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In Swedish in America, USA

we are staying home

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

November 16, 2020

Good Morning! Hope you had a wonderful weekend. We haven’t really done anything. Went to Greenwich for an oil change on Saturday and while we were waiting we sat down at an outdoor seating for fries and a drink in the sun. Other than that, we’ve been home. We have enjoyed each others company and snuggled our pup, pretty nice and easy weekend. A lot colder outside yesterday too so not very pleasant to be outside. 

The world is getting worse again so the best thing to do is to stay home. On Friday I got an automatic phone call from the city mayor saying that we should only go outside if we absolutely have to – for us that means taking the dog out. Bars and restaurants have to stop serving at 10pm and we have a suggested curfew between 10pm and 5am. I don’t think we will go into another full lockdown, the country can’t afford it, but it kinda feels like it now.
I’ve been fine being at home this year, but now it almost feels like our home has turned into a prison. All of us around the world is experiencing the same thing, but that doesn’t make it easier for any of us. My husband and I have spent on average probably 22 hours a day, every day,  at home since March (or actually since February for me). We take our dog for park adventures when the weather allows, we have some errands to do during weekends, but other than that we spend time just us and the pup inside our apartment. Yes, we did travel for two days in July which I greatly appreciated but it also gave me major anxiety.
I think we can all agree that this is a sucky year. I think a lot of people have kept their positivity up and made the best of this situation, but at this point we are all tired. But even if we are tired we still need to remember that we have to keep doing our part to stop the spread of this dumb virus. No one knows when this will end, it will take time, even if there’s a vaccine coming out in a few months. It is the virus that decides, all it wants to do is to continue its party and hang out with as many people as possible. But all of us needs to try to stop this massive deadly party. Best way to do so is to stay home if one can, wear a mask when outside, frequently wipe surfaces with disinfect, keep distance to others and wash those damn hands. It’s not hard. The quicker people do their part the quicker the world can move on. 

In Connecticut, New York, Swedish in America

Doesn’t get more FALL than this

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

October 12, 2020

This weekend has been absolute perfect and very fall-ish:) And today it really feels like fall since it’s raining outside and the temperatures dropped a bit. Because it is Columbus Day today (or Indigenous People’s Day), J is only working a half day. We wanted to do something fun with Thor today as well but ya, the weather isn’t exactly puppy-adventure-friendly (Thor doesn’t like the rain). We’ll see what we do, maybe watch Halloween movies and sip apple cider. 

So, this weekend:
On Saturday we drove to North Salem, NY, for a hike at Mountain Lakes Park. We’ve been there a few times before, I really like this park. We started by going up the mountain first, look at the pretty view and then hike in the forest. We barely met anyone during our 1.5 hour hike; a few bikers passed us and we saw a camouflaged  hunter with a crossbow, and that’s about it. Lots of trees were down and the trails where covered in leaves, if they hadn’t put up the markers on the trees we could have easily lost the trails. At one point we branched off to go find a different trail that led to one of the ponds. J had to carry T since we didn’t know what we were stepping on. The pond was so calm and some trees had changed colors, it looked like a painting. 
Our hike was so lovely, very quiet and peaceful. We could not have picked a better day or time of day to go hiking. 

On our way home we bough coffees and donuts and then just enjoyed the day together. At night we played Yahtzee and for once Jim won the first two rounds, but then I won with epic numbers on the third 🙂 Then it was time to watch Svengoolie and some tarantula movie. I always have a hard time watching these old movies from the 40s-60s, they usually involve animals and they aren’t treated that well in the movies and we all know that they weren’t exactly treating them very nicely behind the scenes back then either. It breaks my heart. 

On Sunday we got up early again. We drove to Easton, CT, and to Silverman’s Farm. I have been searching for pumpkin/apple farms that allows dogs. I found one but then I saw that because of covid we needed to purchase tickets and every weekend was sold out (we also didn’t want to pay). Then J told me that one of the dogs here in Stamford that we know through instagram had posted that they went to this Silverman’s, so we decided to check it out. 
We came an hour after they had opened and there were already plenty of people but still ok for us to visit. We had a great time. There were so many different kinds of pumpkins, some bigger than Thor haha. We didn’t actually buy any pumpkins though, we are not planning on carving this year. Would have been nice maybe to get some for cooking but eh. We got ourselves some yummy treats though. 
It was fun and I think Thor enjoyed it (oh the things we do for our fur babies hahah). We left the farm after 25 minutes and the parking was now full. My friend that I invited to join us couldn’t go in the morning like we wanted to, so they had gone they day before after noon and it was like an ant city she said, they had turned around and gone somewhere else. Now when they say that the virus is air born and can spread pretty far, we don’t want to put ourselves in crowded situations, so we knew we had to go early. Our experience at the farm was great. The picking (blueberries, apples, peaches etc) was over for the season but with a dog it would have pretty hard to enjoy that anyway, so this was perfect.

If we hadn’t gone to the store just a few days before we would have got more veggies and fruit at the farm
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I had to google why it’s called cider.. In Europe we think of fizzy drinks or drinks with alcohol when we hear the word cider, but here in America that’s called “hard cider” and this type of cider is basically just juice. 
The pie is amazing!

