Author: Gian Reinardy

Today for school we had an activity day of sorts. We all meet in the morning down at the big spa hotel for a day of fun exercise type activities run by the “Spa 3″ kids at my school. Here is the schedule of activities we had to choose form.

We simply signed up for the classes that we wanted, then went. It was actually a lot of fun, I did yoga and massage as my foot has still been bothering me a bit from a long run I did last week. However, all of my classmates seemed to really enjoy the other classes and got quite the workout! It is really cool to be able to do things like this in my small Swedish school. I feel like doing this kind of thing is unheard of in America.

After we finished for the day my Swedish friend Sandra and I decided to go to Gekas (the Swedish Superstore that I claimed I would never return to) again. This time around I was actually really excited to go again because I have a lot of gift shopping to do for back home now! However, once I got there I remember why I hated this place in the first place. there were just so many people and everything was so crowded and unorganized I just got stressed out. Sandra and I looked around a bit, then decided to abort and head back home.

I got back to Varberg at around 5 and went out to have “After Work” with Bea, MorMor and Olivia. After work is a very Swedish thing on Fridays where people can go out, buy a drink, and enjoy a yummy mini buffet.

Unfortunately the rain came and dampened our moods so we all decided to go home. The rest of the night will consist of relaxing and watching “Let’s Dance” – perfect way to end this long day!

Swedish Word of the Day: “huvudvärk” – headache which is what poor Olivia has at the moment.

Lagom is kind of like the “Swedish motto” or way of life. It does not have a direct English translation, but can roughly be translated into meaning “just enough” or even “not too much not too little”. Back in the times of the vikings the etymological translation was “around the team” meaning that there was just enough food/drink for everyone at the table. In todays society lagom has almost infinite translations, meanings, uses etc which is part of the reason that I think the word is so cool.

“How are you” can be answered with lagom. The weather can be lagom, even someones height can be lagom.

The term really just means balance/moderation. It does not mean perfection, or lack there of, it is simply a feeling. It is very hard to describe what lagom means actually because it completely depends on the person, context, etc. What lagom may mean to one, could be something completely different to another.

I feel as though I am really failing at trying to describe what this special Swedish word means, but I hope you all at least kind of are making some sense of my word vomit. For me lagom is not only a cool, versatile word that can be used almost anywhere, but it also symbolizes Sweden’s core cultural ideas of social fairness, equality, and living life in moderation.

Today I journeyed down to Halmstad to go to the Lilla Bruket company factory and learn the ins and outs of how all the products are made, packaged etc!

The whole things was fascinating to me. I loves seeing how everything was poured into different jars, then labeled, and finally packaged. I learned all about why certain jars were used and why Lilla Bruket uses brown jars to help preserve the organic ingredients in their products. I spent most of the day help to put products into boxes, which I was more than happy to do because in return I got a yummy free lunch of Thai food and a bunch of free products for me to try out!

I am in love. I honestly cannot recommend their products enough. Made up of all organic products, their products smell good, feel good, and are good for you! My personal favorite at the moment would be the almond/coconut lip balm.

I am so happy to have had the opportunity to learn more about this amazing company, and hopefully will be working again with them in the near future!

Swedish Word of the Day: “lilla bruket” – little factory. The brand Lilla Bruket came about when Monica, the founder, began making ceramics and selling them. She eventually began making soaps as well. Her soaps turned out to be more popular than her ceramics and eventually one thing lead to another and before she knew it she had created a international brand!

Hey everyone, hope all is well. I have been having a fabulous long weekend. On May 1st (Thursday) the family plus MorMor and Douglas drove out to a beautiful forest to have the first outdoor fika of the year! This is a very Swedish thing to go out on the first of May to a forest in the middle of no where and have a fika. Even if it is raining, snowing, or super cold, every year the Swedes brave the weather determined to signify the start of Spring. Although it was not as warm as we had hoped, there was no rain and the sun was out so I am not complaining.

After out nice relaxing afternoon, we headed home so I could meet up with my friend Ellen, who came to spend the night. She got to Varberg around 4 and the weather was gorgeous so we decided to go for a long bike ride. We biked for over an hour, just following random paths in the forest and talking about everything. Ellen will be joining me on the Euro Tour which starts in less than 2 months! Crazy how fast time is going. Anyway, after our bike ride we came home to have a yummy dinner with my family made up of grilled chicken, salmon patties, broccoli pie (quiche), a bean salad, and a giant regular salad. Needless to say it is clear I am not food deprived in my Swedish house hold.

This morning when we woke up the weather was great and the sun was out so we decided to go for another bike ride in a different direction. I think that it is so nice here, all of the bike and walking paths that they have in Sweden. They are so safe, the scenery is always breathe taking, and the coolest part is that there are so many paths that you can literally follow them and walk all the way to Stockholm if you wanted to.

