A very busy break

We have spent the past few weeks in Belgium, Germany, Sweden, New York, Washington DC, Boston, New York again and Sweden again and it has been Crazy Town for us, hence the blogging hiatus. Finally we are back in Sweden and the plan is to relax for a few days so hopefully you'll see some more posts popping up. I hope so anyway :) The first of many has just been published - Paris to Belgium. Enjoy!

Here is a taste of what's to come..

The Atomium in Brussels

Checking out the view from the belfry in Bruges

Taking (and almost missing) the train boat to Denmark

Cousin time in Sweden

Lots of transiting

In depth political discussions in DC

A Boston lake house

Christmas!

New Year's at Time's Square

 and..

Proper snow in Sweden!

Sweden to America

To America! We had three flights and weren't due to arrive until about midnight USA time so all we did until all day was sit in planes and airports. 

Airport #1 - Sundsvall

Our dawn (9:30am) flight from Sundsvall - those clouds are the 
beginnings of the ones that brought 50cm of snow just after we left

Plane #1

Sweden - no snow to be seen. 

Adam loved the sticker book SAS gave him

Airport #2 - Stockholm

Spraying the wings with antifreeze before departing from Stockholm.

Plane #2 and the beautiful countryside of northern France

Airport #3 - Paris

Beautiful views

And that's where the photos stop because by the time we got to New York we were both zombies. We had to wait more than an hour on the tarmac before being assigned a dock at JFK airport, and then we made the unwise decision to take the subway into town which took about two hours. By the time we arrived to our hotel we were thoroughly exhausted and crashed into bed as soon as we could. 

Härnösand Farewell

Nothing crazy or strange or scary happened today at all: it was a packing day, which is nothing new around here, but in the evening we did have a bit of a belated party for Hisham's birthday with a spectacular cake. We got dressed up in our Palestinian outfits and enjoyed our last night in Sweden for now. Oh and I finally found my niche in a Middle Eastern kitchen after days of feeling useless: the dishes!

Cake!

They were all about the decorations

Galabia party

Härnösand Tourism

This town boasts a grand total of two tourists attractions on Trip Advisor: a museum and a reconstructed cold war military post from the 1950s. Neither of these were particularly high on our to-do list, so instead we went out and explored some of the natural attractions. First: the beach.

Guess what surprised me about the beach? The level of frozen!

The sand was frozen as hard as concrete..

.. the chairs were frozen ..

.. the seaweed was frozen ..

.. but the water wasn't.

Hisham in his bathing suit

So I thought it might be fun to get a picture of me standing in the water. I mean, it's still liquid so how bad can it be, right? Really fun, guys, really fun. So fun. The kind of fun that I want to repeat every single day. Yeah. Way fun. It probably only took about 30 seconds for Hisham to get a photo through his triple-gloved hands but to me it felt like hours. So cold! So very very cold! I wisely wore sandals this day so had to use my gloves as socks in the van to try and get rid of the frostbite. How long does it take for extremities to start going black? I was beginning to get concerned.

On the way to our next stop it felt like we were driving through the set of an apocalyptic movie. Everything looked like it hadn't been touched in months, the trees were stripped, there were hardly any cars on the road, no people walking around, and no animal sounds to be heard. The sun, when it is there, is permanently either rising or setting; and night lasts from 3pm to 10am. In reality though of course Härnösand is a town full of life, it's just that that life is lived almost exclusively indoors.

Sunset at 1:40 pm. #nofilter (unless you count a foggy window)

Our next destination was the top of the town hill to check out the view which apparently is stunning. This is a hill which they close when it snows so you can snowboard down it - how cool is that! We got about half way up and then all of a sudden the car stopped moving and the wheels started skidding on the icy gravel. You know when the wheels are skidding and the car kind of slides to the side a tiny bit? That happened. I looked out the window and saw that the ground dropped down a nice steep bank, as is common with hills. We tried to go forward a couple more times but the only change was that we began to smell burning from the tyres. The car was full of tension with nobody really saying much which even Adam noticed and he uttered an entirely appropriate "uh-oh". I politely suggested that, "Perhaps we should all get out of the car so it's a bit lighter?" but what I really meant was "OH CRAP EVERYBODY GET OUT OF THE CAR WHILE YOU STILL CAN". So the guys got out and we two mums stayed in with our kids and we rolled down the hill a hundred metres until the slope was more gradual and there was a spot to turn. We were never in any real danger but it was enough to give me the heebie jeebies.

