One year in Sweden

I don't have anything really interesting to write today, but it was a year ago today that I arrived in Sweden, so I thought a blog post was necessary to mark the day.

We spent the day in Stockholm taking arm-length and tripod-staged engagement photos. Kind of joking there...we'll get real engagement photos taken some day. Hopefully before the wedding. :)

We tried to check out some wedding dress stores, only to find out that most of them closed exactly 30 minutes before we arrived. It didn't matter when we arrived, they all closed 30 minutes earlier.

The high point of our day, if you can call it that, was trying out a new Mexican restaurant. It didn't really occur to us a year ago, but there isn't much of a Mexican influence in Sweden, and consequently, there are no good Mexican restaurants here. We knew we'd have to live without Taco Bell, but living without good Mexican food in general came as a big surprise. They do have Taco Bar here, which tastes good, but it's about the same quality and taste as taco day in the school cafeteria. Even though it was the best of the school lunches, it doesn't really count as Mexican.

So we rode the subway out to a distant suburb to find the newest Mexican restaurant in the country, Serrano. We read a good review that said this was a chain that quickly rose to huge success in Ireland, so this is one of their first expansion restaurants. It was pretty much the Chipotle/Panchero/Qdoba style, with the option of a normal or a large size burrito. The normal was probably the perfect actual serving size and the large was probably 80-90% of its American counterpart, which is probably a good thing. We both give the Irish/Swedish Mexican restaurant a good review, with one exception; they didn't have a steak burrito option. I settled for ground beef, which was a mistake. It still tasted okay, but when you have rice and beans, ground beef just doesn't do the trick. Miranda has warned me that her craving for good Mexican might take us out there again, but I'm okay with home cooked tacos in the meantime.

That's life in Sweden. Exciting...right?

Oh, and another thing, I have a new favorite beer. Erdinger Dunkel Hefeweissen. We were introduced to it down in Berlin and I was lucky enough to find another bottle at the state-run liquor store last weekend (it's normally sold out). Erdinger's normal hefeweissen and kristall (crystal) hefeweissen are good too, but you must try the dunkel (dark). Mums!

Bad news for you Iowa and Minnesota beer coinessours, I just checked the John's Grocery and the Surdyk's websites and was not able to find Erdinger's Dunkel Hefeweissen on their beer lists. John's Grocery did have a number of other dark German wheat beers, so if someone is willing to give those a try, be sure to send the review my way.

New Photos

In an effort to catch up on our photo albums, we have uploaded a wide variety of photos to Picassa. Everything from mid-September through early December is in our web albums, so be sure to hop on over there and check them out.

It's kind of funny to me, but I've started to realize how much our photo albums have changed. Earlier they were filled with all of the new sites that we were taking in, and now that Sweden has become "normal" to us, the photo albums are filled with pictures of people instead. Guess that means it's time to travel again!

We hope to upload pictures from Christmas through the end of February within the next week.

Valentine's Day without Taco Bell

Most people would have titled this post "Valentine's Day in Milan", but considering it was our first Valentine's Day since 2004 without Taco Bell, that seemed much more unusual than the fact that we were walking around a new city.

Miranda's former neighbor, James, came to visit for two weeks, so we decided to use this opportunity to travel. We took an overnight cruise two weekends ago and spent last Friday through Sunday in Milan. These two trips led to some cool experiences, and now we can rank an awesome British couple on our list of friends, as well as a handball player that used to play on the Swedish national handball team. We also ate the world's best fresh mozarella cheese pizza in Italy...and separately ate a bit of boiled tongue.

We'll come back to some more of those stories later, including a trip to the Ice Bar in Stockholm, but for now, we just want to make a quick mention of Milan.

Milan was cool, even though we've been told it's the ugliest Italian city. I don't find that very hard to believe...it had areas that were absolutely amazing, but the other 75% of the city was filled with mismatched buildings that were black from the soot of the millions of miniature cars lining every single street. Plenty of piazzas, but very little green space. But to be fair, the ugliest city in Italy is still better than the prettiest city in the U.S. To end, Milan was amazing. I can't wait to see the rest of Italy.

Miranda just told me that picking her favorite three photos to include in this post will take hours, so instead I'm going to make you wait a few days to a few weeks until we catch up on our Picassa albums. Sorry! As a teaser, here's a picture of the Duomo:

I also have a lot more to write about Milan. Hopefully I can tackle some of the extras on my train rides to and from work tomorrow.

P.S. I think my German blood must have a little Italian in it. Between my skin tone and thick black hair, I seem to have more in common with those southern Europeans than their near neighbors to the north. The random Germans we met on Saturday night even told me that I look Italian!

We made a new friend today...

Bring on the visitors

Our first guest of the year, my friend James, who is currently working in Iraq, should be arriving at our apartment shortly! Pension Fischbach/Striegel couldn't be more excited to kick-off the Swedish tourism season a bit early, and Scott and I are really lucky to have so many friends and family members who are planning trips to see us this year. Actually, in only the next six months, at last count, we are planning on six or seven rounds of visitors. We're pretty happy about that, plus all of our visitors are planning to visit another European city while they're in Europe, so we we have a lot of travel options in the coming months! The other day, Scott made a list of the upcoming flights we'll need to book (including our trip - yea! - to Minnesota in August), but after the four or five countries/trips, he then added a line for "other trip," since we are also thinking of spending a week someplace off of our own list of places to see. We both had to smile about that...thanks to his generous vacation schedule and our oh-so-convenient location, it's just a fabulous time in our lives for travel adventures.

