Sweden

1-3 October 2009
~Thursday - Saturday~

First, I need to correct Patti's husband's name. His full name is Oddbjorn (Ode-byorn), a common Norwegian name but his nickname is Obbe (Oh-buh). He's a really neat guy and happily took us through the greenhouses of his family's business. He's half Norwegian, half Swedish, and all fun.

Second, I need to correct a description I made back when we were in Switzerland and I described Heidi as native American. I meant that Heidi was a native-born American, not that she was Native American.

Now, on to our adventures....

Rhonda and I stayed up fairly late Wednesday, working on emails and such, so we got up late on Thursday. Mom and Adri had called twice before we were even dressed to see what our plans were for the day.

Our plans were to go to the original part of Stockholm, and to check out the shopping. They have really nice dress boots in Scandinavia and we wanted to look in the stores.

Old town was amazing; narrow, winding street like all the other old towns -I saw a few here where only two people could walk side-by-side comfortably; cobblestoned streets; tall, towering buildings; lots of shops....much the same as any of the other cities yet somehow different.

It could have been the weather and the latitude; Stockholm is on the same latitude as Anchorage, Alaska. The morning was overcast and it sprinkled on us a little. We were smart -it started to sprinkle so we ducked into a handy shop and browsed around. When we came out, the rain had pretty much stopped. The chill wind was blowing, but at least the rain had let up. Mom and Rhonda huddled inside their coats and I even felt a little cool. We'd walk a little ways, step into a shop and browse around until we'd warmed up a little, then go on further. Eventually, the sun came out. As long as we were right in it, it felt warm-ish but the shade was cold and the wind was always blowing. The wind was the worst.

We were about to cross the street going out of the old town area when a motorcycle cop went by, lights flashing, no siren, and stopped at the intersection to our right. We crossed the street, saw/heard more motorcycles coming, and stopped to watch. The first cop waved to half a dozen others and they raced up to and past him. Behind them came a black, smallish but very nice car with a small, pale blue flag fluttering from the right front fender. it wasn't the Swedish flag and I didn't recognize it. There was a cop car next, another black car or two with tinted windows, and then a black stretch limo, also black with darkly tinted windows. A few more cop cars and a motorcycle or two and the entourage was past.

Did we see the royal family? Only the king and queen? The kids? Some visiting dignitary? We don't know. That was not the Swedish flag off the front of that car but they were headed to the castle just a few blocks further on. And the castle had the Swedish flag flying, indicating the king was in residence. This castle in Old Stockholm isn't where the king lives -that's in Drottninghom- but is where they hold receptions and receive visiting dignitaries.

When I asked Pattie about it later, she said to go ahead and tell everyone that we saw the royal family. "It could have been them," she said, "and no one would know the difference." So I saw the royal family entourage. Maybe.

After all that excitement, we walked to the shopping district. Yes there was a wide selection of boots....for a lot of money. Many of them are Italian and commanded a stiff price. The most expensive ones I saw were 1,999 SEK (Swedish Kroner) or about $285. The least expensive ones were 385 SEK or about $55 but they didn't feel like they were real leather.

We rested our weary feet at a coffee house with a cup of tea and a pastry and then caught the train back to Spånga (Spone-ga) and supper.

Obbe made supper. I don't know the name for what he made because they said they call them "hot sandwiches". Obbe made two kinds: mushroom and ham-n-pear. He started out with buttered slices of bread, added a slice of ham and a canned pear half, sprinkled a bit of cayenne pepper over it and topped it all with several slices of a mild cheese. Then he either baked it or broiled it (I didn't see and forgot to ask) until the cheese was melted and turned a golden brown.

The mushroom sandwiches took a little more preparation. He sautéed sliced fresh mushrooms in plenty of butter, salt and peppered them, and added flour and milk to make a white sauce. He spooned a good helping of that onto slices of buttered and mustard-ed bread and topped it all with thin-sliced bacon. Those also went into the oven until the bacon was done.

They were delicious! I especially like the mushroom variety. He said they were what his Swedish mother made when he was growing up and he came up with the recipe for the pear ones himself. You can't get any more authentically Swedish than that! We ended the meal with a Swedish tort.

It's a good thing we do all that walking and that I usually stand in the trams, buses, and metros.....

Mom and Adri were there for supper as well as a young couple with a small child and the conversation was lively and varied.

We sang a few hymns after supper and then Adri and Mom went back to Adri's place. We stayed up a while longer showing off pictures of our families and talking about them. Robert, 16, was fascinated with Cameron's Eagle project and asked a million questions about it and about Scouting in general. I happily answered them all.

I witnessed again the ease of children -or in this case young adults- slipping between two languages with no hesitation. In the Scandinavian countries, English is started in third or fourth grade and continues through high school. We had no problem button-holing someone on the streets and asking directions; they always spoke nearly perfect English.

I have cleared up two things that have bugged me for a few years:
1) "uff da" is not a swear word as someone tried to convince me. Our Swedish friends said it translates to something like 'oh, no', 'oh, wow', 'oops' or something like that. One of our ministers uttered it when we told him where we'd been in two and a half weeks.
2) "æbleskiver" is from Denmark, not Sweden, and is pronounced 'eh-bleh-skiv-egh' with a bit of a gargle for the "r" (remember the language lesson Vibeka gave us).

Friday, Patti took us to Drottningholm; the official residence and major royal palace of the Swedish royal family. There was no fee to wander the estate but there were guards posted to keep the riff-raff out of the living area and we weren't able to go through the palace itself. I don't know if it's off limits period or that we just didn't try but Patti said that of her family, only Robert's been past the sentries and that was only because he was delivering plants.

