Showing all posts in Sweden

Photo from 2013, Midsummer on Manhattan.
I think this failed photo shows exactly what Midsummer is:) 

I’ve heard that there is a lot of Scandinavians in Connecticut, so I wanted to check if there is a Midsummer celebration around here. My husband is working all day, so my plan was to prepare food and make a flower wreath headband during the day and when J comes home we could either go to a possible Midsummer celebration somewhere or just celebrate at home on our terrace with good Swedish food and listen to old Swedish music.

The yoga studio I go to offered me a free workshop because of the whole “no morning yoga” thing (on May 17th). I saw a few days ago that the class is 7:15 PM, not AM like I thought. An early morning yoga workshop seemed like a nice way to start the celebration of light, but apparently it’s in the evening. So, that will be my celebration this year. 

At first I got sad and I considered to skip the workshop. But, I really want to do the workshop plus celebrating here doesn’t feel the same as in celebrating in Sweden. A celebration with Swedish people I don’t know in a Swe-US way or a celebration with my husband who has never experienced it in Sweden, won’t actually give me much. It’s not the same. The sun goes down at 9pm here. The whole point of Midsummer is to honor the light and the best thing about it is that the sun doesn’t really go down. 

This is my 7th Midsummer away from Sweden. Some years I have been busy with other stuff and not celebrated. Midsummer is a tradition I really love, it’s special, but I live in the US now and celebrating it here would never be the same. It’s ok.  Although, it’s the only day of the year that I can feel really Swedish, but whatever.  

Glad Midsommar!

Hello new week! We’ve had a wonderful weekend! The temperature dropped a bit from 33°c degrees to below 20, but it was still really warm in the sun. 

On Saturday morning we went to Costco to buy coffee and meat. We drove to Norwalk to buy some Swedish things at the Scandinavian Butik. I had found it online earlier in the week and they had a lot of stuff on their website, but the store was unfortunately a bit disappointing. Extremely overpriced and not much to choose from. I bought a “salt och blandat” (salty licorice candy mix) and crackers. We drove a different and longer way home to look at giant houses with front yards as big as soccer fields (and these houses are not even the biggest ones around here). In the evening we went to the rooftop to use the grill. My husband was super excited to grill some meat:) We finished our day with watching the Swedish Oscar nominated movie A man called Ove. For me, that was a painful movie to watch until the very end. People in that movie is one reason why I don’t want to move back to Sweden. The end made the whole movie worth watching, but ya, no, I did not like it at first. 

Sunday morning started with my husband coming in to the bedroom with coffee that he and Thor had bought for me. Aww♥ After breakfast, we walked over to a shopping area near us. We were trying to find bike helmets, but they all looked retarded, so we walked home again. We spent a few hours on our terrace. I planted some seeds and replanted a few things that needed new soil. I have no idea what I’m doing, but it’s fun to experiment:) With our sunburned bodies we went to the gym in the afternoon, I organized a few things upstairs and then we had dinner. Pretty slow weekend but we enjoyed it. How was yours?

Today is “Fettisdagen” (the Fat Tuesday) in Sweden. This is the day we eat the semla. I haven’t had a real Swedish semla in years. They start to sell them already in like November on some places and some people, like my dad, loves them.

Last week when Jim was off work for President’s Day and the weather was lovely, we went for a long walk. We stopped a few times along the way. First stop was Wolfgangs in Tribeca where we had bacon and rosé for lunch (yes, very healthy 🙂 ). Two blocks north, there is a FIKA, so we stopped by to have coffee and semla. Fika nyc is not the greatest, but at least I can keep the Swedish traditions by going there. Our journey that day continued on to find jeans for Jim. He didn’t find anything but I walked home with a bag of two pair of jeans and a long sleeved:) Back home, after a walk with Thor in the sun, I went to the gym to pretend to be healthy again, haha.