A Lake and a Rose

Alright. Well, a lot to catch up on.

This last week was a pretty eventful one. My two friends, Michelle and Angela, came to visit. And for those of you who may not know, my great grandmother passed away on Tuesday.

As far as the time with my friends, I will write more stories later on. This week will be quieter, so I will try to write about what all we did (which was quite a bit). Suffice it to say, Tuesday and Wednesday we saw the sights of Brussels, Thursday and Friday we took a trip to Antwerp (northern Belgium) and Amsterdam (in the Netherlands). Saturday I stayed home while they went to Bruges, and Sunday they left early in the morning.

But what I really want to write is about my great grandmother. She was 100 years old. I should warn you, that you might need a tissue (especially if you’re family); at least I do.

I got the phone call Tuesday night from my mom that she had passed. I had to make the very difficult decision about whether or not to come home for the funeral. After much discussion and heavy thoughts, I decided, with the full support of my family, to stay in Brussels. I will get a copy of the services; my thoughts were that the stress of traveling all the way back to Grandview, especially for such a heart wrenching thing as a funeral would not be at all pleasant or practical. This was not unexpected, and I felt that I had said my goodbye, and kept all my promises. I feel good about my decision, and at the suggestion from my mom, had my own little memorial service yesterday afternoon.

I bought a beautiful dark pink rose from a flower shop on Saturday (my fear was no shop would be open on Sunday, since nothing usually is). Sunday, after my friends had left, Kristoffer and I went down to a very pretty park south of where we live. There is a lake there (much like Greenlake for you Seattlites). I found a beautiful little spot, where a tree was growing on the waters edge. I put the rose there at the base of the tree with a note on it: In Loving Memory of Veva Whitney; Born December 23, 1907; Died March 25, 2008; Rest in peace knowing you are loved and remembered.

I read a letter aloud at the tree that I had written to my great grandma. I might post it sometime, but it’s a little too painful for me to look at right now. Afterwards, we sat on a park bench for a while to just let me cry. It was a nice afternoon, if a little cloudy. That night we had a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant, to celebrate her life.

That’s all I can manage to write for now.

I love you Great Grandma. I’ll miss you.

Snow for Easter

While a "White Christmas" has always been an elusive event when I was growing up, it was always hoped for. But as far as I can remember there was never any desire to have a White Easter. In Sweden, especially in Dalarna, it is absolutely expected, and Easter is the biggest skiing weekend of the year.

It's a beautiful, clear, blue, sunny, Easter day, but the snow here looks like what you'd see up in Snoqualmie in January. SO MUCH SNOW, and it's SO COLD!

Anyway, the last few days have been very busy, running around the Swedish countryside, and seeing lots of Kristoffer's friends and family.

I left off last blog saying that we were probably going skiing. Well, we did. We rented some cross-country skis, did about 3 miles, I fell twice, and I was done. Its hard work going on those skis.

The next day was more fun. We took a snowmobile ride Thursday up to the top of Klappen, the closest ski area to Lima. Kristoffer's dad drove the snowmobile and Kristoffer and I got to ride in a sleigh that they pull behind it. Not quite what I think of when I hear snowmobiling, but it was fun non-the less. We drove to the restaurant at the top of the mountain, had lunch and drove back. Then K and I took a ride up around the mountain's behind their house. The snowmobile is a two-seater so I just rode and let K drive; the machine was a too big for me to feel comfortable driving it and I don't know the area.

That night we drove out to their summer house on lake Tisjon (pronounced Tee-hwen, or Tee-shan, or Teesin depending on...nothing but however you want to pronounce it), where the lake is about a mile across, about 5 miles long, and frozen about a yard thick with a 6 inch layer of snow over the ice. Crazy. You can walk on it, no problem, ice fish, drive a snowmobile, or a car onto it; its pretty much like solid ground.

At this lake there are tons and tons of these tiny "summer houses" that are very primative, generally no electricity, no running water (especially in the winter) and (with the exception of Kristoffer's parent's house) no indoor toilet. But they are all beautifully kept and modernly furnished on the inside. These houses line almost the whole perimeter of the lake and are all very old.

