No moon over Liseberg

Yesterday we continued our tradition of meeting up with people we haven’t seen in 20 years (remember my Spanish sister and LisafromAfrica?). When Jon was a teenager, his family hosted an exchange student from Norway for a year.  Although Jon’s parents have stayed in touch with the family, Jon and Eirik haven’t maintained their relationship (sound familiar??) until now. Eirik, his wife Janne, and their children Philippa and Sina drove from Oslo to Gothenburg yesterday and we spent the day with them at Liseberg amusement park. You might remember Sara’s wardrobe malfunction during our previous visit to Liseberg – if not, you can check that out here. This time we were much better behaved, and had lots of time to catch up with Eirik and see what he’s been doing since high school. He’s done quite well for himself, with a smart and funny wife, 2 gorgeous girls, a job he loves as Assistant Editor-In-Chief of a newspaper’s online division, and a new house in Oslo 3 minutes away from his parents and in-laws. Not bad. We like to think that his time in Orion with Jon’s family set him up for such success, but I guess his own parents had something to do it with it too. Probably. They must have. We’ve been so lucky to have rekindled these relationships, and are looking forward to spending more time with Eirik and his family in the future.

 

Swedish grandparents

This past weekend we were pleased to have Roland and Kerstin as our guests for dinner at “our” house. I decided to make them a typical meal for our family, although I’m not sure how representative it is of how Americans eat. My sister eats like we do, so I guess it counts! The kitchen in this house is separate from the living room, so I wasn’t really able to chat while everyone tried to keep the crostini away from Kerstin’s dog Max.

Luckily I’d made most of the dinner in advance, and only had to cook the pork while they were here. I made an herb and garlic-stuffed pork tenderloin (well, Jon actually prepared the tenderloins for me that morning using herbs from the garden) that I braised with fresh apples and served with an apple cognac reduction. We have pork tenderloin quite a bit at home, and it was fun that they had served us pork as well, Swedish style, so we could compare. I also made a summer wheat berry salad – a new favorite that I discovered in Sweden and adapted for our tastes – and minted peas. We had cheesecake brownies from my beloved David Lebovitz (his recipe is here) that I changed a bit as well. You can’t get chocolate chips in Sweden, so I left them out (David said it was OK), doubled the brownie part, and added a shot of espresso (I didn’t tell him about the espresso, shhhh). In retrospect, I should have skipped one of the eggs too, since the 4th egg made them a bit too custardy without the addition of the chocolate chips. If you make them the way I did, lose the last egg.

Anyway, we had a wonderful time with the kids’ new Swedish grandparents, and are hopeful that they will take us up on the offer to come visit in Florida.

Roland and Kerstin sing the Swedish song – or try to! – to Sara and Sam.

The Griswolds we’re not

I haven’t had a lot of time to post lately, as we’ve been on our European vacation since leaving our exchange house in Gapinge, Holland. First we took a short cruise on Norwegian Cruise Lines from Rotterdam, and stopped in the ports of Le Havre, France and Guernsey, Channel Islands, UK. We were surprised to realize that we had no interest whatsoever in Le Havre, which is French for Shit Hole, and we promptly returned to the ship for one of their delicious pina coladas with spiced rum and a poolside massage. Guernsey was a nice port, the largest of the Channel Islands, and I was thinking about my mother and how she used to tell me about the Guernsey and Jersey (another Channel island) cows when I was little. We had to tender to the port, and Sam loved that NCL used its actual lifeboats for the tender boats and the seas were rough, even better. The kids decided that Guernsey reminded them of Ålesund, and I knew at that very moment that this trip was so worth it.

I also had a few observations about taking an American cruise in Europe. It was worth the $18 for an unlimited soda card, even when I bought it on the 2nd day of the cruise. The bartenders tried to talk me out of it, not realizing that I’ve been jonesing for a Big Gulp with extra ice since February and I would have no trouble getting my money’s worth. There were very few North Americans on this particular cruise, and the staff seemed very happy to see us. Hence, we inferred that the other demographics were not as popular, and I could sort of see why. There’s a general feeling in the US that the people who take the short (and much less expensive) Bahamas cruises are not the most sophisticated of crowds, and we’ve found this to be true in Europe as well. These people pushed and shoved, careened into us multiple times at the buffet, and drank beer after beer while their children splashed loudly in the Adults Only hot tub. They were, in a word, uncouth. I had plenty of time to reflect on how well behaved our kids are, even when they are driving us crazy, and how easily they adapt to any situation. So far on this trip we’ve been on transatlantic flights, European flights, international trains, local trains, a cruise ship, local busses, taxis, charter busses, metros, tour busses, and bikes. I am proud to say that our kids take it all in stride, and Sam is still waiting for his chance to ride on a tuk tuk.

Let's start with the A,B,C of it...

A lot of people have been asking me recently what prompted us to exchange our home with people we've never met before, and it's a pretty simple answer: why not? Home exchange has been popular in Europe for years and has started to catch on in the States, although none of the Americans I told had ever heard about home swapping before.  It's more common in Europe, and the locals nod with understanding when we tell them what we're doing here. It seems that the general stereotype of Americans is that we're uptight, loud, and always looking for the biggest and the best of everything. Gigantic televisions, 400 cable channels, current generation iPod/iPhone, massive SUVs...and I still don't know what Hemi means. We are always in a hurry, so much so that we have drive-thru coffee, banking, pharmacies, laundry, fast food, liquor stores, curb side pickup for steaks and lobsters. We don't even have time to use our credit cards at the gas stations; we just click our card once and it knows who we are. We are even too busy to stop at the local video store to rent a movie; usually we watch it On Demand from cable, but if we absolutely must have it on DVD we have it sent to us in the mail. Expedited. And while we're driving back and forth to accomplish all of these things, some of us even catch up on our favorite TV shows which we've downloaded to our iPods and mount to our dashboards. Don't laugh, my old boss used to watch...yes, watch...new episodes of The Office while driving to work every morning. We have nice bicycles, which we dutifully load onto the backs of our cars and drive to the bike trail so we can enjoy nature or spend time as a family. In Europe, people ride their bikes to get from one place to another. Sometimes they even transport their kids or their groceries in fantastic cargo bikes (you know I am getting one of these) because they don't even own a car. Sure, part of the American stereotype applies to me: I love my big TV in my bedroom and I get cranky without high speed internet access, but that's about it. Our family and friends were amazed when we moved to Florida and downsized to only one car and a Vespa scooter. We were the only 2 adult family that I knew without a second car and we were often asked how we managed. Ridiculous! In Europe, many families have no car or only one car, and it is much less common to have a car for each driver. So why do we home exchange? Well, it gives a single-income family of four a chance to experince amazing new places and cultures that we could never afford if we paid for hotels, and we make new friends with people we never would have known (see picture - our neighbors invited us to a cookout in the circle). We live immersed in the culture rather than anonymously in a hotel. The best part, though, is that we get to disprove the American stereotype, one home exchange at a time.