The king is only a figure-head in Sweden. He has no say in the running of the country; his value is in public relations. He has vast holdings across the country and I got the impression that the bulk of his income comes from there. Patti also mentioned trust funds.

The palace wasn't elaborate with pinnacles, spires, and ginger-breading. Instead, it was built for northern climates and was more blocky and solid. There weren't a lot of flowers, either. Most of what we saw were in planters and along one long wall of the formal garden.

Just so I can feel famous...all of the flowering plants are purchased from Skalleberg Handelsträgågard, Obbe's family's company. How many people can say they know the people who supply the flowering plants to the Swedish royal family estates?

Obbe and Patti took us to a food court in a mall for supper. That sounds sort of odd but they were trying to give us as full a flavor of Sweden as they could and this food court is hugely popular with the Swedes in Stockholm. There was a vast selection of ethnic foods including Persian, Turkish, Thai, Swedish, American (I got tired of seeing Burger King and McDonalds all over Europe), Indian, and Mexican.

Our ministers in Sweden came to the house after we got back from supper. Eldon and Stephan had just gotten in from Finland and came by to visit with us for a small while. They'd been up since about 1:30am that morning to make the drive to catch the boat to Stockholm, and since we had to get up at 4am the next morning to catch our plane to Amsterdam, they didn't stay long and we went to bed shortly afterwards.

I wanted to get this finished and posted Friday night but decided to sleep instead. 4am comes mighty early!

It was -2°C at 4am Saturday morning in Stockholm. That's even cold for me! Patti apologized for not having the car warm for us. Rhonda had purchased a really nice pair of lined knit gloves at the mall the night before and was delighted to have warm fingers on the drive to the airport.

Patti hugged us goodbye at the front entrance and we walked for probably five minutes to get to the security gate. I had been randomly chosen for a quick pat-down in Portland when we left, and, after I set the alarm off in Stockholm that morning, was treated to another episode there. Note to self: Take off your watch, stupid!

I think they saw the watch and knew what set off the alarm, sot he pat-down was done pretty quickly. It didn't take too long to get to our gate and because we got to the airport only an hour before the scheduled take-off time, our wait at the gate wasn't very long. We didn't have to get there any earlier because we'd checked in online the night before and had our boarding passes in hand.

We were seated directly in front of a three-year-old girl and her mother and grandmother on the plane. This girl is evidently seldom made to do what she felt was uncomfortable. She objected to sitting in the seat with the seatbelt on and, when the stewardesses insisted she do so, screamed. The mom explained that the girl didn't like it and the stewardess told her, "You're the mom - tell her you don't care." She allowed the mom to buckle her in in such a way that the girl only fussed loudly.

That was bearable for take-off but the stewardess insisted the girl be properly buckled in for landing in Amsterdam. That child screamed bloody murder from the time they buckled her in to the time they unbuckled her when we landed. And when I say 'landed' I mean as soon as we had finished the landing roll and were taxiing to the terminal....long before they were supposed to.

I glanced over to Rhonda during the screaming session...she had her fingers stuck in her ears. She leaned over and asked, "Do you have a few choice words you could say?"

The girl kept crying something like "I gotta baby!" They spoke Spanish and, since she was using baby-talk Spanish and crying to boot, I couldn't understand what she meant. After a few minutes of this -a long few minutes- Rhonda leaned over again and said, "She's got a baby!" and we both cracked up.

We had a two-hour layover in Amsterdam. It took us about ten minutes to get from our arrival gate to the general area where we looked up the gate number for our flight to Portland; another fifteen minutes to get to passport control; maybe another ten minutes waiting in line to get exit stamps on our passports, and another five minutes or so to get to our gate. And the whole time, the little girl with her mom and grandma were walking the same direction as us and went through passport control not far from us. We were in dread that we'd have her on our plane to Portland. Thankfully, they were nowhere to be found at the gate.

There were lots of babies and a few young children from Amsterdam to Portland but the most we heard was a bit of fussing on take-off and landing. Rhonda wonders what kind of luck we have when half of our flights contained screaming children one row away from us.

We were 45 minutes late taking off. I don't know why. Ten hours and thirty minutes after wheels up, we were landing in Portland. Somehow, the pilot made up fifteen minutes and we were only half an hour late. Long flight.

I wasn't particularly excited to get home until we were on approach to the Portland airport and I could see the ground. Until then, I was still in 'Europe Adventure' mode. Oh, I was eager to see Mike and the kids, don't get me wrong! It just didn't seem quite real that I was home until I saw the Columbia River out the right side of the plane and we were quickly getting closer.

We went through customs rather quickly since we didn't have any checked baggage. Rhonda had a connecting flight so we had to say goodbye there. A bus took us to the waiting area of the airport and we saw Richelle and Dianne waiting. Richelle was dancing around eagerly as we came close and as soon as I'd crossed the 'do not enter' line, I was enveloped in a very tight, very long hug. You can believe I hugged her back as tightly and as long.

Mike met us at the front entrance and we went to Mom's to get the things I'd needed to bring but didn't need in Europe (phone, purse, etc.)

We stopped at Denny's for supper on the way home. Three men were seated at a table behind us, speaking in Spanish. "Now THAT sounds familiar," I said. "A language other than English."

It was all I could do to stay awake until a reasonable hour to go to bed but I did it. It meant staying up for twenty-four hours but I did it.

Ahhhh.......home........