Day three

I was going to post this last night but something happened to the ethernet cord and we haven't been able to get it to work with my computer anymore, it's not fixed yet so right now I'm just borrowing Jox's mom's computer for a short while. This means I can't upload photos either, but hopefully we can figure out what's wrong tonight when Jox's dad gets back from work.

xxx

Today we went to the Christmas market and zoo at Skansen, it's also an area where they moved and fixed a lot of really old houses and now they use them as old-fashioned shops and cafés. We took a lot of photos and I bought some stuff but I'll edit this post with the photos later.

They had a lot of booths selling various things. Mostly handicrafts, Christmas decorations, meat, and cheese. There were booths selling knitted items and sheepskin items, one booth sold "home brew" in a big vat, some just had coffee and bread products, and some sold the traditional Christmas drinks like glögg and Julmust and such.

I paid for a five crown (73 cents) raffle ticket and the ticket won a mini cheese grater. I also managed to buy some dried reindeer meat (totaled something like 225 crowns or $33), "meat chips" which is just various types of meat like deer in small, dried bits (four for 100 crowns or about $15), some Christmas decorations, some matchboxes (5 crowns each), and we bought a "mystery gift" but it turned out to be a glass spice container for holding food and stuff so we gave it to Jox's parents because we don't need it.

There was music playing at one point, and I think all of the shops set in the old houses do things traditionally, so there's bookbinding, bakeries, glass-blowing, I think there was also carpentry or metalworking or something. We saw a squirrel climbing up and down a tree and got a short recording of it, and bought some cinnamon roll things that were freshly baked and really good except for the pearl sugar on top.

I got some photos of some of the people I bought stuff from because they were wearing traditional clothes, and most of the booths had old-fashioned signs too so I got a lot of photos of them. I didn't really get photos of what the booths were selling though because there were so many people around that it was impossible.

My feet got really cold as we were walking around so once we stopped in an old house that was set up like how people used to live (you could see a kitchen and stuff but it was roped off) and they had a fire going in the fireplace but no other source of light. So I sat down there and warmed my feet. Couldn't really take any photos as it was too dark inside.

We also stopped inside a café in the end and I got hot chocolate, it was pretty disappointing though because it was just powdered chocolate mix that you mixed yourself and it was in a disposable cup. I think it was 25 crowns or about $4, but Jox's dad paid for me.

As we were trying to find out way back to the car (it was around four or five and already dark at that time) we wandered into the zoo section and glimpsed some mooses and one was making some funny sounds so we got a short recording of it that I can upload later. We also saw some tame reindeer but it was really too dark and they were too far away for me to really see anything. We saw some seals too. We're going to go back again, probably on Wednesday, to see the regular stuff they have. The Christmas market is only open on the weekends so we mostly went to see that today.

I learned a lot of Swedish today!
tamren - tame reindeer
väska - bag
jacka - jacket
kan du ge mig... - can you give me...
ren - both reindeer and clean
papper - paper

Day two

Today we just stayed around the house. We slept in a bit late and then looked for the Sleeping Beauty DVD that Jox's family had (we had been searching for it for some time in Iceland and hadn't been able to find a copy of it, but Jox's family had one with a Icelandic dubbing) and they found that eventually, so we watched it. Then Jox and I took a nap.

At some point we walked around Jox's yard and they have a newly-built shed, an older shed, an outhouse, a greenhouse, and then various planned plants and things. They have three or four apple trees and a plum tree plus some berry bushes. It's all a bit messy but it could look really nice if it was just cleaned out and the stuff inside the sheds was sorted through. The newly-built shed, someone could actually live in there if they wanted, it was built that way although it's not completely finished yet. They're thinking about building a second shed and then connecting both of them via some doors and a passage to make the whole thing bigger.

After the nap, two of Jox's Aunts came over and we had a mini Christmas party. I forgot to take a photo of the food table but I think one of Jox's relatives might have one that I can ask for later. We had reindeer, ham, meatballs, shredded cabbage(?) for salad, plum sauce, lingonberry in yogurt sauce, pineapple, more thin bread, some other types of bread, gravad salmon with dill on it and smoked salmon, potatoes...

You eat the ham with the pineapple or with the plum sauce.
Reindeer goes with the lingonberry in yogurt, on top of thin bread.
There was no desserts, but afterwards we drank some glögg (it didn't taste so good, kind of orange-y, but it smelled like cloves).

