Please Mr.White Tiger, Don't Eat Me Up! - SWEDEN

Most of the people I know over here in Korea hopped on a plane for a few hours, found some small piece of island paradise a friend of a friend recommended, and spent their winter vacations languorously spread across a beach chair sipping $2 cocktails .... I did not.



I took a train from Busan to Seoul (3 hours) + bus to the airport (1 hour) + played in the Seoul airport (3 1/2 hours - this I didn't mind. I like airports) + flew to Paris (12 hours) + 2 hour layover ... CHEESE ...+ flew to Stockholm (2 hours)

I guess I should somewhat sheepishly acknowledge that my major in university was geography, and yes I am aware that flying to Paris in this situation was somewhat redundant as I was almost literally passing over Stockholm would just going to back track ... but my judgement was clouded by visions of wine and cheese dancing in my head.

... but eventually I made it ....


... and it was more than worth it ....





... in fact it was quite delicious. Let's start with the food.
Swedish breakfast.
It is already very sorely missed. The key to it is to have a man make this for you. They butter the flat bread in a way only a men can, with a reckless disregard for hips and thighs, paying attention only to ensuring that inappropriate sized globs of butter cling to all the bread's nooks and crannies.
You name it, we shake it. Brilliant.



Don't you want to nibble on his sausage? Just for reference 7 krona = a little more than 1,000 won = around 1$ CDN.
This little Italian restaurant near Pet Sounds had the most wonderful fennel salad and shared a secret with me, I might miss Toronto a little bit.

Question - Are muffins the new cupcakes? Because the enormous blueberry "shhheasecake" beast we feasted upon was amazing.
We spent an afternoon wandering around the modern art gallery. They had a Dali exhibit which was alright - I liked this video - but in general the museum wasn't quite as goood as their hot chocolate.

Stockholm only gets a few fleeting hours of sunlight a day, generally it is pitch dark by 4pm ... and it got chillier everyday I was there. So there aren't too many outdoor photos.

Back indoors I brought a little Korea to the Swedes. Gonggi is an ancient and popular Korean children's game that all my kids play between and during classes. I brought over a set for each of the boys. It was a hit. The wolves make it look so easy ... me and the blondes soon learned it wasn't.

On New Year's Eve we headed over to Oscar and Ailyn's for dinner. Oscar is pretty much allergic to the world which isn't such a terrible thing when you come over for dinner because he'll make you 3 kinds of meats (chorizo, steak, and chicken), loads of gravy, salad with healthy amounts of avocado, and then for dessert you get Marängsviss.

After dinner we returned to the city all the while sipping on mini bottles of Jägermeister which we proceeded to lovingly place at special locations along the way ...

Eventually we found ourselves at one of her favourite places. It was a beautiful bar, filled with beautiful people, and decadent cocktails. I felt a little shy about bringing the camera out ... which in retrospect was ridiculous because despite all its beauty, most of the beautiful people in the bar looked so bored ... but not us. I couldn't stop smiling. We giggled in our chairs and drank our drinks and when midnight came around we were standing on those chairs and we kissed, and it was wonderful.

And just like that it was almost time for me to go... but first .... more food ....

I am Canadian.

I can build a fire.

I am quite proud of this.

Me: We should make smores and drink glögg.

Linus: Smores?

Me: Right. We need to buy marshmellows immediately.

So we made smores ... Gingerbread, with dark mint chocolate smores.




They were delicious .. and then it was time to go.

Puss puss.

Ps. Mary Flynn - I'm sorry I went without you. Next time?