Sally and Linnea's Mini-Blog

Sorry for the lack of new blogs! It’s a good sign that my mom and I are having fun. Here’s my effort to recap the last three days in as little space as possible…

Thursday: A Lund Thanksgiving
Our mission to go downtown to find a bowl of pea soup at Gloria’s was fruitless, but we ended up having a delicious dagens rätt (the daily special) at Café Finn anyway. Lunch was followed by some essential Thanksgiving day errands: we took a trip to the Systembolaget for some Swedish jul öl, wine, and other beverages, picked up some potatoes and whipped cream at ICA, and bought some some yummy turkey from Ingelsta Kalkon.

We also did some shopping and found some fun gifts and treats, including some “Super Tomten” themed items. And we couldn't forget to make an essential stop, at Mormors (my favorite bakery!), for a classic Swedish kanelsnäcka.





Our evening consisted of pie making, potato mashing, and StoveTop mixing, and we threw together a very tasty Thanksgiving meal. The Swedes didn’t know why exactly there were seasoned chunks of bread on our plates, but we filled them in on the significance of the American family holiday. To top it all off, I wore the adorable Thanksgiving socks that my dad sent me (thanks, Dad!).

Friday: A Malmö Shopping Expedition
We bundled up and headed for Malmö to visit a Swedish IKEA and doing a little shopping downtown. We spent a few hours marveling at the Swedishness of IKEA (where the people shopping there are Swedes and all the displays are in Swedish). We enjoyed some lax in the restaurant, purchased some candles (now essential given the 3:45PM sunsets) and then headed back into the center of Malmö to wander the shopping streets.


Malmö is really the big city. My mom and I were comparing the Lund-Malmö area to the Davis-Sacramento area (where the former are smaller university towns with a lot of character and the latter are the economic centers with good shopping, lots of people, and more things to do). In both Lund and Malmö right now they are setting up for Christmas, which means that there are trees, lights, and other decorations adorning every street lamp, intersection, and square in the cities. It is a beautiful sight. We also stopped at Gray’s American store just to take a peek (I’m not feeling quite as homesick with my mom here, and I realized how desperate I must have been last time to find this store so appealing).


Friday night was a repeat of Thanksgiving leftovers (mmmm) and some Swedish TV, followed by a good night’s sleep!

Saturday: The Thanksgiving Three-peat
Sun! Saturday morning was sunny! The skies were free of the usual gray, so my mom and I headed out for a quick walk to the nearby lookout (Klosterängshöjd). I often jog over to and up this hill because on clear days the view is fantastic: you can see all the way down to Malmö and the Öresund bridge, all the way up north to Landskrona (and beyond) and even across to Denmark, not to mention all of the rolling Skåne landscape in between.


You’d think that after two meals of Thanksgiving goodies we’d be all turkey-ed out. Not the case. At 11AM, we met up with a group of about 50 UC students (40 studying in Lund, the other 10 in Copenhagen, which is right across the water in Denmark). As per tradition, the two groups meet up on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, first for the Lund students to give the Copenhagen students a walking tour of Lund, and then to join together in a Thanksgiving feast catered by an American chef!

Some pictures of the walking tour through Lund:


The Thanksgiving lunch took place in Falsterbo, a little town just south of Malmö. A restaurant was set up and reserved just for us. We ate delicious salad, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry lingonberry sauce, sweet potatoes, turkey, bread, and later an enormous Swedish-style apple pie and pumpkin pies as well! We all ate A LOT. My mom got to meet all of my good UC friends and I was able to share Thanksgiving with my “other” Swedish family. After we got back (around 4:30), my mom and I walked back to my dorm, under a big full moon (yes, at 4:30!)

Then we accomplished the impossible. It was bike box time… which meant disassembling my racing bike and fitting it into an impossibly small cardboard shipping box so that my mom can take it back to the states with her on Tuesday morning (it is too cold and icy to ride here anymore). I bubble wrapped the frame and all of the more fragile parts, and then tried getting the frame, the two wheels, and the handlebars into the box. We tried one arrangement. And then another. And another. After four international calls (to wonderful Max in California), oodles of packing tape, and lots of frustration, my bike was IN THE BOX. Thank goodness. Here is the before shot. And here is the after:


Whew.

Today we have more planned, and hopefully I will get a blog up about it soon!

Love,
Linnea (and Sally).