A Beautiful Week in Norrköping

We’ve started a nice tradition of visiting with Malin, Jimmy and co. every year or so, and this time around it was our turn to join them at their house in Norrköping for a week. We somehow had perfect weather all week, which meant that all of our adventures – hiking, boating, just walking around town – were that much more lovely.

We didn’t have anything specific planned in advance, which meant every day ended up following a rather nice pattern: a nice leisurely breakfast, a mini adventure with a fika, (usually) dinner at home, and hanging out with tea in the evening. The last time we visited with the entire family, Sam was very shy about not knowing any English, so Kristan tried to learn a little Swedish before heading out to try and make it a little easier for him. What really connected us though was the current lingua franca -Pokémon Go! We had a lot of fun walking around Norrköping catching Pokémon all together.

Our day trip out in the boat near Arkösund was picture perfect, to the point that Kristan decided she just had to get in the water. Once we found a nice island to hang out on, she and Jimmy both jumped in – crazies! – before warming up with a fika on the rocks. It was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon.

We ended this lovely week with a bang – a traditional Swedish crayfish party! The night before, Jimmy finished up the deck of their new outdoor room with little assistance but a lot of encouragement from Kristan and then we all hung up art throughout the house (after much discussion about placement!) to get it looking perfect for the party. Once the guests arrived, the bubbly and beer started flowing and the piles of crayfish stacked. Everyone gave us tips on the proper way to eat crayfish and laughed when we failed miserably and secretly moved parts of our crayfish on to other people’s plates. We toasted and smiled and laughed at the kids on the trampoline and did our best not to make anyone worry when they had to switch to Swedish. Thankfully we had sort of learned a drinking song at the Sprit Museum, so when Malin’s dad lifted his glass of nubba (Swedish spirits drunk at this sort of party, in this case an aquavit) and started singing, we could join in! Of course as he kept lifting his glass and singing another song throughout the night we just tried our best to figure when to yell “Skål!” and drink. We were consistently one second too late, but still managed to get the job done.

Looking forward to sharing some of our SF traditions in the near future!