Our Staff In Sweden: Grace Taylor Part 1

Hi all! 

For those of you who have not met me, my name is Grace Taylor and I am the Librarian at Gammelgården as well as the Food, Membership, and Youth Programming coordinator. I am currently in Sweden visiting my long-term boyfriend (Calle). He was born and raised in Sweden, and we met online through common interest and have been dating for almost two years now. This is now my third time coming to Sweden and I will be sharing some of my current adventures and sights and some I have gotten to do and see in the past too! 

Day 1: 

My flight from Minneapolis left around 7:00 pm (30 minutes early woohoo!!!) and from there it was a five-and-a-half-hour flight to Reykjavík, Iceland. The flight was smooth, but sadly I struggled to get comfortable and sleep on the plane. Not sleeping on planes is normal for me, so luckily, I was prepared for the lack of sleep ahead of me. We landed around 6:00 am in Iceland which was 1:00 am CST back home. The layover in Iceland is always short, but the airport is small, and security goes quickly. The first time I experienced the layover I was so worried about missing my flight, but by now I knew to expect the short turnaround. 

The flight to Sweden from Iceland is short in comparison (three and a half hours), but to me can often feel long because I have spent so much time sitting, in addition to the anticipation I feel about getting to my destination. This flight was great, and I was so excited to land. The Arlanda Airport is outside of Stockholm, much like our airport in Minnesota. One really nice thing they have is the Arlanda Express, a high-speed train that goes directly from the airport to Stockholm’s Central Station. 

Upon arriving I was very tired and hungry because of the short time between flights. One tradition we have started is that once I get off the train we head to Max, which is the closest fast-food restaurant to the station. Max is similar to McDonalds but in my opinion way better and has more options. Sweden also has McDonalds (which I have tried in the past) but I personally prefer Max. That night we went to a Sushi place for dinner and afterwards went home. By the end of the day I had been awake for about 24 hours and was ready for some serious sleep!

 

Day 2: 

The following day we had a slow morning, and I slept in quite a bit. Calle did some work on his master’s thesis that morning while I slept, and by the afternoon we were both ready to get out of the apartment. We walked down to the local grocery store and grabbed two ice cream treats before taking a short walk along the water on the island. On our walk around the island, we found a fun named street that reminded me of our museum! It was called Gammelgårdsvägen. Vägen means “The street” so this translates fully to “The old farm street.” A fun sight and a reminder of home!

Gammelgårdsvägen road sign

Day 3:

Today we went to a cafe that also has a large garden. The garden has both flowers and vegetables. We sat in a dome-shaped metal trellis covered in roses. The flowers had stopped blooming this time of year, but the greenery was so beautiful! We had two coffees and a chocolate zucchini cake with a small lemon glaze on it.

Day 4: 

This was a day of staying in and enjoying the day. We did a lot of cooking, and I finally remembered to take a picture of what we might eat on a given morning. Normally we make coffee at home but stopped by the store to grab some ingredients for dinner and grabbed fruit at the store, and coffee at the cafe next door. The pastry is not always common too, but we had bought some day olds the prior day and needed to eat them before they went stale. The open-faced sandwiches are called sandwiches here. I continue to remind Calle that sandwiches typically include two pieces of bread, and we have this debate jokingly often. These ones are white bread with butter and cheese. Sometimes you can add cucumber slices or ham.

Day 6: 

We stayed overnight in Södertälje and went to a popular local science museum in the morning. The museum is called Tom Tits Museum, and it features a lot of hands-on science experiments that are designed to be fun for all members of a family. In comparison to museums we have in Minnesota, it felt a lot like the Science Museum in St. Paul. We went to a show about bubbles and also played with experiments that related to forces in physics and the senses. 

That evening we headed to a comedy show in Stockholm. The comedian is a man named Al Pitcher, he is from New Zealand and moved to Sweden after starting a relationship with his now wife. His show was in English and centered around Swedish cultural norms from an outsider’s perspective. It was amazing and I was laughing all night long!

 

Day 7: 

This morning, we woke up and Calle’s mom picked us up and brought us to Kungsör, a smaller town on Lake Mälaren outside of Stockholm that his parents now live in. We planned for Calle and me to switch places with them and spend some time in the countryside with the family dog Maya, while they enjoyed city life in Stockholm for a while. That evening we relaxed and caught up with his parents while watching TV and playing games.

Day 8-10:

The next couple days we lived a slow life and it was wonderful! There was frequent on and off rain so we spent most of it inside with daily walks for Maya. Here are some pictures of some breakfast on the back porch overlooking the lake and plenty of pictures of Maya enjoying time outside. We made chokladbiskvi, commonly just called biskvi, which is both of our favorite Swedish pastries. It took a long time but was so rewarding! I will include a recipe for you all below but be warned it is complicated and lengthy in time, but despite this I think it was still worth it. 

We went to a nearby spot for lunch one day and got räcksmorgås, which translated to Shrimp Sandwich. We picked it up from a cafe called Himmelberga Hembakt. The building is beautiful and has a historic feel to it, and rightfully so! The original building, and some of the remaining stonework on the property is from the time of Gustav Vasa’s reign in Sweden back in the 1500s.

Himmelberga Hembakt

Fika with biskvi