After our second bike ride we came home packed a picnic basket and headed off to have a picnic lunch with some of my friends here in town. We brought a big blanket and just laid out, ate, and talked. It was a great afternoon. Unfortunately by 4 it was time for Ellen to pack up and head back home. After saying good byes I headed off to my spin class, then came home had some dinner, and now I am on the couch relaxing. All of that biking wore me out!

Tomorrow is a big day for me as I am interning at Lilla Bruket. I will leave for Halmstad (a big city 30 min south of Varberg) at 8am and not return home until late evening. I really do not know much about what exactly I will be doing, but I am super excited non the less! I will be sure to take lots of pictures if I can and fill all of you in about what I did on Sunday.

Swedish Word of the Day: “cykel” – bike. A real hard one to guess – I know.

The last week in April is always a special one in Sweden filled with many festivities, parades, and most of all parties! In Sweden April 30th marks the celebration of Spring and warm weather to come! The stores all close super early, so everyone can go out and see the parades that all the university students throw.

I went to the parade in Gothenburg which is one of the biggest ones in all of Sweden. The streets were PACKED with people all eager to see what the students this year have come up with for their floats. The university students prepare for this parade all year long. They split up into about 50 groups and come up with a “theme” for their floats. These themes range from political messages making fun of the government, song floats that dance to popular songs, etc. Quite a few of them mentioned USA actually, not necessarily in the best lighting though. Here are some pictures from the parade.

After the parade ends (this one happened to be over 2 hours long), everyone heads to a giant forest for more fun festivities such as live music, food, and a giant bonfire. People laugh and sing these crazy Swedish songs while dancing all around the bonfire. It was quite the sight to see. Most people spend take full advantage of this holiday and spend the whole night out drinking, singing, and dancing with friends. Especially in my city, Varberg, I could still hear people out on the streets at 4 am!

Luckily for the Swedes they can all sleep in the next day because May 1st is “International Workers Day”, so the whole country gets the day off to recover. Another very Swedish tradition to do on May 1st is to go out and have the first outdoor “fika” of the year in the forest which is exactly what I plan on doing today.

After a lazy morning, the whole family plus MorMor are going to drive to a big famous forest to have a nice picnic/fika this afternoon. After that my friend Ellen is coming to spend the night, and tomorrow we are going to meet up with a bunch of my Swedish friends and have a BBQ on the beach.

Saturday I will finally be doing some “Pratik plats” (job training) as well at the famous lilla bruket company (here is a link to the website – lillabruket.se) that started right here in Varberg and has grown into a world wide brand! I am so excited to have such an amazing opportunity and will post all about it on Sunday.

Hope everyone has a lovely rest of their week, crazy to think that it is already May! This will be my last full month in Sweden 🙁 – time is going by too fast.

Swedish Word of the Day – “tuggummi” – gum! This one just makes me laugh, it seems more Chinese to me than Swedish.

As promised here are some pictures from my trip! There are still many more to share, but my friends still have to email them to me so I will do another separate post sharing those once I get them.

The trip was a lot of fun, we got there Friday night and went out to have pizza and play a few quiz like games to get to know each other. We had quite the diverse crowd with kids from Thailand, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Australia, Slovakia, New Zealand, Finland, and of course America. All in all there were 26 of us total.

After dinner we made our way back to the hostel that we were staying at which happen to be right in the middle of old town! We got assigned our rooms, three rooms of six and one room of 12! Thankfully I was in a room of six. The next morning we woke up had a little breakfast than headed off to do some sight seeing! We toured Old town, and the Royal Palace then came back to the hostel for some lunch. After lunch we went on a scavenger hunt through out the city and all met at a bowling place at 5 for some bowling and dinner. The dinner were these GIANTIC burgers which you can see in the pictures. Thankfully the place was nice enough to make me a veggie version 🙂. Once stuffed with food we had one last surprise – apparently this is a special weeking in Stockholm called “culture weekend” so all the museums are free and open till midnight! Even though we were exhausted after the long day we all managed to rally and had a great time exploring all the famous museums at night! My favorites were the Nobel museum and army one.

The next morning (Sunday) we packed up our things and went to Skansen which is an outdoor museum with animals – kind of like a zoo but with moose, wolves, bears, pigs, horses. No real exotic animals. It was a gorgeous place and I am glad to have seen it, but seeing all the wild animals locked up made me sad. I hope that zoos and anything that involves the domesticating/enclosing of wild animals becomes outlawed soon, it just is not right in my opinion. Regardless though Skansen was a very beautiful (and huge) museum. Click HERE for more information on Skansen.

We had lunch at Skansen as well, then it was time for good byes. It was sad saying bye to all my new friends, but I was also completely exhausted and really excited to sleep in my own bed again. My train ride home was nice and uneventful and before I knew it I was back in Varberg.

Overall I am so happy to have seen Stockholm, it is SUCH an amazing city and unlike anything I have ever seen before. I would describe it as Gothenburg on steroids. There are no skyscrapers, all the buildings have a really old and vintage feel, and barely any cars. Not to mention that the city itself was spotless – no garbage, debris, advertisements, or even pigeons in sight.

