To say we had a good time in Sweden would be an understatement - dare I say it was the best vacation in the last 10 years???
After three truly amazing weeks in the love blanket of our friends in California, Eric, the boys, and I flew from San Francisco straight to vacation in Sweden - connecting through Frankfurt to Stockholm, and then renting a car to really get truly lost in the middle of Southern Sweden. Eric had researched for months, and booked us a room in a hostel in Vartorp - you won't even see it on Google Maps - is that even possible in this day and age?
Now, because of our late arrival, we had decided to only drive 2 of the 5 hours on day one; spend the night and then keep on the next day to our week-long stay - so it is only fitting that our flight from SF was delayed, so we had to be booked on a later flight that would get us to Stockholm at 10:00 pm, only to find out that the suitcase with Eric's and my clothes did not make the switch (which took another half hour to register the missing bag)and end up checking in to the hotel near 1 am - which with the late sundown combined with jetlag was really strange - I even took a work phone call when I got there (only 4 pm in California).
The real bummer was that we were off to the middle of nowhere, and weren't sure how Eric and I were going to get our bag - the airline promised they would get it to us, but somehow we had a bad feeling...maybe we weren't giving Sweden the credit it deserved - what we thought was out in the middle of nowhere (again, you won't find it on Google Maps) is actually really easy for them to find - stop putting our "U.S." minded attitude on everything, no?
The next day on the second half of the trip to Vartrop we stopped at a H&M and Eric and I bought a shirt, shorts, socks and underwear each - assuming that the bag would appear the next day (Sunday) - or Monday at the worst.
We arrived shortly after lunch (and after a few phone calls with the owner due to lack of ability to use our Google Map instructions) to all our dreams had imagined: a rustic granary converted to a hostel, 200 yards from a lake, beautiful forests, fields, and rivers surrounding us. It turns out most of the hostel residents the week we were there were from Denmark - and even they were asking us what the heck we were doing there in the middle of nowhere!
We spent a week doing: a whole lot of NOTHING! Now nothing means something different to each of us, and I think we all had such a fabulous time: Eric and Karl really got into fishing; Bennett and I had a few afternoon naps (which, combined with jet-lag and sunshine until 11 at night is just lethal to getting any semblance of a normal body rhythm...); picking rasberries in the forest; practicing tightrope walking on the straps set up for the hostel (would NEVER be allowed in California...); soccer on the huge field; reading endless books; going jogging, and in Eric's case getting lost along the way;
afternoon coffee and cake set up by the hostel owner's daughters; a visit to a Swedish "Pancake House" outside on the lawn with live music and American style pancakes for dinner with all the Danes; I could just go on and on... it was a blissful combination of things to do, but really nothing on the schedule and no hurry - who needs to hurry when it stays light until 11 pm?
The funny thing about the long days was that I was afraid my kids would never go to sleep - they go to bed late already, but to have it stay light just seemed like it would be impossible to ever get them down. But the real curse ended up being the "other" side: the fact that it was bright daylight at 4 am actually got them up EARLY - wasn't expecting that! Perhaps a bit slow to figure it out, it happened twice before I made sure they slept with their airplane sleeping masks - took care of it quite nicely...
Now back to that missing suitcase - I took over talking to the airline (as Eric would have ripped their head off, and having heard Swedes are conflict-adverse, it didn't seem like that would get us far). On Monday she said they tried to get it on the flight to Kalmar on Sunday night,
to then drive it the final two hours - but the plane was small and at their weight limit; they would try again on Monday night. What made her think it would be any different, I asked - not sure, she said. I told her I wore the same shirt now three days running (I really didn't care, as I wasn't doing anything, but it was getting a bit sad to think if we were doing lots of stuff this would not be ok). She said she was sorry - and clarified to me that we should go out and buy more clothes - with a limit of $100 per person, we could spend up to $400 (even though the kids were afloat in clothes: I actually, despite his protests, wore a shirt of Karl's as a night shirt). Not that it goes far in Sweden, but Eric went to the store and bought us striped shirts that really made us look Scandanavian; running shoes and bathing suits for both of us - combined with the previous purchases put us right up to the $400 limit. When did the suitcase arrive? Wednesday - when they finally drove it down (which they could have done on Saturday - oh well...).
But the real treat to our week of isolation was learning the card game Agurk - or in English, Cucumber. It is a Danish card game, but we didn't learn it from the Danes - we had taught Karl and Bennett Solitare, and Clock Solitare (a favorite from my childhood), and Bennett wanted to learn something new. So, with my sometimes-on sometimes-off cell reception I searched on my iphone for card games, and came across an alphabetical list that showed Agurk, and the rest is history. It is a really strategic game, and to our shock both kids learned it immediately - I don't think Eric has won a game yet. We would watch Bennett, and he would do something that appeared really stupid, and then he would end up winning the hand. The rules seem complicated, but truthfully are easy and it is so addicting - learn how to play because next time we see you we are going to ask you to... This might be the first game we played with them that playing our best we still can't win - ah, yet another milestone in our kids growing up...
So our week of nothing came to a quick end. We then made our way back up to Stockholm, where we finally sampled the local cuisine: herring 5 ways, licorice ropes, the standard cinnamon rolls with coffee. We actually had Swedish Meatballs as well - but confused the waitress who spoke little English, as we tried to show her what we wanted on the Swedish menu by matching up its position on the English menu - but, hysterically, they don't offer the meatballs on the Swedish menu - only tourists would be dumb enough to order them!
We got to tour the city which was quite pleasant, and spent one day out in the maze of islands outside of Stockholm hiking and swimming in the Baltic Sea. We visited Skansen, this set of old Swedish houses complete with people in costume who would explain (quite nicely) what it was like to be a farm worker at the turn of the century, or a soldier in the middle of the 19th century - suffice it to say, it was yet another reminder that we are SPOILED today with lots of room and indoor plumbing and lives that don't require hard labor from dawn until dusk just to survive... but we did get Karl in an apron to grind his own flour (discovered that wheat does not grow well that far north, but rye does - explains the difference in regional breads...) and make his own flat bread, the old fashioned way over an open fire.
We then had to say goodbye to Sweden, and moved on to Norway with mixed emotions - the tragic bombing and shooting had happened three days before we were to arrive - how could such a small and peaceful country be submitted to such tragedy? Suffice it to say that it was an amazing country, both in its history and its landscape. Story to come...