We went to a neighbors summer house for dinner that night and had some sort of Swedish shrimp-mayonnaise-cake. In general, traditional swedish food is very good, but my one complaint is the excessive use of Mayonnaise bases in their cooking. Its really hard to describe the food, and I think it would be boring if I tried here, but I'll just say that about half the things they eat have either mayonnaise, sour cream or some sort of other cream type base in it.

Another fun thing about Sweden is that they have so many different dialects in this country that people who live even just 40 minutes away from each other, cannot understand the dialects of the neighboring counties. Everyone speaks standard Swedish to a functional degree, but people who live in these small areas speak basically their own language. It's a form of Swedish, but they have different words for things and even grammatical differences. In Lima, they speak Limamal. In Malung they speak Malungsmal. Someone who grew up in Stockholm cannot understand these dialects if they are to hear them. So while I'm getting the hang of at least being able to follow a topic of conversation in swedish, its totally worthless when we get here and everyone speaks Limamal; I can't understand a darn thing.

So Thursday evenings dinner was spent with me mostly staring at my plate and trying desperately to follow even a bit of the conversation. Luckily, there was one other woman there who was from Stockholm and spoke English, so we talked for a while, and at least when she spoke Swedish I could get a hint of what they were talking about.

Ok, enough of Thursday. Friday we tried to go see a ski competition up in the mountains, but it's so crowded here for the Easter weekend it was really impossible to get a parking spot. When we finally got to the race, it was about 20 minutes after it had started and it was pretty much over. So that was a bummer. Afterwards we had coffee with Lars and Frieda. Lars grew up with Kristoffer and is engaged to Frieda. We stayed with them when I was here in August, so it was fun to chat with them again.

Friday evening we went back to Tisjon for an Easter dinner. K's mom made TONS of food. So much so I pretty much made myself sick with all the rich dishes. Great food, but not such a fun night afterward. :S

Saturday we took a ride out on the lake on the snowmobile. We drove all the way to the top of the lake and back to an island where they had a fire pit. We roasted hot dogs and watched people ice-fish. Then we went to the bottom of the lake and saw some of the oldest houses on the lake, which aren't so different from the not so old houses on the lake. Then back to their house to warm back up because it was freezing cold.

That evening we went to a big birthday party for Kristoffer's Uncle Olf who was turning 40. It was a huge party with a big dinner, games, live music, dancing, and lots of drunk Swedes. Basically, they have huge parties for every 10th birthday: 30, 40, 50, 60....and they are fully willing to admit that they use any reason to have a party. :)

It was a very fun evening and, of course, I got pointed out as traveling all the way from America just to come to little Lima for a birthday party. :) Once that was announced, everyone who knew even a little English wanted to practice on me...I was exhausted from talking by the end. It's really draining to talk to people for an extended period of time who don't really speak your language well. It's hard to know if they are understanding everything you are saying and you hope that you are getting everything that they are trying to say.

So that brings us to today. We are going back to Tisjon for another Easter dinner tonight. Easter is a much bigger deal in Sweden than in the US. It's much like Thanksgiving or Christmas. They get Friday and Monday off, and a lot of people have the whole week after Easter off. They have special easter food and celebrate with candy and easter eggs much like us. I don't think they do easter egg hunts, but they have a lot of other funny traditions that involve witches and more pagan things. The children do a "trick-or-treating" thing much like halloween, but they just dress up as bunny's or chickens and go around asking for candy.

Tomorrow, we head back to Brussels. We have to leave very early in the morning to catch the train back to Stockholm, because the trains don't run very often since its a holiday in Sweden. Our flight leaves at 4:20pm and we should be back in Brussels around 7ish. My friends Michelle and Angela are already in Brussels and will be staying with us for a week. Should be lots of fun!

I hope I'm not wearing everyone out with these ridiculously long blogs, but this is also a way for me to kind of exhale from all these experiences.

