Even Swedes Are Irish on St Patty's Day!

One of these years I am going to go to my mecca- Dublin on St Patty's Day.. but not this year. Instead, we decided to bring St Patrick's Day to Sweden, where it is not typically celebrated in the least. Since they dont celebrate it here, it was going to be hard to find all the fun decorations and random "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" flair that help make St Pattys Day the best holiday ever. But my Mom stepped up and mailed me a bunch of awesome decorations, silly hats, and party favors, including the infamous shot glasses on a string. Thanks again Mom!

She also sent me some green jello, which may or may not be illegal here in Sweden. All I know is that most Swedish people have never had Jello of any form. I know... that's crazy talk. Here we are enjoying (?) some Jello Shots:

So between the stuff my mom sent, the stuff I sent Blake last year so that he could celebrate St Patty's Day properly that he never used, some random green decorations, and green light bulbs, we were ready to show them what it is all about. Except that when everyone asked us what is was all about, we said, "Ummm, you know, I'm not sure. I know St Patrick drove out a bunch of snakes, so that's cool, and I remember hearing something about him bringing Christianity to Ireland, which might be why he is a saint. Hmmm... well, don't worry why we are celebrating. All you need to know is that if you don't wear green, you get pinched, and that you have to drink green beer. Don't worry, it is just regular beer with green food coloring in it." (They all seemed a little skeptical of the green beer... but most of them tried it at least.) And so that is what we did.

What I thought was weird was how many people commented that they had to go out and buy something green because they didnt own any green clothing. Is it just me who owns an excess of green clothing, or is it weird that Swedish people dont wear green?My favorite pic of the night (which sort of illustrates my point. Sort of.) is our Seattle Seahawks friend, Erik, who considered wearing Seattle Seahawk gloves that Blake picked up for him in the states, his Green for the night.


So we successfully brought a little peice of Ireland* to Sweden. To check out all the pics, click here.

*And by Ireland, I mean a totally Americanized version of Ireland

How To Drink Like A Swede

So here in Sweden, they pretty much arent allowed to take a drink without singing a song first. Ok, so thats not neccesarily true, but the tradition to sing a song before you take a drink comes from the colleges. I have heard different variations of the story, but basically it started as a mini-hazing thing for the freshmen, where they couldnt drink before they sang something. So sing they did.

According to wiki, "In Sweden, where they are called Dryckesvisor, traditions are upheld to an unusual degree in modern European context. There are songs associated with Christmas, Midsummer, and other celebrations sometimes unique to Sweden. One commonly sung is "Helan går"."

When Kelly was here, we tried to show her the most authentic Swedish things and traditions, so we busted out the snaps (which isnt particularly great tasting) and taught her the song "Helan går." It goes a little something like this:


(Thanks Kelly for posting this video!)
The lyrics (in case you are curious), are:

Helan går

Sjung hopp fadder allan allan lej
Helan går
Sjung hopp fadder allan lej

Och den som inte helan tar
Han heller inte halvan får

Helan går
Sjung hopp fadder allan lej

SKÅL!

Did ya get all that? SKÅL! (Cheers!)

Visitors! Hooray!

Hey all you potential visitors... take a look at how much fun a weekend in Stockholm is and actually buy your tickets and come visit us! Kelly, who studied with us at UW, is on the same fellowship that I am on now, but who lives in Copenhagen, came to visit last weekend. It was great to have a visitor to give us a reason to go out and explore Stockholm in the middle of winter.

Kelly got in on Thursday, but after some traveling issues, we decided to take it easy on Thursday with a night in. Nothing blog worthy there! But Friday, Kelly explored on her own before Blake and I met up with her after work, and that is where the adventure begins. We started out the evening with dinner at a very old, traditional Swedish restaurant, Kvarnen, where we had a dinner of meatballs (they really do eat a lot of meatballs here, it isnt just a cliche!):

After that we took Kelly to Gamla Stan (Old Town) to a cool medieval bar for some mead.

After awhile Blake started to make me mad, so I took care of him medieval style:

Just kidding.... After a drink and when we got tired of playing with candles, we wandered around Gamla Stan, which is quite deserted in the middle of winter in the middle of the night.

