This year Mr. T and I are delving into California history. With a few other families, we’re visiting a different historical site each month. We’ve already had a few wonderful experiences, which I’ve neglected to share here.  One of these days I’ll catch up.

Meanwhile, this week we went on an overnight living history trip to Fort Ross, on the California coast.

It was an amazing adventure.

Fort Ross was established by Russia during the early 19^th century, as a site for growing food for Russian outposts in Alaska, and a place for hunting otter for the fur trade. The Russian-American Company that developed at Fort Ross was an interesting mix of Russians, native Alaskans and natives from California’s Kashaya Pomo and Coast Miwok tribes.

For the trip, each of us took on the persona of an actual person who once lived at Fort Ross.

Mr. T became Kirill Timofeevich Khlebnikov, an accountant for the Fort Ross Company who kept records of everything from how much employees were being paid to how often the cannons were unlawfully fired. T was part of the militia group on our trip, which meant he got to learn about weapons and help shoot a cannon. He’d be happy to tell you what an 1812 Charleville smoothbore flintlock muzzle-loading musket is. He learned how to follow Russian military commands, how to make rope and how to keep a fire going. He also washed a lot of dishes, something he never seems able to do at home.

I was Paraskov’ia Kulika, a half-native, half-Russian (or Creole) woman who married a Russian. After her husband died, Paraskov’ia worked off his debts by serving as a cowherd for the company. During the trip I served as a cook, which was a whole lot of work involving a whole lot of beets.  (Borscht, anyone?)

The coastal site was stunning. The quality of light–an otherworldly mix of sun and fog—made the whole experience seem a little magical, as if we really had stepped into an earlier world.

Portraying real people, and visiting their cemetery especially, connected us to the people who once lived there in a way that we surely wouldn’t have felt by simply visiting as tourists. The whole experience was powerful.

When I talk to H and Lulu about their childhoods as homeschoolers, it seems like our living history experiences are some of their favorite memories. There’s something about leaving behind real life for a day or two, and living as someone else, that transports and transforms you.

It’s an unforgettable experience.

I’ve been a little distracted lately.

By Mexican palms and Mayan ruins.

By coconuts.

And cenotes.

The slightly loco part of all of this is that we flew to Mexico the same day that I gave my second homeschooling conference workshop. Which meant that the week before was a mash-up of preparing PowerPoint slides and buying sunscreen and Pepto Bismol.

I’d barely finished shutting down the projector after that workshop, when I found myself racing home to pack a bigger suitcase.

Which was exciting, but a little sad too. I’d put so much time into planning those workshops; it seemed a shame not to stop and ponder how they went.

So I’m pondering now. Basking actually. It’s such a buzz to be able to share ideas that I’ve been percolating and poking at for months with real people. (People who are stuck in a room with me for an hour and fifteen minutes and who can’t leave without looking rude, I should mention.) It’s a thrill to get people worked up about writing and their kids and their kids’ quirky interests.

I love it when a workshop participant nods along to something I’ve said. When another approaches me after a workshop to share her own family’s writing story. When a whole group moans and marvels after doing this exercise to see what it’s like to be a beginning writer.

(If any of you workshop attendees have stopped by, I hope you’ll leave a comment and say hello!)

So in the post-vacation glow (read: ocean of emails that demand my response), I’m thinking about how to keep a little of that workshop excitement going. Happily, I’ll be offering the workshops to some other homeschooling groups in the next few months. But I’m also trying to figure out how to share more of what I’m working on here, so I don’t feel stuck alone in my brain quite so often.

Today I’m going to make myself a pitcher of agua de jamaica, and think about some changes I’d like to make on this blog. (Inspired in part by a long conversation with my dear friend Emily, who designs websites for writers.)

I’m also going to finish unpacking my suitcase, winnow down my Mexico photos, and try to get the ants out of my beehive.

I’ll try not to get too distracted.

We’d talked about going to China as a family last summer, before H went off to college. Our friend, Mike–buddy since high school, best man at our wedding–and his wife Erin and their kids have been living in Shanghai for five years now, and we’ve played with the idea of visiting them ever since. So last year we planned a grand trip to Asia, with stops in China, Thailand, maybe even Cambodia. But after researching costs–high!–and considering that a family of five might be a bit much as house guests, we scrapped the idea and headed to Scandinavia and Germany instead.

