Peter and his daughter Veronica

Some of you have asked about the names and ages of Peter's children, so I will clarify: Twin daughters Veronica and Helena are 23. Daughter Marika is 20, and son Erik is 16. They are all attractive, talented, and nice kids.
Veronica came in the day before I left. She lives a few hours east of Laholm, closer to Stockholm. She's very sweet; I'm happy I had the chance to meet her.

New Windmills

Fields of windmills like these are a common sight in southern Sweden.

Halmstad Architecture/Back in the US

BTW, I am back in the USA now. I came back on the 21st. My time in Sweden was an amazing experience. I'm not doing a separate post about returning home because I have managed to go 48 hours with only crying once and I don't want to start again. Peter and I have gone back to taking by Instant Messenger several times a day. We try to be online when the other is going to sleep or waking up. It is a wholly inadequate substitute for being together, but it is going to have to do for now.

I am going to continue this blog indefinetly. I still have a lot more photos to post, and I'll be posting photos Peter sends me. I'll also of course be adding posts of Peter and I together which I hope will be sooner rather than later.
Anyway, here are some cool buildings in Halmstad.

This first one may not be an example of Halmstad's finer architecture, but I liked it and the many other ice cream colored buildings I saw in Sweden.



This lighting fixture, or a similar variation, is found in the window of almost every Swedish home and office this time of year.

Evening in Copenhagen

Isn't this sort of surreal, like "Fast Food Galaxy"?


I like these holiday decorations. I also think the heart theme in the first photo is cool. We spent about two hours walking around downtown Copenhagen in the evening. I always knew I would love this city. I can't wait to visit it again.

Liseberg Amusement Park in Göteborg

We've had a very festive week. On Thursday we drove to Göteborg (about an hour and a half from Halmstad) and went to Liseberg amusement park. The holiday lights were beautiful. Swedes tend to be more subtle in their Christmas decorations - almost all white lights- but there were beautiful touches of color too. There was a full moon and the weather was not unbearably cold, although it did snow later that night.

Day at Tivoli Gardens

I am a roller coaster fiend, but I'm not wild about the ones with a lot of upside down loops. Peter was laughing at me because I was sceaming just watching all the twists and turns. The fact that it was a breezy 33 degrees outside was another good rationalization to not try this one.

I rather gracelessly named the figure in the background "The big-assed deer" as in "Peter, let's get someone to take a picture of us in front of the big-assed deer." We gave the camera to a Danish guy of about 30 who I later found out joked to Peter after he handed the camera to him "Oh, a nice camera, thank you, I steal it."

Train from Malmö to Copenhagen

There are so many pictures from the Tivoli / Copenhagen trip that I am going to divide them into groups. These are of the train ride from Malmö to Copenhagen. This first one is the Baltic Sea from "The Link", the bridge completed in 2000 that connects Sweden to Denmark. Before The Link, the only way to Denmark was by ferry.

Our train wasn't purple, but I was excited to see a train that was from the window. I think this was once we had crossed into Denmark.

Leaving the train station

I had no clue that Tivoli Gardens was right across the street from the main Copenhagen train station. My first glimpse of this rather unassuming entrance sign was nevertheless surreal: For years and years, I've wanted to go to the Tivoli and I couldn't believe I was finally there.

ESL at the Tivoli

Peter and I spent a wonderful day and evening in Copenhagen today. I have a lot of photos and text to post, but am tired now so will just share this one photo. I snapped this because I thought it would be interesting for all of you to see an example of a Danish Christmas/Holiday season lunch. I also was amused and curious as to one of the descriptions: 'Rye bread with butter and fat'. Er...what kind of fat?
My favorite though, after seeing the photo, is one of the entrees listed toward the middle of the menu: 'Streaky belly joint'. Peter's guess is that they are trying to say spareribs. My guess is that whatever it is, it's something I can live without.
But I do think English as a second language can be wonderfully amusing. I'm sure my SSL (Swedish as a second language) is pretty amusing too.

Self Timer Photos

These are not particularly great photos of either us, but I am amused by our early attempts to use the self timer option on my camera. The jury is out as to whether these are better than the ones where Peter holds the camera at (long) arm's length.

