Regional School Chess Championship

The last of March was a day filled with things to do, planning for May 5th. However, we were also able to go to "The Blue Hall" inside the Stockholm City Hall - where the Nobel banquet is being held every year - to cheer for Tara's students in the Regional Chess Finals for 4th graders. The English School had two teams in the finals - and they ended up receiving the gold and silver medals! So now both their teams are off to the Swedish Chess Nationals in Västerås, next month.

Another grand view of the Blue Hall, packed with young chess enthusiasts.

Tara and Joakim also toured the City Hall to view the other ball rooms. The pictures below (click to enlarge) are from The Golden Room, where the walls are decorated with 18 million golden mosaic pieces.

Swedish wedding registry

A registry (bröllopslista) can be found at the Swedish Cervera stores.

For guests from Sweden: The easiest way to find out more about the registry is to just walk into a Cervera store near you and give them our names and wedding date.

For international guests: If you would like to take part in the Swedish registry we advise you to get in touch with the toastmaster.

Any further questions - including login-key and password to our personal page at the Cervera online website - will be answered by the toastmaster Martin Nilsson. He can be reached at: idaochmartin[at]telia.com.

Happy 30th Birthday!!!

Tara turned 30 today! We have been forced to take it a little bit easy though, since Tara has caught something from school and has been staying at home. The pink Champagne that Joakim gave her will probably be used sometime in the near future...

Update March 24th:

Joakim's parents treated everybody to a wonderful dinner at Fem Små Hus in the Old Town of Stockholm to celebrate Tara turning 30 on March 22 (which, interestingly enough, was the same day Joakim's dad turned 59). The table is decorated with the Star Spangled Banner and the Swedish flag in honor of a cosmopolitan girl getting older.

Most of us around the table had very tender caribou filet with a black currant sauce. We finished off the meal with a cloudberry icecream dessert.

And more pink Champagne ... (this bottle was a gift from Martin and Ida) Tara is seen wearing a Swedish birthday wreath.

Some pictures from the restaurant cellar:

Chess for kids

Tara went to cheer for her kids at the "Schackfyran" Chess tournament for fourth graders. It was held in the Stockholm Globen arena (picture below) - just a few metro stops from our place on Söder. There is something quite appealing in the sight of a conference hall, packed with 10-year-olds eager to take on intellectual challenge over a board. Everything went well during the tournament and now it's on to the next round!


Update: Some more photos from the event. (Click to enlarge.)

Long day's journey into night

Tara today went to her first play, entirely in Swedish, at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, (more info here) in Stockholm. Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night (Lång dags färd mot natt) was performed by some of Sweden's best actors (Börje Ahlstedt (who appeared in this old classic!) , Lena Endre, Jonas Karlsson and Jonas Malmsjö).
For the trivia-buff, it should be noted that O'Neill's play had its world premiere on this very stage.
The Royal Dramatic Theatre is a very impressive building, both the interior and exterior. However, the set on the stage was anything but inviting; just a table, four chairs, a whiskey bottle, a couple of glasses, and a long grey, transparent curtain with a pillar of light in the backdrop. After almost four hours of anxiety, grief, loathing, drug abuse and misery, Mrs Mary Tyrone was finally able to get back into her long-awaited, abysmal darkness again.

La Traviata at the Royal Opera

Tara and Joakim decided to have a combined celebration of Valentine's Day (14th) and Joakim's birthday (16th) today, on the 15th of February.
Tara treated Joakim to a wonderful dinner at Cafe Milano, and later we walked across the park to Stockholm's Royal Opera where we enjoyed La Traviata.

Stockholm here we come!

We just moved here!
Stockholm, Sweden, Europe.

We just moved to the south side ("Söder") of the inner part ("innanför tullarna") of the city: In the trendy part called SoFo, with lots of restaurants, clubs, shopping streets and other activites (hot tubbing outdoors is cool this time of year!). It is pretty snowy and cold right now, and the open water around the city has turned to ice (perfect for open sea ice-skating!) but it will be even more beautiful when spring comes.

Movin', movin', movin'

It is cold in Sweden in January! Tara is posing in front of the ruins of Brahehus castle, near the town of Gränna. (The castle was erected in 1640 by Per Brahe Jr. and destroyed by fire in 1708.)

"On the road again
Just can't wait to get on the road again
The life I love is makin' music with my friends
And I can't wait to get on the road again"

"On the road again
Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway
We're the best of friends
Insisting that the world be turnin' our way"

Joakim is filling up some diesel for our moving truck. It was a cold and snowy weekend, and after being caught in a snowstorm up on the highlands of Småland, we had to find shelter for the night at a remote little motel. Needless to say, our truck got very dirty and we must have used at least 5 gallons of windshield wiper fluid during our trip between Lund and Stockholm!