I also should give an update on my CPA tests. I didn't pass the ones that I took in February, so the plan now is to try and retake those in July. I am feeling a lot of pressure to study well for these next ones I have in May, so hopefully the next round will go better. I'm pretty bummed that I didn't pass either test, but I knew it was a long shot when I took them.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts and well wishes. I get a little homesick every once in a while, especially when I'm really hungry and just want some American pizza or tacos or something. It's always nice to read your comments and get emails from home.

Anyway, more stories to come from this next week with my friends!

Lima for Easter

I had originally prefaced this blog, saying it would be a quick note. But since it has turned out a bit longer, here is I guess a standard update. :)

We made it to Stockholm, no problems, and had a fantastic time there. We stayed with Kristoffer's friend Anders for the weekend and enjoyed the company of many of K's old friends.

Saturday we had a day out on the town. We ate at a fancy Swedish restaurant, went to the Opera, had coffee in the swanky part of Stockholm, and finished with a night out on the town.

Sunday was more laid back. We had brunch at an all-you-can-eat buffet, with live jazz music. The food was a mix of Swedish breakfast and lunch foods, and of course the meatballs were the best. That night, we had a big dinner party with K's closest friends (who are mostly vegetarians so we had very good vegetarian food) and played Swedish Trivial Pursuit, which, yes, is in Swedish.

Now this is actually the second time that I've played swedish TP, and it went pretty good the first time; people just have to translate the questions for me. The only problem is some of the questions are pretty Sweden-centric so I'm no good at all with those. This particular time playing it, the questions were really dumb and almost totally about sweden, so it wasn't very fun. But the rest of the evening was great.

Monday we took the train to Lima, which is usually about a 4-5 hour train ride. Unfortunately, our first train was late coming into the half-way station, so we missed our second train by 8 minutes, and had to take a greyhound-style bus the rest of the way. So we left at 1:44pm and should have arrived in Lima around 6:30, but instead we got there about 9pm.

Today we went to a meat buffet for dinner with K's parents and grand-parents, which was very good.

One of the funny things about Lima is its so small-town that everyone is curious about an American coming around. On the bus ride here, a woman asked me where I was from, and it turned out she was from Michigan, but had married a swede after studying abroad and had lived in Sweden for 30 years. Then today at dinner, a couple sitting next to us asked me where I was from because they had done a lot of traveling in the US. They had recently been to DC this last July, and of course remarked at how hot it was there! Anyway, my American English attracts some attention.

Tomorrow, we may do some cross-country skiing (there's about 2 feet of snow here, definitely still winter), and Thursday we are going to K's parent's "summer house" which is about a 20 minute drive away, but it's "farther in the woods and on a lake." So that makes it a vacationing spot. :) Small country.

Back in Brussels--and Pictures!

Quick note on today and then on to what I know you really want...Pictures!

This morning we checked out of the hotel and I hung around doing some work in the lobby. Our train was supposed to leave at 2:36, but it was delayed about 20 minutes. We caught it, no problem, and they seemed to make up some time as we went along so we actually got into Brussels early; and by early I mean 7:30...long train ride! This was not a high speed train, but the slow pokey kind of train. But anyway, it was a very comfortable ride.

My seat was in 2nd class because I was paying for it myself. Kristoffer and some of the other assistants were in 1st class because their tickets were payed for by the Swedish government. But after the ticket guy went by I went up and sat with them since there were extra seats.
Not much difference with 1st and 2nd class. I was definitely glad I didn't pay the extra 20 Euro for it.

Anyway, now we're back and tomorrow we pack and leave again! Our flight leaves around 7pm so enough time to get some stuff done tomorrow before we go. Kristoffer has all sorts of plans to meet up with people in Stockholm, so it should be quite fun!

And now, to the pictures!

PARIS

Maria's SIXTH FLOOR APARTMENT and the reason for all the caps is that there was NO ELEVATOR.


Notre Dame. The top half because we couldn't get far enough back without loosing our place in line to get in.


Melinda in the towers of Notre Dame! You can see the Eiffle Tower way in the background and the gargoyles behind me. So cool, and a really pretty view!