But Chris couldn’t get the idea of China out of his mind. When another college friend moved to Beijing with his family last year, the opportunity seemed too good to pass up. One Friday night, over pizza and a bottle of wine, Chris floated the idea of taking a short trip in the spring, just the two of us and Mr. T. Both families in China have kids close to T’s age, which would make it fun for him–plus he’s always been the easiest traveler in the family. H is off at college, and Lulu would have school and drama rehearsals, and probably wouldn’t relish vacationing with so many little kids. We got her (slightly reluctant) blessing, and bought plane tickets. (She stayed home with the help of four loving grandparents and some wonderful neighbors.)

And suddenly we were off for ten days in China.

When it comes to travel, I’m usually the Research Queen. I find snazzy apartments for us to stay in; I make grids of when museums are open; I find and we read every kid book available on the location and the history of the place; and–most importantly!–I study up on the local foods and search out the best restaurants in every neighborhood we’ll visit. This trip was different. We did a little reading and film-watching ahead of time, but not much else. We’d be staying with locals and we decided to just go and let the trip unfold.

Sometimes that’s the best way to travel. When you have no expectations, you are bound to be delighted.

And delighted we were. A few of the highlights:

the people: Although we couldn’t communicate in words with most, the Chinese were lovely.

The old ladies worried when the kids weren’t wearing sweaters or socks. (Erin speaks Mandarin. At the park one day, a woman pointed to Erin’s sock-less five-year-old and said the word sock in two different dialects and then said, in Mandarin, Get some!) Chinese men stopped to help us when we were lost, and one serenaded the kids with his heavily-accented version of You Are My Sunshine.

If you could get past the constant spitting on the street (Chris started rating loogie-hocking on a 1-10 scale), the people were more genial than we’d expected.

the food: Yes, there were the oddities that we’d heard about. A Hunan hot pot restaurant featured chopped bullfrog, sheep’s testicles and something described on the menu as Insect Story–a grand platter of grubs, worms and bugs to cook in the simmering broth.

A snack street in Beijing had scorpions still alive and wriggling on a stick, just waiting for a dip in the deep fryer.

We managed to steer clear of all that, with the help of our local Mandarin-speaking friends, and ate quite well. Delicious noodles with gingery sauces, beautifully prepared veggies, and all manner of dumplings and steamed buns. I learned to make potstickers from Mike and Erin’s ayi (house helper)!

Some of my favorite eats were the street food breakfast crepes called jian bing. They’re large crepes topped with egg, spicy sauce, herbs and green onions, pickled veggies and folded around an unexpected fried wonton-type cracker. Sizzling hot, crisp, fresh and so tasty! The best were from a wet market in Shanghai; they were so good that Erin and I went back a second day in a row, taking a taxi just to buy a bunch more and bring them back to the house.

the ex-pat life: What an interesting lifestyle! Both Mike and our friend Paul in Beijing work for American and European companies. They live in compounds full of Americans and other foreigners; their kids attend international schools—and learn Mandarin, of course. The kids play soccer in leagues, and act in school plays. Ex-pat families can shop at international groceries that carry everything from Annie’s Mac and Cheese to Kettle chips. Eating dinner at Mike and Erin’s house the first night, we felt like we were at their old house in Portland, Oregon. Their home is hip and beautiful–Mike’s a designer–and full of quirky touches like this one:

(PVG is the airport in Shanghai; PDX the one in Portland.)

The kids scooter and bike around the compound; neighbor kids drop by for pizza and a jump on the trampoline. So there we were, feeling very Portlandish one night, only to leave the compound the next day to the completely foreign world of Shanghai! What a way to grow up: on the one hand, the kids live in a foreign country and are immersed in that new language and culture, while at the same time they’re able to hold on to the culture of their home country.  It’s such an alternative, fascinating life, and I couldn’t really fathom it until I’d seen it myself.

the scope of Shanghai: Comparing the skyscrapers in my local San Francisco to the skyscrapers of Shanghai is a giggle. San Francisco has a skyline, sure: a few dozen tall buildings clustered mostly in the Financial District. Take that cluster and multiply it by…what? Five hundred? A thousand? In Shanghai, the tall, crammed-in buildings go on for miles and miles. Driving through, it looks less than real, like some CGI rendition of a city in a futuristic film. The population of Shanghai is 22 million (according to wikipedia) so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Beijing has a similar population, but it’s more spread out, and the buildings generally aren’t as tall. We went to the top of the World Financial Center in Shanghai, which, at 101 floors, is the tallest observation deck in the world. It had glass floors so you could see down to the roads below. Generally heights make my knees go all noodle-like, but we were so high that it didn’t even seem real. Like the view of Shanghai in general.

the Great Wall: When I told people we were going to China, a good handful said that walking the Wall was an item on their bucket lists. Hiking there does feel monumental. Chris and I had imagined it being flatter; the Mutianyu section that we visited had lots of ups and downs, and made for a surprisingly strenuous workout. As you walk, you see the Wall snaking ahead of you, distantly into the mountains, just as it stretches behind you in the opposite direction.

