An Icelandair plane! Each seat has a tv and if you bring headphones you can watch movies or tv episodes and listen to music. They had everything changed a little bit for Christmas.
Flight from Iceland to Stockholm was about three hours, the weather was cloudy and rainy so we didn't see anything from the plane until the last ten minutes or so during landing. I can read and understand a little Swedish since I'm learning Icelandic, but only random things.
Fake bus at the baggage claim.
Photos from the car ride from the airport to Uppsala, we drove through the city and Jox's parents pointed stuff out to me but we didn't stop there. The camera takes bad photos when you're moving fast unfortunately. Sweden is a giant forest!
The tall building in the background is a place where they burn trash. Then they somehow heat up water with it to not have the energy used go to waste.
Uppsala photos start here.
We stopped at a grocery store to get food and candy, I also got some sheepskin slippers because Jox's dad said their house is cold and that I should get them. This photo is of the gambling section of the kiosk in the grocery store, apparently they have these plus a Lotto ticket area in many kiosks. The only things they don't have are slot machines, which are only in casinos.
Of course this grocery store is a lot bigger and has a wider selection than in Iceland! If there's one thing I miss, it's that.
The traditional thing in Sweden is a "Christmas goat". To the right here you see Christmas goats made of straw or something, used for decoration. They build a giant one every year and then burn it down.
In Sweden, because of how their grocery stores and rewards plans are set up, it can be cheaper to buy a ton of things at once because you can get random discounts and stuff during checkout based on what you buy and what you normally buy. One of Jox's sisters had her "name day" today, which is something they celebrate where every calendar date has around two Swedish names assigned to it, and on the day with your first name (and sometimes middle name) people will wish you a happy name day and possibly celebrate with some treats or small gifts. With this, the family having a mini Christmas tomorrow because some relatives will be visiting, and Jox and I arriving, they ended up buying a ton of food.
In the bowl at the top is some candy we bought at the Icelandic airport. Right next to the glass is a candy bar with nugat and hazelnuts, covered in chocolate. Then there's a package of four mini apple dessert things that tasted gross, some citrus gum, some fruit pastilles that are also gross but we liked the packaging, and then the long yellow thing on the right is sour fruit chews. Above that is "thin bread", something like thin and floppy naan bread that we were eating by spreading liver pate over it and then rolling it up into a log. Underneath that is a package of what we're assuming is sugar sheets that look like Swedish bills, and then the black things in the container are salmiak licorice bits that I bought at the Icelandic airport.
The bottle of stuff is a Christmas drink, we don't have anything really like it but I don't think it tastes so good. Another Christmas drink is glögg which is like mulled wine but there's non-alcoholic versions too. The Hello Kitty tin is full of Chupa-Chup brand lollipops and to the right in the bowl you can barely see some really gross licorice pieces with coloured marzipan in them.
We arrived at Jox's house and set down our stuff, and I ate the thin bread with liver paste because I have to take medicine with food once a day and I had forgotten to take it because I was on the plane at the correct time. They all speak just fine English, but understandably lapse into Swedish most of the time. I'm trying to learn some Swedish as I go along, so here's some stuff that I've learned from either Jox or them:
Snälla - please
det är gott - it is good, when talking about food/taste (use bra instead of god when talking about people and stuff)
jag vill ha en tesil / ha te - I want a tea strainer / tea
jag ska försöka att... - I shall try to...
We ate pasta carbonara that Jox's dad made (it was delicious!) and drank some elderflower drink from concentrate that we bought at the store (i really like elderflower drinks). My eyes were really dry from the plane but no one had eyedrops so Jox's mom told me to put wet camomile tea bags over my closed eyes and let them lay there for a while... not sure how much that worked but at least I tried it. I talked to Jox's dad for a long time about various stuff like traveling, he's been to a lot of places including the Faroe Islands!
Then I took a bath and Jox and I pulled out a few boxes from storage that were full of Jox's things so we could look through them and see if there was anything we could take back to Iceland with us. Now I'm just writing this before I go to sleep, but hopefully I can update here once a day.
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