No, I didn't actually ring the bell. I don't think they would have really like that.


Maria, Kristoffer, and I on Pont Neuf, a bridge over the Seine.


One of the small children running around the Orsay Museum.


Outside the Musee D'Orsay and the fantastic double rainbow! The pot of gold is apparently behind the Rhino...That's me with the umbrella cause it was still pouring.

STRASBOURG

This is the Astronomical clock in the Cathedral. In the olden days towns had one mechanical clock for time keeping purposes, other than people ringing bells at estimated times of day. These were huge, ornate things that had many symbolic items and moving figurines. This is one of the few left, and they make it chime the noon hour once a day (otherwise it doesn't really run). For reference to size note that the man whose head you see is standing up and is taller than me.


This is a view of Strasbourg from the Parliament. The tallest spire is from the Cathedral shown next.


This is the massive Cathedral in Strasbourg. This is just the top half; it was so big!


A picture of me in the streets of Strasbourg, the central part of the city is an island surrounded by canals so this is on the edge of one.


This is the European Parliament. BIG building used for 4 days once a month. Sometimes I wonder...

Update from Strasbourg

Alright, no more panicking. I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. :)

But since it’s been a while since I’ve blogged, please be forewarned that this will probably be a very long blog. So sit back, relax, and enjoy!

We left off with Melinda in Paris heading out to a stranger’s birthday party. This turned out to be quite an entertaining evening since there were only 3 of us girls, the other two were Swedish, and the rest of our party of 10 were Frenchmen. Let me just say right now that I have the greatest respect for people who can speak three languages fluently (namely French, English, and Swedish) and keep them all straight in their head during a conversation. Since Kristoffer doesn’t speak French, and I’m a monolingual for all intents and purposes, there formed two distinct groups during the evening: the English speaking group, and the French speaking group. Several of the guys bounced back and forth between the two, and all in all it was a fun evening. It ran so late, though; we ended up getting our dinner at 12:30--as in midnight+30! Crazy Europeans. They eat late, but even that was a little ridiculous. We ate at a gay bar/restaurant, which was pretty funny, but the food was good. I had steak and “French” fries. The steak was mediocre; the beef here is generally of a lower quality, but it was flavored well. That night ended with crepes and a LONG walk home, because we missed the last metro (subway train).

Saturday, March 8^th

A late start this day because of the late night out. We breakfasted/lunched at a café called JetLag (appropriate) with the plan of the day being to visit Notre Dame. When I was in Paris last, Notre Dame was under construction and had lots of ugly scaffolding and such all inside and out; also, we had came too late to go up to the towers So I was really excited to get to see this wonder of Paris unmarred by ugly steel polls and plywood.

We wandered around inside for a while, looking at the rose windows, which I had only partially been able to see before. Then we headed to the line outside to go up to the legendary home of Quasimodo! The hike (and I mean HIKE) up to the top of the towers was all stairs. The three of us, Maria, Kristoffer, and I, were all huffing and puffing by the time we got to the top. It was this crazy, tight, spiral staircase the entire way up with room for only one person at a time. Good workout! And it was really worth it, too. The view was gorgeous, and it was so neat to get to see the bells in the tower and the gargoyles.

After Notre Dame, we went to the Shakespeare bookstore, because it was an English bookstore very reminiscent of Elliot Bay Bookstore in Seattle. Kristoffer wanted to go there, I am still not buying books—we didn’t stay very long.

Next on the agenda around 5:30pm was a cute café with fantastic desserts for a snack. We were having all-you-can-eat sushi that night, but not until 9pm so we thought we could risk some coffee, ice-cream and cobbler. The Sushi that night was also very good (bad food in this country is hard to find) and we spent it with some friends of Maria.

Sunday, March 9^th

Another late night out ended up with another late start, but we managed to get to the Musee D’Orsay around 1pm, so we had a good afternoon to spend seeing the wonderful works of art. I had never been to this Museum. Everyone said they liked it better, but I think I enjoyed the Louvre more when I went there last time. Anyway, we saw works by Monet, Manet, Van Gough, Whistler, and so many more I can’t even remember. It’s really amazing the amount of art history collected in one place. I especially enjoyed watching little children running around the museum. It amazed me that parents would bring them and not keep closer track of them. Priceless works of art were well within the grasp of the sticky fingers of a 3 year old. It really makes you catch your breath!

