Tag: Malmö Page 1 of 2

Swedish Summer Saturday

On June 10, 2018

Swedish summer in Västra Hamnen

Today, like nearly every other day for the past month, the sun rose early, pouring into the apartment like the savage heat of a Mexican vacation.

The birds started their daily chattering around 4 a.m. in regular observance of their fowl social hour. And before long the radiant sun was pressing through the layers of our drawn window blinds and thick, velour curtains. It was hot, really hot.

I usually keep my extra thick face mask handy, just in case I wake up and cannot get back to sleep. The face mask is amazingly effective, cradling my closed eyes in soft satin and soothing darkness. I am sure that I look scary, but not nearly as scary as I look when I only get four hours of sleep.

This morning I slept in, thanks to the mask and the relative quiet of our apartment with the men gone on their schools-out, summers-in motorcycling adventure. I stayed in bed late and then took extra time to journal, read, pray, and drink coffee on the balcony under our tree, now thick with its summer leaves.

It has been a mixed week for me, a few days of enjoying our life here, and a few days of struggling with the ongoing search for a job and the ongoing problems I cannot solve. The futile job search is a difficulty I should have expected, coming to Sweden without highly sought tech skills or a proficiency in Swedish. But even so, looking for a job can be deeply discouraging, and some days I just need a vacation from planning and thinking and trying. And so, this morning I decided to do just that.

Micah brought me an avocado-cocoa-spinach-almond milk-date smoothie, and we talked about life, not the distant future, just the present; and when the smoothies were done I told her I thought we needed to go for a long, hot run and jump into the ocean.

She was reluctant, not so sure about the jumping-into-the-ocean part, but I prevailed and we ran across Malmö in the midday heat. We ran through some of our favorite parks with the tall trees and their delightfully shading green canopy. We ran past the museum that she has not yet been to and then on to the long sandy beach strand. We ran along the beach, choosing a trail and avoiding the stream of people using the bike and pedestrian path. And then we ran through our “old neighborhood,” Västra Hamnen, the stylish new apartment village where we lived in a small, temporary apartment last summer. That already feels like a long time ago, even though the anniversary of our arrival is next Saturday.

It was almost 80 degrees again today in Malmö, and I was surprised to see how much of the grass had turned yellow, sun-scorched like California in September. Everyone is talking about how unusual the weather has been, and Swedish officials have even sent out social media warnings, urging people to use less water.

When we arrived at the docks, I took off my running shoes, walked to the end of the pier; and to Micah’s surprise, jumped in. Last Saturday I met my friend Jennifer at the docks and she urged me to jump without thinking. Jennifer often gives me really deep advice without realizing it. “Just jump in,” she says with her cute shrug and reassuring smile. And she was right. It really is the best way, because even in June, the water is still freezing cold, and the only way in is sudden, full immersion.

Later in June Micah jumped off the highest point at the docks.

But here is a nasty secret most people don’t know about California: the water is cold there too. It looks warm and balmy in movies, but it is not Hawaii. In the 14 years, I lived within three miles of the Pacific Ocean, and I only swam a few times. And when I did swim in the ocean it was almost always in August when the warm sun had finally warmed the water to the mid-60s. In June I was more likely to wear a sweatshirt to Santa Monica beach than a swimming suit.

According to some resources, the water in Malmö is actually almost the same temperature as Malibu throughout the summer months. Today it was about 62 degrees, and it was 63 degrees in Malibu. But unlike swimming at the beautiful California beaches where you have to brave past each cold, crashing wave; getting fully immersed in the Öresund Strait is as easy as running and jumping from the public docks. And after the cold shock of it all, nothing feels so exhilarating and calming as washing away all the sweat and dirt in an instant.

After swimming around long enough to feel warm, we got out and did what everyone else on the dock was doing. We let the sun dry us and then we jumped in again — like the sauna routine without the sauna.

Families around us shared picnics, parents with small children, young people with grandparents. Couples talked or read books, both in English and Swedish. One young man next to us read a biography of Stalin in English. Two young women laid next to each other, reading the same novel in Swedish. I wondered if they had a book club or if it was for a class.