Then we passed out presents. Instead of giving one present out, waiting as the person opens it, and then getting another, they just passed all the presents out at once and after they were all done everyone opened theirs. I can take photos of what we got in a bit, but from what I remember we got candy, money, two glittery dinosaur Christmas ornaments, a Moomins book in English (which was great!), a mobile-like Moomins tea candle holder thing, a Sleeping Beauty book in Swedish (that's the only Disney movie I really like except maybe 101 Dalmatians!), a book about Norwegian trolls in Japanese, two Hello Kitty compressed handtowels, two little cat keychain figures, a great book on the 200 or so most common Swedish verbs... I had no idea I'd be getting anything at all, that was really nice of them! I even got stuff from Jox's Aunts!





We talked a lot about various stuff again and when one of Jox's Aunts decided to go home we walked to her apartment with her and saw the inside (she just moved in recently and hasn't unpacked much yet). There was a really cool elevator where it didn't have any metal door that closed, instead on every floor there's a regular door that you pull open and then when you're inside you can see all the floors go by! I'd never been in one like that except the glass elevator in the Seattle Space Needle, but that's a bit different. Jox thinks that the elevators with the metal doors are like "Disneyland elevators" and that the one we saw today is a normal (Swedish) elevator.

Then we basically started going through more of Jox's stuff. He has a LOT of stuff, probably more than I've owned in my life! Well, that might be an exaggeration, but certainly more than I've ever owned at one time.

Tomorrow we're going to go to Stockholm for a Christmas market that's only open during the weekends in December, and maybe look at electronics because my camera's broken.

Some Swedish I learned today:
Jag vet inte - I don't know
Sill - herring (similar to Icelandic)
Jag är hungrig - I am hungry
trött - tired, similar to Icelandic too
Hejdå - bye ("hi then")
Kan jag få...? - Can I have...?
Kan du ge mig...? - Can you give me...?
I forgot the rest...

Friday, Dec. 10 in Sweden

Image gallery for this trip is here.


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.

Last Day, Iceland stuff

Here's my blog for when I'm in Iceland.

Here's a mini photo blog for Iceland too, because I'll probably update that more than the real blog.

Sorry, I took so long to post anything that I forgot most of what we did. On the last day we had to walk all over because the train station was closed for repairs. We got on a bus to go to another train station and after that we found out that the entire line we wanted was closed for a bank holiday. So we took a different line.

After getting to the airport and going through security, we got some lunch at an Italian place. I got a pizza and sandwich (I think).

27th, Thursday

We went to a makeup shop to check to see if an order Roxy had put in had arrived, and while we were there we wandered into some stores that sold books and pop culture merchandise. We also went into some vintage clothing stores. Afterwards we went to the War Museum, which featured exhibits from almost all the wars Britain has been involved in. Admission was free (it might have only been free past a certain time, I can't remember) and they searched our bags briefly before we went in. The first room has airplanes, tanks, and a trolly while outside the building itself is a giant cannon. I took some photos for a man and his mother in front of one of the tanks. They were from Australia and the man said he had just spent two months in America (Delaware and some other more eastern state) for training for volunteering to help starving kids and that sort of thing.

They had models of houses from WWII, models of clothing, food, toys, and they had simulated trenches (including the smell!) along with a lot of picture and movie exhibits. The trench simulation was in my opinion too short to really have any effect on a person but Aino had thought it was good. However my eyesight is quite good in the dark so I could see everywhere in the trench just fine anyway despite there being few lights (and the lights that were there were flickering). I really liked the models of the houses, it was surprising how small everything was. Even the beds were a lot smaller than we have today.

The gift shop had some nice things like postcards with old photos and some toy and candy replicas, but I was overall disappointed. I thought there would be more clothing replicas and just replicas in general, a lot of it was the same images printed on different things (like a postcard, t-shirt, fridge magnet, and mug). I bought some things for dad there.

After this we met up with some more friends who are also visiting London at the same time and we ate at Pizza Express near Victoria Station. It was good food, but it was a bit expensive and they only cut half of everyone's pizzas into slices, in addition they had immense trouble considering splitting a pizza into half with one half one type of pizza and the other another type. It was also extremely loud and we could only hear about half the table when we were trying to talk.

When we were done we went to Christine's house, who lives nearby, and talked for a while. We eventually caught the last train home but instead of the normal forty-or-so-minutes, the last train takes two hours and it goes to a bunch of stations no one had heard before. Most of the train got off at the first stop because they didn't recognize where it was going, but we stayed on and got home in the end.

