We arrived in Huskvarna after spending one full 24 hour day travelling from Frankfurt to Copenhagen. Our stay in Copenhagen was great...it was a good thing we had booked a place to stay in advance there after all of the travelling we had to do with about 170 kilos of luggage between us. Copenhagen was gorgeous. People biked abosolutely everywhere, and somehow many bikes were unlocked and yet they sat on the street... Very strange. The buildings were brightly coloured And the town was filled with beautiful waterways. We had to indulge in some carlsberg, which did manage to taste even better than usual. it was pretty astounding to see how beautiful Danish women are. Fashion is clearly high on the agenda here, and they can pull off some things I couldn't have imagined people wearing, but they do it so well. Getting used to the breakfasts in scandanavia in general has been a bit of a challenge. Eggs everywhere... On salads, on their own, even in fancy entrees at restaurants. Pickles and cucumbers are also a popular treat at breakfast. Mostly we get meat and cheese and pickles. Overall people have really gone out of their way to help us and be friendly.
One of the neatest parts of our trip from Denmark to Sweden was the trip across the bridge between copenhagen and Malmo. For part of the journey you are completely underwater in a tunnel. The Danish and swedish landscape were gorgeous to watch out of the train window. For the most part we saw lush flat farmland, with a nice mix of trees (I was worried it would be rocky with coniferous trees like the Canadian north). During part of our train ride to huskvarna Dan and I had fallen asleep and we woke up to our train having driven on to a ferry. We were quite distraught as we couldn't understand where everyone was going and why it was dark. When we came to and realized what had happened we were on a lovely trip (we think across the north sea?)
we have been so lucky in the way that lierally everyone here known english. At the same time, we can see how hard we will have to work to learn Swedish because of that. On a food note swedes love to help you to pronounce Swedish words and they are incredibly friendly and patient with any questions we ask about their language.
Perhaps the most exciting days so far we spent in Huskvarna seeing the place that is now our new home. It is quite small ... About 15000 people (the same as cobourg!!) but the city centre jonkoping (for those of you who know the same distance from cobourg to grafton ) is about 120 000 people and has a whole lot going on. Huskvarna is a town that is almost 100 years old. The main industry there is building machinery like lawnmowers, chainsaws and sewing machines. There also seem to be enough factories and quite a bit of logging. Huskvarna is in a valley, so some people live on either of the two mountains, and some people live down in the valley. Many of the houses are made from red sides which makes them look very quaint and cute. It has a very rural look to it, but only some people have a very large property, usually a large private plot along the vattern (a salt water lake that formed from a melted glacier). The people are all proud to tell us, especially once they hear we are Canadian, that they host the best hockey team in Sweden.
The other best part has been seeing the school and meeting one of my new colleagues at IES. The building is coming along so well (it is a renovated factory) and the staff member I met has been just wonderful and so welcoming. We are now in Stockholm heading on a trip to Italy France and Spain (more on that later) but are really looking forward to seeing our new pad in huskvarna.
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