Second Half of Sweden!

I am currently on a train from Göteborg back to Stockholm, it’s my last day in Sweden!  (Wrong, I am now finishing this post and am back in Heidelberg).  I have constantly been so surprised on this trip at how amazing it’s been.  On Friday night I went out to dinner at a Turkish restaurant with Mathias, Kristin, and their son Ivar.  Soon it was Ivar’s bed time and Mathias took him home to do the nightly putting to bed process and Kristin and I stayed in the city for a few beers.  Kristin is originally from Norway, but moved to Sweden 4 years ago or so and works as a Historian at the same place Mathias works.  He’s actually the manager there, I found out.  There’s probably not a cooler Historian in the world than Kristin.  She is very soft-spoken, relaxed, quietly hilarious, and of course really nice.  When she first told me she wanted to be buried in peanut sauce when she died, I knew we would be friends.  We went to the grocery store to get some beer so we could sit on the river bank and drink them and enjoy the wonderful weather.  In Sweden, you can only buy lättöl in grocery stores, which is beer that is about 2.5 percent alcohol.  Otherwise, you have to go to a liquor store.  The laws are confusing.  You have to be 18 to buy from the grocery store and you can also order any drinks at a bar or restaurant, but you can’t buy from a liquor store until you’re 20.  So we buy a few beers and walk outside to find a bench to sit on, and as we’re deciding, Kristin goes, it’s not actually legal to drink in public here, but I think we’ll be fine.  So nonchalant.  I had no idea it wasn’t legal until then, but I just started laughing and then we sat down drank our beers.  We hid them a little bit between our legs on the bench, easy peasy.  Imagine I’d been given a ticket for it or something.  But I doubt anyone would give Kristin a ticket, so I felt safe. 

Karlstad by day (the bar we had drinks at and where we sat for beers)

And Karlstad by night

My Hostel!

 She told me a bit about life growing up in Norway and what she thinks the differences are between the two countries.  She said that the Swedes are all about being peaceful and not ever wanting to offend anyone.  She said that one time she listened to Mathias’ father and uncle and some other people agree for a solid hour on the best way to fix a dishwasher, or something along those lines.  Conflict avoidance, always a good option.  After a few hours, it started to get cold outside and the mosquitoes were coming out, so we went into a bar across the street which had a library in it! Books and beer and comfy chairs, that’s my kind of place.  There we sat for another few hours talking about books and beer and she recommended some Norwegian authors to me.  I met a few of her colleagues, one from Spain that was really nice, named Irina.  All in all, just a good and meaningful night of conversation and laughter.  I never thought I would feel so comfortable with people here.  Also I had the best chocolate beer ever in the whole world don’t even try to fight me on this one you’ll lose it was so good ahhhhhh.

Kristin walked me to my hostel and when I arrived at 3 am, it was still pretty light out.  It was quite cool actually, something about it just felt like summer.  She biked home and I walked up to my room for sleep times.

3 am in Sweden

 The next morning Mathias picked me up with Ivar and we drove to Margit’s house a few minutes away.  Something we laughed about all weekend was the fact that Mathias was constantly 15 minutes late or so.  Kristin called him a Time Optimist.  Apparently, when he was in high school, his friends called it the “Nilsson Half Hour” because he always said, “Be there in a half hour!” then showed up an hour later. Great guy. Sounds about like what I do if it’s not super important to be there on time. It seemed like my cousins and I were always showing up 5-15 minutes late this week.  It was awesome.  I’ll chalk it up to the Persson blood in all of us. 

Anyway, we showed up to meet Margit (who is Sara’s grandmother) and Sara’s sister (Johanna) and parents (Christina and Mats) had heard I was there and came as well! That was a nice surprise, since I had heard about them all from Sara.  We sat down for coffee and some smörgås, which is just bread-like products with butter and other assorted items on top, like meat, hardboiled egg, or shrimp.  Margit told some stories and Mathias helped to translate.  Like apparently Johan August (my great great grandfather) left for the states when he was about 22, and his mother, Marit, followed him down the driveway crying and saying she’d never see him again and then she fainted.  So that’s good to know.  My parents will just faint if I move away.  Johan August also built a stone wall on the farm in Östmark that is still there to this day.  He left Sweden in 1892 and the journey lasted only 9 days by ship, which I thought was pretty impressive! A lot of people were leaving Sweden at that time because they’d had bad harvests three years in a row and everyone heard about the free land in America for those that were willing to come and farm it.  It must have been really difficult for him to leave, knowing he might never see his parents again.  Margit also talked about her trip to the states and meeting my family members (my grandma and her brother, his wife, and their aunt!) It was really cool seeing the pictures from years ago.  After about an hour and a half, we had to head on to Östmark, which is about 2 hours north of Karlstad.

