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.

Sightseeing and barn sale

(Holiday ro-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ad, holiday ro-o-o-o-o-ad!)

One week in New Jersey made it possible for us to do a little bit of everything.
We had donuts and watched a score of football games. Aaah! How we have missed college football!
Joakim got his Miller Lite beer (?) to make the experience complete.

During the days before Thanksgiving we went on a road trip to the Amish country up in Lancaster county, Pa. Pop-pop acted as the backseat driver with the cookies by his side.

After a while, horse and buggy scenes became more common which slowed down the traffic considerably. The landscape in Pennsylvania resembles the countryside in southern Sweden.
Since we live in politically correct Sweden and are well aware of the debate over the Kyoto protocol we think that the Amish way of fighting climate change is a pretty neat solution. When we visited the cute little town with the unfortunate name Intercourse (!) we saw buggies parked outside houses in town. The only bi-product of these vehicles is manure (and that's good for the farmers' soil).

On thanksgiving day we spotted this turkey that was going to be spared this year. He belonged to some neighbors and seemed to be more like a household pet than a walking future meal.


The day after Thanksgiving we teamed up with Tara's parents and her brother and hosted a barn sale with things from Tara's Mom-mom and Pop-pop.

Although it had been grey and pretty dull weather the day before, things seemed to clear up during the Friday and there were quite a lot of people that showed up as the garage doors were opened.





To the right is the back side of the house in New Jersey.







This house would be a perfect backdrop for a horror movie, according to Joakim! Cape May, New Jersey - it is hard to grasp that this was once a bustling coastal community and the oyster capital of the US.

Thanksgiving

The Angelo/Gibson clan gathered around the turkey dinner in Cape May, NJ. Tara and Joakim flew in from Sweden. Tara's dad took a flight from New Mexico and her mother had a three day drive up from Texas. But we all made it there on time!

Allah al akhbar!!!

Our latest asset in the household- an Azan "call to prayer" alarm clock! Tara's generous employer whose kid she is tudoring recently went to Oman. And what better gift to give your kid's teacher than an alarm clock (especially since Joakim is such a heavy sleeper)?
Our version looks just like the one above, except ours is painted in a tasty lime-green shade.
In the morning the clock screams (!!!) out several different chants on the lines of "Allah al akhbar". Yep, after a while you have to agree that he truly is great... great enough to get you out of bed. (You can also set the alarm to call out evening prayers.)
Did somebody mention the word kitsch?

Mårten Gås

We went up to the summer cottage in Båstad to celebrate St. Marten "Goose" Day, on the 4th of November, which is one week too early since "Mårten" is supposed to be honored on the 11th of the said month.
Martin and Ida came down from Stockholm, and Joakim's grandmother and grandfather as well as his maternal grandmother also took part. Since Joakim's mother seems to have something against geese (she was chased by one when she was little) we had duck instead.

Halloween in Sweden

Outside of our house the Jack O'Lantern was grinning.

Inside, we were celebrating a 3 year anniversary since our first date.

Oktoberfest, part II

"The hills are alive, with the Sound of Music..." Tara is sporting her new Heidelberg look with her neatly arranged hair. The second day of our Oktoberfest celebration went on in the same fashion as day one - with plenty of Weissbier! In true Bavarian drinking style, Tara's glass holds 1/4 gallon of pure wheat beer!

Our drinkin songs of the day included some traditional German songs, like:

"Trink, trink Brüderlein trink,
laß doch die Sorgen zu Haus.
Trink, trink Brüderlein trink,
zieh doch die Stirn nicht so kraus.
Meide den Kummer und meide den Schmerz,

dann ist das Leben ein Scherz."


"99 bottles of beer on the wall..." Tara behind some of the brands we tried. After two days of beer testing we have now gone through 1,2 gallons of beer. And we feel a little bit bloated!

Two beer not two beer - that is the question. It's going to take a while before we can muster another drop of beer again.

Oktoberfest!

(Kim with his liter glass of Franziskaner Weissbier.)

Yes!!! It is Oktoberfest in Bavaria - the mayor of Münich just recently anounced the party for open, and we thought we should celebrate this too (especially since Tara has German ancestors although we haven't been able to trace them yet).

The Oktoberfest - a way to celebrate the harvest - consists of drinking pure wheat beer (Weissbier) brewed according to the old German reinheitsgebot (purity law). Three main versions are available and we only bought hefe (the unfiltered kind) and the dunkel (the dark brew). In the pic above, you can compare the looks of the kristallklar (filtered) and the hefe (unfiltered) wheat beer.

Our impression is that this year's production is very good - or so we thought after tonight's drinking of half a gallon of beer...
Tara said that this is probably the best beer she has ever tasted and pointed out that the sweetness of weissbier makes it easy to drink although it is very (!!!) filling.

Franziskaner Weissbier (the name stems from that it used to be an old monestary brewery) - now a part of the Spaten brewery was today's selection.
To get the German feeling going we had sausages and eggs with it - and it went just fine together.


Tomorrow we are going to try this year's production of Erdinger Weissbier with sauerkraut and bratwurst (sour cole slaw and hot dogs) and on Sunday we will go through our stock of the Weihenstephan weissbier (which by the way is the oldest brewery in the world - founded in 1040).
On Monday we will start working out ...