In the photo above, the flash is reflecting off the reflective material on Peter's work jacket (he wears it when he is out inspecting streets and bridges). He is holding a bag with our lunch entrees from Pasta Huset- I'll be writing about Pasta Huset in another post. We ate lunch in the car overlooking the Nissan River. It was a nice change from the Thai buffets we so often go to (I never thought I'd hear myself complain about too much Thai). This photo was taken on one of my favorite Halmstad streets, which I'll also be doing a post about.

Daisy the dog was very confused by the time the shutter finally went off. Peter had been saying "Daisy, titta Wendy ("Daisy, look at Wendy") and I think I was trying to get her to look at the camera. She's such a sweet dog.

Looking for Moose

Almost everyone I've met here has a moose encounter story. Lest I feel deprived, Peter drove me into the woods in an earnest attempt to find one or two. We didn't see any, but we did meet these nice cows.

Peter's Karate Class

Oh my God, he killed them all!!
Actually he's just practicing a few moves while his students are doing warm up exercises.

Bowing to his class.

Komme Snart (Coming Soon)

Peter's cable modem went down on Thanksgiving weekend. The cable company had him mail it in. They fixed it and mailed it back. This simple process took almost three weeks. Sweden is an advanced country, but Peter says American customer service standards are definetly higher. Kind of scary if you think about it.

So now the modem is back, Peter installed it and...it doesn't work.
So, posting photos continues to be challenging. The last few blog entries' photos were posted from Peter's office, and that's what I may end up having to do again this weekend- although hopefully this Saturday we will either be in Copenhagen for the day, or in Göteborg for the afternoon and evening. More about that later.

One way or another I will post blog entries by this Sunday of Peter teaching his karate class, some goofy self-timer photos we took, and one of my favorite streets in Halmstad.

A Windmill in Särdal

For whatever reason, I wasn't expecting to see windmills like this in Sweden. In some primary, word-association way my mind insisted that old-fashioned windmills were in Holland and....Holland. Finding the three beautiful, old-fashioned windmills in the Halmstad / Laholm area was a happy surprise. On my first Saturday night in Sweden, Peter took me to a concert at one of the windmills. It was a singer/songwriter named Jan Olaf-Andersson. Much of his performance was in the form of musical storytelling. Most of it was very funny; at least I assume it was because the audience laughed a lot. I, of course, couldn't understand more than the occassional word or phrase (prompting me to excitedly whisper such things to Peter as "Travel! He just said something about travel! Right??") but the guitar playing was wonderful and I enjoyed it as much as he did. On the drive home we shared a meatball and red beet salad sandwich bought at a convenience store. I considered trying it to be an act of bravery comparable to skydiving. It actually was really good.

I told Peter this is the only time I've ever seen him look small.

Peter's Company Holiday Party

Peter managed at the last minute to sneak me into his employees-only company holiday party. It started on Monday afternoon with a musical performance which included both beautiful traditional Christmas songs and some lighter-hearted numbers. Peter had been attending weekly rehersals for this since I got here in October. He played guitar and dobro and was wonderful and adorable. I told him sincerely that the whole show was very entertaining. There were about 175 people in the audience. After the performance we moved into a beautiful dining hall for a traditional "Christmas table" buffet. It included Swedish mainstays like an appetizer table of assorted herrings, another huge table for the main course of ham and other types of meat and fish, pickled red cabbage, and a lot of other really good dishes. It was followed by the traditional Christmas dessert of rice porridge with "lemonade soup".

I was lucky to get a fourth row seat, but ended up right behind a gigantic candleabra...which of course Peter ended up being directly behind. I was happy to get any pictures with him in them at all.

This of course got a huge laugh when everyone saw their coworkers/managers come out like this. Peter was playing his Hawaiian dobro song during this.



This St. Lucia procession was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen and heard. It was done by local performing arts high school students.


This was really good. It was sort of like rice pudding, but a little thinner. The "lemonade soup" tasted like black current, raspberry and lemon. Peter had two bowls.

Festive Night in Laholm

On the first day of advent (countdown to Christmas), there is a relatively-new holiday in Sweden. Me to Peter: "What's the holiday called?" Peter: (says some Swedish word I don't remember) Me: "What does that translate to?" Peter: ."Uh...Some kind of 'Sign Day' I guess you could call it. Me: "Er...Ok". Anyway, it was a much more gracious beginning to the holiday season than the day- after- Thanksgiving retail frenzy in the US. A lot of people were out and about in the town square on Sunday night. All the stores were open and served Glogg (hot spiced wine) and pepparkoker (ginger snaps).