Finally vacation..

This year we finally went to Sweden again. Vladimir had never been in Sweden and it was time for him and Irma to meet the rest of my family.

My parents are from the Borås area, and like it is with every “migrant worker family”, we spent every summer in Sweden.

We always lived with the family of my mom’s sister, which was awesome for us kids, since we spent out vacation with our cousins, who were around the same age.

A couple years ago my mom realized her dream, to have a little summer house in that area. My parents found a great summer house with garden by lake Tolken. Very idyllic and perfect to spend vacation with a little child.

Since I hadn’t been in Sweden for three years and our family had gotten a lot bigger, I wanted to bring presents for all the kids and intended to sew all of them myself. That definitely was a little stressful, since they were 11 kids and my mom had her birthday too. 3 weeks before our departure I started and sewed like an assembly line, while Irma slept.

In Sweden we celebrate the traditional crayfish fest kräftskiva. Everyone HAS to wear a little paper hat and of course we eat crayfish and drink a lot. Normally someone strikes up a Schnapps song and then you drink a shot of Schnapps. You can imagine, in the course of the evening the Schnapps songs are struck up a lot more frequent.   

A bowl full of crayfish

A typical Swedish Schnaps is Aquavit, which tastes meeeh, but can’t be missing at the table. But don’t worry, there are other brands of Schnapps and “soft alcohol” at Swedish festivities.

Aquavit, snaps and crayfish

This Saturday we had our crayfish fest and the whole family on my mom’s side came. We were really lucky with the weather. The sun was shining and it was nice and warm. Even in the evening we could sit comfortably outside, which is rarely the case in Sweden.

In the afternoon we gave out all our present. For the little ones this day was like Christmas.

It was really a successful fest and nice to see everyone again.

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