At 19.22 the train pulled out of Stockholm’s Central Station and our 17 hour journey into Swedish Lapland began. Our destination: Porjus, a small village approximately 100km north of the Polar Circle, and our mission: to seek the enigmatic Aurora …
Stockholm on a Budget
‘Stockholm’ and ‘cheap’. Two words that you don’t often hear uttered in the same sentence. It is common knowledge that tourists’ hard-earned cash doesn’t stretch that far in the Scandinavian countries, making visiting them an expensive …
Snow Days
Anybody who has attended or worked in a school in the UK will know how exciting it is when the winter brings the first snow, not so much because we love snow but because of the prospect of a Snow …
Fika Fridays – Swedish Cake Break!
Anybody who knows me will know that Fridays are my favourite day of the week. I love Fridays. Not because the weekend begins or even that I only work for 2 hours, but because Friday is cake day or as …
2010s Best Bits
What an awesome year this year was. In honour of a great year this blog post recalls some of my favourite moments of 2010
January
We welcomed in the New Year with elated cries of Chúc Mung Nam Moi on …
God Jul – A Swedish Christmas
The festive season has definitely taken hold and I am familiarising myself with Swedish Christmas, although this is not my first encounter with Swedish Yuletide traditions. Two years ago Nicklas and I spent Christmas on Koh Phi Phi in Thailand …
Visiting Friends
This weekend Rhoda—my very good friend from college—came to visit me in Sweden. It is always great to see a familiar face from home when you are living in a foreign country; over the 4 ½ years that I have …
Lest We Forget – Remembering The Fallen
“Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them.”
Today is Remembrance Day: a day which many countries have adopted as a day to reflect …
Hazy Shade of Winter
But look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
Apologies for my second seasonal post following so quickly after Autumn Daze but little did I know last week when I was walking through piles …
Autumn Daze
As I walked home from school the other day, the trees shedding their leaves like confetti around me, I looked down to see something that I haven’t seen for over three years. Lying at my feet was a small but …
Ticket to Ride
When I was interviewed for the job at IESE I was asked where I would be planning to live should I be offered the position. I explained to them that as Nicklas would be working in Västerås we would base …
Need a place to stay? Check out these wacky hotels!!
Last weekend I went to prison. I was to spend the night in a cell at the infamous Långholmen Prison, Stockholm.
The hallways were long and narrow with row after row of bolted and numbered doors harbouring their confining cells behind. As expected my …
The Final Countdown (to a night in the cells)
In the good old days of vinyl my parents bought my sister and I a record: ‘The Final Countdown’ by 80s rock band Europe. I was 7 years old and little did I know how much this record would come …
Snus
Something that really surprised, and impressed, me when I first visited Sweden two years ago was the apparent lack of smokers. Initially I put this down to the smoking ban in all public places: I was living in Vietnam at …
No Room at the Inn
Whilst the picture above may raise a slight smile, it conveys the serious problem of Stockholm’s housing shortage.
Finding accommodation is Sweden is surprisingly difficult with most people having to join long queues in order to be considered for apartments. …
Weddings and Castles
On Saturday I attended my first wedding in Sweden. I am hesitant to say Swedish Wedding as, despite the geographical location, there was probably very little about the wedding that was traditionally Swedish. The bride is Swedish but has Finnish …
Anyone for Banana Pizza?
Nicklas once told me that Swedish pizza is ”The best pizza in the whole world”. Even better than pizza in Italy apparently. As he has never been to Italy, and he has the typical Swedish belief that everything is better …
Välkommen till Västerås
Welcome to Västerås: Sweden’s sixth largest city and the place that I will be calling home for the next year or so. The city is one of Sweden’s oldest cities and was the second largest city in the 11th…
Back to School
The phrase that every teacher (and student) dreads the most is: Back to School. Probably because these 3 words are usually splashed across every shop window and inside every supermarket aisle about 2 days after the Summer Holiday – …
Keeping the Tradition Alive
July 30th has officially been labelled as National Cheesecake Day. Admittedly this is in America and as far as I am aware the day is not widely celebrated in Sweden, if at all. Those of you who know me …