Even with a heat wave and a drought, Sweden´s summer weather is still heaps better than Spain's.
Sweden, land of IKEA and pickled herring. And, more importantly for me, it is the land where my beloved cousins live. Cousins who not only put up with my biannual visits, but provide me with a very comfy guest bedroom and my own coffee pot. (Conveniently, I also really like the whole family.)
This year, they suggested an experiment where I stayed for longer, but my trip would be less of a visit and more as a member of a family. This means we get to spend time together and time apart, plus I got to spend two glorious weeks away from the heat of a Spanish summer.
By all reports, the experiment was a success and we hope to repeat it next summer. The pictures below highlight the family-bonding side of things, but I also took a lot of long, solo bike rides and met locals at meetups.
Midsommer´s Eve is one of the most Swedish of holidays. We danced around the Maypole at an event aimed at kids, so as far as I could tell from the few words I knew and the hand gestures, we sang of barnyard animals and musical instruments.
A requested a belated birthday cake, specifically an almond cake with cherry filling and coconut filling. I did the baking, but L and N did a bang-up job with the decorating. I need to use more gold dust in my baking, that´s one thing I learned from them.
We built and successfully flew a kite, an item on N´s bucket list.
All those years of studying physics finally paid off!
