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What a wonderful, wonderful Christmas holiday.
I am aware I left all of you hanging with respect to my missing luggage... I was quite frustrated to begin with. But, 9am the next morning, I got a call that it was ready for pickup. So, I wasn't too long without it but had to drive all the way out to Arlanda and lug everything over to Eskilstuna, where Fredrik's parents live. We left the first day to Mesta Hage, where Britt-Marie lives. The complex has a party room you can rent, and since her place is so small and Per was already staying there, she rented it for us. We came over every morning to have breakfast, toast with cheese, juice and coffee, and spent the days watching strange Swedish TV-programs (including a lot of Astrid Lindgren, eg. Ronja Rövardotter, several singing shows, eg. Allsång på Skansen and Tack för musiken with the Swedish version of Bieber, quiz shows, and of course BingoLotto...top pastimes as far as I can tell, at least over Christmas).
When we arrived, Fredrik's two brothers Per and Karl, and Karl's wife Lucja and their daughter Alva, were all there. Alva is two and a half, and speaks Swedish, Polish, and French... she never spoke to me in French, but I could tell she understood me. At some points she attempted to teach me the Swedish words for various household objects... incredibly cute.
Britt-Marie's house, as you can tell by the pictures, is totally cozy and beautifully decorated. She has a lot of antique or nearing antique decorations, mirrors, books, etc, and several traditional Swedish 'chandeliers' and window stars. She has two wall-sized bookshelves (she is a retired librarian), and has her father's old collection of 'gnomes' (tomte, the Swedish 'santa' concept is more like a gnome who takes care of your farm animals... I will find the story and post it later). But, it's small, and we were pretty crowded in there. On the 23rd we brought in the julgran (christmas tree) and decorated it in a very classical Swedish style, with electric candles, a string of Swedish flags, red and gold ornaments, and silver tinsel strands. Since Karl, Lucja and Alva were going to Stockholm for Christmas eve, we had a mini-christmas and Alva opened her presents (a beaver hand puppet from Canada, home-made doll clothes from Britt-Marie, a puppet theatre from Per, puzzles from Fredrik). The beaver looks pretty realistic, and is actually a tad scary looking... Alva didn't know what to think. When it was tickling her, it was hilarious half the time and "DON'T LET IT EAT MY LEG" the other half. It became known as 'mus' (mouse).
On to the food...
I won't go in any particular order as I've lost track of when we had what. We had four kinds of herring and three kinds of salmon... mustard herring, onion pepper herring, and I still don't know what the others were. We had gravadlax with dill-mustard sauce, smoked salmon, and salmon meatloaf with horseradish sauce. (All on a smörgåsbord of course). Also there was ham with 'peep' mustard (a family inside joke, a strong mustard that apparently makes a peep noise in your ears when you eat it because it's so strong), Christmas sausage, hard bread, toast, cheese, brussels sprouts, red cabbage, red-beet-salad (I've mentioned this before), boiled potatoes, lutfisk, meatballs and lingonberry jam, 'dopp i grytan' or 'dip in the pot' (dipping bread slices, usually stale, in the ham broth after boiling the Christmas ham... from the 'old days'), prinskorvar, 'mumma' (stout beer, cardamom, madeira, and unflavoured sweet soda), herrgårds snaps, julmust (christmas soda), julöl (christmas beer)
Anyway, an awful lot of fish and strong tastes. Too much for me... but I guess I will get used to it...
Christmas eve is the 'christmas' for Sweden. The big dinner is on the 24th, and presents after supper. Let's not forget that everyone watches Donald Duck at 3pm on the 24th as well.
Christmas day is the rest day. We sat around, watched Astrid Lindgren movies on TV, and hung out with some of Fredrik's friends from Eskilstuna after dinner. Many people will go out to bars and clubs on the 25th as well, it's so popular that all places raise their prices significantly.
Boxing day shopping (mellandags rea... middle days sale) was excellent at Tuna Park (Eskilstuna's indoor mall). We poked around in downtown and old town Eskilstuna on the 26th and 27th while staying at Gudmund's place (Fredrik's dad), and watched more strange Nordic TV (Ylvis, Sagan om Karl-Bertil's julafton, Trolltyg i tomteskogen , Kan du vissla Johanna).
On the 28th we headed back to Uppsala (about 2h drive). We met a few of my and Fredrik's friends, and had a super time at the new years eve gask :) Much singing and standing on chairs as usual. All in all a great holiday.
Here are the photos!
What a wonderful, wonderful Christmas holiday.