I feel as though this was great preparation for what the Euro Tour I am doing this summer will be like! Tons of walking, little sleep, and lots of moving from place to place. Although if I was this tired after only 2 days of sightseeing, I do not know how I am going to survive living like this for 3 weeks straight! It will be an adventure that is for sure.

Swedish Word of the Day: “resa” – trip

In honor of Mei Mei and MorMors birthday on Sunday the whole family went out to eat tonight at a fancy Cuban restaurant located in the famous Hotel Havanna here in Varberg. the hotel is super cool and the inside really makes you feel like you are in Cuba! The best part is the hotel is a mere 5 minute walk from our house. So we had everyone over to our house before to enjoy some drinks on the balcony and catch some sun rays before dinner.

We headed to dinner at around 6. The menu was small (compared to that of an American restaurant at least), and offered 3 starters, 6 main courses, and 3 desserts. We all ordered a starter to begin with – I got the scallop caviar artichoke soup and WOW was it good. The other two options were a small shrimp sandwich or a warm goat cheese honey sandwich (sounds familiar doesn’t it).

For my main entrée I got a vegetable pasta dish. I am always a bit weary about ordering pasta while out to eat because often the portions sizes are just so big and the pasta is not very good. This however was honestly quite possibly the best pasta dish I have ever had. The noodles were so thin and fresh they tasted as if they had just been homemade from scratch. The vegetable sauce was light, yet filling and was filled with zucchini, cabbage, mushrooms, tomatoes, and tons of other goodies. Literally, I was in heaven. Everyone else agreed that their food was quite good. Mats, Douglas, and the kids had duck while Bea and Mor Mor had cod.

I was way to stuffed for dessert, but as always MeiMei managed to rally herself for some chocolate and got a warm chocolate mud cake for dessert. I swear I have never meet someone who loves chocolate as that girl.

It was a great night and now I am left stuffed, happy, and exhausted. Tomorrow the weather is suppose to be sunny and high 60s! Bea and I plan to take a long walk in the forest and take some fun pictures. Bea is a great photographer so I cannot wait to see how they turn out.

Exactly one week from now I will be in Stockholm cannot wait! Fingers crossed this beautiful weather stays until then.

Swedish Word of the Day: “middag” – dinner

Similar to the “Polar Plunge” that we have in Wisconsin, here in Varberg there also is a crazy tradition  of running into freezing waters once a year on Holy Thursday called “Påskdopp” or in English “Easter dip”.

So today was the big day that this event would go down and naturally I had to go down and watch these crazy people. Maybe if the weather had been a little nicer (at least 70) then I would have considered participating; however, today it was 40 and the wind was out of control so there was not a chance I would be even going near the water.  Still over a 100 people decided to brave it and make the plunge.

Here is a video clip of the whole event. You can hear just how windy it was!

Bea and the kids have been down in Mälmo the past 2 days visiting a friend which means Lucy and I (and Mats) have been running the household. It has been a nice and relaxing two days, I tried a new class at the gym called “piloxing” which is a cross between boxing and Pilates, went on some nice walks with Lucy, did a little shopping, and had a fun time making my own dinner and lunches (get excited for Tuesday because I have a great new recipe for you all!). While it has been nice having the house to myself, I look forward to the kiddos return tomorrow. They should come home around lunch time and then we will go out to dinner at a Cuban restaurant to celebrate Mei Meis birthday with the fam.

Hope everyone is having a good break!

Swedish Word of the Day: “koppla” – relax/unwind

Thankfully the weather was one my side for once today and I got to go horseback riding with my friends! It was so much fun, I got picked up in the morning and we drove 15 minutes to my friends barn. In Sweden it is really common to own horses and live on a barn. In my class of 12 girls 6 ride horses and 4 own their own.

The sun was out and we went for a nice long walk taking turns riding. The horses name we rode was “Dixie” and it was my friend Matildas. They also owned three other horses as well. After a few hours of riding we decided it was time to head back to the house where we relaxed for an hour or so than had a super yummy dinner of salmon soup.

Now I am super tired and ready for bed! Hope everyone is having a great break!

Swedish Word of the Day: “häst” – horse

Tonight we had Mei Meis birthday party! It was quite the production, that included 10 screaming girls, a quiz game, a magician, burgers (Americam Style), a cake, and a dance party to top everything off. It was a lot of fun and Mei Mei had a great time, but now Bea and I are left exhausted (and with a giant mess). That is okay though it was all worth it.

Here are some pictures from the party:

Tonight it is another episode of “Welcome to Sweden”. I forgot to mention that last week Will Ferral was on it! Tomorrow my friend is coming down from Gothenburg to spend the weekend, and then it is a week of relaxing because we are on break now.

Swedish Word of the Day: “fest “- Party