Margit's records of Johan-August's family

Her pictures of my grandma's family from her visit to the states

Me, Johanna, Margit, Mats, Christina

The drive was gorgeous.  I can see why the Swedish immigrants settled in the Pacific Northwest, because it looks very similar.  I loved all of the lakes in Sweden though, they were everywhere.  I think that’s something we don’t have all over in Oregon, or at least not as often.  We arrived at the farm where Per Persson and his wife Marit lived, and where Johan August and his 7 brothers and sisters grew up.  Hence the huge family and lots of 4^th cousins.  It was picture perfect: white house on a hill, red barn to the side, huge green field in the front with lots of colorful flowers, and a river running by.  The plot of land that the farm is on is actually called Abfallsberg, which Mathias translated as “mountain falls into river” and that’s exactly what it was like.

Driving to Östmark

Östmark

What a life!

Traditional Swedish house

Mathias’ parents (John and Birgit) were waiting outside for us to arrive and were so very sweet, even though his mother could only speak a little English and his father couldn’t at all.  His mom even started tearing up a little when she met me, I think just because she was so touched I’d come all that way to learn about our family history.  It was really sweet.  She had been preparing lunch for us, so when we got there, we all sat down to eat.  She made the traditional Swedish dish, pickled herring (sill) and potatos (potatis!), but of course, provided a pasta dish as well, because they anticipated that I wouldn’t like the sill.  Their assumptions were correct.  I took a pretty healthy bite and for the first few chews it was not so bad, but then, it was real bad.  I did swallow it like a champ though and they all laughed at my face as it went down.  They also have a thing called knäckebröd which is basically like gigantic, delicious, almost stale, crackers, and I’ve seen them at a lot of meals so far, and you just put butter on it and it’s delicious.  Every Swede has a big tub of butter and a wooden spreading knife for this type of bread specifically.  I bought a huge package and am bringing it back to Heidelberg with me.  This is a tradition I will continue.  So lunch was tasty, besides the sill, and afterward I did a bit of exploring on the land while Mathias took Ivar out to drive the new lawn mower.  I took some pictures and then headed inside, where Birgit brought out some pictures and documents and explained to me what or who they were.

Per Persson and his wife Marit

The original house that Johan-August grew up in,
13 people lived in this house!

Young Per Persson, who looks a lot like my dad!

Baby Johan-August on the right

What the farm looks like from above,
the original house that Johan-August lived in used to stand 100 meters in front of the current one.

Mathias and I try to figure out how everyone is related...

Barn

Same apple trees from when Johan-August lived here!

Ivar at the lunch table

Sill, Knäckbröd, potatis

Mathias and Ivar on the lawn mower

Field looking out from the front porch

Standing at the bottom of the driveway

Where the original house used to stand

Standing where the original house used to stand,
the current house was rebuilt in 1946

Stone wall built by Johan-August

John, Birgit, Mathias

The stone below the steps is also original from when Johan-August lived here

Then Mathias brought out his work laptop and we drew out exactly how we and the others I had met were related.  We figured out that Sara and I really were fourth cousins, phew! The whole time I was with her we kept saying, “what if we’re not even related!?”.  But we were.  Then we had some “fika” which means coffee and cake (or something else sweet) and left for Karlstad.  On the way we stopped at the Östmark church and gravesite of Per Persson and Marit, his wife.  There is also a bible that has been in the family for over a hundred years that is now at the immigration center across the street from the church, but it was closed, so we couldn’t go see it. 

Relative's grave site

Östmark church

On the way back we talked a little bit about Sweden, well I basically just asked Mathias a bunch of questions, and some of the things I found out were pretty interesting.  Like the traditional Swedish house is painted red because way back when, there were big copper plants, and they used the coloring from the left over copper for the paint on the houses.  Also it is legal to camp anywhere that is not private property in Sweden.  That’s amazing.  There are some bears and wolves, but they say as long as you make a lot of noise in the woods, the animals will typically be afraid of you.  Mathias said that the bears and wolves usually just go after sheep, so when I asked if it was dangerous at all, he said, “Well, as long as you don’t stand in front of your tent with your sheep costume on…” Rule 1 about camping in Sweden.  So, there’s my newest life plan.  Buy a tent and hike/camp my way through Sweden.  Of course I will have a dog with me to carry all of my things.  Leo would get too tired.  I’ll need a new one.  Maybe a wolf.  Or a wol-uf, as my dad would say.  There was also a bit of talk about Sweden during WWII.  They were officially neutral, but Mathias said that some of the older generation still feels guilty still because they helped supply the Nazi’s with weapons, or something to that extent, in order to be able to be neutral.  But that kept them essentially out of the war…so…yeah. That’s just a big mess. 