26th Wednesday

We went to The British Museum. It was really big and built like a maze, and had a lot of statues and old artifacts from various countries in it. Snorri and I weren't as interested in the museum as everyone else so we walked around while they looked at all the exhibits. After a while Roxy, Snorri, and I went to a convenience store and bought ginger cookies/biscuits and drinks, while the others continued to look around the museum. I bought a lemon-lime water drink that wasn't carbonated, and the others bought various things, and then we returned to the steps of the museum. They were shooting a movie on the steps of the museum, all the actors were Indian and one of the staff(?) was holding something like a really long mop. There was a lady in a business suit who walked up some of the steps and then turned around to talk to a man, but I couldn't hear anything they said even though they were fairly close.

Erin, Snorri, and I went to Piccadilly to wait for Aino, who I met last year in Iceland as well, (Aino is from and lives in Finland). According to a friend, the statue in the middle of Piccadilly is the god Eros and this place used to be a meeting place for lovers. There are a lot of French tourist groups and classes that go on field trips to the museums. There was one at the museum and there was one at Piccadilly too, and I've also been seeing lots of English classes with students in uniforms at all the museums.

24th Monday

I arrived at the airport and made it though the American security check just fine, but after I had gotten off the plane in Canada they thought I was suspicious (Because I was bringing two things of luggage for a one week flight) and so they put me in a different area and started to interrogate me. They asked me stuff about where I lived, who I was meeting, what I was going to do in London, had I been out of the country before, et cetera. They were really quite mean about it and after nearly everything I said the staff member said "You know, for some reason I don't believe you."

They told me to write down the names, phone numbers, and addresses of everyone I was going to meet, of my landlord, of Arlene who I visited in Canada a few weeks ago, and of my parents. They asked if my parents knew I was going on this trip (despite me being a legal adult and having already told the staff I didn't live with my parents) and after I gave them my dad's number they left, so I assume they called him. I hadn't memorized numbers or addresses for anyone because I had the important ones written down and all the unimportant ones are in my phone, which doesn't work anywhere outside of the US (not even in Canada), so I hadn't brought my phone. They couldn't believe that I hadn't memorized all of these numbers or that I hadn't brought my phone despite me telling them where all my friends were from (various countries in Europe, hence never memorizing their numbers because I won't need to call for help or call them at all because of the expenses) and telling them my phone doesn't work in Europe or Canada. They kept asking me tons and tons of questions and I had looked down to turn off my ipod because I had been listening to it while I was waiting for them to finish doing something in another room, and they got mad at me for not looking them in the eye when I was turning it off (because I was looking at the ipod itself to make sure it turned off).

They found three things suspicious. One, that I was bringing two bags and that one of those was a bag filled with gifts for friends. Two, that I was bringing so little money (they asked me how much I was bringing and when I told them, they said "You can barely survive one day on that amount" despite it being a lot more than that would take, and I told them I was staying with a friend, eating their food, and not planning to go out and do expensive things and they acted like that was unheard of). Three, that I was meeting up with friends because apparently... friends don't meet up together in Canada. I had a subway map with directions on how to get to the meeting place where Snorri would be waiting and they kept folding and unfolding it, looking at the back as if it would magically hold some clue as to what I was doing wrong despite it having nothing but meeting instructions on it.

After about two hours of this, they went to actually rummage through my suitcases to check and make sure I wasn't packing anything contraband. I had been doodling some pictures about the volcano and how it was disrupting flights, and once they saw that they asked me if I was "going to go to any protests" and if I had "very strong opinions". I told them I wasn't and that I had opinions but they weren't strong and I wasn't going to act on them. Finally they let me go, but I still had to go to the ticket counter and everything to pick up the tickets for my connecting flight... which was arriving in ten minutes by then. I ran through the airport and got to the security check where I was stuck in a line that was going slowly, except most of the people in it were all from Scotland and all friends of each other, and when they found out when my airplane was supposed to leave they all let me cut ahead of them. I kept running because the security check was at about the middle of the airport while the gate for my flight was at the very end, and when I got there they said it hadn't even started boarding yet because the plane had been late.

I went through the English customs just fine, but at baggage claim I found out my baggage hadn't arrived. So I had to file a missing baggage form and use Gunnar's (Snorri's uncle, the one we're staying with) address and phone number so they could drop it off.

I met Erin at the airport, she's from Ohio and she's visited Washington before. From Heathrow we traveled by train and eventually got to Victoria station where we met Snorri. We had a bit of trouble finding out exactly where to go because I mistook a store name in the directions as a street name, but a man who was probably homeless saw that we were lost and helped us out.

From there we wandered around until we settled at Piccadilly, where we were meeting the other Icelanders who were also going to be staying at Gunnar's place. For the rest of the day we basically wandered around some more.