The nest day we were lucky to have some sun while exploring the city. We saw a few churches, city hall, Gamla Stan, and even had traditional fika (coffee) in the afternoon at this adorable cafe.

That evening, our friends Bjorn and Ulrika came over for dinner and to join us for a night out. We had been meaning to check out a few places in the area, and we ended up finding this great club with amazing music about 2 minutes away from our apartment. We danced the night away:


We also found out that Blake was part ghost, which is sort of weird that he didnt mention it before:

The next day we had plans to go ice skating on one of the lakes, but there was a huge snow storm, so we decided to go to Skansen (an outdoor old fashioned museum). But on the way to the ferry, it was snowing so hard that we decided to go somewhere indoors, and went to the Museum of Moderm Art, which also has a small Architecture Museum. Blake and Kelly are both structural engineers, so they were all about that. We had planned on taking the ferry back to the island that we live on, since it is the most convienant way to get back there, but after waiting for a half hour in a snow storm and watching the ferry boat pass us, we realized that it was never coming.

Luckily a bus driver saw us standing there (pathetically I assume) and came to our rescue, and we were able to get Kelly off in time to catch her plane.

We took a bunch of photos between the 3 of us, so if you want to check them out in all their hillarity, go here.

Giddy Up!!!

Things here in Stockholm have been quite busy the past couple of weeks, so my apologies to all of the people who read my blog (hi mom!). A couple of weekends ago (the 14th), Blake and I were invited to a Cowboy-themed birthday party thrown by an American-Swedish couple that I met through a friend at work. As you probably remember, the 14th is Valentines Day, which yes, they do celebrate here. They call it "Alla Hjartans Dag", which literally translates to, "All Hearts Day", and most people here also see it as a commercialized holiday (minus hallmark though). Blake and I both agreed that a cowboy part sounded much more fun than a crowded restaurant that night. We brought our friend Bjorn along, who took the theme quite seriously:

He showed up to our apartment and asked if he could borrow some eye liner to create the awesome 'stache. And he got quite a few looks on the subway with his "big guns!"

When I first heard about the theme, I immediately thought to myself, "See! I should have packed my cowboy boots! I knew I would need them!" (This is potentially funny if you know me well enough to know that I am a terrible packer and will always think to myself that I will potentially use something on a trip. You would think after all this traveling that I would be a better packer now, but turns out, nope- not so much. Which makes me wonder what WAS my thought process when packing for Sweden that I ever thought that I would not need my cowboy boots?! How did I talk myself out of that one?) Anyways, after kicking myself for not packing the boots, I realized that I was going to a house party, and that you dont enter someone's home in Sweden without taking off your shoes, so I would have had to leave them at the door all night and just point to them from across the room, which would have been just sad. So I wore a country-ish shirt that Kathleen once dubbed as my, "Texas meets Seattle" shirt, and called it good. Here I am with Per from my work, who actually went to UW for 6 months and was in a room across the hall from me and we never talked. He introduced me to the couple, Elisabeth and Tobias, who were hosting the party (both their birthdays are on February 12th.):

Blake, coincidently has now been to 2 cowboy themed parties in Stockholm. (The first one was his company Christmas party... weird... I know.) He didnt feel like going all out at his company party, because he thought, when would I ever use cowboy accesories again here in Sweden? Boy was he wrong! He had bought a teeny tiny button to wear to the holiday party that said, "Go West" and so he wore that both times. He also stole for me the foam cowboy hat that I rocked during the party that has been sitting around his office for the past few months. Good work Blake!

You can check out all of the pics at my flickr page.

Skiing in the Swedish Mountains

Not really much to say, except that it was great to see northern Swedish (well, technically middle Sweden, but it seemed north-ish) in the winter. My work hosted a ski weekend at Åre, the largest mountain in Sweden, and Blake and I were excited to try skiing in Sweden. We went with 8 other people from my work and stayed at a really cool cabin. Blake and I went skiing on our own because this was only the 3rd time I had ever gone, and I think swedes actually come out of the womb on skis. Anywho, it was a fun weekend, made even more fun when we quit skiing on Sunday and went to Pool and Sauna world. Check out some pics!:

The Super Bowl... Swedish Style

Awhile back (1st week of the NFL football season to be exact), Blake and I stopped in at a bar called O'Leary's to watch a Seattle Seahawks game. Well low and behold, sitting behind us were 5 people decked out in Seahawks gear. Blake was pretty excited to meet other Seattlites, so he started up a conversation with them, only to find out that they were actually Swedish. And they love American Football. You have no idea how rare this is. Turns out, this guy Erik's older brother used to play football in the US, and he used to live in Seattle, so when Erik went to visit, he became an immediate fan of the Seahawks. He got a few of his friends back here in Stockholm into the team as well. Throughout the season, we got to know Erik better, and we decided to host a Superbowl party together.

