See you on the flip side

Merry Christmas everyone. If you celebrate Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Reyes Magos, or anything else, then I hope that's really happy too.

As for me and The Mister, we are off to Morocco tomorrow for a little getaway that hopefully includes copious amounts of cous cous.

May your holiday be full of good food and belly laughs, and not too much fruit cake.

   

2011 in review

2011 has been a rollicking good year. Seeing as the coming of the new year always makes me a little nostalgic, I put together a little highlights post of some of my favorite memories of the past 12 months, a few pictures and a few posts. We've been lucky enough to make some pretty awesome memories this past season - here's hoping 2012 can follow this act!

Castilla La Mancha, Spain, August

Castilla La Mancha, Spain, August

London, June

Sherwood Forest, Nottingham, England. April.

Scottish Highlands, April.

Porto, Portugal, March.

Ericeara, Portugal, March.

Málaga, April

Cape Cod, September

January:

On Italian food: Olive Garden versus the real thing

February:

The Shakira comment made up for the ego bruise

Peanut butter and salsa

March:

Stuff Europeans Like

Stuff Americans Like

April:

How to eat a Spanish churro

May:

In which The Mister is a rock star and I am a failed Mexican-American cook

June:

Four.

Monochrome London

July:

Team 'Merica

Pranks on the Boss Lady

August:

Sunflower fields

Someone actually approved this message

September:

Tales from Maryland

October:

The checklist

November:

The flamenco flop.

The hardest part of being a teacher

December:

The Polar Bear Plunge

  

The Polar Bear Plunge

Stockholm, Sweden 

December 9, 2011 

Sauna Temp = 190°F 

Water Temp = 37°F

So when we decided to go to Scandinavia in the winter, we were told that the thing to do is a traditional Swedish sauna, where you steam yourself like a dumpling and then either a.) jump in freezing water if it's available, or b.) roll in the snow. I was assured that people don't actually die doing it, which cheered me up a bit and made me feel adventurous and devil-may-care. So, we did it. And we survived.

The sauna is so hot and steamy that you are gasping for cool air. After I was cooked about medium rare (approximate internal temperature: one hundred thousand degrees), and my skin looked as red and glowing as the coals in the sauna, it was game time. Dunking yourself in the freezing cold Baltic Sea doesn't seem exactly appetizing, but it's as close as you'll get so you might as well get it over with.

You say a prayer and go outside. This part must be done very fast, because once you're outside the freezing air makes you lose your will to live, nanosecond by nanosecond. Your hair and eyebrows immediately frost over. You climb down the ladder as a concession to your heart, or if you're The Mister you just go for it and hope for the best. The water snaps at you with icy jaws and clamps down on your skin with a force that feels like tiny sharp teeth all over your body. Your mind has only one thought: &^%$#!!!!!!

I held my nose when I hopped in the water, scared that the temperature change would make me inhale in shock and get icy liquid in my lungs. I needn't have worried, however, because it turns out that water that cold makes you not breathe at all, and you'll notice that each of us is surprisingly quiet until we are out of the water, because each of us is experiencing lungs on total protest lockdown.

We had a pretty international group in our sauna: Scotland, Australia, Sweden, Germany and the USA all had representatives. Group bonding happens surprisingly quickly when you are half naked and sweating your buns off, and we laughed a lot and cheered each other on. I think it may be my favorite memory of Sweden.

*Warning: the video contains a little bit of beeped-out salty language, for obvious reasons. Look, if you had dunked Mother Theresa in that water she would have said more than darnit. Those words are for very special occasions and trust me, this was one of them. Sorry, Mom.

      

Nerds (as in geeks) and Nerds (as in candy)

    About once a year, I like to read a really opaque physics book, one on relativity and space-time and the weak nuclear force and all that. The Mister always reads the same book at the same time, because the ideas are too big for one brain alone, and then we read until we're dizzy and then go lie flat on our backs and stare up at the heavens and try to make sense of what we just read. If you're lacking a little wonder in your life, if you need something to grab you by the shoulders and remind you to pay attention because this life is amazing, then I highly recommend this course of action. Just once a year, mind you, or else you'll turn into a real geek.

Anyway, with this in mind, you won't be surprised to learn that one of the things that really excited me about last week was that they were giving out the Nobel prizes in Stockholm and the prize winners give lectures that are free and open to the public. Hello, physics lecture from Nobel prize-winning physicists. Hello, room full of fellow blonde nerds. I felt so normal. It was glorious.

Also, all three of the laureates were U.S.-born, so, you know, go America.

Speaking of America, I saw more American stuff in Sweden than I've seen for a long time. For starters, there seemed to be 7-Elevens on every corner. I don't think I've ever seen a 7-Eleven abroad before. It smelled the same, like day-old chili dogs and stale coffee. Mmm, scent of the heartland.

Also there was a restaurant rumored to be the best Mexican restaurant in Europe (which, let's be clear, is not saying much) and oh man, it was smokin' good. Mexicans owned the place and the food was authentic stuff - lots of cilantro and lime involved. Delectable.

Most charmingly, there was a little store in Stockholm that has all American food, and the primary clientele seems to be American expats and study abroad students who miss their home cuisine. Not sure what you'd miss if you were to find yourself stranded outside the motherland? Well, take a minute and peruse the options that would be available to you if you lived in Stockholm. If you look closely at the pictures, you'll notice that one has an entire shelf of products labeled "ASS KICKIN"

As a side note, I have never eaten Baconnaise, although I applaud the concept (not that I would ever eat it or anything, I'm just saying that it's innovative is all).  Also, I did not know that people still drink Snapple, seeing as it's no longer 1996. You live, you learn.

In any case, it's better than the American food we can get in Málaga, which is limited to some neglected-looking Old El Paso taco shells for about 8 euros a box. 

So, a round of applause for America. The Nobel prizes were impressive, but the 7-Elevens were really the icing on the cake.

A glimpse at Sweden

I ate Rudolph, and he tasted delicious.

   Hands down one of my favorite parts of traveling is eating. One of my traveler friends says that there are really only three things that you must do when you travel: eat a typical meal, have a glass of whatever the locals drink, and climb to a place really high up so you can see the whole landscape. I like his style.

I ate like a champ in Sweden. It was dark and cold and...no, I don't have any good excuses, I just like to eat. Good Swedish food is heavy with lots of hearty sauce, and this humble fare is surprisingly hard to find in Stockholm, which is a quite cosmopolitan city filled with Thai restaurants. When we asked where we could get some good traditional grub, Swedes wrinkled their noses and said, well, we eat that at home, so when we go out to eat we want something different. But one day we lucked out and fell into this little place that had Swedish flags all over and didn't have an English menu. Good signs.

We had the reindeer stew (yup, read that again. I said reindeer.) which was tasty and tender and was sort of like a stroganoff. Side of lingonberries (of course).

Then we had a classic Swedish dish of potatoes fried with sausages and meat, topped with an egg and with sides of beets and pickles. And the crown glory - you knew it was coming, right? - were the meatballs. IKEA, stand aside. These meatballs were divine. Dee-vine.

We also did a touristy thing and signed up to learn how to make meatballs from a Swedish chef. It was surprisingly cheap and we got to eat the meal afterwards, of course. The appetizer was thick wheaty crackers topped with something like sour cream, chives, red onions and pickled herring. The pickled herring smelled just about exactly like cat food but it tasted a lot less strong than I imagined it would be. I didn't go back for seconds though. It is, after all, fish from a jar, and when all was said and done it still sort of tasted like fish from a jar.

  

I hope you noticed that the pickled herring brand is Abba. As in ABBA, Swedish rock band. In fact, I asked our Swedish chef what makes Swedish meatballs different from other meatballs. He cocked his head to the side.  "You have to listen to ABBA while you make them."

And in fact, we did.

   

You're in Sweden, welcome to the time warp

Sweden: pretty awesome and very, very cold.

On our trip we ate reindeer and pickled herring, jumped in the (literally) freezing Baltic Sea, and sang ABBA while we made meatballs. We saw Nobel prize winners lecture on their genius ideas, and we went ice skating outside and hung out on Viking ships. But by far the oddest part of the trip was trying to adjust to the daylight hours in Sweden, or the scarcity thereof. The sun rises at 9 and sets at 3. Six hours, and that's not including dawn and dusk.

It throws you completely off kilter. You find yourself yawning, looking at your watch and thinking, surely it's almost time for bed!, but it's really only 6:30. It's just been dark for three hours.

The first day we arrived, it was about 1:30 in the afternoon and we told the receptionist at our hostel that we were going to peek around and then have lunch in a few hours (we do live in Spain, after all, so we usually eat lunch between 3 and 4. When in Rome...)  The girl looked at us like we were crazy. "You'd better go to lunch now," she told us, "everyone closes in the next half hour." So we rushed to a nearby restaurant to eat and when we emerged at 2:30 it was sunset.

We stood in the street, stunned and incredulous, looking at the sky. 2:30! It was nightfall by 3:00 and that was that.

11:22 a.m.

2:38 p.m.

3:32 p.m.

3:45 p.m.

 

3:48 p.m.