The crowd was wonderfully age-diverse, elderly men and women sunning and swimming alongside teenagers. I noticed again, how gracefully Swedish people seem to be able to transition from winter white to golden brown. I, on the other hand, got the first sunburn I have had in years.

After we swam, Micah and I walked slowly back to the apartment, stopping to play on an empty playground, talking about the creative play structures and her childhood friends. We watched an endurance race with multiple obstacle stations, teams of people crawling under a maze of ropes, crossing the city moat on connected barrels. It looked like fun, the kind of thing Kip would like. We watched for a while and then meandered to my favorite falafel stand. I ordered a kycklingrulle, a middle eastern chicken burrito, the best fast food deal in Malmö, and we walked back to the apartment. Satisfied. Happy.

One of us said we liked the simplicity of our life here. The other agreed.

It is Saturdays like this that I want to remember when somebody asks what we did in Sweden.

I wrote this piece in June 2018.

May, Glorious, May

By Theresa Haynes

On May 31, 2018

In Uncategorized

Spring and Summer

Spring came abruptly and quickly gave way to summer.

I had been waiting for spring, anticipating the anticipation, and when it arrived the only thing that surprised me about it was how short-lived it seemed. One day the first yellow and purple buds were piercing through the grass, and then, a week later there were tiny buds on the trees. And then BANG – May 1st arrived and it felt like summer.

This is what spring looks like from a Swedish apartment window.

On May 1st, after a disappointingly cold and rainy Valborg night, the sun came out and the world celebrated in shorts and t-shirts. By Ascension Day, May 10, which is also a public holiday in Sweden, it was California hot. I wore an outfit I bought for a Rio trip two years ago, and Kip and I walked to Davidshall for an impromptu date. We bought a couple of beers at a restaurant with sidewalk tables, waited for a table outside and spent the next few hours sitting in the late afternoon sun, watching all of Malmö past by on the street. There is nothing like the combination of first summer sun and a public holiday to bring the entire inhabitance out of hiding. It felt like Malmö had tripled in size.

The garden at slottsparken in the last week of April, just before the heat of May arrived.

Just a few weeks earlier, in April, the tulips bloomed in Slottsparken. By mid-May, they were gone and the park looked like summer.

Earlier in the day on May 10, I met my girls at a café in Slottsparken, one of Malmö’s gorgeous city parks. Slottsparken is literally translated, the Castle Park, and it felt like a royal experience that sunny morning. We ordered salads and veggie burgers at Slottsparken café, a charming and particularly scrumptious garden restaurant surrounded by trees in full bloom and Swedish families enjoying their prized outside culture. The café and surrounding park were full that morning, Disneyland full, of people enjoying the day — walking, jogging, biking, paddling canoes through the park canal and playing Kubb — a Swedish block throwing game that may or may not have anything to do with Vikings. And it seemed like hundreds of people were lying on picnic blankets in sundresses, shorts, and t-shirts, or just swimming suits, soaking in the Swedish summer sun.

Sunny day brunch with the girls.

And this is still true, even three weeks later. The parks and every open green space is filled with people on picnic blankets, mostly in bikinis or shorts, soaking in the sun.

Celebrations

In May we also celebrated River’s birthday. It was his first birthday spent away from his friends in California, which was a little sad, but it provided an opportunity for us to invite some of his new friends home for a breakfast-for-dinner party in our apartment.

Jenga anyone?

One group of friends got together and bought River a box of Swedish treats, both good and quirky things that represent Sweden – the best candy and chocolate, the traditional crackers, meatballs, hot chocolate, super salty liquorice and a can of surströmming, the infamous Swedish fermented fish which has been named among the world’s worst smelling food — a heartfelt box of welcome whose generous gesture was not wasted on any of us.

And then we asked them to sing the Swedish Happy Birthday song.

For Kip and me, it was a really important moment. The long days, the sun, River’s new friends, it seemed like we had turned a corner in our experience here. We had made it through the winter in Sweden, and our son had finally made good friends, and that made being here so much easier.

And More Reasons to Celebrate

Taking our Colorado college kid for a hike in Sweden

And then, a few days later, Micah came back to Sweden.