We had lunch/dinner at the museum café; I had quiche and coffee. As we left the museum around 6pm there was a torrential downpour of rain followed by one of the most fantastic double rainbows I’ve ever seen. It was so rich and put into perspective the beautiful works of man against the beautiful works of God.

We walked past the French Parliament building on our way home, and stopped in for evening Mass at a church called the Notre Dame de Lorette on the spur of the moment. The rest of the evening was spent in with some Indian food delivered and the good company of friends.

Monday, March 10^th

We made the train to Strasbourg after some massive confusion and panic when we couldn’t find the right car number on what we thought was the right train. It was the right train, but someone changed the car numbers as we were walking down the ramp! So, to give you an idea: we were looking for car #7, and what we saw as we walked down the train was car #s 12,13,14,15,16,17,8,13,14,15,16….I kid you not. We finally came back and found a worker to ask where on earth car #7 was, and it was right next to car #8. So yay! We found the car, it said #7, but as we got on we realized that we were not the only ones confused and that there were people sitting in our seats who thought they were in car #17. We were rude and made them move, but we were so tired from running up and down the train that we just wanted our seats. There were plenty of extra seats in the car so it wasn’t a huge deal, but it was quite the drama.

Strasbourg is an adorable little French town. Yesterday I wandered around the town a little, sat in a café and in general enjoyed myself. Today, I went to the HUGE cathedral here and saw the astronomical clock kept there. In the old days a town had only one mechanical clock and it was usually kept in a municipal or religious building. This is one of the few left and it is still working! The show the striking of the noon chimes once a day, but otherwise they don’t run the clock. It’s amazing how many gears and figurines move on the clock. It’s very tall as well, reaching around 20 feet high.

Today I also went to the European Parliament and saw a “debate” on a report about Iraq. It wasn’t really a debate from my opinion, most people just agreed that the report was good and just made suggestions on what more needs to be found out and possible actions that could be taken from the results found. It’s really amazing that the entire European Parliament moves to Strasbourg for a week once a month. Kristoffer and I had dinner with the 5 Swedish Members of Parliament (they bought us a fancy dinner too!) that Kristoffer is working with, and all of them agreed that it was silly to move the parliament once a month. But because of the structure of the government they can’t change the process. Politics, politics, politics…

Tomorrow we return to Brussels and Friday we leave for Sweden! My French is getting a little better, or I should say my courage to use my Frenglish has grown. :) All in all I am enjoying myself so much! It was especially fun to stay in a hotel with never-ending hot water! (Hot water in our apartment lasts about 10 minutes.) The saddest part is the fact that today the dollar hit a record low against the Euro. Yuck. Prices in Euros are about what they would be in dollars in the US, so things are really expensive. But I’m managing to live pretty cheap.

Ok, longest blog ever! But I felt I owed it to you all. I will try to keep up a little better in the days to come. (Pictures to come as well!)

In Paris!

I think today I took one of the scariest taxi rides of my life. I've taken some scary ones, but this one is definitely in the top 5! We hailed a cab from our appartment to the Brussels train station and caught the train with little to no problems, and just a little trepidation of whether we were at the right platform. Finding the right train car was another issue, but we managed, and now we've made it to Paris! We had crepes for lunch, with a stop off at Starbucks'. I know, I know....you go all the way to Paris and you have Starbucks?! Well, it was nice to have something familiar and to buy a coffee that was more than a teaspoon of liquid, so that's my reasoning. However, it will probably be the last Starbucks I have because it cost 4.40 Euro, which is $6.60...yikes! probably the most expensive coffee I've ever bought, but who can put a price on familiarity. :)

Anyway, the friend we are staying with lives in a great spot in Paris and is very close to many things, so after coffee we walked to the Paris Opera and even thought about getting tickets for tomorrow nights show! But the only tickets left were 130 Euro (~$200) so that was out of the question, but it was worth a shot.