I am aware I left all of you hanging with respect to my missing luggage... I was quite frustrated to begin with. But, 9am the next morning, I got a call that it was ready for pickup. So, I wasn't too long without it but had to drive all the way out to Arlanda and lug everything over to Eskilstuna, where Fredrik's parents live. We left the first day to Mesta Hage, where Britt-Marie lives. The complex has a party room you can rent, and since her place is so small and Per was already staying there, she rented it for us. We came over every morning to have breakfast, toast with cheese, juice and coffee, and spent the days watching strange Swedish TV-programs (including a lot of Astrid Lindgren, eg. Ronja Rövardotter, several singing shows, eg. Allsång på Skansen and Tack för musiken with the Swedish version of Bieber, quiz shows, and of course BingoLotto...top pastimes as far as I can tell, at least over Christmas).
When we arrived, Fredrik's two brothers Per and Karl, and Karl's wife Lucja and their daughter Alva, were all there. Alva is two and a half, and speaks Swedish, Polish, and French... she never spoke to me in French, but I could tell she understood me. At some points she attempted to teach me the Swedish words for various household objects... incredibly cute.
Britt-Marie's house, as you can tell by the pictures, is totally cozy and beautifully decorated. She has a lot of antique or nearing antique decorations, mirrors, books, etc, and several traditional Swedish 'chandeliers' and window stars. She has two wall-sized bookshelves (she is a retired librarian), and has her father's old collection of 'gnomes' (tomte, the Swedish 'santa' concept is more like a gnome who takes care of your farm animals... I will find the story and post it later). But, it's small, and we were pretty crowded in there. On the 23rd we brought in the julgran (christmas tree) and decorated it in a very classical Swedish style, with electric candles, a string of Swedish flags, red and gold ornaments, and silver tinsel strands. Since Karl, Lucja and Alva were going to Stockholm for Christmas eve, we had a mini-christmas and Alva opened her presents (a beaver hand puppet from Canada, home-made doll clothes from Britt-Marie, a puppet theatre from Per, puzzles from Fredrik). The beaver looks pretty realistic, and is actually a tad scary looking... Alva didn't know what to think. When it was tickling her, it was hilarious half the time and "DON'T LET IT EAT MY LEG" the other half. It became known as 'mus' (mouse).
On to the food...
I won't go in any particular order as I've lost track of when we had what. We had four kinds of herring and three kinds of salmon... mustard herring, onion pepper herring, and I still don't know what the others were. We had gravadlax with dill-mustard sauce, smoked salmon, and salmon meatloaf with horseradish sauce. (All on a smörgåsbord of course). Also there was ham with 'peep' mustard (a family inside joke, a strong mustard that apparently makes a peep noise in your ears when you eat it because it's so strong), Christmas sausage, hard bread, toast, cheese, brussels sprouts, red cabbage, red-beet-salad (I've mentioned this before), boiled potatoes, lutfisk, meatballs and lingonberry jam, 'dopp i grytan' or 'dip in the pot' (dipping bread slices, usually stale, in the ham broth after boiling the Christmas ham... from the 'old days'), prinskorvar, 'mumma' (stout beer, cardamom, madeira, and unflavoured sweet soda), herrgårds snaps, julmust (christmas soda), julöl (christmas beer)
Anyway, an awful lot of fish and strong tastes. Too much for me... but I guess I will get used to it...
Christmas eve is the 'christmas' for Sweden. The big dinner is on the 24th, and presents after supper. Let's not forget that everyone watches Donald Duck at 3pm on the 24th as well.
Christmas day is the rest day. We sat around, watched Astrid Lindgren movies on TV, and hung out with some of Fredrik's friends from Eskilstuna after dinner. Many people will go out to bars and clubs on the 25th as well, it's so popular that all places raise their prices significantly.
Boxing day shopping (mellandags rea... middle days sale) was excellent at Tuna Park (Eskilstuna's indoor mall). We poked around in downtown and old town Eskilstuna on the 26th and 27th while staying at Gudmund's place (Fredrik's dad), and watched more strange Nordic TV (Ylvis, Sagan om Karl-Bertil's julafton, Trolltyg i tomteskogen , Kan du vissla Johanna).
On the 28th we headed back to Uppsala (about 2h drive). We met a few of my and Fredrik's friends, and had a super time at the new years eve gask :) Much singing and standing on chairs as usual. All in all a great holiday.
Here are the photos!
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| L to R: Adam, Alva, Karl, Gudmund, Per, Fredrik, Fiona (half asleep/jet-lagged), Lucja |