Micah has been in college since August, a full 8 time zones away from us. When she left for school it was difficult for all three of us left behind. It was a sorrow intensified by the distance and the disorientation of being in a new country with new expectations and rules. But it was also a sorrow soothed by watching her mature and grow intellectually. I am sure it is an experience that every good parent has, sorrow for the childhood that is over, joy for the adult who has emerged. But getting her back for a few months this summer was just cotton candy, the icing on the cake.

Last Day of May

As I am writing this blog post it is the last day of May and we are still amazed at the good weather here in Sweden. It has truly been a month of California weather with sunny skies and warm temperatures, and it seems too good to be true. In a few weeks, River will be finished with school and we will begin a truly busy season of summer visitors and road trip adventures, but for now, we have enjoyed this month of summer bliss. There is nothing like a good, long winter to make the summer so special.

The canola fields in bloom. Kip took this picture on his way home from work, and its a perfect example of the Swedish Skåne countryside.

Do you like Malmö?

By Theresa Haynes

On March 22, 2018

In Uncategorized

Do you like Malmö?

I hear that question frequently. What do you think of Sweden? Do you like Malmö?

There is the tendency to talk about the weather first as this is universally the easiest small talk topic.

“Well, you know, we came from California and its sunny there all the time.”

“Yeah, so this is our first winter is 15 years.”

“You know, its ok.”

But all of that is true and completely beside the point. No one asked me what I thought about the weather in Malmö. Everyone, with the exception of one person I met from Northern Ireland, agrees that the weather in Malmö is less than pleasant, especially the long, dark, rainy winters.

But do I like Malmö?

This Sunday, a woman I met after church, awkwardly socializing over cup of post-church coffee, asked me this question. She was older, from a more rural part of Sweden, and she communicated through halting Swinglish that she understood English but did not speak it well.

I stopped, trying to articulate my words simply. I looked into her clear blue eyes in her face framed by wispy blond bangs, and I heard myself say, “I like Sweden.”

She smiled. Satisfied.

And I realized that I believed what I said.

I told her that just yesterday Kip and I had spent the afternoon with a neighbor we met on the street, a very un-Swedish connection. But even so he had invited us over for coffee, and so we sat in his beautifully Scandinavian styled apartment and had coffee and freshly baked, homemade cardamom rolls with his wife and toddler son. The candles on the table warmed the room and made me forget about the cold Saturday afternoon outside.

And last Friday night, despite the cold snap that brought the temperature well below freezing, Kip and I rode our bicycles across town to meet up with another couple and discuss our lives over imported wine and olives. After a wonderful evening of discovering common hearts in uncommon narratives, we rode our bikes back through town and stopped near Möllevången for midnight falafel from a middle eastern restaurant that keeps very unSwedish business hours. And I kept thinking about how, just a year ago, I could not have even imagined such a night.

The real Malmö … late night kebabs paid with Swedish kroner under a Swedish flag. (Note: This picture is not from Möllevången, but from our neighborhood kebab shack. These popup stands offer the best “fast” food in Sweden.)

I like our life and adventure here.

I love that Malmö is an international city, a baby city where you can ride bikes from one end to the other, but a multicultural hub where you can get to know people from around the world who have chosen to make this tip of Sweden their home.

I like the indoor winter culture.

I like the hospitality.

I like the massive bike roads and the fact that we bike everywhere, even in the middle of the night in the cold of winter.

I love the people we have met, the friends who feel like real friends, the kind that I will keep in touch with for a long, long time.

I like the coffee culture, and dangerously so, I like all the freshly baked bread and bakery treats. It’s the best I have had in the world, and there always seems to be opportunities to partake.

Swedish semla and salad, a perfect spontaneous lunch date with my friend Jennifer. Semla is the Swedish response to “fat Tuesday,” a traditionally pre-lent delight that somehow arrives in bakeries early and lingers after the beginning of lent.

I love the tree that grows just outside our balcony. I have watched it change from green, to yellow, then barren, then white with snow and now dripping with freezing rain and the pre-spring promise of budding tips. I like the reality of seasons and the rhythm it brings to people’s lives.

Our tree, exactly five months ago, the last of the green leaves.

Today, no new leaves yet, but tiny rain-dripped buds, birds and a curious cat experiencing his first spring ever.

