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.