The apartment's industrial laundry which got six loads of washing clean and dry in five hours flat. 

We finally got all of our clothes clean at once, had some delicious dinner and indulged in some more of that wonderful activity - packing. Here's a nice photo of Adam reading himself a book to end with.

A rare enough event to warrant photographing.

Härnösand Day One

We woke up wonderfully late to be greeted by a beautiful clear day and ice everywhere. Hisham's sister graciously prepared a tasty Syrian breakfast to fuel us for the activity of the afternoon: shopping!

The level of deliciousness has remained consistently high throughout our time staying here.

On the trip out to the shopping centre I was obtusely astonished to discover that the ice was everywhere. The roads, the medians, the fences, the houses, the trees, the grass, the paths: everything was completely frozen. We passed by a lake and it took me a while to realise that the reason the reflections of the trees in the water were kind of blurry was because I was actually looking at ice! I felt like perhaps I had walked through a wardrobe overnight. I tried and miserably failed to take photos of the all-encompassing ice so sadly this is the best of my attempts:

That photo was taken at 2:30 pm and as you can see the sun has well and truly gone down already. I guess it's not surprising though considering how far north Härnösand is:

It's on the same line as Greenland, which is always covered with ... you guessed it ... ice! I bet the Swedes are hanging out for the days to start getting longer in a couple of weeks. Anyway, we arrived at our destination just before 3pm and discovered where everybody was:

How cool is that reindeer?!

"Bishta" City; the local mall - only a 45 minute drive 'down the road' to the next town. It looked unsurprisingly (in hindsight) exactly like any other mall I've ever been in and even had some shops which were carbon copies of the NZ versions. Swedish Specsavers? Identical. Body Shop? Identical. It was a weird juxtaposition with my wardrobe experience from a few minutes ago.

So we shopped and we wandered and we browsed and we enjoyed the warmth and we got some sweet threads for the little dude and we took the boys to the playground and we headed out to a cafe and then I discovered I didn't have my bag. I tried to contain the panic while waiting for Hisham to catch up but soon found out that he didn't have it either and then we panicked together about both of our credit cards and all three passports. I walked as fast as I could back to the playground, holding out a shred of hope that it would be on the floor where I left it, but it was gone. My sister-in-law reassured me that Swedes are honest and I tried to remember my faith in humanity but it was almost swamped by the thoughts which were crowding my mind about how impossible it would be to replace our passports without ID or means of payment before our big expensive flights to the US in two days. And then we arrived at the information desk and, like the grand prize in a game show illuminated by flashing neon lights and dancing elves, there it was! I sobbed into Hisham's shoulder for way too long - I'm blaming that on jetlag - and offered up some prayers of eternal providence for the kind soul(s) who proved once again that good will always prevail.

Back at the casa we hung out, ate some tasty food, enjoyed each other's company and generally wound down from the day. Adam had a great time playing with his newest cousin in his fancy clothes and then we all slept the peaceful sleep of people with bags and passports and credit cards safely stored under their pillows.

Fancy new clothes from his aunty, and finally a warm hat and gloves!

Cousin time

Germany to Sweden

This was always going to be an intense day: One boat, three trains, three countries, seven people and nineteen hours. It all started so well with an easy wake up and everyone ready on time. The two carloads of people and luggage to the train station down the road and the return of the rental car were textbook smooth. The German pastry breakfast was delicious. The first train ride through German countryside to the ferry terminal was beautiful. The ride across the Baltic Sea was wonderfully wintry.

Thanks Sixt!

so cold

And then there we were, relaxing inside the ferry and enjoying the warmth. We knew we would be landing soon but somehow missed the announcements that it was time to be getting back on the train. I'm going to blame it on the fact that speakers on public transport always seem to be just quiet enough that if there's any noise around you then you miss all of the important words. So all of a sudden we realised that the ferry had stopped and an official guy was telling us to hurry. We RAN out to the door, down two flights of stairs: locked door!!, back up two flights of stairs, across the ship, down two more flights of stairs, and finally burst out a door to find the blessed train still there and the doors open. We hastily scrambled on and seconds later as we were still gasping and shaking from the stress and the rush, the doors closed and the train began to move.

