Category: Sweden
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Keeping busy in Lund
Just north of our apartment building, along the railroad tracks, is a park where I walk most days (photos from September) with the monument, a pond, and paths around the burial mound known as Lerbäckshög which is loosely translated as Muddy Stream Hill. Here is a translation of the above text…The site, with the highest…
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Winter excursions
Melissa had a passport appointment in Copenhagen so Erin and I joined her to see more of the city across the bridge. I hadn’t even seen the obligatory mermaid of HC Andersen fame. That was fun if a bit anticlimactic. We wandered around the 17th century fortress or Citadel and then Christiania, the infamous hippie…
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A milestone birthday
18! An adult but still a teenager… here’s a birthday montage of our firstborn.
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Advent season
I hosted fika at our apartment one afternoon and served glögg using the collection of cups that I collected from thrift stores around town. A clerk at the Grand Deli advised me what to serve for the most traditional glögg party. She recommended lingon knäcke, a kind of flat bread/ cracker, along with ginger cookies…
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Birthday week, part 2
…birthday week has turned into birthday month and it’s nearly December! At this point I will just try to choose a few moments to highlight and summarize the month of November. Erin and Melissa took me out for birthday lunch at Marvin, featuring “classic English suet pies” and wonderful crispy Mac and Cheese bites. We…
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More excursions
I keep expecting life to slow down as we settle in on Spolegatan, but it never really does. Lund, like most Swedish cities, is putting up winter lights, replacing water in the fountains with greenery, and adding seasonal decoration. I joined two international organizations for tours in Helsingborg and Malmö this week. In Malmö we…
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The Celtic New Year
The old traditions of Samhain, All Hallows Eve, Día de los Muertos, All Saints and All Souls have melded into an interesting mix of religious and cultural celebrations here in Sweden. It makes perfect sense that people mark the transition from summer-harvest-abundant life to winter-dormancy-death. And many cultures believe that “the veil between the living…
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Hunting Season in the Grocery Store
Interesting to see all this game meat in the local grocery store. Alg = moose, hjort = deer/venison, vildsvin = wild boar, vildandsfile = wild duck, and renstek = reindeer.
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Cykeläventyr: Tirups Herb Garden
The weather has been so nice lately, and I can only hope that Autumn continues this way! Erin and Melissa rode their bikes from Malmö to Lund, where Carole and I joined them for a cycling adventure! I am still not confident about biking except under the most perfect of conditions, so it was a…
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Another birthday in Sweden!
Our 14 year old (yikes!) says we need to do something different for her birthday this year to distinguish it from the photos of previous b-days in Sweden. She’s right- it’s hard to tell since she requests the same cake, gets similar gifts in more or less the same setting. So this year we changed…