We were so tired for some reason during the rest of the day that we ended up doing absolute nothing. In the evening we watched some newer horror movie that at first seemed promising but then was just annoying, just like all the other so called horror movies. Why can’t anyone make a good scary movie these days? If you know any good movies, please comment on this post, I have yet to find something good. 

Our weekend was amazing, we could not have picked a better weekend to go on adventures with Thor. And if this is our actual last fall up north then I think we have nailed the fall activities by now hahah. 

I hope y’all had an amazing weekend as well and that you got to enjoy the outdoors.
Have an awesome week!

In Sweden, Travel

moster time

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

January 30, 2020

Mila, one week old yesterday“Leverpastej” and pickled cucumber, “nyponsoppa” and coffeeBeautiful sky as we drove back from my sister yesterday

I’m not that busy, but yet I’m super busy during my time in Sweden. My sister lives in a different city and the others have stuff scheduled from before, so we have to plan driving back and forth in good time to be able to actually see my sister and her little one before their appointments. But, I’m used to this now, driving between places and lots of people to see. My grandpa was here for a few minutes earlier this morning and now I’m just waiting for my parents to get ready (both have taken time off work this week) so that we can drive down to my sister in Halmstad. I’m ready for baby niece snuggles:)

In Sweden, Travel

staying busy in Sweden

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

January 27, 2020

Having really nice days in Sweden. Not doing anything but at the same time I’m doing a lot. Trying to enjoy some Swedish stuff. Lots of “fika” of course:)
On Saturday, my dad and I went to a movie premiere. He knows a guy who made a documentary Möten vid brunnen. This was the third movie of his, this one was about pilots from America that had to land in Sweden back in 1944. Quite interesting. 

Mila

Once the movie was done around 5:30 pm, my mom picked us up and we drove to meet my new niece for the first time. A tiny little cutie ♥ 

My aunt and my dad, hahha, what a cute pic! Great imagination 🙂

I woke up at 2am on Sunday and could not fall back to sleep. And then at 7:30, we were on the road to go visit my grandma in Smaland, a region about 2-2.5 hours away. We arrived and were welcomed with a yummy second breakfast. So nice to get some time with my grandma. An hour or so later, my aunt, her husband and my cousins daughter (who I had never met before) showed up. By 1pm, my cousin and her oldest (also the first time to meet him). We ate lunch – my grandmas meatballs! – and then fika. We left right after 3, short day but we wanted to be on the road before it got dark. But it was nice to spend some time with them. Back in the house, I skype’d with hubby and Thor. How is it possible to miss someone so much already after only a few days?;)

John and my sister gave me a new coffee mug

Today I woke up at 6am after 8 hours of sleep, yay, finally! At 9 I had a hair appointment, and then we spent some time at the bank…as always. For some reason there is always something to fix at the bank when I come to Sweden. After all the errands in town, we drove back to the house. I have been going through some of my old stuff that I still have here, we had fika, my mom showed me some old black n white photos and then I got my dads spaghetti bolognese. Now we are just watching some comedy show on tv.
I’m hoping that we can go see my sister and the little one tomorrow, but we are trying to respect them and not be in the way. But, I’m also only here for a week and won’t see the girl for awhile so I want to go there and see her as much as possible of course. We’ll see how the rest of this week turns out. 

In Sweden, Travel

Oh boy what a trip

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

January 26, 2020

Hello from Sweden! Currently writing on my phone sitting in the car on the way to my grandma’s (I’m obviously not the one driving). I have no idea how this post will turn out, or if it will even upload (driving in the middle of forest with bad reception🤪). Anyway, I arrived in Sweden on Friday after a really difficult trip. To start with, the taxi to Newark that was supposed to take 1 h 10 min took an extra hour and I almost missed bag check in. But then I was first group to enter the plane and luckily I had two empty seats next to me. Unfortunately this didn’t help me sleep though. I slept for maybe 20 minutes during my 7 hour long flight, but it was nice with extra space, and SAS is way better than Norwegian. We arrived 40 min early, got off the plane, grabbed my bag and walked over to the trains. Apparently Copenhagen airport doesn’t accept American Express (how weird?! Its an international airport!) and apparently everyone starts working past 8 am, and I landed at 6:40, so noone could help me. It was a shitshow. After two hours I finally managed to get myself a train ticket and I got on the train. Once we were approaching Malmo in Sweden they said in the speakers that the guy who was supposed to take over the driving to Gothenburg hadn’t showed up to work, so we all had to get off the train and wait for the next one…an hour later! I arrived in Falkenberg closer to 1pm (I thought I would be there before 10). Exhausted, hungry and disappointed in people, but after a quick shower and my mom had given me a cup of coffee, we drove to the grocery store and I bought everything I wanted..and my Amex worked, yay! So everything was awesome again:) We ate pizza for dinner and I stayed up til 10pm to get myself on Swedish time. At this point I had been awake for 46 hours (except the 20 min I slept on the plane). Probably a personal record🏆 So lots of problems, but at least I made it😊 Staying til Sunday