesome, so get over here so we can treat you to a burger!

On another note, we've added a bunch of new photos to Picassa. Be sure to check them out, and hopefully Miranda will be adding more info about the new albums soon.