We bought a Volvo wagon! I couldn’t go any longer without a car. The longer and warmer days are making me stir crazy to get out of the city! Today the Volvo took us out to the coast to the Strömbäck-Knot nature reserve. We did some walking and playing in the snow at the shore’s edge and some skiing.
Amelia has become a really good skier already. Today she figured out how to kick and add some glide to her step.
Here are some pictures of our winter life:
This is outside our front door. Amelia is getting more brave lately. There are 20+ foot piles of snow all around town and she has been enjoying climbing them and making slides down them. Yes, we wear snow pants every day!
We are fortunate to be able to ski from our front door into the forest near our home.
Amelia is enjoying taking a dance class and wants to play dance class just about every day. I add a little yoga so I get to do some yoga ;)
We've spent many hours doing arts and crafts. She particularly likes making fairies. She's drawn them, painted them, made play-dough fairies, and even fairies out of pipe cleaners.
In this picture she's sewing a bear. Thanks Grandma Cindy, Grandpa Klatt, and Emily! He is stuffed, has a bow tie, eyes, a smily face and has been named Sewy.
Thankfully there are indoor play areas. There has been lots of jumping on the coach and bed too.
There are several neighborhood centers around town and churches that have a space for children, young and old. The spaces are very nice with toys and kitchens and gyms. Amelia and I have been consistently going to two playgroups. The öppna förskolor/playgroups are for parents and children to attend. However, most of the children are under a year and half. Families are given 18 months of paid leave to be with the little ones. The time is split between both parents and I think it is required that the dad spends at least two months with the baby while the mom goes back to work. The 18 months do seem flexible though. The family can spread these 18 months paid leave time and work part time or postpone them. Once that paid time is over it seems very common that both parents are back to work and children go to förskolan/daycare, which is free. It seems very uncommon to be a stay-at-home parent beyond this paid leave. (There isn’t a lot of diversity in ways of doing things here in Sweden). The only older kids we see at playgroups are the siblings of the babies. The parents tend to reduce the older children’s time at the daycare to be with them during their paid leave with the new baby.
We have made some friends and learned about Swedish culture by going to the öppna förskolor. Amelia has learned some Swedish! Can you tell which song it is?
Later in the day we drove to the coast. Amelia was passed out in the carseat, tired from play at Leo's Lekland, and the weather outside was dismal. We didn't venture far or hang around too long. At least I've now seen the Baltic Sea/Gulf of Bothnia.
Will you put dinkelmjöl on the grocery list?
We are speaking in Swenglish ;) Dinkelmjöl is spelt flour in case you are wondering.
Now that I’ve been to seven grocery stores, I’ve decided that I can write about them. There seems to be a grocery store in every neighborhood, although it may be small. There are basically only two grocery stores companies, COOP and ICA. It also seems that most areas have both competing stores. They are often even right next door to one another (see picture in Ålidhem central). (Oh yeah, they are capitalists here!) I haven’t yet decided which one is my favorite, as I haven’t really figured out how they are exactly different. It’s not like there is a Safeway, a Town ‘N Country, and a Bozeman CO-OP (reference for the Bozeman folks) with differences in price, health food, organics. The COOP here is not a co-op, it is pronounced ‘coup’ like a chicken coop. I guess both stores are a bit more like a Town ‘N Country, stores where you can find a bit of everything, including organic food and even a biodynamic/organic line Salta Kvarn, produced in southern Sweden. The selection just depends on the size of the store. There is also one kind of “health food store” that also sells other natural products. They have a few things that ICA and COOP don’t but mostly have the organic and natural brands that are also at the other stores.
Most herbs and some lettuce are sold in pots… so far north they have to ship them in pots so that they survive? Do you see the sad leaves? This basil plant did not like our cold walk home.*Our favorite word at the store is jordgubbe, pronounced ‘yourgubber’, which is Swedish for strawberry.*
Our favorite character so far is this Turkish yogert guy. What do you
think he is saying? ‘Oh so good!” ??
Or maybe these characters are even better. ?? They aren't found at the grocery store though. This is the alcohol store bag. ;) Wine, beer, and liquor is sold at the government run liquor store.
Imagine having a room with treats and comforts inside. You know that things like your pillow, sunglasses, your favorite coffee mug, salt, honey, a chocolate bar, and hot running water are inside the room; those things that add comfort to your life. The only thing is THE ROOM IS LOCKED. At some point you know that the key will be mailed to you but you don’t have any idea when. It’s out of your control, you must wait.
Here our key is a personnumber and the room is the Swedish system. Once we have a personnumber we are allowed to hop onto the tracks of everyday life here in Sweden. We are officially acknowledged as residents in this country.
