Denmark

(I'm writing this from California with no access to my photos from the trip for the moment so I'll come back and add photos later.)

We spent a fantastic week in quiet northern Denmark June 27-July 4 at a holiday center thing called Skallerup Klit. A klit is apparently a dune in Danish and we had much fun calling out all the klit names on the signs as we passed them in the car. I loved this place because it was beautiful, nestled in the sand dunes by the beach, and totally kid friendly. Aside from the miles of beaches, it had its own farm where the kids could milk cows, collect eggs and ride Shetland ponies; an indoor waterpark, bowling alley and playland; outdoor playgrounds and obstacle courses; a roman spa; and a terrific activity center for arts and crafts that was open 8-8 every day where the kids could make candy or soap, paint a T-shirt or generally wreak havoc with a glue gun and glitter pen.

Denmark is really beautiful except for the Danish language, which is really sort of startling and absurdist. I mean, any language where the number 70 translates to something like "half of 4 20s" should be voted off the island due to complexity. Tor tells us that Danish children take longer to master their native language than any other children in the world and I take this to mean that Danish is difficult and not that Danes are dumb. It certainly sounds like a train wreck after the lilting sounds of Swedish and Norwegian. I say this with only love of language in my heart.

We went to Denmark with our friends Gen and Tor and met up with Tor's childhood friend Dag (everyone calls him Daggi which sounds just like Doggie in English and I always avoid saying it because I just can't call a grown man Doggie) and his family. So there were lots of communal dinners on the porch where the kids tramped around the dunes and we ate and drank a little too much on the long Scandinavian summer evenings while the world cup games buzzed in the background. Pretty nice.

There are some beautiful small towns a short drive away and we visited windy Lokken, touristy Skagen (where the Skagerak and Kattegat seas bump into each other), and cozy Lonstrup on some day trips. Then it was back on the ferry to Gothenburg, where the mad rush to moving began.

Goodbyes

There are lots of goodbyes at the moment. Every day I realize this is the last time we'll see Monique or Conceicao or little Eric Lugo and it's actually really sad. I say that with some surprise given that I'm happy to be heading home and we haven't been here THAT long after all. But I tell you, when you start from nothing in a new country, the people who become your friends along the way are really important and the goodbyes have been more emotional than I bargained for. I even got teary saying goodbye to my bodypump instructor at the gym. Lord!

Ava is losing a kid a day at school and she comes home crying "I'll NEVER see Lucas again!!" on Monday, then "I'll NEVER EVER see Leyan again!!" on Tuesday. And it's sort of true so there's not much we can do except hug her and mumble something about endings also being new beginnings.

This week was a whirlwind of adieu events. Three dinner parties out plus our own goodbye party on Friday at Slottskogen (see pix above), on a beautiful and sunny evening (hallelujah!). Having it at the park was a stroke of genius, if I do say so myself, because it meant that the 15 or so children in attendance just ran around like mad people for 3 hours and left the parents to chat in the sun. It was sort of amazing to look around and think that we didn't know any of these people 2 years ago and now they are our friends and the people we see every day. Teary teary, but in a good way.

Boating

Just in time to leave Sweden we have done the most Swedish of Swedish things and taken a boat out to the archipelago for a picnic on a perfect summer night. Our dear friends Andreas and Conceicao (Swedish and Portuguese) and their daughters Annika and Louise invited us out on their boat and we putted over to a little island called Kvarnholmen that has a playground and sauna (!) and a beach where the kids fished for crabs and collected shells while Andreas grilled sausages. We searched for wild strawberries to no avail, but we did find a snake skin, a goose egg and, most importantly for Julian, goose poop! Oh, and the kids love that there are a couple of sheep on many of the islands to keep the vegetation to a minimum. A charming sight.

Swedes are obsessed with summer and it totally makes sense if you have to suffer through long, depressing winters. They do a wonderful job of making the most of them, including guaranteeing everyone 3 weeks time off in July (out of your total 5 weeks paid vacation a year). And it seems like almost everyone has a summer house and/or a boat or at least a family member who does. Because of the insanely long days (the sun has been setting about 11:15pm and is up again around 3:00am right now) it's just magical to be out in nature this time of year. A great note to end on.

Winding down

The Move sneaks up on you. Up until about 10 weeks out the move home still seems far away. Then suddenly you're 6 weeks out and you're surprised that you just made it in under the wire to order that coffee table you've been eying for a year because it's a 4- to 6-week delivery window. Then you're a month out and have to rush to cancel your cell phone service and gym membership. Then you're less than a month out and you stop buying big things of ketchup at the store because you probably won't finish it and you're planning meals around what you have in the freezer. We fly home on July 10, so we're officially in the no-new-ketchup phase, and my days are full of final playdates, goodbye coffees, and work wrap-up meetings.

