For our spring break, my parents, brother, and grandmother came to Sweden to see this wonderful country and to try to dig into our family history. Our spring break was very interesting and filled with many “I can’t believe this moments.” We had the start of our trip in Stockholm. We spent 3 nights in Stockholm before heading to Uppsala that Monday. The trip to Uppsala started out with my family heading to the rental car company and realizing we just had to much luggage to fit in the small little Volvo we had rented. The people and the Hertz desk were very nice and sad they had another bigger car that they could give us. The new car turned out to not be a car at all, but a mini bus. In all the buss sat 9 people and there was only 5 of us. Needless to say we all had plenty of room and could spread out. I was the most capable in my family of driving a manual transmission so I got the job of driving.
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When we got to Uppsala we found a parking lot that was perfect. It was close to everything and I had lots of room to maneuver my mini bus. The only problem was that the parking meter was not working. Everyone else around us seemed to just be ignoring it so we went on our way. We came back to the car to find a lovely parking ticket on the bus. We all took it in stride and did not let it get to us. We also had an interesting time at our hotel in Uppsala. It was a very nice hotel with room for lots of people. It was in a nice place just outside the city and suited our needs very well. The only thing is that out of this entire large hotel, my family was the only ones renting a room at the time. The nice thing was is we were all able to spend time together in the dinning area talking and playing card without having to worry about bothering any of the other guests. We ended our time in Uppsala and headed back up to Mora to see this beautiful city and to introduce my family to our politics teacher Lennart’s family. We had a great time having dinner with this amazing family and then Lennart was kind enough to give us a driving tour of the city.
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We we going from place to place when Lennart wanted to show us an old town right next to a lake. I took my mini bus down this small road and when it came out I was looking onto the frozen lake. I was then instructed to drive on to the lake, much to the silent discomfort of my mother and grandmother. I made sure to get off the frozen death trap as soon as possible and we headed back to our hotel and had a peaceful night. After our time in Mora we headed to the area of Sweden that my family had come from, Varmland. My family history can be traced back to the city Torsby and we decided to go see the city of our ancestors. We arrived in Torsby and found a hotel that looked like it would be perfect. My mother went into the hotel to ask the man if they had any rooms and at first he said no. As my mom and grandma where walking out of the hotel the man remembered that he did have one more place for people to sleep. It wasn’t just a room that we got, it was and entire apartment. Not only did we have a kitchen and all the space we could want, it was also the cheapest price we had paid for a hotel since my family had arrived in Sweden. That night for dinner we just made our own food in the kitchen we had in our apartment.
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The nest day we where able to have a fika with some Swedish cousins we have in Torsby. It was very cool to get to met some of my family here. After we left Torsby, we headed down to Gothenburg. This was a very long drive and when we finally arrived in Gothenburg we were all very tired and just wanted to find our hotel. The problem was that Gothenburg is a huge city with the most traffic I had come across in my min bus excursions. We were following the maps on our smart phone, but f course we took a wrong turn and got lost. Although it was a stressful few minutes, we figured it out and found our way to our hotel. It was a very nice hotel right on the water and we all had a nice dinner and enjoyed the rest of our night. We spent the first half of the next day walking around Gothenburg before we decided to hit the road again. This point of the driving done this day was to get us a little closer to Stockholm, so I would not have to make the whole 8 hour drive in one go. Our choices of places to stop for the night where either Carlsberg or Mariestad. I decided to drive a little long that day so we ended up finding a hotel in Mariestad. The people working at this hotel were very nice and we had a great dinner there. Attached to this hotel was a nightclub/bar and of course our rooms where right above them. I was awoken at about 2 in the morning to people talking very loud, but I was able to pretty easily fall back asleep. We all woke up the next morning a little tired from the noise but we couldn’t complain. We headed back to Stockholm and enjoyed our last night together before I moved on to Uppsala. I am very thankful that my family was able to come to Sweden and see this beautiful country. I had so much fun showing them where I had lived and introducing them to people I had met. Overall I said it was very good spring break.
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P.S. happy belated birthday Paps
This reminds me of my early years as a teacher. How great it felt and how much you learned from explaining to others what you had just learned, what you knew, what you “kind of” knew. I think it’s great how you “reviewed” the months you have had in Sweden with your family and learned more things while they were there. Keep adding “odd experiences” to your stay, and keep asking questions.