It looks so endless—and then you remember that you’re only seeing a miniscule portion of the whole. T and new buddy, Ryan, son of our Beijing friends Paul and Stacey, had a fabulous time creeping around, looking for “Mongols”. We were lucky enough to be there on a weekday, when it wasn’t crowded. Sure it was touristy—at the Wall’s entry we ate jian bing which were literally ten times as expensive as the tastier ones in Shanghai, and we rode a kitschy summer toboggan sled down from the top—but there’s no denying the magnificence of it all.

walking in the neighborhoods: I especially enjoyed wandering through the French Concession in Shanghai, and the hutongs (old courtyard neighborhoods on narrow alleys) in Beijing. All those tree-lined streets, and beautiful, chipped-paint doorways leading into secret dwellings behind. Of course, when you catch a glimpse into those doorways, you discover the primitive, cramped conditions in which many Chinese live, and that gives some perspective to it all. Still, after all the high-rises, it’s nice to walk the old single story streets. Like zooming in with a camera lens.

chinglish: The Chinese translations of English on signs and menus never fail to entertain. Check out this list of rules for a Shanghai park to see for yourself. Ethic and moral codes should be duly honored!

And this roll of paper towels was enough to make me pull out the camera in a bathroom:

my kid as a tourist attraction: Everywhere we went, people took pictures of T. Many did it on the sly with their cell phones, others came right out and asked in gestures or limited English if they could pose in a photo with him.

Blonde, blue-eyed kids are a rarity in China. T got the most attention in touristy places like Tiananmen Square in Beijing or Pudong in Shanghai. My guess is that many of the tourists in those spots are from remote areas of China, where they see fewer foreigners. Eventually T took to walking down streets greeting everyone with ni hao (hello)!  The Chinese seemed to get a kick out of this, and T always got a friendly ni hao in return.

It was lovely. As was the entire trip. When you have no expectations, you are bound to be delighted.

(There are more photos on my flickr page if you want to peek.)

A few members of the family are off on a little adventure.

I’m updating photos to my flickr page each day, if you want to come along!

In which Lulu and I go visit H in New York City, and get worked up about all sorts of things.

the washington square arch. Washington Square is such a haven in the middle of the city. Now I’ve seen the arch in every season but fall. H’s new dorm is right on the square, which almost makes up for the fact that he is crammed into a room the size of a typical bathroom with two other guys.

the mud truck. Best antidote to red eye flights. And we always take the red eye. Here’s the cheap way to visit New York from California: Catch your plane on Thursday at 10:30 p.m. Will yourself to sleep; when that doesn’t work, watch Mary Kate and Ashley as infants on Full House on the screen of the kid one row in front of you through the gap between the seats; surely this will make you nod off briefly. Arrive at JFK at before dawn cracks and pray that your hotel will give you an early check-in. If they do, lay down for no longer than half an hour, then take the subway to the Mud Truck parked in all its orange glory at Astor Place. Sufficiently amped, plow through Friday and make yourself stay up late. A 9:00pm dinner reservation might do the trick, as could a Broadway show. (Lulu and I saw Chicago and stayed awake through the slower numbers by chomping on Milk Duds.) By Saturday you’ll be perky as ever, and if you catch the 7:00 pm plane home on Sunday, you’ll have had three full days in NYC at the cost of two nights in a hotel—and with the time change you’ll be home before midnight. But to make this plan feasible, the Mud Truck is key.

muji. I can’t believe I didn’t take any photos in Muji, the Japanese shop that makes you lust after things you never knew you needed. Sixty colored pencils in a tube, or a foldable hairbrush, or a beanie made from recycled yarn. Or an inflatable neck pillow wrapped nattily in purple striped t-shirt fabric—something I actually did need the night before while dozing to Full House. Now I have one for my next trip. And also a small zipped mesh bag for my knitting notions that manages to be see-through without being plastic.