Am I sad to be leaving Sweden? Not exactly. I'm a little prematurely nostalgic because it's been such a great family adventure and learning experience for all of us. I will miss the friends we have made who have meant so much to us over the past 2 years. I'll miss the slower pace of life, the 5 weeks of vacation a year, the kids being in 1 school, the sincerity of the Swedes, the daily discoveries. But no, I'm not sad to be leaving, nor am I purely ecstatic to be moving back to SF.

I'm excited about being on my home turf again and knowing how things work and where the best kiddie swim lessons are. I'm excited about Mexican food for 4 for $20 and buying nuts at Trader Joe's for peanuts (pun intended). I'm excited to have friends around who have known me for 5, 10, or 30 years, who get the context of my life. And I'm excited about the work opportunities that are happening in the Bay Area for me and Adrian. I'm also nervous about losing the work-life balance that we have fallen into here and I'll do my best to hang onto that European lesson as we slide back into home.

Stina Wersin

This post is an unabashed plug for the Swedish illustrator Stina Wersin. Her work is so beautiful, simple and perfect. I could just eat her portraits. I've been taking a watercolor class and her oozing blogs of color are an inspiration. Here's her website.

Amsterdam - part 2

OK, where was I ...

We decided we had to see some tulips, what with being in Holland and all, so we drove (my Mom was a good sport despite being squashed between the kids' enormo Britax carseats in the back seat that still smelled faintly of barf) to Keukenhof, about 20 minutes from Amsterdam, which is apparently THE place to go to see tulips. It was a little pricey and a lot cold, but it was fun to see all the different varieties of tulips (and the plethora of Japanese tourists taking lots of close-ups of flowers):

If you're in Amsterdam you have to get on a bike (without a helmet of course)! Merel and Dennis took us on a great ride around town with the kids in bike boxes (you, too, can own one for about $2700). I know Julian looks a little skeptical, but he and Ava loved it (you could tell because they were oddly silent most of the way, even though they got a bit wet):
You also MUST eat bitterballen, deep fried balls of creamy potato and veal served with mustard dip. Oh, I love a country that loves fried foods!

We also continued our tour of European zoos and went to Artis, where the kids investigated the natural world:
By the way, I highly recommend having a grandparent along for trips with kids, especially one as cute as my Mom. It was a treat to be able to go out with Merel and Dennis for an Indonesian feast without Julian yelling about having green things on his plate and asking for noodles and butter:
I think those are the highlights of the trip. Mom and I did go to the Van Gogh Museum, which left me pretty cold, and I went by myself to the Anne Frank House, which was almost visible from our apartment and really moving. I was happy I didn't take Ava, which I considered for about 5 minutes. No way was she old enough for some of those pictures. Come to think of it, I may not be either.

And if you're ever in Bremen (hey, it could happen) the Best Western Zur Post is awesome for kids. It was actually really nice to stop over in Germany for a night. I am always slightly paranoid about speaking German because I've lost a lot of my vocabulary but not my accent, so I sound, well ... slow. Oh well, I sound a lot worse than that in Swedish. Herregud!

Amsterdam - part 1

We just came back from a terrific trip to Amsterdam. We picked Amsterdam because we wanted to see Merel and Dennis and their new baby Thomas before moving home and because we could get their without flying, which is just a pain in the butt and very expensive with 2 kids, even within Europe. Don't let those RyanAir ads fool you -- flying from Sweden to anywhere is pricey! Plus, we thought it would be cool to take the overnight ferry (with our car) from Gothenburg to Kiel, and drive through Germany to the Netherlands.

So on Friday we picked the kids up from school and headed over to the Stena Line Germany port to get on the ferry. I have never been on a ship bigger than the ferry to Alcatraz, so I thought it was pretty cool to see our little cabin (little being the operative word) and explore the boat, which was packed with 600 cars and 1700 people. As far as I can tell people basically eat and drink the whole time, which is OK for an overnight trip, but sheesh, sort of gross. The kids loved the Curious George play area that had Curious George (Nicke Nyfiken in Swedish) cartoons playing 24/7. Amazing how even cartoons in foreign languages are like kiddie-crack. They were less excited by the waiting around that is sometimes required when getting off the ferry after a night at sea: The next morning we drove off the ferry at Kiel and made our way to Amsterdam. It took forever because of traffic jams and a barf incident (thanks for the memories, Julian!), and we got into town after about 9 hours on the road.