All our furniture is in the back of this truck...

Christmas cats

Our cats Wittgenstein and Nietzsche enjoyed the holidays in their best attire - green bowties!







They had lots of candy and toys to keep them occupied, ... and they also did some drugs. To scare them straight we usually show them the following pictures and messages:



This is your brain. .... and ............... This is your brain on cat nip.

Merry Christmas!

From all of us, to all of you a very Merry Christmas!

God Jul!

Our very own little Christmas tree, decorated on Christmas Eve! (Joakim made the nativity scene up on the top shelf all by himself, out of things Tara brougt home from school!) On top of the bookcase you can also see Frosty, the singing snowman, which we got from Mommom and Poppop last year.

Tara ready to eat. Our Swedish "julbord" (a Christmas version of the traditional "smörgåsbord") is set with six types of herring, eggs, Janson's temptation, smoked salmon, salmon caviar, Kalles caviar, meatballs, 4 pounds of freshly cooked ham, "small" sausages, caribou sausage, cold smoked sausage, pumpernickel bread, Chrismas cheese, Mimosa sallad, red beat sallad, Christmas pudding, strong Skåne mustard. All this food was appreciated together with German Weissbier and Swedish sweet porter drink "svagdricka", and of course Gammeldansk snaps!

Julbord in Copenhagen

Herring, herring, herring. Prints from Nyhavn's Faergekro where we enjoyed a Christmas table (julbord) full of herring and some Gammeldansk - Danish Snaps!

Christmas market in Copenhagen

At The Tivoli Garden in Copenhagen we experienced some traditional Christmas shopping. Although it was hard to get those true holiday feelings going when the quicksilver would not drop below freezing point it was still a very picturesque little trip.

We started off the day by having a smörgåsbord lunch with mostly just herring and other kinds of fish down in Nyhavn's Faergekro.


Since it was Joakim's mother's Birthday we had to give her a call which we did just after lunch!
In the picture below Tara is posing along the scating rink outside of Hotel d'Angleterre on Kongens Nytorv in central Copenhagen.


After this little stop we walked along the boutiques in Magasin du Nord and on Ströget to reach Tivoli where we spent most of the evening in the wonderfully lit-up garden. Although we did not suffer from frost bites it was still pretty cold during night time and we thought it best to warm ourselves with some glögg, glühwein and Irish coffee.

Swan Lake

As a little Christmas present to us both, we visited the main stage at Copenhagen's Opera House to see the ballet of Swan Lake.

We were able to get seats on the third balcony which put us high up, almost by the ceiling. The view was great from up here, though the lack of oxygen made it a little tough to be totally focused on the performance before we were able to get coffee during the intermission.
The opening was memorable because a technical error with the stage curtain forced the orchestra to re-start the intro!
While impressed with the entire play Tara preferred the individual dances in Act II while Joakim liked the swan lake scene in Act I the most.


To the left: a view of the interior of the hyper-modern opera house. With a sold out performance, like so many other nights, the atmosphere in the main stage hall gets almost intimate. With that being said, the ambiance of the main stage hall is clearly hyper-modern, although you would hope for just a little bit more leg room up on the steep sloping balconies where tickets go for $150 a piece.

In direct contrast to the newly built main stage is the (old) Royal Opera House at Kongens Nytorv, where we went earlier this year to see a performance of the ballet Romeo and Juliet. This stage is spectacular in all its gold leaf decorations, with warm velvet tapestry and seatings. If you are a little bit conservative in this area, about how an opera house is supposed to look, it is understandable if you prefer the old stage. (Click to enlarge and get a better view of the stages!)



As we left the opera house that evening, we could see the entrance from the the opposing side of the harbor (by the Royal Palace). Of course, a photo can hardly capture the impression one gets in real life of this remarkable building.

Leaving home

Ready to go. Nietzsche and Wittgenstein are sharing the space in one of the cat carrier with eyes that seem to say: "Are we leaving soon?"


Living the easy life. Nietzsche relaxing in his favorite armchair.







To the right: Wittgenstein stretching after a big meal.

Yes, the family is soon about to move to Stockholm. We still haven't signed the contract yet, but hope that the cats will enjoy the new apartment.

The Sign

Fifty years ago, the Lund university student music orchestra Bleckhornen was born in the laundry room of our apartment house in Lund. (If one would like to trust what was being said to us today, the reason for this odd rehearsal place was that noone else wanted to let them practice in their house...) To commemorate their initial home ground, and to honor the sign on the wall of the house (which reads "Bleckhornen was born here in 1956") the music orchestra today played a tribute concert for the house (while polishing the sign fervently)! Some of them seemed genuinely honored to be able to meet with some of us who live on this sacred ground.