Once we got home that night, we went to Mathias’ and Kristin’s apartment and first things first, we had to jump on the community trampoline so Ivar could get some energy out.  Trampolines were all over in Sweden.  It was a dream land.  Then, as we climbed the flights of stairs up to their place, Kristin said, “I’m sorry the apartment isn’t very clean, Mathias has made a rule that relaxing comes before housework, so…” and then later, “We really need a housewife.”  I loved everything about that.  And then upon entering the apartment, they told me that Ivar had recently seen a movie or show in which a young boy tied string all over the house, from doors to dressers to tables to chairs, just back and forth across the room.  Then I saw that Ivar had done the same exact thing at the apartment.  Mathias and Kristin just ducked under and climbed over the string like it was normal and offered me a drink.  The way they let Ivar just be a kid and play was probably the coolest thing in the world.  They let him be independent and figure things out for himself.  Except for jumping on the trampoline with candy in his mouth, that was a no-no.  One time Mathias accidentally did it and he was scolded by Ivar.

Mathias, Ivar, and Kristin

So we had dinner and champagne and then later beer and homemade Bulgarian moonshine and about the time where I should have been getting back to my hostel, we all realized that they wouldn’t be able to drive me back because the legal drinking limit is 0.0.  No matter, we stayed up till 3 am talking and then they cleared out the guest room a bit for more and I fell right asleep in the daylight.  The next morning I woke up to waffles being cooked! We sat down for breakfast and I tried two new food items, one being brown cheese, which is a typical Norwegian goat cheese and is actually brown which is weird, and the other being blueberry soup, which comes in a juice box type contraption and is thicker than juice and delicious.  Kristin gave me one for the train ride too.  They took me to my hostel to get my things and then to the train station where I would get on a train to Göteborg, my next stop for two nights.

In Göteborg I was supposed to meet up with another cousin, Erica, at 6 pm that evening.  My train got in at 3, so I was going to go relax at my hostel for a few hours first.  As I got off the train, several beggars came up to me wanting money, so I was trying to mind my own business when I heard someone say, “Ursäkta, Ursäkta!” and then “Excuse me, excuse me!” and I was thinking ohhhhhh my goshhhhh gooooo awaaayyyy people, and then I felt someone tap my shoulder so I turned around and there was a girl standing there, completely drenched from the downpour of rain, and she says, “What’s your name?” and it took me a while to realize that it was Erica.  I was really confused, but of course, happy to see her when I did!  Her plans had been canceled because of the rain so she decided to come by the train station and see if she could find me and she eventually did, but had to run after me after realizing it. 

Anyway, after we got all that sorted, she helped me find my hostel and then said she’d come back in a couple hours so we could get some dinner and see the city a bit.  I relaxed in my room, which was much needed after the lack of sleep I’d gotten during the trip so far.  Then we headed out to find food and ended up at a restaurant with Spanish tapas, which was delightful and delicious, and got to know each other a bit.  She is 33 and a pre-school teacher and basically the cousin who is most interested in our family history, besides maybe Mathias.  She was really, really nice and interested in my life and what I thought of Sweden so far.  After dinner we walked around a bit because the rain had subsided and she showed me a few things I could do the next day while she was at work.  Then we went into a grocery store so I could get a few things for breakfast, and that’s when I fell in love, with Swedish grocery stores, because they are the best.  All of their food was just so different and cool and then of course in every grocery store, there is a candy store! Well, kind of.  They have the bulk candy type thing, where you can mix and match and then pay by weight.  It was amazing.  And they just have the best candy ever.  So that’s that.

Of course that evening I called home because it was KP’s birthday and Father’s Day all at once! It was nice to be able to talk to them for a bit because of course I was wishing they were there the whole trip to experience it all, too. Someday…someday we’ll all come back. Afterwards I fell right asleep and had a relaxing morning of breakfast, packing up, showering but realzing I didn’t have a towel so using a shirt to dry off with, and watching Swedish TV.  7^th Heaven was on, actually.  They have mostly American shows with Swedish subtitles.  Desperate Housewives was also on.  That’s probably why most of the younger generation speaks such good English, from watching all of our TV shows and movies.  They only dub the kids movies into Swedish, but not the others. And I think most college textbooks are also in English.  Weird.

