Thoughts About Sweden

This is Per's family: Tore, Monika, Ann-Sofie (Ahlqvist), and Nils Lövgren. They all live in Sweden. My family lives in the U.S., in Kansas, 3,000 miles away. I like to go visit them in Sweden, but we only go every few years because it's expensive. We usually have to take three or four airplane rides to get to Sweden (Kansas to Minneapolis to Zurich to Stockholm) then it's another four hours from Stockholm to their home in Väse. The entire trip takes about 24 hours and their home is seven time zones ahead of what we're used to, so we have jet lag when we get there.

The longest airplane ride is about nine hours on a 747 (Minneapolis to Zurich.) In the past, this plane ride has been fun for many reasons including that the airplane is big and I get to sit with my four family members. (On 747's, in coach, two seats are on the left side, two seats are on the right side, and four seats are in the middle [the place my family always sits].) Now that we have five people in our family, I imagine three of us will sit in the middle and two of us will either sit behind, in front, or to the side of the others. In any case, the trip will be fun.

The last couple of times we've gone to Sweden, TV screens have embedded the backs of each seat. I've thought of this as convenient because each person could put their headphones on and watch their own movie. Usually, the airplane had about nine movies to choose from; so if a person couldn't sleep they had something to do.

Flight Attendants usually serve two meals on that nine hour ride: dinner and breakfast. The food tastes pretty alright. (One of my memories of that airplane ride is: As little boys, Bryan or Andrew would inevitably spill their drink on Per.) After flying for a while, the air on the plane gets pretty stale and the throat gets dry. About that time, a flight attendant walks down the aisles and asks awake persons if they'd like some water. (I always feel glad to drink it.)

When we finally get to Per's Swedish home, some kind of food always awaits us. Sometimes we eat dinner, other times we eat something light. No matter what we eat, we always have Knäcke Bröd (cracker bread) with butter and yummy cheese. I love Knäcke Bröd with butter and thin slices of cheese. For some reason, it tastes even better in Sweden (probably because the butter and cheese are different [better] than where I live.) In any case, I love to have Knäcke Bröd in Sweden. (I especially like it when Per makes it for me [probably because he uses more butter than I do].)

Per's mother, Monika, is an excellent cook. We've had her deer roast, moose meatballs, smoked salmon, pancakes with pea soup, and fresh strawberries with vanilla sauce to name a few things. The deer roast is amazing. When Per asks her how she makes it she says "I just do a little bit of this and a little bit of that." (She made the roast one time when she visited us in Kansas, and my house smelled just like Sweden.) She has told me how to make it but I'll never be able to make it like her. If I practice a few times, I'm sure it will be good but not as good as hers. 

Per's home in Sweden is about 100 years old and on a farm. It's so quiet that when I awake in the morning I can hear the leaves rustling in the trees. If I look out the front door I'll see forest to the left, farm fields to the right, and a barn and a pig house down the lane straight ahead. The house has a lot of wood inside it, and when I'm there the smell of wood and the air tells me I'm in Sweden.

Sweden is the same latitude as Juno, Alaska. There, the sky never gets dark in the summer. But, it gets very dark in the winter. We mostly go there around mid-summer (the end of June) when they have the midnight sun. (During the midnight sun, it get's about as dark as dusk so it's hard to tell what time it is. The sun still rises and sets but it never gets dark at night. It could be 3AM and still light enough to see without a flashlight.) 

The food is one of my  favorite things about Sweden. We always get Swedish pizza while we're there. The thing I like is that no matter where I'm at, the pizza menus I've seen are always the same. I like that because, as a creature of habit, I get the same thing every time. My pizza is called Bussola: it has ham, shrimp, tomato sauce and cheese. There are two best things about getting pizza in Sweden. The first is that each person gets their own, which is about the size of a dinner plate. The second is that it only costs about five bucks per person.

Menu at Swedish pizza restaurant

The thing that strikes me most in Sweden is how old things are. The Lutheran church in Väse (Per's hometown) has saints buried under tiles (inside, at the front of the church.) The font used to bless newborn babies is from the 700's. The oldest thing I know of in America is from the 1600's. Sweden had vikings a thousand years ago when part of the country was under ice. The country had Kings and wars (they still have a King but politics are handled by the Prime Minister and they haven't been a part of a war for a while because Sweden is a neutral country.) I've seen ruins and walked through a castle that stands today. I've seen (in a natural history museum) the remains of a viking woman - her bones are at least 1,000 years old. I've walked the streets of cities from medieval times. Seeing those things has made history come alive for me. (I wonder if Swedish people have the same awe I do, or if something old is just another thing to see.)

Väse Church

Väse Church Font

Borgholm Castle ruin

More ruins on Ӧland

Kalmar Castle

Visby, once a medieval town

Skull in chainmail at the museum of natural history in  Visby

The cobblestone streets of Visby

I love Sweden. Unfortunately, I don't speak Swedish. Also, I don't go there often enough to feel like a Swede. (Almost everyone there knows how to speak English, but they prefer to speak Swedish.) I understand how people feel that come to America but don't speak English. I admire people who speak fluently in more than one language. I could go on and on about Sweden. It's a lovely place. My family and I have been there quite a few times.  It's always great to see family and I love to be in that foreign place.