Christmas shopping downtown at 2:30 in the afternoon. Yeah, it's pretty bad.
So, for the first time in my life, I'll be spending Christmas away from Minnesota. Make no mistake, I still love and miss all of you back across the pond very much, but spending the holidays in Sweden with such a group of good friends as I have now is an opportunity I can't refuse. Not to mention, it's a great escape from my usual comfort zone. This is the story of our... shenanigans as of late.
Sunrise on the winter solstice, and Stefano with the Christmas tree we got from the Spegel farm. (my very distant relatives. Ste is also responsible for the tortellini incident below)
The tortellini factory. We did this for four hours and I never want to fold one of these again...
Christmas Eve was mostly a story of eating and sitting around all day. Gray, damp, gloomy weather. Incredibly, it was colder back in Middelburg! I started the day with kanelbullar, then headed over to Max and Frida's house (aka the largest one on Camping!) for the day.
Just below freezing in Middelburg and well above in Östersund!
Incredibly Santa himself brought us all gifts after lunch. The world works in strange ways!
The post-Christmas buffet and a sunny walk afterwards. Christmas day brought The Return of the King extended edition, 4 hours 23 minutes long. Holy cannoli...
The days between Christmas and New Year's are usually a void, a no-man's-land, an in-between. Nothing happens, and it's best to enjoy it! We did plan a little trip out to Åre (Sweden's premier ski destination) to do reconnaissance for the school ski week in January and hike a little bit.
Sunrise at the train station and the town square in Åre. I was talking with some Dutch people in a coffee shop here and by sheer chance was offered a graduation internship, beginning about this time next year. What are the odds that they would be urban designers... Proof that it pays to learn silly languages!
A slog through the deep snow, not bad. Åre village has exactly the same feeling as Vail, except without Texans. Hikes like this begin at the edge of town and lead up the mountain. A typical Swedish thing!
Curiously we had better food for New Year's than on Christmas. The usual party and staying up late- I recall we were all walking downtown to watch fireworks at midnight and wound up celebrating with other students at a park in the snow. Core memories!
Now there's just two weeks left in the semester. Two lectures, one project, and one exam between me and a mysterious internship that starts later this month. Equal parts excited and nervous. Most of our cadre of international students will leave at the end of this month- that'll be hard to handle, but we're getting ready for it. As I write this, it's at last snowing a little. Locals say this has been one of the mildest winters ever here. The last few years it feels like the Dutch climate has been following me... Until next time!
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