So yes, sweet lady from Sweden with your careful worded English and your hospitable smile, I like Sweden.

Winter Sun in Malmö

By Theresa Haynes

On February 5, 2018

In Uncategorized

Kip snapped this picture on his train commute this morning.

The sun shone victoriously under a cold February sky today. It was a gorgeous celebration of the rapidly lengthening days and no one in our family went without mentioning it.

A layer of frost and snow glistened under the rare morning sun. River took this picture.

I rode across town in the late afternoon. It was still cold, very cold, but nice to be outside.

And even the twilight was clear as I crossed one of the partially frozen Malmö canals. Is it too much to hope for a few more days like this?

In Defense of a Forgettable Weekend

By Theresa Haynes

On February 5, 2018

In Uncategorized

He thinks I should paws for his edits. An open laptop is a laptop needing his touch.

This weekend was a blur of quiet family life, the kind of weekend that I suspect will be vaguely remembered. There were no major events, no milestones, no memorable travel. It was the kind of weekend lived once but repeated often; forgettable, but beautiful in the simplicity of its own existence.

Oh, earth,you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it–every,every minute?

― Thornton Wilder, Our Town

Saturday morning we made family breakfast — Kip, with the bacon that I always complain about but love to eat, me, with a Trader Joe’s pumpkin bread mix that I stashed in my luggage when we were in Los Angeles last month. (I still miss Micah every time I set the Saturday morning breakfast table for three, but I talked to her Friday night and she seems to be doing really well in college, genuinely enjoying her classes, excitedly recounting details of her church history class.)

Saturday we also cleaned the apartment, so much easier now that we live in a two-bedroom apartment instead of a three-story, four-bedroom, four-bathroom house in California. (That sounded like a complaint. It really is a bonus to clean up faster. Simplicity.)

Then Kip and I went grocery shopping together. I like to stock up on nuts and veggies, fresh bakery bread, and a boxed soup that I eat for lunch on cold days when I am home alone. I try to keep the processed food to a few “emergency” frozen pizzas and boxes of cereal for our ever-hungry teenage boy. Of course an occasional carton of ice cream or Swedish chocolate bar makes its way into the basket too.

Kip usually picks out the cheeses and meats, and he does a good job of it. Had we been in Los Angeles he would have gotten wine and beer too, but they are not sold in the grocery stores in Sweden. The only retail store allowed to sell alcohol in Sweden is the state-sanctioned monopoly Systembolaget.

Recently I got a very small bottle of tequila that was more than twice the price I would have paid in a grocery store in the US. Most Swedes will defend this government-controlled monopoly, saying the government has its people’s best interests at heart with its prohibition-style regulations. Systembolaget claims to be taking the negative aspects of alcohol out of society by eliminating the profit. Of course at $30 for a small bottle of budget tequila, I think someone is making a profit.

One memorable moment of the weekend was Saturday night when we invited friends over for dinner to celebrate one of their birthdays. I made dinner. They brought drinks. We had my childhood-favorite American apple crisp with ice cream, and we talked about living in Sweden. One of them is Swedish, the other from the UK. They have only lived in Malmö for a few years so they still see life here with both an insider and outsider perspective.

Easy like Saturday morning.

Sunday afternoon we made a quick family trip to IKEA. It was mostly River’s idea, as Kip can easily get to IKEA any day he works in Älmhult. But I was more than happy to go because I had not been to our favorite Swedish mega store since before Christmas. I realized when we were walking into the store that River mostly wanted to go because he was craving IKEA’s mashed potatoes, a soothing comfort food for his newly braced teeth.

We decided to start orthodontia for River this week. It is something that has been on the to-do list for awhile now, but for the last few years we have never felt settled enough to commit the time to braces. You don’t start orthodontia if you are planning to leave town. I have known too many friends who had to make unplanned trips back to LA to finish their teenager’s orthodontia treatment.

So as River starts this new dental treatment, I know it will also be a solid reminder that we are planning to be in Sweden for at least the next year, maybe a few months more or even longer. And what else will happen during that time?

At IKEA I also got a green plant for the apartment. As the last remaining Christmas decorations make it into the clearance bins, little green windowsill plants are popping up like the first promise of spring.

