Swedish Xmas

Having had a couple of relaxing but cold days in London since arriving back from Cuba, Caroline and I got ready to go to Sweden for Christmas.

23rd December 2008

We were having a quiet glass of wine as I checked in on-line before embarking on the rather long and painful trip from Forest Hill to Heathrow, which would take half as long from Heathrow to Stockholm when I saw my brother Nat on-line. As Kristina, his wife was about to go into labour with their first child I chatted briefly to him, wishing them both a merry Christmas before our departure. The conversation had delayed us a little, but I figured there shouldn't be too much of a problem until we got to the train station to find that the next train was not for another fifteen minutes. Things were starting to get a little tight.

We got to London Bridge and legged it to the tube, which duly arrived and prepared for the long interchange at Green Park station. It is a fair hike between the lines, and we were pretty tired after leaving the Jubilee line to get to the Picadilly line and we flopped down on the seats on the train that would take us to Heathrow. After that it was a matter of working out whether we would get to the airport on time before they closed check-in. As each stop passed I was working out how long to go and how much time we would have. As we'd already checked in on-line, it would be simply a matter of getting the labels for our bags and going through to the gate. We ran to the counter and the woman was about to tell us that the check in had closed when we showed her our pre-printed boarding cards and she did the necessary tapping away at her terminal to print the baggage tags for our checked luggage and let us go through. The security was quite painless, and the announcement for the boarding gate was still three minutes away when we got through, meaning I could get a cheap flash gun for my camera from duty free on the way past.

After arriving in Stockholm on what seemed like the last flight into the airport, we caught what was certainly the last bus into town, and walked through the empty streets of the city from the bus station to our hotel.

The next morning was fine and clear and calm, and we went downstairs for an amazing breakfast. With buffet food that good I find it hard not to over eat, as the never ending supply of incredible food triggers some innate behaviour that causes me to not want to waste anything. When I knew I couldnt eat any more, we went back upstairs and after the breakfast had settled a bit, went out for a run. We ran for an hour through the city around the harbour, passing boats and the harbour ferries and enjoyed the sunshine which although was not very strong was enough to feel on our backs after we'd warmed up.

After returning from our run we went into town to do some last minute shopping for presents, Im not the best of shoppers, and certainly Christmas shopping is about the worst kind but I survived and we managed to get the requisite number of gifts before we got on the metro to visit Caroline's Mum.

We took the various trains and walked up to where Katrin lives, where we also met Caroline's sister, Louise. After a chat and some food, we had to get away to catch the train back to town but not before we'd been given the task of making up rhymes to go along with our Christmas presents for the next day which the person opening the present would read out in order to guess what was inside.

24th December 2008 - Christmas Day

As we weren't going for a run and had nothing planned for the morning, we got up later to once again go downstairs for an amazing breakfast. We'd spent quite a bit of time the night before making up songs to the tune of carols, and there was still a few finishing touches to put on the songs before we could write them on the cards accompanying our presents.

We then did our own swapping of presents and got on the metro out to Nicklas's (Louise's fiance) parents place. As we waited for Katrin, Louise and Nicklas to pick us up from the station it started to snow lightly, which was a little exciting but mostly cold.

By now we'd got over our massive breakfast enough to be starting to get a little hungry, and boy that was lucky! After introductions to Nicklas's family which was very mumbly on my part, as few of them actually spoke English and I certainly don't speak any Swedish, the feast that was waiting for us was long and large. It was also punctuated with what appeared to be traditional Swedish Christmas drinking songs, after which there was a drink of either aquavit or vodka, but in addition to the beer and wine that was also being served. As you can imagine, it certainly helped the communication channels.

After Christmas dinner in Sweden it is the unbelievable tradition to sit down and watch Donald Duck, and so that's exactly what we did. Everyone knew all the words to the cartoons and I must admit to knowing them pretty well too. In any case after the Disney was over it was time to do the presents.

We each swapped presents in a secret santa kind of a way, and eventually our rhymes for the picture frame and photo album to the tunes of 'Silent night' and 'Rudolf the red nosed Reindeer' were performed by a mixture of reading and singing, hampered only slightly by my writing! The songs were as follows:

Silent Night

Landscape, Portrait,
Favourite pet, or a mate,
Birthday Party or Wedding Day
Relative that has passed away.
On the mantle piece,
On the mantle piece

Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer

If you were in the summer,
And you went on holiday
The things that you saw and captured
Would be in this place.
All of the pub nights out
And the museums by day
Every incidental incident
From at home to out at play

Then one lovely Christmas Eve
Santa came to say:
If you can guess this rhyme,
You may need a little time.

After that I was plied with more alcohol, but eventually and luckily everyone got tired and it was time to go home. I slept a good portion of the way back to the hotel which I'm sure was to the benefit of everyone else in the car.

25th December – Christmas Day

This morning we crawled downstairs to breakfast and went for a wander through the down town area of Stockholm which helped clear our heads. We then got on the train to Katrin's place where we were to have Christmas dinner.

After dinner we wandered down to see Caroline's friend Anna, who lived reasonably close. I also met her husband Fredrich and their two little ones.

Then we went off to Nortellje, and met my friend from London, Kris. We had a few drinks and dinner with her and some of her family and friends. It was nice as as I'd known Kris for many years, I'd not seen her in the town she spent a good part of her life growing up. We were constrained by time and had to catch the bus home, so left them to go out on the town in order to catch the bus back. The trip back was particularly interesting because there were some young lads who were having a few beers, singing ice hockey songs and being quite loud. As the coach had no on board toilet they were improvising with their empty beer bottles.

26th December

This morning we got up and went out for a short run, only 30 minutes, then went walking in town, stopping for a skate on the ice skating rink in the centre of town. It was cheap so we didn't feel we had to stay for any length of time, which was good because after a short time, we didn't!

We finished our time in Sweden by going out to the airport early where we met another of Caroline's friends, Peggy, her husband Paulo and their little one over a cup of coffee.

When out flight was finally called, we got on our plane and flew back to London Heathrow T5, the first time Id been to the new terminal that had opened so famously with more bags getting lost than most decent sized airports get in a year. However it was a smooth transition to the tube and very quiet when we got back.