The glorious sight of the train still on the boat

Our first transfer between trains was to happen in Copenhagen and we had only fifteen minutes. This may or may not seem like long to you, but for us who are used to travelling by plane it's a very very short time. Coupled with our experience on the ferry, we were all prepared to dash across the station to find our train in lightening-quick time. We moved like a well oiled machine: a solid ten minutes before we arrived we were all standing by the door with the bags we were responsible for and had a plan for getting to the next platform. Of course the transfer only took five minutes and we arrived to the train with no difficulties and with plenty of time to spare, but we weren't willing to take any chances that time.

As the trip progressed we slowly began to relax and enjoy the journey again and then after about an hour on the new train I realised it was getting dark outside. It was only 3pm but felt like 9 and we were still near the bottom of Sweden with many hours of travel ahead of us so we settled in and prepared for a long night.

The Sweden I saw through the train windows was comfortingly familiar after the dense population of mainland Europe. There were no more extensive apartment blocks but rather beautiful homes in their own patches of grass, and no major industrial areas but instead cute little towns and villages. Later in the evening as Adam and I were watching the houses whizzing past and enjoying their Christmas decorations it began to snow!

A really bad photo of the snow.

See? You can see it around the two street lights. And you can't tell in the photo but there's a light layer on the ground too. As we continued to travel further north the landscape became ghostly and the white gleam more and more encompassing. When the sky cleared everything had a blue hue from the light of the moon just like a painting. Sweden!

The worst thing about the train trip was that Hisham gets motion sickness really badly. By the time we arrived in Stockholm he was a wreck and needed some serious TLC. With sleep, food, hydration, and nausea pills he managed to make it onto our third and final train and stick out the last few hours to Härnösand.

Poor Hisham recovering in Stockholm Central's Burger King

As the clock struck 4am we fiiiinally arrived and trudged across the icy ground to the car. We bid a bleary welcome to Hisham's sister's house and then crashed into bed for a much needed sleep. 

Belgium to Germany

Our only task on this day was to get to Hamburg so we could catch our train to Sweden the following day. We estimated it would be about a six hour drive but I think I've made it clear enough that me and the GPS didn't always agree on where we were supposed to be going, and with intersections like this to navigate through, do you blame me?

There had been about three times on our Bruges trip that I made a wrong turn, and I did so again about three times on this morning too. The fourth time it happened I was 99% sure I was following the correct road coming out of an intersection but our beloved GPS told me I went the wrong way so considering the number of times I had been wrong (6/6), I followed the advice it gave me and turned back. This ended up being a seriously bad move and added 150kms and lots of gaaaah to our trip. Reviewing our route at the end of the day we couldn't believe nobody had noticed we were headed in such a different direction but at the time we were tired and just wanted to arrive so we faithfully followed the suggested route without zooming out to see the bigger picture. Something tells me there's a lesson to be learned here.

On the way we passed briefly through a corner of the Netherlands so hopped outside to say hi..

Adam waving hello to the Netherlands

Dutch soil!

..and I had great fun making the most of the Autobahn's excellent roads and lack of speed limits.

That's 170 folks, and there were people cruising past me at even more ridiculous speeds.

At one point we were on a bathroom break and it was freezing. One look down at the ground explained why:

hail!

The weather had been iffy all day but we hadn't passed through any hail storms. I've never seen ground cold enough for hail to stick around before so that was pretty exciting for me. Small things, I know.

Eventually we arrived to Hamburg and after having to go around the block three times because of missing the entrance to our hotel (don't ask me why. Tiredness? Random intersections?) we tumbled in and found our rooms. The hotel was really lovely and super cheap too at 140€ for six people - Hisham has discovered a gift for finding excellent deals on lastminute.com.

Delicious food right next door to our hotel

Hisham has an aunt, uncle and cousins living in Hamburg who were gracious enough to host us when we visited last year so after eating we loaded up the car and headed out to visit them for second dinner. It was very nice to see them again and spend some time catching up in the evening, but soon enough it was time to head back to the hotel to prepare for yet another travel day. To Sweden!