In other words, we should have an abundance of blog content over the next six months, just as long as we're anywhere near a computer and can find the time to write.

New apartment

Our first installment of new apartment photos: the living room, dining room, kitchen and showerroom (take a peek...it's really a much more accurate description than bathroom).

We'll soon have a new set to share, including the current hallway "remodel" and upcoming bedroom "redesign." Stay tuned...

Welcome Back!

(cue Ma$e)

Welcome back fellow readers! Sorry that we haven't written in so long, there's really no excuse. We'll do our best to give you all the important updates from the last three months, and then hopefully pick up the blogging pace in the upcoming weeks.

Around the time that we quit writing completely (late October) we found a new apartment up in Uppsala. The guy renting out his apartment wanted us to start renting only two weeks later, so we started packing and cleaning immediately. We were fortunate enough to receive some moving help from my coworker and two friends that Miranda met through her Swedish studies. Taking the moving truck from Stockholm to Uppsala was my first time driving in five months, my first time driving on European roads, my second time driving a large moving truck, my first time driving anything with rear-wheel drive, and the first snow-storm of the year. The entire experience was kind of like jumping straight into the deep end, but it seemed to be much more dangerous. The truck and all of its contents arrived safely, and we've been settling in ever since.

The rest of 2008 was filled with paper writing for Miranda, a heavy work schedule for me and glögg parties on the weekends. What's glögg you ask? It's a very typical Swedish Christmas drink. Warm port wine often mixed with brandy and some various spices. It's served in tiny glasses, about the equivalent of two shots...it isn't too strong, but it's a good way to warm up on a cold winter night.

We made it home for two weeks around Christmas. It was so good to be home with friends and family, it even felt as if we had never left. It was great to spend quality time with both of our families, and I'd give almost anything to snuggle with Marble on the couch, or to play fetch with Helius again.

Back to Sweden...

Per our rental agreement, our new landlord cancelled his internet service when we moved in. The internet continued to work for another few weeks, so I waited to contact the internet provider to set up my own account until the service stopped. They shut down our stolen internet in early December, so I called and was told that it would take two weeks to have the internet turned back on. I was a bit surprised that it would take two weeks to get service, but I figured it would actually work out quite nicely...we were going back to the US for two weeks for Christmas, so I figured we could "survive" for a week without a home internet connection, sign up for service when we left for the US, then have internet as soon as we returned to Sweden. If only it worked that well...we got back and received a note (all communications going forward were in Swedish) explaining that the initial two weeks were the "regret period", meaning nothing was done during that period. It further explained that it should take an additional two weeks to activate service. So we waited. After two weeks I called...sorry, the phone company didn't know which apartment we were in when they tried to activate service. I gave them the same information that I had already given them once. We were delayed another two weeks. I called back and although they had some excuse, all I heard was "Sorry, there are additional incompetencies." I don't know what was going on, but finally, after seven weeks of waiting, they finally activated our internet. Seven weeks, in a modern country! It was ridiculous.

Enough of that rant. We are connected to the modern world again and are once again accessible via phone and internet. As far as I can tell, life is good.

Those seven weeks, we'll call them the Dark Ages from now on, were rougher on Miranda than on me. I was spending about 18 hours a day either at work or commuting to and from work, one hour a day getting ready for work or winding down from work, and the remaining five hours sleeping. Home internet was the least of my concerns. Miranda on the other hand, was writing her final papers. She had to do some online research and welcomed the friendly distraction of a phone call, email or Facebook, so she spent most of the Dark Ages holed up in a computer lab at the university.

After my busy season ended we started to concentrate on completing our move into the apartment. A new bed was needed, as well as more storage space. A few trips to IKEA were made, taking measurements, scouting prices, checking the weight of the boxes. We finally decided it was worth the extra money to just buy online and have everything delivered. The dresser alone weighed over 150 pounds. Too much for a weak guy like me. Miranda probably could have handled it with one hand, but my pride wouldn't let her show me up. As for a bed mattress, I'm sure our fellow bus riders would have loved that…We placed the IKEA order yesterday, so we finally hope to find a home for the many piles of clothes that are laying around with nowhere to go. It also will be nice to get a good night of rest, in a bed that is larger than 120 cm (roughly four feet) wide.

I have spent the rest of my free time converting the old 12-speed bike that I bought for $50 (probably stolen, but that's another story) into a singlespeed. Converting to a singlespeed was a pretty cool project. I ripped off the handlebars, had Miranda's dad cut them shorter over Christmas and I rewrapped them. I replaced the brake pads, brakes, brake cables and housing, stripped off all unnecessary parts and in the end have a bike that is about 10 pounds lighter without any slipping gears, badly working parts or annoying sounds. The only help I needed was to have a local bike shop remove the rear cassette for me. Miranda doubted my ability to finish the project, but in the end the time and money were definitely worth it. She even complimented me on the finished product!

Lastly (Miranda taking over the keyboard here), we need to add that the blog missed an important birthday back in December: my sister Taryn, who turned 42 this year. Happy super-belated birthday, Tz! You still have the energy and looks of a woman 20 years younger...er, wait. You are! I forget these things in my old age. ;) But for as late as this birthday greeting is, we are still anxiously waiting for the webcam birthday present to be plugged in! You are an amazingly hard worker, but our wish for you this year is less work, and more time to relax and chat on the webcam with your Sweden-er relatives. Love you!

That's all we've got for now. Next in line...catching up on photo galleries and maybe a quick blog about our new life in Uppsala.