The only problem, is that to watch the game live, it wouldnt have started until 1 am on Sunday, our time. Since Erik, Blake, and potentially myself would have been the only ones to stay up and watch it so late on a worknight, we decided to download the game and have a party the following night. Erik thankfully volunteered to host, which was great because we had about 15 people over (and that would not have been comfortable in our apartment!). Blake and I cooked some chicken wings, made salsa, guacamole, a spinach dip, and a veggie tray to make sure our favorites were covered, while other people brought classics such as pigs in a blanket, pizza, pasta salad, and all sorts of other goodies. It was awesome. Everyone really got into the spirit. Most of the Swedes there had never seen the game, and got a kick out of it. They couldnt believe the huge production it was between the anthem, the flyovers, the food, the everything. Erik lent out a few of his seahawks jerseys to get us even more into the spirit. The only thing we were missing was the commercials, but after the game we watched the top 10 from last year to try and give people a flavor. Erik had even downloaded the half-time show! It was seriously an amazing success. Especially the part where I rooted for the Steelers and they won (most of the crowd was going for the Cardinals because the Steelers beat Seattle a few years back in the SB)! And it was a shockingly good game! Here are a few pictures of the event:


Erik, our awesome host:

The jersey brings out the tough guy in Pär:

Ylva enjoys the chicken wings and american food:

Björn and Ulrika enjoying the game:

The real winners... Ulrika, Björn, Alina and myself were the only ones cheering for the Steelers the whole game:

Blake is proud to be an American:

Life in Sweden: The Update

So usually I write about my travels, but, well there are none to write about right now, so I decided to show you what a week in my life in Sweden is actually like. I usually wake up, eat pickles herring, work out with the Swedish chef, listen to some Abba, go to work at Ikea, eat some meatballs, etc, etc. But no, really, let's see.

Borat Night. I know I said I would never see that movie, but our friend Bjorn is a huge fan of the movie and quotes it all the time, and his friend Mike was visiting from Poland, so we finally caved in and hosted a Borat Movie watching night. Bjorn brought his own mankini.

Then things got weird... haha. No, it was a pretty funny movie, excecpt for the part where I was embarrassed to be an American.

Bandy. According to wiki, "Bandy is a winter sport, where a ball is hit with a stick." Why of course! It is basically hockey played on a soccer field. My co-worker, Micke, invited us to watch a Stockholm team play his hometown team, Lindköping. It was a little cold, and Lindköping ended up getting crushed, but it was all part of the swedish experience that we are here for.


The Light Cafe. So, yeah, the whole thing about it being really dark here all winter, turns out, they weren't lying. At the peak of winter, there is only about 4 hours of daylight. 4 hours! I thought I could handle it, but to be honest, I have started to feel the effects of it. After 3 minutes of research on the internet, I found the Igloo Ljus (light) cafe which wasnt too far from our apartment. You can pay to sit in room and bask in a 10,000-lux glow while eating an organic salad while sipping Fair Trade coffee. Oh, and you get to wear a white robe and they dont get upset when you spill coffee on it!


Markus Krunegard Concert. My friend Ida has been hooking me up with all sorts of awesome Swedish music lately, and one of the artists I like, Markus Krunegard, was coming to Uppsala where Ida lives. So I took a train up to Uppsala on Saturday night to check it out.


The show was pretty great, and afterwards we even got to meet him! I bought Blake a T-shirt that says, "Jag är en Vampyr" (I am a vampire) and he asked if I wanted him to sign it. Without even thinking about it, I quickly answered, "No- thats ok." I think he was a little sad. But then we got a picture with him, so hopefully his ego wasnt too crushed.


So there it is... a week in my life. Well, plus there is the whole french fry eating itself thing: