Random stuff

About twenty-seven more hours until we head out. I'll go in to work super-early tomorrow morning, to get a few more things done and to start adjusting to the new time zone (6 hours ahead). I'll head home early and we'll leave for the airport (by way of the kennel) around noon, for a ~5:30 flight.

We got about 80% of everything packed last night. Sarah is taking tomorrow morning off from work, so we're doing good as far as packing and stuff goes.

You probably won't see any more updates here until we're sitting pretty in Stockholm with our mouths full of herring (ooh, note to self: take a "Sarah with mouth full of herring" picture). That'll be later in the day on Saturday, probably.

Wrapping up & packing up

We're heading for the airport around noon on Friday, so we have roughly two more business days to wrap things up at work. It's not too bad. Sarah's on top of all her stuff, so no sweat there. I need set up just a couple more things to keep working without me (so as to avoid the much-dreaded "emergency phone call while on vacation"). Almost there.

Also, we'll probably take our first crack at packing things tonight. We have some decent packing lists set up, so it's not really a "what should we take" question (we've tackled that issue already). The challenge now is just to see how conveniently we can pack it, especially taking the latest luggage restrictions into account. It shouldn't be much of a challenge: Sarah is a seasoned traveler, and I love to pack things (a purely genetic thing inherited from my Dad; Mom calls him the "master packer" or something like that).

Field research

In our never-ending quest to be 100% integrated into Swedish culture before actually setting foot there, we conducted a little field research today by visiting our local Swedish embassy, IKEA. Mostly we were there just to eat some pseudo-Swedish food, to start getting ourselves used to it. We also took the opportunity to look for some sort of dining room cabinet / kitchen appliance storage solution.

I got the chance to try some cloudberries, in the form of some preserves that IKEA sells in their "Swede Shop" thing. Apparently it's an acquired taste; it's a bit funky-smelling, and there are these gargantuan seeds that threaten to stick between your teeth. Oh well. I'm guessing that all the sugar and stuff in the preserves threw things off a bit, too.

For "fluff books" with which to fill the shelves of their bookshelf floor models, IKEA uses gobs of old Swedish-language books (children's books, atlases, novels, and textbooks) that they must have purchased on discount, by the thousands (around twenty identical copies of any one title were sitting together on any one shelf). We weren't there long enough for me to actually plop in a sofa and try to fumble through one of them (and I don't really read Swedish that well yet anyway), but it was an interesting idea.

Study materials

Before they let you into Sweden, they make you answer some test questions, such as "What's the best place to buy socks in Jönköping?" and "Count to seventy-two in Swedish." So we're studying pretty hard.

What this is

Sarah and I are planning a trip to Sweden, departing on September 29 and returning on October 11.

Among other things, we're going to try to take a fair number of photographs. Since I've just about had it trying to get my old photo site to work (okay, I haven't been trying that hard), I figured I'd follow in the footsteps of my big sister and give this Blogger thing a shot (especially because it apparently makes photo-sharing pretty easy).

Note that this doesn't replace my regular updates thing (yet).

More about the trip
This trip to Sweden is Sarah's idea, originally. About a month ago, I was messing around with the Wikipedia article for The Real Group (a really good a cappella quintet from Sweden), and Sarah got a flash of inspiration and, sneak-like, spent about two hours planning out a surprise trip to go see them in concert in Sweden (because the group hardly every tours in the U.S.).

Aside from being an outlet for our modest Real Group fandom, this is also a chance for us to have a real vacation, and in Europe even (Sarah has really enjoyed previous travels in Europe, but I've never been there). And, as an added bonus, this will definitely be the furthest north that either of us have been (Sweden's latitudes are roughly comparable to Alaska's). We're going to skip the whole "day trip to the Arctic Circle" thing, though.

We have at least a passing interest in Sweden itself. I've been learning some Swedish (just a very little bit), so it'll be interesting to get some firsthand exposure (even though most everyone there is fluent in English). And, as we read more about the people of Sweden, they sound like our kind of folks (minus the whole socialist welfare state thing and the "play it safe / entrepeneurism = bad" attitude). Reality will certainly be somewhat different, but we're anticipating good things.

I've even harbored a couple of wild thoughts in the back of my head that maybe we're being called to be missionaries to Sweden or something, but that's purely imaginary at this point. Another "wait and see" sort of thing.

So, yep, we'll see how things go, and hopefully we'll share some nice photographs with you along the way (we may even upload them during our trip). While we're over there, I may still be contactable by cell phone, so feel free to give that a shot.

Travel plans
Without giving too many specifics, we'll fly into Stockholm (via Frankfurt, Germany), spend a few days there, drive a rented car down to Lund (possibly taking a day or two along the southeastern coast), catch some concerts, drive back up to Stockholm (possibly stopping along lake Vättern), spend a couple more days in the city, and then fly back. All of this will be interspersed with plenty of sleeping in late, wandering around trying to read street signs, and general gadding about.