I went to do a little bit of shopping and sending packages that afternoon and then got on the ferry boat and sat on the upper deck for a good hour while it went back and forth from the island to the mainland and up and down the coastline.  It was a good way to see some of the city, plus relaxing.  I also climbed up to a tower type thing and the view from there was pretty cool, but it was also kind of blocked by some trees, so I couldn’t get very good pictures…

Big cinnamon rolls for dad

Old city in Göteborg, a little bare on a Sunday evening

I love how they spell egg!

Järntorget (Iron Square)

Commuter ferry, accidentally got on this one first and it just goes
back and forth between two stops...whoops

Cool lookin boat

This thing is what they use to lift boats and fix them!

At 4.30 I met up with Erica and she had her cousin (so also my cousin) Hannah with her.  Hannah was 17 and came an hour into the city just to meet me! She was pretty cool and her English was so good, it was like I was talking to a native speaker.  I mean, that’s how it was for all of the younger generation.  We met up with another cousin who was my age, named Carl-Johan, but with their Swedish accent, the way they were saying it sounded more like, Collie-Wawn.  The four of us sat down for some coffee and talked about women’s soccer, I’m not sure why, but it was great.  Then we walked over to where we were all having dinner that evening and were soon joined by August, Carl-Johan’s younger brother, and their mother Laila Gordon, who had met my grandparents before in the US and Sweden in 1990.  The food was great and it was nice getting to know all of the family members and seeing how they interacted with each other too.  They were all first cousins, so I kind of compared to it how all of my cousins and I act at home.  It was just fun to know that we are all related and do some of the same kinds of things on completely different continents. 

After dinner I went home with Laila and her two sons because she’d invited me to stay the night at their house.  There I met her youngest son, Wilhelm (I think), and her husband Joachim.  She showed me a few pictures of their travels in the US and also a picture book that a relative from the US had made her which had a picture of my grandparents standing with my dad and his siblings when they were really young! I thought that was pretty cool to see. 

Dean and Bonnie visting Sweden, and also on the bottom is Dean holding Carl-Johan as a baby!

Peterson family, looking good!

The next morning Laila had to go to work, she had just become the principal of the school she attended when she was young, and I had to take an early train back to Stockholm that day, so we said goodbye.  I ate breakfast with Joachim and Carl-Johan and Joachim even packed me a little lunch bag, complete with a sandwich, a hardboiled egg, and a beer.  That was hilarious and the best meal I’d ever eaten.  He drove me to the train station and walked me not only to my train, but onto it, and put my back up for me.  It was so cute, he had barely known me for 12 hours and still he cared enough to make sure I was well taken care of. That is how I felt about all of the family members I met.  I kept being surprised at how much they cared even if they didn’t know me at all.  

Sara had given me the key to her apartment earlier that week, so when I got to Stockholm, I went straight there so I could set my bags down.  She wasn’t coming home from work until after midnight, so I was free to just relax and make myself at home until then.  I went to the grocery store and got some food and bought her a few bottles of wine (for the upcoming Mid-Sommar celebration) and then spent the evening relaxing.  She got home late that evening and we caught up for a few hours and then realized it was 2 am and I needed to wake up at 5 to catch the tram to the train station for the bus to the airport and ahhhh. I was tired, but it was worth it.  The next morning I was on my way by 5.30 and could not believe I was awake and functional.  Anytime I was able to sit in one spot for long enough, I fell asleep.  After I got to the airport, I checked in for my flight and went to the gate.  I flew with Ryan Air, which is a cheap airline for a reason, and they have very strict regulations on how big your free carry-on can be.  Well, my carry-on was pushing it, so they made me try to fit it in the sizer and of course it wouldn’t fit.  So I sat there for probably 15 minutes trying to rearrange things in my bag to make it fit so I wouldn’t have to pay 60 euro to check it.  After putting on three coats and stuffing a bunch of food items into the pockets of those coats, I finally got it to fit, and I was the last one on the plane.  That was really to my advantage though, because for some reason there was an open three seats at the very back and I got them all to myself.  Of course, I lied down and fell asleep for the whole plane ride back to Frankfurt.  Then I had to catch a bus from Frankfurt to Heidelberg and I knew it left ten minutes after my flight landed, so I rushed out and after all the obstacles in the world imaginable, made it onto my bus.  Otherwise I would have had to wait four hours for the next one. 

When I got back to Heidelberg it was a whopping 94 degrees and I suddenly regretted wearing all of my coats and boots and big scarf.  It was the hottest walk back to my apartment ever in the world, even just carrying all of the coats.  Even with no coats.  It was the worst.  So ever since then I’ve just been getting back into the swing of things and that, dear readers, is the story of Sweden.