Scariest night of my life.

Imagine it is dark out and you are already late for a dinner party. You’ve already gotten lost in the woods once looking for the bus stop you were supposed to transfer onto and had to wait 20 minutes for the next bus standing along a dark deserted stretch of road. Imagine also you just realized you are totally completely and hopelessly lost and you are just wandering the streets aimlessly not sure in which direction to go. These dark streets are basically deserted and all you are trying to do is find Gregor-Mendel-Straße (shout out to Mendel and his peas!!). You try to call your host to ask for directions, because although you weren’t smart enough to bring a map, you did think to write down your host’s phone number, and also to bring your mobile, only to find you can only dial 3 numbers before the network keeps cutting out. Panic is starting to set in a little bit.

Then you see it.

A guy, alone, walking towards you (also alone) in the dark.

He passes under a streetlight and you get a better look at him.

He is covered in blood…

and is slowly walking towards you…

carrying a chainsaw…

wearing a bloody hockey mask.

Seeing a guy dressed up like “Jason” from Friday the 13^th might not normally scare you on Halloween.

But imagine you are in a foreign country where you have been told no one celebrates Halloween, and based on your previous experience the year before also in a European country that doesn’t celebrate Halloween, you have no reason to doubt this information. You, actually, have pretty much forgotten that October the 31^st is any different than any other day of the year.

Then you see a serial killer walking towards you when you are lost and alone in the dark on the street.

And, in my own defense, that serial killer was the only person I saw all day who was (presumably) dressed up in costume.

Scariest Halloween ever.

...then we take Berlin

Hello Friends!

I feel like I have neglected you. There are so many posts I write in my head, but then never put pen to paper…or fingers to keyboard as the case may be.

Going back to September:

I had a great (whirlwind) trip back to Canada, with a pitstop in Duluth to be part of a very special day for two of our bestest friends. At the wedding, we got teased a little bit about being Swenadians, and there was a minor controversy about whether a marriage certificate witnessed and signed by a Swenadian is actually legal. (It is.)

The Canada portion was fantastic, but again, far too short, and at times incredibly bittersweet. I was so happy to have time to visit with family and friends, especially my grandparents who came up from Saskatchewan.

Bittersweet, in part, because again I was leaving my husband on the other side of the Atlantic and taking my third solo trans-atlantic flight this year (out of a grand total of 7 trans-atlantic flights this year - How did I end up with this gypsy lifestyle?)

In the last 12 months I have lived in France, Canada, Sweden, and now Germany.

Germany. Which brings me now to October. I am here in Potsdam for one month doing some research at a famous (in the science world anyway) institute for pflanzenphysiology.

Potsdam. East Germany. Formerly GDR. Capital of Brandenburg. Just outside of Berlin.

Remember high school? Remember after the war was over and Stalin, Truman, and Churchill met up to discuss ‘what next?’ That was the Potsdam Conference.

The names of all the treaties like that never meant much to me in high school. The Potsdam Conference falls in the same category for me as the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the British North America Act, and the treaty of Versailles - words you pull out on social studies tests when you can’t think of anything else. But now, actually being in the place where it happened, makes it much more interesting to me.

I’ve only been here a few days now, and am really looking forward to my first weekend to get some exploring done both in Potsdam and Berlin. Stay Tuned...

Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner

As I sit here watching the movie “Ghost” on Sveriges TV, I am reveling in the revealing revelation that… I actually love this movie.

Then I think about Patrick Swayze and how he starred in almost every other guilty pleasure movie of the ‘80s: “Dirty Dancing”, “The Outsiders”, “Big Trouble in Little China”. Wait – isn’t that Kurt Russell? meh. Close enough.

Since I am not, nor aspire to be, Perez Hilton- I generally wouldn’t make an entire blogpost about Patrick Swayze a.k.a. Sam Wheat, Johnny Castle, Captain Ron - but there is actually an Umeå connection.

There is a random building in downtown Umeå which has a Patrick Swayze related neon sign on it…for absolutely no reason that is apparent to me – or most likely to anyone else either.

Where else in the world would they have random “Dirty Dancing” quotes written in noble gases on the side of a building? It would be funnier if it were in Swedish. Ingen kropp sätter barnet i hörnet

Uh oh. Carl Bruner just “spilled” on his shirt.

“No Molly! No! Don’t believe him! He’s in league with Willy Lopez!”

Must go. I’m emotionally vested now.

Spread the Love

Go With It
Go With It
Jam
It Ain't Too Much Stuff
It Ain't Too Much
It Ain't Too Much For Me To
Jam

-Michael Jackson “Jam”

As the typical author of this wonderful blog is currently away gallivanting throughout North America I have been given the great honor to come in to do a special edition post to keep all the avid readers happy until her return. So sit down, strap in and hang on because we are about to rock your world.

