Category: Culture
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Seventeenth birthday adventures
Ebba’s friend, a neighbor from the Berkeley days, came to spend a week with us. It was a whirlwind of travel and adventure mixed with lots of down-time for gaming and catching up. For a variety of pesky reasons, the eldest Noiceling and I missed a lot of the fun but luckily Bryant was able…
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A Provençal Holiday
One of my (Bryant’s) bucket list trips was lavender fields in Provence. As well, we have friends that just love that area and have encouraged us to check it out. Summer of 2025 was the time. We ended up super-lucky with the weather managing to arrive after the big heat wave, and also after the…
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Sommartider hej hej
Summer has been slow to arrive but today is the first really hot day, by my standards, at 84 degrees. It might even qualify as a heat wave, which in Sweden is 3 consecutive days with a high of at least 77 degrees. Because the infrastructure is built to reduce heating costs, there hasn’t been…
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Studenten Season in Skåne
The folks required lots of recovery time upon reaching Lund (a full day journey via taxi, ferry, commuter train, high speed train-with last minute platform change, bus). Our youngest (camp name Ebba) was still busy wrapping up her penultimate year at Katte but we squeezed in some small excursions close to home. Then on the…
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Gotland’s Chamber Choir
Uppsala University’s Choir at Campus Gotland has been an interesting outlet for the eldest Noiceling. She enjoys singing with them and the director appreciates her regular attendance. Drawing from quite a small pool of students and other community members, Director Dan may be a bit over ambitious, at least from Hil’s perspective. They have dabbled…
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Concordia Choir in Uppsala
We were fortunate enough to get a winter renter for our house in Saint Paul, but that further delayed my plans for a Spring visit. Then my parents began to consider a fun opportunity because the grandson of long-time family friends shared news of his upcoming Concordia College Choir Scandinavian tour. As a Concordia alumna,…
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JÉNNY
IN PARIS The opportunity to visit Paris presented itself sooner than expected, via my friend Carole, who arranged for me to stay for a few days with her at her flat in the 14th arrondissement. Her daughter, who lives there, generously spent those days couch surfing with her school friends so we could be extra…
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Zealand’s Forest Tower
Our Gotlander was unable to make it home for the Easter holiday this week so we decided on just a short trip that’s been on the list since we first arrived in Sweden. It’s so close by that we always think we’ll get to it one day but we never do! Because it’s across the…
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Reading the Riot Act
First a few library photos from my travels…For a variety of reasons (OK, I confess, mainly Instagram and Youtube) I haven’t been reading as much over the past few years. I’ve always relied on libraries for the majority of my reading material, both print and audio books. In Sweden, the selection of books in English…
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København-Frederiksberg
Melissa’s 50th birthday gave us an excuse for another Øresunds Bro crossing and a day of adventure with said birthday girl, Erin and Glen, who was introduced to the American group awhile back (along with his Swedish husband, Anders). Glen and Anders met in Copenhagen and have spent a lot of time there so he…