Birka - Where the Swedish Vikings Began

Last year, for Jon's 30th birthday, I planned a nice weekend getaway to the mountains in Chattanooga.  We went hiking, ate steak and potatoes and had a relaxing time with 4 month old Calvin.  This year, I wanted to "Viking-it-up" a bit and give Jon a complete viking experience.  I baked a not-so-attractive Viking cake (nothing on Pinterest or Google was of any help), gave him a book that promises details on the "violent history of the vikings" and planned a day trip to Birka, Sweden's original Viking city (700-900 AD).

Like Swedes do, we watched the weather and tried to pick the best day possible for this trip.  We had heard that "there isn't much to Birka..." so we weren't expecting

Finding the Swedish Bible Belt

Since moving to Sweden, one challenge has been finding a church to attend.  In Atlanta, we had a great church that was right around the corner, had a great jazz trio that played at 10am and offered plenty of room to step away and feed / console Calvin if he decided he didn’t want to be in church at that time.  Oh, and they offered mass in English as well…

Unfortunately, it has been decidedly more difficult to find a comparable option here in Sweden.  For one thing, churches are just not as common here in agnostic (at best) northern Europe than in the Bible Belt of America.  Here, churches have partnerships, with groups of 2-4 parishes rotating who hosts the service that week.  We’ve been caught a few times

A Swedish House

I've had a lot of people ask me, "how do you like your new house?" and it's with a smile that I say that we really like it.  It's not because I'm lying because we really do like it.  It's just because we had no choice during our house hunt.  Literally, this was the only house that was in the universe of our "budget" that accommodated pets and was still located within Stockholm. We kind of have to like it or be miserable. I suppose we have two options.

Surprisingly, we lucked out and landed

There is little doubt...

...that Calvin gets his dance moves from his momma and his baby belly from his daddy!

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Dagis - Is the 3rd time the charm?

Checking out the place before any kids start for the year

I have written past articles about our/my struggle to find an appropriate daycare/dagis/forskola for Calvin.  No place was good enough, clean enough, friendly enough, [insert your own values] enough for me to consider placing him there.  I even thought that child-friendly Sweden would be a cake-walk to find the right fit, but alas, the perfect dagis remained out of reach. I had to tell our first Swedish dagis

Fantasy Fotbol

I’m not stranger to fantasy sports – I’ve probably been in at least one league a year since 2000 or so, and have had teams for football (obviously), baseball, basketball and I think even hockey one year.  (Let’s not bring up the F1 league run by the Dwyer’s – I’m an embarrassment for 5 years running)

But earlier this week I had a new “first”.  I was walking into the building in the morning with my Italian buddy and he asked I was interested in a Champions League Fantasy Team.  I said yes before we even finished the sentence, but he kept trying to explain

International Delight -- Part II

FLASHBACK!  Me, Kyle and Samantha circa July 2007

July 2012 -- 5 years later and slightly less reckless

Our very first visitor to our apartment in Stockholm, was my best friend, Samantha.  She braved schizophrenic weather changes (sun to hail to rain to snow to sun in less than 3 hours) and we wrote all about her first visit here.  The timing of her second visit meant that she was also our first visitor to our new house in the "country."  Unlike her last trip

Football is BACK

If there is one thing that Lis and I loved to do during the beautiful fall season in Atlanta, it was to spend all weekend inside watching TV.  We were obviously concerned that this season we would need to go for hikes and / or eat food that was not grilled or fried, which got us pretty nervous.

But fear not!  Football is back! 

A few weeks ago, I found that the NFL has a really sweet deal for expats – actually WAY better than what is available in the states.  For $250 dollars or so, we get the full season of football (including the draft!).  For the price, we get a bunch of cool features –

Winter is Coming...

A repeating mantra...for Swedes and the characters in Game of Thrones.  You can see the signs of it almost daily now that "summer is over" and we are mid way into September.  As Jon said on a Friday afternoon,  "It's Friday, I just got off work, it feels like a beautiful November day!"  Except it was the beginning of September...not exactly our usual Atlanta weather pattern.  I try not to look at the weather back West but it is difficult not to be envious of the beautiful fall days in Atlanta where football dominates every weekend and pumpkin coffee and ale start brewing.  Ahh, Fall.  It seems to be one weekend in Stockholm and then there is WINTER.

Here are a few signs to let you know that "Winter is coming" here in Sweden:

Passport Update: Can I find a Danish in København?

No really, there must be a danish somewhere! My only goal on our trip to Copenhagen was to find a really delicious danish and a good cup of coffee.  Fortunately, we found even more than delicious danishes and strong coffee!  Also, I (re)discovered that Danes call Copenhagen, København.  I remember in Spanish class that the US is Estados Unidos but it always surprises me when we constantly translate a city or country into our own language. Why can't we just call it by the same name?  Personally, I like saying København (pronounced like this) much more than Copenhagen ("Copenhaaaagen").  Anyway, I digress.

delicious danishes and coffee -- yum!

Jon, Calvin and I met up with our friends, Samantha and Kyle, in Copenhagen.  They were halfway through their tour of Europe and were open to meeting us in Denmark and traveling back with us to Stockholm.  It worked out perfectly because