First I’d like to tell you a little about myself. On the outside I am like any other person you know. Well, I guess in reality I am nothing like anyone you have ever met but I do my best with what I have. I have no desire to be trendy and to keep up with the times because really you can’t improve on perfection. I don’t wear my hat sideways, I don’t have bling and I would not be caught dead in jeans of any color but blue. Seriously, they are called blue jeans for a reason. Don’t fool yourself into thinking they were cool in 1994. They weren’t. And trust me they aren’t any cooler now. But that is a topic for another time.

Anyways, back to the topic at hand. As your mom will always tell you, it is not necessarily what is on the outside but better yet what is inside that makes a person special and I am no different. I find that I give and give and give but never really expect anything in return. That’s just the way I am. But don’t worry about me. I always find a way to “refill” myself so that I can dole out more of what I have to offer to the world.

As I am only here as a special guest this is where I will leave you for now and maybe one day I will be asked to come back to tell you more about the trials and tribulations of my life but I guess you never know. Hopefully Melissa has a great vacation and will have a new post upon her return.

“Spread” the love!!!

BOB

Okay, Bob is just the jam they have here in Sweden and not a real person but it is awesome jam none the less. I won’t go as far as to say that it is better than my mom’s but it is definitely a contender. The refill tubes are awesome, a little weird but great.

Swedish Chef: Not just meatballs

Here is my typical menu of how I’ve been converted to eating a traditional Swedish diet.

Breakfast (frukost) : I usually have muesli with runny yogurt and, of course, coffee. The yogurt is more liquidy than at home, which I much prefer to using milk. The yogurt is thick enough that it takes much longer for your muesli to become soggy.

My coffee used to be ‘Nescafe instant’, but now that I have a coffee maker - (free! with the purchase of two second hand sofas. but wait: buy now and the special offer also includes a rolling pin) - I make real coffee and treat myself to Arvin Norquist Classic mellan blend. On special occasions I would have some knäckebröd (crisp bread cracker) covered with gräddfil (slightly soured cream), then topped with fresh smoked gravlax (lox) and capers. mmmm.

Fika: Later in the day, between breakfast and lunch, and also between lunch and supper, comes fika. Fika is basically a coffee break, but also usually includes a sweet treat to eat as well. Swedes drink a lot of coffee and therefore also have fika every few hours (so important is fika, that the lunchroom is actually called the ‘fika room’). My favourite fika treat is a kanelbulle. (Cinnamon bun, with the most delicious speckles of cinnamon-ey sugar on top).

Also they seem to really love green marzipan here. You can buy entire cakes covered in it, or even little cupcakes, or little rolls with the ends dipped in chocolate.

Dinner: Special meals like midsummer’s eve usually have herring (I haven’t tried it yet, but I promise I will) in dill sauce, or the brave even try surströmming, a rotten fermented herring that smells like hot garbage. Surströmming must be eaten outside, preferably deep in the forest away from civilization, opened under water to temper the stench, and is illegal to bring on airplanes due to the risk of exploding and potentially killing people if the stench is contained in a small place for too long of a time. I don’t think I will be trying this 'food', no matter how adventurous I feel. I don’t think I could ever pollute my insides with something so horrible. My tastebuds would never forgive me.

The most typical Swedish meal would have to be the following: meatballs with gräddsås (cream sauce), fresh forest chanterelle mushrooms, new potatoes and lingonberry jelly.

Although it may sound cliched, Swedes really love their meatballs.

The Hunt of the Blåbär

Narrator (in the voice of one of those animal safari nature documentaries):

Watch how the native berry picker hunts the noble blåbär, eyes quietly scanning the forest floor for blueberry plants. She stops, stands still, and then realizes the entire forest floor is covered in blueberry plants as far as the eye can see.

The delicate blåbär hides, slightly protected under it’s own leaves, hidden from clumsy eyes of bicyclists riding by too fast to notice.

The hunters instantly spring their traps, using their red blueberry pickers to comb the undersides of the leaves, harvesting the shy blåbär, while leaving it’s mother plant intact for the next season’s crop. It is backbreaking work for the hunters since the blueberry plants rise only to a modest 30cm above the ground. The picking becomes addictive. There are so many plants, with so many berries, the hunters are in a frenzy. Though tired, they don’t want to stop picking. They nearly pick more than they can eat or carry.

Tired and satisfied with their bounty, shoes and socks stained with the blood of the blåbär, the hunters begin their retreat.

Until one hunter eyes a sparkling ruby poking through verdant green underbrush, and the frenzy starts all over again.

Lingonberry season has begun.

no line on the horizon

Ok. Sweden is great, there are berries, mushrooms, trees, socialism. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I am missing home. Not just my family and friends, and not just having a house to sleep in which contains luxury items like sofas or wine glasses.

But I actually miss Canada.

I miss the prairies. I never realized that I would feel so closed in -living deep in the forests of Northern Sweden-

but sometimes I feel like I can’t see the landscape around me because all the trees are blocking the view.

I realized this is the prairies in me.

I need the wide open spaces.

I need to see the horizon.