Stalkhouse and Karl's Dad

(Let's pretend I posted this on June 14th, just for funsies)

Hej! Jag är i Sverige.  Yep.  That’s about the extent of my Swedish knowledge, or so it feels.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been traveling in a country where I don’t speak the language, so that’s actually a little weird. I feel really silly when people talk to me in Swedish and then they switch to English when I look at them with that confused stare.  Since I’d been speaking all in German with Katja for the day, when I got into Stockholm, I kept wanting to speak German and was saying “Danke” instead of “Tack” the whole afternoon.  There are some things I can read and understand, but others that I have no idea about.

So I spent a good seven hours total traveling from Munich to Stockholm.  I basically passed out asleep the whole way since I hadn’t slept much the past two nights.  I met up with Sara Gustafsson in Stockholm and we’re still not actually sure if we’re related, but we just decided we should be cousins anyway, why not! She spent a year and a half in America as an Au Pair and also studying in California.  I think she was excited to meet me because she really loved America and would rather live there if she could, so we had a lot to talk about.  It was about 2 pm when we met up and she took me into Gamla Stan, the “old city” of Stockholm, and we sat with some coffee and sandwiches and got to know each other.  She was really easy to talk to and her English was, of course, amazing.  We had planned to just meet up for a few hours and then I was going to go meet my couchsurfing host, Jannike. Jannike had sent me a few emails within the past few days and it just seemed like she kept being confusing and changing up her story/situation/what dates she could host me, and I was starting to not look forward to staying with her.  She also lived 30 minutes outside of the city, which was kind of a bummer.  Well basically what ended up happening was that Sara offered to let me stay at her apartment in the city and I had the best time with her.  I honestly could not have been luckier to have a “cousin” in Stockholm!

So we walked through the city together for a bit and she kind of explained to me what all of the beautiful buildings were.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful city than Stockholm.  It was absolutely amazing.  It is a city built on water, which means that the different quarters of town are basically different islands. One is maybe a good shopping part, the other is just a big nature park, one has the parliament buildings and old city, one has an amusement park (weird), and throughout it all is just gorgeous lakes.  It was just such a regal city.  I don’t know if it has anything to do with the fact that they still have a royal family, but that could be part of it.  Sara explained to me all about how Princess Madeliene just got married this past weekend, so they all lined up and watched the bride and groom go into the church together by horse and carriage.  The Swedish Princess married a banker from New York and has moved there for good, which was a bit of a scandal for the Swedes.  Her older sister, who will become queen when their dad dies, married her personal trainer, which was also looked down upon and they couldn’t get the king and queen’s approval for marriage for 8 years or so.  The Royal Family doesn’t actually have any power in Sweden anymore, they are more just like figure-heads or celebrities, or perhaps just representatives of Sweden.  Anyway, they have some ridiculous castles and Victoria (next queen) and Daniel (personal trainer) just had a baby about a year ago named Estelle, and she will be the next crown princess afterward, which is so weird, because she’s just a baby! And she sits next to her parents on one of those big, royal chairs, not knowing her finger from her toe, and they call her Princess Estelle.  What a weird, weird thing.  In a lot of ways, Sweden is just so different from the States.

I feel like I really learned a lot about the country just by talking to Sara.  She is 23 and works as a flight attendant, but by some stroke of luck, had two days off just as I arrived.  Her apartment is just a ten or fifteen minute walk from the train station and old city, which is amazing since the city is so huge.  It’s a studio with a balcony and I love it.  I would like to live there.  She has a pretty classic style, so I really liked it all.  We talked a bit about how Americans don’t really have any style at all, we’re pretty plain.  I wouldn’t have understood what she meant at first, but after walking around Stockholm for ten minutes, I knew exactly what she meant.  They honestly just throw a bunch of random clothes together and make it look good.  I have no idea how they do it.  Here I am wearing skinny jeans, and that’s even a big step for me.  They’ve got all sorts of things going on, I was fascinated by it.  Best looking people I’ve seen in a while.  Also the most pregnant city I’ve ever seen.  At least one of five women we passed on the street was pregnant.  I’m not exaggerating at all.  I’ve never seen so many pregnant women in one place in my whole entire life.  It must have really been a cold and dark winter here. 