I put the plant on our bedroom windowsill, next to the crocuses Kip picked up at IKEA last week. I’m hoping our kitten-cat who does not seem to be able to resist temptation of any kind, will not find them. Plants have not fared well under his teeth and claws, but I really like these little green reminders of new life and I plan to keep them shut behind our bedroom door until we have trained the cat to respect the plant life. Coexist kitty.

In November this plant met its end under the kitty’s paws. I am hoping a couple of months has matured our feline friend.

Off Season Off Road

By Theresa Haynes

On January 29, 2018

In Uncategorized

It’s a rainy Monday and I think I have come to terms with this. It rains in Malmö — a lot. I don’t know if this is true all year or just summer, fall and winter. We have been here almost 7 months, and so far it has rained constantly. Hardly two days in a row pass without rain.

My friend who visited us from the UK last week said it was similar there too. We both lived in California for a decade and we are intimately aware of our need for sunshine. While we were walking through Malmö, the sun burst through the cloud cover, and I got excited.

“I haven’t seen the sun in weeks!” It might have been a gross exaggeration for the benefit of someone who would understand, but it had been days at least.

But as I have mentioned in this blog before, weather is not a show stopper in Sweden. People bike, walk, run, and even push baby strollers through the wind, rain and drizzle. I have even heard of people jumping into the ocean in January. It is a bit of a macho Viking thing, but still, it happens. I have seen pictures.

While weather is not a show stopper, observing correct activities for correct seasons might be.

It is kind of like an LA friend once told me, “There is beach season and hiking season in southern California.” You can go to the beach in winter, but it will be too cold to swim, and you can hike in the heat of summer, but that can be hot, dry and miserable too. In Sweden it seems to be both a matter of practicality and tradition. Seasons are not just for weather. Swedish life is organized into seasons for work and food and apparently, motorcycling too.

Saturday I dropped Kip and River off near a known motorcross trail, which was really a series of dirt roads, in Skåne. I drove the car up to Markaryd, left it there and caught a couple of trains back to Malmö. It was great for me to get out of the city, drive through farmland and deep woods, and remember that Sweden is much bigger than our beloved grey Malmö. It is rural with small towns and mid-sized cities, connected by roads and trains.

It was also great for me to navigate the trains myself. Kip commutes by train several times a week to Älmhult, but I rarely use them as we live and work in Malmö. On the weekends we use the car if we need to get somewhere further away than our feet will carry us in 20 minutes.

When the train stopped in Hässleholm I walked around to get a look-and-see at this charming mid-sized city. Its the last weekend of January and it still looks like Christmas there.

I like using public transit, even if no one speaks to each other, it brings people together in a way that traveling in cars cannot. As we sit, side by side, we are traveling together, a common goal of moving through space and time, a common need to commute spawned by an infinite number of personal needs – to go to work, to shop, to get to school, to visit someone in the hospital, to get out.

It gives me time to be philosophical about people riding in trains.

The men found the car where I left it, and made it back home hungry and cold; and when I told my Swedish friend later Saturday night, she laughed.

“You know, in Sweden we have a saying, ‘When you hear motorcycles, its time for spring.’”

Kip seemed to agree. It was fun, but too cold, too soon. It might be a couple of months before the bikes make it back on the trail. In the meantime I have seen him scoping out the possibilities of a summer, Baja style, European motorcross trip.

Cool Runnings

By Theresa Haynes

On January 26, 2018

In Uncategorized

I think there are people who love to run, but I have not met many of them.

I think most runners are like me. They look out the window, observe that it is too hot, too cold, too windy, too rainy or whatever, and then they lace up and head out the door anyway. It’s never an easy start, but I almost always feel better after the run, sometimes even during the run.

Winter in Malmö is no exception.

Even with my hat, gloves, long-sleeve outer running shell and new running tights that cover my legs to the ankle, I still brace for the cold, especially if it is windy. And I find myself thinking about easier options.

Last week I tried an indoor gym a few times. Running on the treadmill was boring, although it offered me the unique opportunity to watch American reruns with Swedish subtitles. At no time in my previous life could I have predicted that in January 2018 I would be watching Murder She Wrote, picking through the Swedish words I know, while running on a treadmill — sweating inside to avoid the wintery elements outside.

