On the first of September we celebrated the end of our 3rd
year in Sweden. That week we also welcomed our friend form SA (see previous
post) with particularly Swedish style food (see below).
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| Very typical Swedish food to welcome Christoff - Prinskorv (small sausages) and köttbullar (meatballs) |
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| Very typical Swedish food to welcome Christoff - Godis (assorted candy) and knäkebröd (crackers/hard bread) |
Showing Christoff all
the sights was a nice break from a very busy time workwise. With all the people
now back from their summer holidays and the new year starting for schools and
universities, September is always a very busy time with lots of things
happening. It is also the start of autumn and more and more yellow leaves began
to appear everywhere. We had a very wet and rainy summer (with even one thunder
shower! – very unusual here, the fifth time I heard thunder in Sweden), but a
few weeks of nice weather towards the end of August. The last week or two however,
became noticeably colder and autumn arrived in its full glory.
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| Double rainbow after a very rare thundershower |
When I was
younger I disliked autumn and preferred the new beginnings and happy
floweriness of spring. Nowadays I kind of like the sweet melancholy of autumn.
I started to notice the usual signs associated with autumn here in Sweden; the
cidery smell of apples rotting under the apple trees, the chestnuts ripening on
the trees, lots of bugs flying around trying to stock up and procreate before
winter starts, stalls selling chanterelle mushrooms and blueberries from the
surrounding forests, bushes full of fat ripe bright-red rosehips complemented
by red hawthorne bushes and trees everywhere. I really like the colorful autumn
with the anticipation of the approaching winter. We hope for a nice, cold and
snowy winter. Our first two winters here were ideal with lots of snow and
sub-zero temperatures during the whole winter (people from SA- yes - this means that the temperatures did not go above 0 for the whole winter- not even in the days). The last winter here was not as
nice, however, the continuous snowing and melting caused a lot of sludge and the lack of
permanent snow made the days much darker and dreary. This year, some weather
experts predict a cold winter due to sunspot activity and the lack of ice in the
arctic (ironically), so we really hope that the predictions are accurate and
our fourth winter will be a white one. Here’s to three years in the land of snow
and ice! Skål!
C&R
