Archive for the ‘Sweden’ Category
How can you describe our 10 days in Sweden? We basically ate and ate and drank and played 500 and ate some more. Good times really. Our friends Pete and Kate kindly hosted us over Christmas and we had a wonderful cultural experience. Matt almost swears he can speak Swedish now, he actually is pretty good and understands about 70percent of what is going on. We arrived pretty exhausted after packing up the house and due to the long dark evenings we managed to fit in about 12hours sleep a night, bit like going into hybernation.
On Christmas evening the snow flakes came down and we enjoyed about 70cm of snow. It really brighted up the place and created a lot more fun and games (Matt invented a new game which involves throwing a snow ball at Pete and almost breaking his leg). Evertime we got into the car we had to scrape and brush it down, we had to shovel the snow, sweep it, brush it off our feet…really high maintenance living really. But still wonderful…Christmas is really designed for winter…well our traditions are at least.
We bought some small fire works and with the rest of Ljungby contibuted to the 360degree firework display that brought us into the 2006 (no fire restrictions to worry about). The local counsel has the right idea just legalise fireworks then you don’t have to pay for a public display. And the Ljungby locals spent alot of money on fireworks between them.
After 10 days of relaxing and some post-Christmas-sale shopping we packed our bags and waved Pete, Kate and Olivia off as we were wisked away on the 5.36am Swedish trains. Swedish trains are great!
The day was long, Lgungby to Copenhagen, Copenhagen to Stansted (London), Stansted to Heathrow, 9 hours waiting for check in to open and trying to reclaim some tax,…duty free shopping at Heathrow (our credit card didn’t see that coming and my long time dream to own a Swatch watch was fullfiled), then Heathrow to Bangkok….where it is hight time that Matt does some blogging.
I think that we have lost the routine of blogging…so a bit of a catch up is in order….
Please excuse any typos, I am currently doing battle with a German keyboard.
A quick recap of the last month…there was a fantastic weekend (4 days) in Sweden with our friends Pete, Kate and Olivia. We shopped in Malmo, went to a Swedish surprise party and visited an Alk park. Enjoyed a BBQ and learnt a new board game…it was a fantastic relaxing time and great to be hanging out with old friends.
We have also had some visiters staying with us in Bedford which has also broken up the manotonoy of life a bit. Matt´s brother Simon stayed with us for a week, we managed to cram a road trip into that also – to South Hampton (the Launching place of the Titanic), visiting Oxford briefly to have dinner at the Eagle and Child (Tolkien and CS Lewis´ old watering hole), saw an Abby and a couple of castles and visited Stone Henge all in one weekend!
We then had some other visitors from Oz, Richard Carron (Tommy´s little brother) and his friend Julie. They made good use of the Thames Link and travelled to London everyday to take in the sites. Which reminds us we should venture to London some day :)
Last weekend Matt and I packed the car and made our way down to dover to catch the Ferry to France. We travelled for about 11 hours reaching Antwerp and our beautiful four star hotel. My husband is such a bargin shopper! It took us a while to wind our way to the “tourist” sites in Antwerp but when we got there we were glad we stayed the distance…it is a pretty little city. We then headed off to Eindhoven, where we caught up with the Piening clan and spent a few day visiting the sites of significance to the Piening family. Phillips pretty much own that town. It was hard to find a building without Phillips written on it. We also crammed a road trip to Western Belgium into to our four days. Belgium waffles are great!!!
As we set off again our car was a little fuller, with Liz and Simon crammed in the back with all our gear – Metro Rover what a car. The German auto barns are fast and furious. We had a brief stop in Colone – visiting the Dom (and walking the 500 steps to the spire), and Liz initiated me into the H&M stores.
Our next stop Frankfurt swept us off our feet as we landed there in the middle of a huge festival. All the museums were discounted for the festival and the river bank was a sea of people, market stalls, live music, out door bars and plenty of German food (which is apparently more than sausages). The boys caught a plane the next day to London and Liz and I continue on with our German roadtrip.
That is a whirlwind catch-up and here is my obligatory promise to update the site more often…which I actually think might happen as I am back on the road again. Send Matty emails because he is probably lonley home alone…hey why not even give him a call!
We flew into Copenhagen feeling a little groggy after our 6am start (which was necessary because we couldn’t be bothered packing the night before). We didn’t pass through any customs, I am still feeling a little confused about how all this EU stuff works – who’s in it and who isn’t, who uses the euros and who doesn’t?
We walked straight to the train ticket booth (how great are these airports that have train systems that connect to the airport), and abruptly asked the ticket man the details of our journey – turns out they are a bit more helpful in Denmark. Felling a little bad after this interaction I adjusted my interpersonal style to match this new environment. We caught a train that crossed directly to Sweden and travelled north to a town called Alvesta where Pete (Matt’s school mate) and Olivia (his 2 year old daughter) picked us up. How great was it to see them (and then Kate – Pete’s wife, later), it was one of those weird feelings knowing that a lot has changed over the three years since we have seen them, but so much was still the same.
So this week we have been up to a lot of catching up, relaxing, eating, walking through the woods, fishing in the lakes, visiting bakeries and tea houses, golfing, watching Hong Kong movies, meeting Kate’s family, playing cards (yep Pete’s influence), dancing to the wiggles and walking Poppis (the dog). Matt and I think that they put something in the water over here, because Poppis seems to be the most gifted amazing little dog that we have ever met. He understands only Swedish (which makes it a bit difficult for us to interact with him), but when told he does just about everything – he can discern between his different finger puppy toys (duck, bear, lion, froggy etc). Matt has been trying to communicate with Poppis by talking like the Swedish chef from the Muppets.
Oliver, Pete and Kate’s two and a half year old daughter speaks both English and Swedish (this kid is smarter than us and she is 2 and a half). She is such a little cutie, but she suddenly hit the terrible twos while we were there ☺ But she is still sooooo cute!
Pete, Kate and Olivia say “Hej-Hej” (G’day).
Sweden is exactly what you expect, the air is clean, everything is designed smartly (triple glazed windows on houses), they actually eat meat balls, they’re all blond and giant (well not the recent immigrants), dairy seems to be a staple over here – milk with everything, everyone bludges off social security and there is an Ikea on just about every corner. Disappointingly we haven’t seen any mousses (elks) yet, but we have seen lots of cute road signs with schematic diagrams warning of their proximity.
There were some crazy storms here in Smalland in January where five years of logging produce was destroyed in one day. Even now some houses haven’t had power restored. Trees are down everywhere and it is only now that the major clean up is commencing (after the snow has melted). There are high piles of logs beside the road every 100m. Entire forests have been flattened and some minor roads are still yet to be cleared. Peoples retirement plans are in chaos as they were relying on harvesting the wood slowly to give them a steady income.
We’re off to England in a couple of days – time to face the real world again ☺ Thanks for all the emails and sorry that these blogs have been so long coming.