They had free coffee at the gym, but not a single drinking fountain. When I asked the attendant where the water fountain was, he told me to get water from the toilet. That’s what he said, toilet. At least I have been here long enough to know that toilet is a general word for restroom, which is comforting, but when my free trial week ended, I decided to go back to outside running.

Earlier this month, when we returned from California and started running in the Malmö parks again, I noticed that the birds were standing in the middle of the lake. They were standing on partially submerged ice, surrounded by warmer water, and it looked like they were frozen statues floating on liquid.

But that was just one or two mornings.

Every other day that we have run the lake and ponds have been ice free. It is just not cold enough for them to freeze, and really, that surprises me. Here we are in January, one of the coldest months of the northern hemisphere, and it is so warm in southern Sweden that the ponds don’t freeze.

It has barely snowed this winter either. We had a dusting in December and last week there was snow mixed in the rain, dissolving on the streets below. People have told us that it is typical, but my Malmö friends also tell me that when they were children they remember snow sledding in Pildammsparken. I can’t imagine.

Is this what global warming looks like?

It could be. A few degrees difference would make a big difference in allowing the ponds to freeze and snow to fall. As it is, the temperatures have hovered just above freezing. No snow, just grey clouds and cold drizzle, but ironically, once you warm up, its not bad running weather though.

Today the air was the warmest yet, and deep fog hovered over the lake in an ethereal kind of beauty. Like so many things in this Swedish immersion experience, its different from what life was like before, different, but beautiful.

Awake in the Dark

By Theresa Haynes

On January 16, 2018

In Uncategorized

Awake in the darkness.

Thinking. Writing with eyes shut.

Quiet. Still. Maybe it will pass if I stop thinking.

No. Every waking thought propels me higher out of sleep. I am no longer hovering over my barely conscious dreams. I am awake.

I check the time. Just past 4 a.m.

“It’s four in the morning
I can’t sleep and it feels like a warning
Oh oh….”

Thank you, Switchfoot for the soundtrack of my life. It is the second week we have been back in Sweden and I still can not get the night sleep right. Is it jet lag? Is it taking melatonin at night and being too tired during the day to stay awake, power napping and waking up at night after too few hours?

Is it that I feel suspended between directions again, not working on a big goal, restless? At night my mind wakes up. The tyranny of choice. What to do? What should be a blessing feels like a curse. Freedom. Responsibility. Opportunity slipping away.

I am naturally a morning person, so when I wake up at night I think it is especially difficult to get back to sleep. All my intellectual energy pours into problem solving mode. Sometimes the unabashed, illogical dream consciousness holds on just long enough to make thoughts creative. I see in color. I solve in color.

If I did not think it would hurt my family/social life, I could just wake up every morning at 4 a.m. for a private writing session, followed by a long midday nap. Maybe that is what winter should look like in Sweden, for me.

This morning after I got up I walked out into the living room, stretched and watched the blowing snow in the suspended street lights. In a city that stays dark for so many hours in January, the street lighting systems are evidence of Sweden’s strong, stable government. Miles of public lights illuminate the streets and sidewalks, bike paths and even parks. Its easy and relatively safe to get around after dark. But sometimes it’s hard to sleep with the light pressing into the apartment, especially at 4 in the morning.

Snow and light and I really need to learn how to use my camera better

I can hear the wind and I am glad I don’t have to go anywhere this morning. The snow seems to turn to rain before it hits the pavement below. There is no picturesque accumulation of snow, just driving, wet precipitation. Snow and rain and ice and wind.

We were told it would be this way, but this is the first week it has been cold enough to experience it. You have to leave Malmö to see snow in winter. It just does not get cold enough here with the marine layer to support snow. It is winter without snow, like Narnia without Christmas.

What should I do with it?

Secret Mission

By Theresa Haynes

On December 8, 2017

In Uncategorized

I am on a secret mission, one that has me traveling alone across the Atlantic, over the top of Canada and back into the United States.

My mom is turning 70 on Sunday.