Happily, our rental apartment that we found on VRBO was situated perfectly on the Prinsengracht, bordering the Jordaan neighborhood, and was actually big enough for 3 adults and 2 kids (my Mom would be joining us shortly). You just never know from the pictures how big it actually is (our place in Barcelona would NOT have worked for 5 people though it said it would have). I have learned my lesson to always ask for square footage from now on. Anyway, it's hard to see from the 2nd picture below, but the house was on 4 mini levels, with 1 room on each level i.e. lots of stairs for the kids to throw things down and teeter on making me really nervous and yelling "safe side! safe side!" way too many times. Merel and Dennis came over our first night and we met Thomas and ate pizza and it was a perfect welcome evening. Slightly surreal to see them in Amsterdam (OK, they're Dutch, I know, but they just went together with Gothenburg in my mind, and that takes some adjusting).

Anyhoo, my Mom flew in the next morning and Adrian picked her up at the airport and she was a trooper and stayed up all day battling jet lag. Good Grandma! We went for a canal boat trip and I think the kids MIGHT have looked out the window once. Julian mostly played with "Spot" the horse and "Lasso Man" and Ava mostly talked.
We also had drinks and poffertjes (little fat pancakes with butter and powdered sugar) at this adorable cafe called 't Smalle a couple blocks from our apartment that I loved, especially because you have to climb up some ladder-like stairs to get upstairs where it's super cozy. Amsterdam IS super cozy in general if you ask me:My shot of the outside doesn't do it justice:

San Francisco, the temptress

I just came back from a whirlwind 5-day trip to San Francisco. I had the best time. The entire time I felt like San Francisco was trying to prove herself to me and tempt me home. Look how beautiful I am! Look at the weather I have in March! Look how friendly my people are! Look at all the amazing people you know who choose me! What do they say about having to leave to appreciate what you have?

My primary mission for the trip: register Ava in a SF public school. For anyone not familiar with the enrollment process for the SF Unified School District, let me say that it can only be described as long, opaque, stress-inducing and random. People cry ... people call each other bad, bad names ... people move to Marin ... people enroll in very expensive private schools (we're talking $15,000/year and up) because they give up on the process ...and some people thank their lucky stars. Happily, after 6 months of angst (and waaaay too much time reading a blog called the SF K Files, which covers getting into kindy in SF) we are in the latter group, slightly stunned to have received our first choice school in the lottery. So Ava is now officially registered in kindergarten. Weight off shoulders officially lifted. There's still that little issue of the school district needing to cut $113 million next year and California schools ranking in the bottom 20% in the nation, but hey, I'm feeling cheery anyway.

I also managed to renew my driver's license. Sounds small, but it's huge since I haven't been able to drive in Sweden since last September. Now I plan on just driving in circles around Gothenburg, just because I can.

Great Swedish kiddie lithographs

Melodifestivalen

Ever wanted to see Dolph Lundgren (he's the Swedish guy who played the big blond Russian in one of the Rocky movies) sing "A Little Less Conversation" while he chops ice and wood blocks in half with his bare hands? No? Well, the Swedes do, and now so do I!

It's all part of the annual magic that is the insanely popular Melodifestivalen. Melodifestivalen is the Swedish run-up to the Eurovision Song Contest. Each week you watch 8 performers sing some of the greatest and most horrendest pop songs ever and vote for your favorites. Then there's a finale in Stockholm at the Globe theater and the winner gets to be Sweden's official entry at Eurovision in the summer. The cheeze! The fashion! The Swedish pop! We have been watching on Saturday nights with the kids, who tell us whom to vote for. Julian always likes the blond ladies with big boobs and flashy clothes, like the lady from the Alcazar in the picture above. Ava actually picks songs she likes, for example this catchy number called Kom from a band called Timoteij (and yes, the girls in the band do all look like those old Timotei shampoo ad girls).

Gothenburg for kids - best places

For anyone coming to Göteborg, here are some of my favorite things to do with kids:

Universeum
Otherwise known as our home away from home in the winter, Universeum is science discovery museum right next to Liseberg. The 3-story indoor rainforest is always a winner (especially when the monkeys are out), as is the aquarium, where you can see Hermann the shark. We spend most of our time, however, in the play area called Puls on the 2nd floor, where you can test your speed on a mini sprint track, ride on a mechanical horse, design your own digital truck, and lots more.

City Library
I just love the Stadsbibliotek, not just because it's around the corner from our house on Götaplatsen, but because it's got a cozy, warm and bright kid's room (with a potty!) with lots of English (and French, German, Norwegian, Arabic, etc.) books, some puzzles and toys. They also put on an amazing array of talks, story hours, lectures, exhibits, etc. Plus, they added a decent cafe off the main rotunda last year so you can buy a juice box on your way in or out.


