Addendum - St. Lucia Day

Before I go any further, I failed to mention a special holiday here in Sweden called St. Lucia Day which falls on December 13th (my birthday).  This is an annual tradition where a girl is selected to portray Lucia.  In the ceremony, she wears a white gown tied with a red sash and a crown of lit candles.  Did you gasp?  We surely did when we first heard it. She walks ahead of a procession of women, each one holding a candle as they sing songs.  There’s quite a story behind it, all of which I do not know.  We had planned to attend the service because we heard it was something you don’t want to miss. However, we were not told on Monday it was held on Sunday, December 12th instead, so we missed it.  We did watch a replay of it on television and the whole presentation was quite beautiful. The voices of the singers were angelic.

 

Karlstad - where is that?  How bad is the weather? Doesn’t the darkness bother you?

Many of our friends and family have had the same three questions: 

·         Where is Karlstad? 

·         What’s the weather like? 

·         Doesn’t the darkness bother you?  

Karlstad is the capital of Värmland (like Columbia is the capital of South Carolina).  If you look at a map it’s the northern tip of the large Lake Vänern, in the southern part of the country. Värmland means “warm land” and Karlstad’s symbol is a smiling sun.  The symbol was created by artist Lasse Sandberg who moved to Karlstad from Stockholm in the early 1950’s. He was impressed with how friendly and open-minded the people were and how the sun always seems to be shining.  The smiling sun became a part of much of his art work and today is seen throughout the city.

Weather – There’s no doubt about it, the weather in December was frigid cold. It really wasn’t the snow that was the issue – it would fall 2-4 inches at a time, sometimes accumulate, but it was never like the feet of snow seen back in the Midwest and the North.  As far as the temperatures, it was not unusual to hang in the single digit numbers, but there were times it got as low as -15◦F.  As I mentioned before, Gary walks to and from work and often times his comment when he’d come in was, “It’s so cold out there I thought parts of my face were going to fall off!!”  In January it was predominantly in the upper 20’s-30’s with an occasional light snow fall. 

Darkness - The dark days have really not been a problem for either of us.  We both recognized early on the early darkness was deceiving in that he thought his day at work was almost done and so did I.  Soon we got used to the idea that he had a few more hours to put in before he’d appear at the hotel. I found it was easier to just close the drapes of the hotel room and not give it another thought. One day, for kicks, I decided to photograph the day every hour starting around 8:30 and ending at 4:15.  The interesting thing is – each picture looked almost the same because the sky didn’t change that much until it was total darkness which happened about 3:30 p.m.  The reverse will be true in the summer where the daylight lasts until late in the evening.  Now that might take some adjusting…

Annie comes to visit…

December 21, 2010 – Tuesday

We are excited because today Annie flies in from home and will spend the holidays with us.  We will be driving to Oslo, Norway, to pick her up at the Gardermoen Airport, which is a three hour drive each way. 

When we learned we were moving here, we decided that when each of our grown children came for a visit, they would be allowed to select an area of Europe to visit.  Because of her classes in art, history and photography, Annie chose Florence, Italy.  So, the plans are the day after Christmas we will drive back to Gardermoen and leave for Italy. 

Prior to her leaving Greenville, I sent a mile-long list of items to purchase and bring with her.  Just a few little things I forgot. (No, Bella wasn’t one of them!)  Since we have been in Sweden, I don’t know why, but I have craved a tuna (tonfisk) sandwich with real Hellman’s (no translation – they don’t have Hellman’s), so on my list, among other items, is tuna (I had packed the mayo with our other stuff).  Yes, they have tuna here, but all I can recognize on the can is “tonfisk in vatten” and that’s about it. It could have all kinds of strange things added, and I wouldn’t know it, so I’m playing it safe with something I recognize:  Star-Kist – Fancy Albacore! 

Our first meal back in Sweden with Annie was at Alfie’s which happens to be next to Tiffany’s.  Gary and Annie each ordered a pizza and I ordered their grilled salmon on a plank which is delicious served with mashed potatoes that are ”piped” onto the plank and lightly toasted on top.  They added a dollop of béarnaise sauce for the fish (which I like, but not with my salmon).

The pizza here is wonderful.  Haven’t met one we didn’t like.  There’s no choice in crust thickness – they are all thin and the toppings and cheese are the freshest.  Remember, we’ve been eating out every night since we arrived, so we’ve sampled a lot of pizza.  Most restaurants, especially the Italian ones, serve what’s called “pizza salad” before dinner.  Pizza salad is finely shredded cabbage that is tossed in a light vinaigrette. Sometimes seasonings are added, sometimes not. We found each one a little different. It’s great if you like cabbage.  We haven’t had a traditional dinner salad of lettuce, tomato, and cucumber like what is available in the states since we arrived, and I miss them.

Below is one of our favorite Italian restaurants in Karlstad (Restaurang Fontana di Trevi).  It also happens to be below our apartment next to the Espresso House!  We have dined there so often that when we enter they have said, "Your table is ready!" Oh, and by the way, just one small building down from this restaurant is a large indoor mall with a grocery store.  How great is that?



December 24-25, 2010

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day – were really sort of pathetic. Knowing Annie was coming I had purchased a small Yankee Candle of the Mistletoe smell and a little manger scene which I had placed out in the main room of our suite before she arrived.  Otherwise, we didn’t have any place to go, didn’t know anyone, and no restaurants were open - not even the hotel’s.  Everything was closed.  We weren’t sure we would find a grocery store open, although we did find a little ICA (pronounced like "E-ka") over in a little warehouse area.  At that little ICA, we purchased some snacky items like smoked salmon, garlic herb cheese, slices of Christmas ham, cheese and crackers and some chocolaty confections along with Annie’s favorite Swedish version of sweet and sour gummies.  It was different, to say the least, but we were thankful for being together and thankful for what the day represented. 

So, with the TV on whatever we could understand (remember, unless it’s the BBC international news channel, an old rerun of COPS or The Real Housewives of New York, it was in Swedish) we settled in with each of us either reading a book, Facebooking, or playing an online game. But, we were together, and for us, it was Christmas…