Today, Monday January 30th, a bit more than a month after being here, our keys arrived in the mail! We momentarily jump for joy. Yeah! Now we are covered by the Swedish health care system and have been told about other benefits that we will receive. For instance, I will receive a small stipend for being a stay at home mom. Amelia is entitled to 15 hours a week of free preschool. However, now that we have a key, we walk through the door to find a maze in order to gather up all these comforts and luxuries.
We walked downtown today at 4:00 to open up a bank account, which requires a personnumber. The door is locked, lights out. The bank closes at 3:00 everyday of the week except for Thursday. A man coming out of the bank says, ‘Oh you can do it on-line.’ He says it as if it is SOO easy. We believe him. We got on-line at home and after lots of Google Translate we give up and decide that we’ll just go back downtown on Thursday. We need someone to show us how to do the internet money transfers anyway. I don’t think there is much cash flowing around Umeå, instead bank transfers. I asked if I could pay for Amelia’s dance class with cash since we didn’t have a bank. The response was ‘Um, no. You can just wait to transfer money once you have your bank account set up.’ Even some yoga classes ask for internet money transfers.
Here we go in the maze to figure this all out. On the list of things to do now that we have personnumbers also include getting a phone and a frequent shopper card at the grocery store so we can attempt to cut some costs there. Can you believe it? You even need a personnumber to get a phone and to save on those special deals at the grocery store.
It’s Sunday morning, 8:00. The sun is rising. The sky is filled with pastel orange and pink. I walk through the empty snow covered open air museum to get into Stadsliden, the forest near our home. Trails weave around the forest and are groomed for cross country ski and skate skiers. I see a little stream that I hadn’t noticed before. Its quiet now and I see no other person as I ski and decide to go along the 3.7 km loop. I’m excited to ski in the tracks down the big hill I know is coming up on this loop.
The first time we skied in Stadsliden it was like a super highway. We were like an old VW bus pulling a trailer in the slow lane, trying to stay out of the way. We idled along checking out the scenery and stopped to chat with a great grandma on skis. Others were zipping by in the latest model sports cars. Amelia’s trailer slows us down, as does our skis and our technique or rather lack of technique.
While at InterSport, we were (possibly) clued into the ski scene a bit around here. To enjoy the long winters, I’m sure most opt to ski here in town. There are at least 8 groomed ski trails in the central part of Umea. (Likely, some people have several types of skis and also get out in nature some and take a weekend at the ski resorts closer to Norway.) The ski selection seemed telling. Next to a small selection of backcountry skis (the style we used in MT), were walls and racks of speedy skis, not only speedy skate skis but also speedy classic skis. We didn’t want to spend lots of money on skis that we probably wont use back in the US (hopefully we can sell them here) so we opted for some crappy skis that actually costs a fair amount of money. I knew things were expensive in Sweden but I didn’t think they sold crap. Oh well. We have skis with fish scales and no camber instead of the super speedy wax skis like most everyone else here. The sales guy was right, these skis basically have brakes on them. Along with fancy skis, folks here have some fancy moves. I’m fairly new to the whole ski thing but I thought if you want to ski fast then you *skate* ski. Here they even ski quickly on classic cross country skis. They ski in the tracks but kind of lift up their back foot to give them a big fast push.
That first day we skied happened to also be the day after their first big dump of snow for the season and the sun was out and the sky beautiful blue. Maybe this gem of a forest that we are fortunate to live near wont always be a super highway. Hopefully, it will be like it is today. I turn a corner and merge onto another trail. I see one other skier and two old ladies walking. I hear the birds chirping and again I’m facing south. It’s about an hour after I left home and the sun is still rising. The sky is pastel pink and orange and the light of day is just beginning to fill the sky.
Skiing is in their blood. This photo is of a 5,000 year old ski found in Västerbotten (the county we live in). It’s believed to be the world’s oldest ski.
| English common name | Swedish common name | Latin name |
| Great Tit | Talgoxe | Parus major |
| Blue Tit | Blåmes | Parus caeruleus |
| Eurasian Bullfinch | Domherre | Pyrrhula pyrrhula |
| Fieldfare | Björktrast (Birch thrush) | Turdus pilaris |
| European Magpie | Skata | Pica pica |
| Commoon Blackbird | Koltrast (Coal thrush) | Turdus merula |
| Yellowhammer | Gulsparv (Yellow sparrow) | Emberiza citrinella |
| Eurasian Tree Sparrow | Pilfink (Arrow finch) | Passer montanus |
| Brambling | Bergfink (Mountain finch) | Fringilla montifringilla |
| European Greenfinch | Grönfink (Green finch) | Carduelis chloris |