Liseberg Amusement Park
Our local amusement park with a surprising number of rides for kids ages 2-6 (and of course plenty for older kids, too). I like it best during Christmas time when you can still go on a roller coaster in the snow, but also go ice skating, visit Santa, ride a reindeer-pulled sleigh, check out the Christmas crafts market and warm your hands over drums of hot coals set up around the park as you drink a mug of glögg.

Maritiman
Scramble over and through a collection of 12 or so ships that are anchored in the river close to downtown, from a destroyer to a fire boat. Then have a good cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun in the floating cafe.
Waffles and fish
At the Sjöfartsmuseet (Museum of the Sea) in the Majorna section of town, start your weekend with an all-you-can-eat waffle breakfast in the small cafe, then check out the aquarium or the new play room on the 3rd floor and let the kids burn off the whipped cream and strawberry jam toppings.

Stadsmuseet
The City Museum has a large play area for kids where they can play store, give lessons in an old school room from the 180os, or move barges around a winding model of the Göta River. Head downstairs afterwards to the super-cozy cafe that has a box of toys in the back and plenty of pillars, nooks and crannies for the kids to chase each other around.

Slottskogen
In summer, nothing beats a picnic and people-watching in this sprawling park at the top of Linnegatan. We have spent many a sunny afternoon hanging out on the lawns, playing at Plikta playground, and visiting the cute petting zoo (where pony rides are just a couple of dollars each). Also hidden in Slottskogen is a pool full of energetic penguins, a moose family and a few bored seals. My favorite place to get a glass of wine in summer is Villa Belparc, a restaurant with a huge, picturesque outdoor terrace that overlooks a small lake/pond with a big fountain. The kids love exploring the terrace, eating the yummy french fries and feeding the ducks. In summer, don't forget to buy strawberries on your way home from one of the stands around the park.


In the winter, try the Naturhistoriska Museet (Natural History Museum) that looks down over the playground. It's a bargain (a yearly pass is about $7) and the collection of stuffed animals is old-school creepy to delight boys and girls of all ages.
Swimming
In the summer, the possibilities for swimming are endless. The beaches along the coast are gorgeous and rugged, but we like the kid-friendly and sandy beaches in the Delsjön nature area, especially the beaches at Harlanda Tjärn and Delsjön itself. Both have grassy shaded areas, sand, swings, shallow water for wading and ice cream vendors (key!). An extra benefit of this beach is the cute Cafe Lyckan that is just a short walk away. They do delicious waffles, and outside they have a goat and some bunnies (that they say you can take home if you like). This is the beach at Delsjön last June.
In the winter you can do drop-in swimming at the very warm and low-key Sporthallsbadet, which is next to the large Valhalla swimming complex. This warm pool has tons of floaties and swim noodles to choose from, and a tiny slide. For older kids, Åbybadet south of town is a huge, raucous swim complex with multiple pools, a decked out kiddie wading area and 3 huge spiraling slides that elicit screams from swimmers of all ages.

Kid-friendly Cafes
Most cafes in town are generally kid-friendly (and many have changing tables), but some try harder than others. Glädjebubblan is a big cafe with a play area that's great for babies and young toddlers. And I just love Språkcafeet, the language cafe.

They have a box of toys in the back and a changing table in the bathroom, but this one gets my recommendation because you can sit outside (like the ladies above) and let the kids run around Esperantoplatsen as you eat your delicious vegetarian buffet lunch.

That's all for now, folks!

Is Rudeness Relative?

Along with the very real possibility of being impaled by 6-foot-long icicles I have been thinking lately about whether or not rudeness is always relative. I tend to think about this most after I have become extremely annoyed by a Swede doing something I perceive to be super rude and they seem positively astonished by if I say anything. These incidents tend to involve:

• People cutting in front of me or the kids as we go into the library, get on a bus, etc.
  
• People bumping into me or the kids in the street and not saying anything
• People pushing by us to get somewhere without saying excuse me or whatever

Now Swedes, unless they have lived abroad for a long time, would not think any of the above are rude or out of the ordinary. Notice that all of these involve pretending you don't see the other person you are pushing, bumping, etc. The norm in Sweden, in public spaces, is to not see anyone and not speak to anyone you don't know, and that includes people you injure. The weird thing about this to me is that Swedes, when you've met them, are truly the humblest, most egalitarian people I've ever met, and that's perhaps why the public behavior is so bizarre.