It hit me a few months ago that 70 is a special birthday, a big milestone in my mom’s life; and living in Sweden, I would probably miss it. It was also my parents 45^th wedding anniversary this summer and while I thought about them on that day, I didn’t even so much as send a card. And unfortunately, I cannot claim that it was an anomaly. I have never been very good about my parents and siblings’ birthdays. I rarely do more than a phone call or a text. My mom is known for both her generosity and her faithful memory of everyone else’s birthday, so for the first time in my adult life, I felt really sad that I would not be with her to make this birthday a big deal. She certainly deserves it.

A few weeks ago I began talking to my sister Serenity about what the family was going to do to celebrate, and within a few days my sisters, brother and sister-in-law were talking about throwing a surprise party. My brother, a creative chef and caterer with a celebrity list of clients, suggested they throw a Bermudian-themed celebration on my mom’s actual birthday, two weeks before Christmas.

That left me with a difficult decision. Flying to Oklahoma and back to Sweden and then back to Los Angeles for Christmas seemed out of the question, practically and financially. But I didn’t want to miss either the birthday or our planned Christmas trip to Los Angeles.

After much deliberation and even a few conversations with some of my new Malmö friends, I decided to fly out right before the party, surprise my mom who will think I am in Sweden, and then stay with my parents for a week before heading to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with Kip and the kids.

And while I am thrilled to be seeing my mom and my daughter who is flying in from Denver for the party, it was actually a little bit difficult to leave Malmö just as the city begins celebrating its favorite time of year – Christmas.

The decorations are everywhere, advent stars in apartment windows, electric lights hung across streets, wreaths and candles. The grocery stores are packed with interesting specialty Christmas foods that I had never seen before. There are displays of traditional hams and cheese, tubes of what looks like creamy beat salad, pastries and other Jule-time only Swedish delights. Every grocery store has a corner crammed with boxes of chocolates and stacks of thin gingerbread cookies in holiday tins and of course, bottles of Glögg. And most miraculously, all of this Christmas grocery shopping comes without the endless repeating loop of American secular Christmas songs that exhaust the most festive of Christmas shoppers before mid-December.

Making Christmas cookies in school.

Swedish Christmas drink

There have also been Christmas events around town, concerts and Christmas markets in the old town. This week there will be St. Lucia celebrations all over Scandanavia, a celebration of light coming into the darkness just as the days shorten to the very darkest of the year on the Winter Solsitice.

It is special, really sweet, and it makes me glad we are planning to stay in Sweden long enough to celebrate Christmas there next year.

This week I got together with several of my new Malmö friends, and I realized that not only am I feeling more comfortable here, but I am putting down roots in the form of friendships, the kind that allow for silly text messaging and hastily planned get togethers. Its good.

And for right now, I am really looking forward to surprising my mom. She knows about the party, which is good because I thought that it might not be entirely a pleasant surprise for her to come home to a house full of people she was not expecting. And she knows that my daughter is flying in for the weekend but as far as I know, she has no idea that I will be there. I am planning to post a picture of Sweden tomorrow on Facebook so she will think I am there Saturday morning. Haha.

The “view from my window” I posted, as I was on a layover in Los Angeles. LOL

Stay tuned…..

Internal Life

By Theresa Haynes

On November 27, 2017

In Uncategorized

Late afternoon on a damp day

November in Malmö is ending just as gray as the locals predicted. In typical Scandinavian reliability, the weather is slogging steadily into colder, damper, deeper darkness. The trees are barren and the apartment buildings look as unapologetically uniform as any sample of mid century egalitarianism ever was. It is not particularly picturesque, and if it were not for the festive Christmas decorations popping up in apartment windows and dangling across cobblestone streets, Malmö might feel completely void of color in its November drizzle.

But that is just the world outside our doors. Inside is another story.

Inside our living space has never been warmer, cozier or more welcoming. Even the cars driving through the wet streets below amplify the peace inside. The Danish famously call it “hygge,” and it is a real thing. It is a winter home-life happiness in the form of evening candles, home cooked meals shared around the dining room table, books being read, guitars being played, new friends joining us for dinner and side-aching, hilarious stories shared. It is an interior happiness to match a soulful contentment, and it’s a whole new life I did not know was possible in the sun-drenched lands of Los Angeles busyness.

Christmas stars light up apartment windows all over Sweden. We got ours from IKEA, of course.