Tonight we are going out to dinner with a bunch of people who I don't know, but are friends of the girl (Maria) that we are staying with. Apparently its bottomless wine?? Hmm.....

So not sure what the plans are for the rest of the weekend but we're thinking about going to the Musee D'Orssey (sp?) since I didn't get there the last time. Maybe doing a tour of Notre Dame since it was under construction when I was here 4 years ago. Not sure, but mostly its going to be fun to just be in Paris again!

Start Date?

Well, here is a chance for me to see who reads my blog! I want everyone's opinion!!!!

I just got an email saying that I have to pick my start date at Ernst & Young by March 9th, which just so we are all clear, is this sunday! My choices are:

August 1st
or
October 1st

I have my own ideas, but I would really love to hear what other people think. Please comment to this message, or send me an email, or somehow get a hold of me, and give me your advice! I really hope to hear from lots of you.

No internet....sucks.....

Well it’s hailing outside. I’m glad I’m inside. J

Yesterday I got a tour of the European Parliament! I met K there for lunch and ended up camping out in his office to use his internet for work. Our internet has been slow at best and totally unreliable/nonfunctioning at worst. This, of course, has made work difficult, but hopefully we will be able to figure out something else soon.

Anyway, the Parliament is a very beautiful building. It’s very tall and was built only about 12 years ago, so everything is very modern. Here is a picture:

And I got to see this room!

Everyone is pretty laid back there. The security is pretty loose as well, though I had to get my own temporary ID card for the day with my picture on it and everything! A fun souvenir.

Also! There has been a little change in plans. The parliament is sending K to Strasbourg, France this next week so I will be going too! They pay for the hotel so I just have to pay for the train. The whole Parliament moves there for a week once a month and this is the one time they have decided to send Kristoffer. So slight change in the itinerary for me, but it just means that I get to spend a week in Strasbourg instead of Brussels. Fun! Hopefully its warmer there since its farther south in France. Its darn cold here these days.

Belgian Waffles are AMAZING.....

...in case anyone was wondering.

So Bonjour mes amies! Just a quick note before I head out to do some studying.

This Saturday Kristoffer and I went out and saw just a few of the sights around Brussels. First of all, we made a trip to the train station and managed to book our tickets to Paris surprisingly easy for how painfully difficult it has been to try and use the online ticketing system. We leave Friday afternoon for the City of Lights. I'm looking forward to going back to Paris! This is my first time going back to a European city I've already been to. It's so wonderful to think that I will kinda know my way around!

So after the tickets were purchased we took the metro (subway) to the Grand-Place, which was really beautiful. All of the buildings surrounding the square are in the old gothic style and full of spires and details. We had a lunch at a totally tourist-trap restaurant which was chosen based on the fact that the host (the hawker who stands out on the street trying to bring people in) spoke Swedish of all things! But the food was great and pretty decently priced, so we didn't feel like we had been too suckered. They of course asked us where we were from, and I'm pretty sure that since I was American they felt that they could ask for a tip. Tipping is not standard in Belgium, so it was a little weird that they asked, but we gave the waiter a few Euros because it was good food and service.

Next we went to see the Manneken-Pis, which is this totally underwhelming statue of a naked little boy peeing. It has some sort of historic significance that has to do with the Belgian's feelings toward authority or occupying forces or some such other nonsense. I'm glad it was close to the Grand-Place, otherwise it wouldn't have been worth seeing.

The rest of the weekend was spent pretty quietly. On Friday night we found a great Asian restaurant and we spent the evening with Kristoffer's friend Aron who is interning at the Swedish Embassy here in Brussels. And Sunday was spent grocery shopping and diddling around at home. I had work to do and Kristoffer has a lot of Math to catch up on.

Well, I'm on my way to a cafe to do some studying. Hope all is well and I'd love some comments on my blog if anyone feels the inclination!

PS- Postcards for Great grandma and Grandma & Grandpa are on the way, so those of you at home, keep an eye out!