My theory is that this all relates back to the Swedish value/norm of "lagom," which translates badly to just enough. Swedes are often worried about being too much of anything -- too loud, too smart, too outgoing, too fat, whatever ... they want to be just enough of everything. They are most comfortable when everyone is the same. And when everyone is the same, I guess you don't have to say excuse me when you push by someone because why the heck should you apologize to them because they're not any more special that you and shit happens, right?

Anyway, this is the clearest example I have in Sweden of rudeness being relative. What is rude to me is clearly the norm for the Swedes, and so I go around muttering to myself about rude Swedes when of course in their minds they aren't at all.

So are there some things that are ALWAYS rude across all cultures? Well, you gotta figure that making jokes about someone else's country that refer to sensitive political or historical events are up there. Take the participant I had in my cultural understanding course this week. His jokes over the two days included jokes about:

• The French letting the Germans walk right into Paris
  
• The Germans not being welcome in Holland in large numbers when they wear green
• Not going to Venezuela because you'll never come out again
• It's better not to have oil in your country because the U.S. will invade you

This guy had no edit feature and, as far as I could tell, no practice in putting himself in others' shoes, so we worked on both of those things. We'll see if he can hold back on the Stalin jokes when he goes to Russia next week. Sigh.

Ava is 5

Well I gave in and we had Ava's 5th birthday party at one of those indoor playland places because that's what everyone else with birthdays in freezing months has been doing here. I studiously avoided having it at Lek & Bushuset, otherwise known as Lord of the Flies Comes to Sweden with Pixie Sticks, and hosted it at a more modest one called Lekstan in Sisjön instead (Sisjön, by the way, is pronounced something like SI + wh if you were exaggerating that combination + UN) . I was feeling sort of guilty about outsourcing the party because it's so impersonal, but after seeing how much fun the kids had (and how little there was for me and Adrian to clean up afterwards), I am sold! These places are da best! You show up at the appointed hour with your kid and a cake, and they do the rest, including herding the children into the Jungle Room for hot dogs, serving ice cream, and providing goody bags. Two hours later, happy kids and presents in tow, you just go home to your clean (ha!) house.

I'm guessing there are tons of these kind of indoor play places in parts of the U.S. where there is a) snow and/or b) lower property costs, but there sure aren't any nice ones in San Francisco. Too bad because sometimes drinking a good cup of coffee and talking to your spouse while your kids happily climb and run with abandon when it's yucky outside is pretty nice.

Snow life

The sign outside Liseberg says "Don't be doubtful, Spring is coming" (I'm sure there's a better translation for the "miströsta inte" part ...), but I'm feeling pretty darned doubtful after the amount of snow we've had over the past few days, with more on the way. We're hunkering down waiting for the next storm to arrive. In the meantime we're enjoying watching the huge icicles form outside our windows and drinking lots of hot cocoa.

Julian

Today is actually Ava's 5th birthday (what? I have a 5-year-old??), so I realize it's highly inappropriate to post something about Julian. However, since I have been a sloth in recent months, I figure something inappropriate is better than nothing at all, so here goes. And really, I am just compelled to post something about J because he has changed so much in the past few months. I keep looking at him at breakfast (OK, I'm not usually up when he has breakfast, Adrian does that, so maybe dinner is better) and thinking "hold on buster, let me get a good look at you, where'd you put my baby?" In just a few months he has lost all his baby pudge, stopped wearing diapers (except at night -- the fact that he woke up dripping with pee probably suggests that diaper-free bedtime was a bit premature), and started talking about things and in ways that shock me. Like he uses conditional ... and past tense ... and talks about feelings ... and tells me everything he did that day: "First I had breakfast, den I went to cool and had nack, den I payed outside, den I missed you [awww], den mama came, den we had bulle and den we went home." (Oh, and he asks why every 2 seconds, but since that's not pleasant I haven't included it above.) When you still expect your kid to speak in short staccato sentences a la "mama-milk-now" this kind of thing blows you away. About a month ago, Ava looked at me and said "Mom, I can't talk because Julian just keeps talking!" And you know if Ava a.k.a Chatty Pants can't get a word in then Julian must really be talking a lot.

Julian moving out of babyhood has happened right as ALL of my women friends in town (no hyperbole, I swear. Here is the list of friends who have recently had or will have babies: Traci, Karin, Gen, Merel, Sandy, Anastacia (twins!), and Monique) have gotten pregnant or have recently had a baby. Being surrounded by all this babyness has made my own jump from being a mom of a little girl and a baby boy to a little girl and a little boy more real and bittersweet. It's certainly shocked me into realizing I could give away all the baby stuff that's been hanging around -- high chair, changing table, bibs, swim diapers -- since we won't be going down the baby road on purpose again.