Sweden

       When I think of my nine days in Sweden I still remain awestruck by the unbelievable hospitality that Luc and I experienced. We stayed with Luc´s mom´s friend Anna and her family just outside of Stockholm for seven days and Luc´s very distant Swedish relatives in a rural village for two. Never in my life have I felt so well taken care of--pampered really--by strangers. Many experiences, trips and cities may blend into one as time goes by, but I will always remember Sweden for the two families that took us in and treated us as their own. After 11 months without living with my family, I truly felt like I was home.

Stockholm 

Part of the old town

       This hospitality began the minute Luc and I stepped off the plane, when Anna came to personally pick us up at the tiny Ryanair airport about an hour and a half from their house. There´s a bus we could have easily taken to the city center, but Anna insisted on coming to get us herself. We arrived at their charming house and were greeted by her husband Janne and their two kids, William and Maja, and we all sat down to teh first of many amazing homecooked meals, peacefully eating and chatting on the porch. In the week that followed, the family devoted all of their time to us--and this was during their vacation time, when they could have been relaxing and enjoying their time off work in solitude. They showed us the beautiful old town of Stockholm, situated in an archipelago on the Baltic Sea; we took a ferry ride to a remote island (and they even insisted on paying for our ferry tickets) and had a picnic and swam in the frigid water, which was the farthest North I´ve ever swam; we explored the vast nature reserve outside their house while picking wild blueberries for a pie Anna made us later--not sure if it gets more quaint than that. I´ll always remember Sweden for providing me with exposure therapy for my irrational slug phobia--I´ve never seen so many massive snails and brown banana slugs in my life as I did in the 2 kilometers we walked in the woods, and I still get queasy thinking about Anna stomping them with her boots so I wouldn´t have to see them alive. Not sure if that was worse or not....Anyway, I paid a high emotional price for playing hunter-gatherer for a day.

Anna collecting berries

Too much nature

Boat ride to the island

Picnic on the island

        One rainy day (of which there were many--everyone we met quickly informed us it was the rainiest summer since the 17th century) we visited the Vasa museum. The Vasa was a huge ship that sank in the waters of Stockholm only a few hundred meters after it first set sail in the 1600s. Steven Spielberg is making a movie of it right now, but how he plans on making it as good as The Titanic is beyond me. When it cleared up that same day we visited Skansen, a sort of recreated old Swedish village complete with the typical red and white houses, windmills, and even Scandinavian animals like moose, brown bears, and lynx. There was a free concert that evening, so Anna and Janne--as one would only expect of them at this point--whipped out a delicious picnic, and we ate and listened to music and watched the sun go down (around 10:30 this time of year) over the water.
        As if hosting us and spending every waking hour entertaining us wasn´t enough, Janne and Anna went above and beyond. They invited us for dinner at their friend´s house one night, where I tried barbecued horse--in all seriousness, my new favorite red meat. They cooked us every meal like we were in a 5 star restaurant, treated us to ice cream and pizza when we were out, and drove us everywhere. After I said how much I missed my favorite comfort food, Mac n Cheese, they surprised me with a box of it. And on the last night when Luc and I went out to a club in Stockholm, Janne insisted--despite our numerous protests that we would take the bus--on picking us up downtown at any hour of the night. Every time I thought the level of graciousness couldn´t get any higher, they somehow managed to beat their own hospitality record.
       In the middle of the week Luc and I took a train two hours north to Dalarna, which could not have been less similar to Stockholm. Luc´s distant relatives--whom he had never met--picked us up at the train station and brought us to their beautiful home in basically the middle of no where. This part of sweden is very rural, with vast green landscapes dotted with red farmhouses, lakes, and fields of yellow flowers. It was unbelievably gorgeous and so remote, a huge change from the city we had just left. Luc´s relatives, Kersti and Bo and their children, Joanna and Johannes (could they have chosen more similar names?) were also incredibly welcoming, and despite their poor English we managed some conversation. They told us about their family and work, and I couldn´t believe how different it was from anything I am used to. The parents are from the same town that they live in now,  where the population is probably under 1,000. They have lived together since they were 16. Bo drives trucks for a living and Kersti works in a gas station. The daughter, who is just 16, has already moved in with her 22-year-old boyfriend. All the relatives live in a 5-mile radius. Perhaps what surprised me most, however, is that this family had a beautiful house, land, 2 cars, a tractor, had traveled a lot within Europe, had sent their daughter to the U.S. two summers ago, had plans for the children to go to college, and seemed genuinely happy with what I saw as such a simple life. A family with the saem background and means of income in the U.S. would hardly be as fortunate. In Sweden, even blue-collar jobs provide their workers with a very liveable life, whereas an American family in their situation would be struggling to survive.
         Our stay in Dalarn was very relaxing, as would be expected in a place where most houses are vacation homes for Stockholmites trying to excape the hustle and bustle of the city. We visited a moose farm, drove for hours through the beautiful countryside, ate delicious food (a theme of this trip), and met many of Luc´s relatives. Everyone was so warm and welcoming. On the last day we went to the town´s annual tractor parade. I always thought that if I were to have the most redneck experience of my life it would probably occur in Texas or Oklahoma, never while visiting Sweden. But there I was, riding in the back of Bo´s tractor surrounded by hundreds of other tractors carrying eager hordes of people of all ages. We followed the parade through town, and it seemed like the whole population in 20 square miles came out to watch the event.

Incredible Swedish countryside

View from the house we were staying in

       Although our stay in Dalarn was nice, Luc and I were very eager to get back to city life, and especially to Anna and Janne, who were beginning to feel like a mix between older siblings and parents. They greeted us at the station and brought us home to a risotto feast, as though welcoming us home after a year abroad. Our last day in Stockholm we spent exploring a nearby castle and, even better, practicing driving stick-shift on Janne´s Mercedes. Am I painting a clear enough picture of how cool this man is? He was eager to loan out his Mercedez Benz to two people who not only have never driven manual, but haven´t even driven automatic in almost a year. Needless to say, I stalled more than a dozen times, but I consider it a success that no one was killed during my time behind the wheel.
      After one last breakfast/feast of homemade Swedish pancakes, Anna and Janne drove us to the airport bus the next day, and I knew that I was saying goodbye to some very special people. I felt so at home with them, and I was about to start nine days of travel alone through northern Spain, which made it even harder to leave the comforts of family. To top it all off, Anna burst into tears when saying goodbye to us. In just 9 days we went from strangers to real friends. I really hope to see them all if and when they next visit California, and it feels great to know I´ll always (as they told me countless times) be welcomed in Sweden.

Anna and Janne, adoptive parents