We went out for some pizza that evening and I ordered my first Swedish beer, delicious. Mariestad, I think it was called.  Everything is really expensive here, which is silly, but it’s even worse when you see that a pizza is 82 kronor and a beer is 49.  It’s just hard to convert and conceptualize how much that really is in euro or dollars and I never really know how much I’m spending.  I believe it’s like 1 USD to 7 SEK.  Awkward amount to divide by, so I just don’t.  Afterward we went back to Sara’s apartment and even though it was 10.30 pm, it was still perfectly light outside.  We exchanged pictures of family for a while and talked and shared about our lives growing up.  She also plays/played soccer and golf.  She actually had the same golf coach as Annika Sorenstam for a few years growing up.  I had Rick Peterson, so I think I got the better end of the deal.  Good thing I wasn’t the one born in Sweden! Sara kept wondering why I was even in Sweden.  I guess some Europeans just have the American dream, and some Americans have the European one.  It was kind of interesting to hear about it from the other side, especially because you don’t run into that attitude much in Europe anymore. 

The next morning we slept in, which I think we both needed after so much traveling! She had just been to Munich and back with work the same day that I flew into Stockholm.  We made breakfast and showered and had some coffee and looked outside as the rain came pouring down.  Yep, this was real Stockholm.  We went out that afternoon and looked around at a few stores and had another coffee and then walked down by the waterfront and into Djurgården, which is the nature park island place.  It was beautiful, despite gray skies, and there were lots of tiny goslings lying around with their parents.  The geese wanted to attack us because we kept trying to take pictures of their babies.  Kind of the like Amish people.

Breakfast! 

Djurgården, which apparently goes on forever

GOOSE PILE

We got to talking a bit about Margit, Sara’s Grandmother, who I’m actually going to be meeting tomorrow (Saturday) in Karlstad and apparently she has some great stories about our families history.  I’m really excited to meet with her, especially after talking to Sara about it.  We talked a bit about weddings, marriage, and dating and how those topics differed in the US and Sweden.  She thought it was really cool that I’d been on a “real date” before, “like in the American movies!”.  She tried to explain dating in Sweden to me, but it was just confusing.  They apparently don’t really date.  She has also never been to a wedding before and a lot of her friends haven’t either.  A lot of Swedes don’t even get married, they just live together and have kids together and call it good.  Or they will just be engaged for ten years and then decide to have that gosh darn wedding.  How strange! As far as I know, gay marriage has also been legal here for a few years now.  OH! And when parents have a baby, they get a total of a year off from work between the two, paid and everything! What?! That is pretty cool.  Health care is free, but that has a downside because sometimes it will take months to get an X-ray or surgery, or it’s really hard to get in to see a doctor if you aren’t feeling well.  You pretty much have to be dying to get an appointment, from what I’ve heard.  Apparently the government may be trying to change that in the next few years.  Sounds like a good idea.

Once we got back to Sara’s apartment, she made me a traditional meatball dinner!  With potatoes, a delicious gravy sauce, and lingon berries to top it off.  It was so good.  She was honestly the best host I could have imagined.  I don’t know what I would have done without her in Stockholm, but I know I wouldn’t have learned as much and seen as much.  And to think, she found out about me the day before I came, and then just took me in for two nights and showed me around and hung out with me.  I feel so lucky to have met her.  She has also offered to let me stay with her on my last night in Sweden because I’m flying out of Stockholm.  I couldn’t imagine a better trip, simply because she was so nice and welcoming to me. 

Swedish dinner

View from Sara's balcony

This morning we woke up and had some breakfast and then she went with me to the train station where I was meeting Mathias Nilsson, another family member.  I had planned to take a train west to Karlstad with him and then on Saturday we would meet with Margit together and then he would drive me two hours north to a farm in a small town called Östmark, where his parents live now, and where my great-great-grandfather Johan August Persson grew up.  Anyway, I didn’t know what to expect, but Mathias was just as kind as Sara.  We met up and sat together on the three hour train ride and talked about different things.  He works for the Swedish-American archives/organization type thing and told me about how when he was 15 he started making the family tree and was really interested in genealogy, then called himself a nerd for it, which for some reason was just really funny.  But it was good because he said that’s why he thought it was so cool that I wanted to come over and meet all of them, because another young person was interested in our family history as well.  I made sure he knew I was NOT a nerd and that he was a weirdo.  Just kidding.  We figured out based on the little information we had on the train that we were the same generation and fourth cousins.  How cool! He’s probably in his late 20s or early 30s and has a 3 year old son, with a name that I can’t remember, but he’s cute as a button.  I also met his Norwegian wife, named Kristin and she was super nice.  She studied in Berlin as a student, so I’ll have to speak a little German with her. Anyway, I am at my hostel now and we are heading out for dinner soon, so I’m off! Hej då!