purl. I didn’t take any photos here, either—I’m cheating with photos taken on my last trip. (I can’t believe I lugged my camera with hefty 18-200mm lens around New York city all weekend and took as few photos as I did. Doh!) Purl is a pilgrimage for knitters, just to see how yarn can be displayed like beautiful candy. This shop has an eye for color like no other. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t buy any yarn; I admit to not being a stasher. See, buying yarn solely for projects I’m ready to start saves me money, I’ve justified, which makes me more deserving of the good stuff when I do buy. Right? So I just ogled and felt up yarn, and then bought a new measuring tape. To put in my cool Japanese mesh bag. Oh! Look what Chris and I discovered just next to Purl, on our last visit:

A guitar shop next to a yarn store. Indulgences for both him and her. Someone was thinking there.

lomography. I love this place. Fabulous photos from cheap-o cameras! I bought a Diana lens for my d90. (Chris about snorted when he saw the camera back home, all dolled up in its plastic lens. Sort of like Martha Stewart dressed in K-Mart. Oh, wait…) We hadn’t really figured out the lens yet, but that didn’t keep us from snapping away as we wandered Greenwich Village. Lulu got some good ones:

(He hates it when I put him on my blog. But this shot is arty and obscure! And it makes good use of that hair which he insists does not need a cutting!)

I took a few more once back home.

So fun to make your photos look bad on purpose!

rice to riches. When you’ve had enough all those newfangled yogurt places, there’s nothing like a shop that sells only vats of pure sugar-and-fat rice pudding! H got caramel, Lulu got chocolate chip, and I wasn’t going to get any until I tasted theirs and needed a container of my own. There must have been at least twenty flavors, but I sure liked that caramel. Plus, you’ve got to love their signage.

giggling with my big kids. Oh, how much we laughed. When we noted how much those big circle scarves in American Apparel look like baby slings. (“Hey, look! I can fit a baby in my scarf!”) When H and I poured some “testers” of mints into our hands in a tea shop, from a glass teapot which Lulu, horrified, was certain was just a display, only to discover that, yes, they had a really off texture, and we had no place to spit them out. When we saw some hipster in Pastis, standing at the bar at night in sunglasses and a puffy jacket and a black and white striped hat that looked uncannily Smurf-ish and thinking he was so chill, until some other guy walked in wearing his own puffy jacket and the same striped Smurf hat. What really had us in fits was trying to get both of them in a photo without being obvious about it because H really wanted to post it to some site that features this sort of snark, with hipster and profanity in the title. This was the best we could do. Note Smurf #2, blurry, but still there on the right.

Oh gosh, it was fun. This is the reward, I think, of putting up with all the sibling bickering, and whining about where to eat while traveling when they’re little. We had such a good time, eating and wandering, and eating and shopping, and buying H $66 worth of groceries at an absolutely mad Whole Foods on Union Square—“You’ll eat this huge bag of oranges if I buy it, right?”—and eating some more. And laughing at hipsters and baby sling scarves and clips from Jimmy Kimmel in the back of a cab. There’s nothing like hanging out with your big kids. In New York City. Nothing like it at all.

Because watching my Lulu go off to school in my last post wasn’t enough…

This weekend Chris and I brought H to NYU.

I started writing a maudlin post with lots of wrenching details like the sight of H’s boxers intermingled with the family laundry for the last time, and the sorrow of shopping at Whole Foods without buying his peanut butter Clif bars. But it was just too much. Too personal, too close.

I will say this. That last hug is as hard as you imagine it will be. But it helps when you start to let go, and he just keeps holding on. I can still feel his arms around me, squeezing me back. I’m hanging on to that.

It’s also no slight solace that technology makes the world so much smaller these days. My boy may be 3,000 miles away, but we’ve talked, texted and emailed. This afternoon I reminded him to eat his fruits and veggies.

His dorm is on 10th and Broadway in New York City. Think of that! He has a world of excitement waiting right outside his elevator door.  I’m hanging on to that too.

For now, I try not to cry every time I walk past his empty bedroom. I told Mr. T to expect extra hugs from me because I can’t give them to H. And I’m trying to busy myself with other projects.

I’ve got a big one planned. Right here! Tomorrow! A big ol’ month-long project that requires audience participation. So come on back, my friends, and keep me from drowning in my own salty puddle of tears. I know you’re good for that.

I had such grand plans.

Plans to post from each new place we visited on our trip. (But we didn’t always have internet. And three of us with computers had to share we one Northern European adapter. Plus, there wasn’t always time for blog posts: we were on vacation.)

I had plans to keep a journal as we traveled. (When the kids were younger, we all kept great travel journals. We’d sit in cafés in Paris and write in our journals and glue in empty sugar packets. The kids drew pictures of Picasso’s art, and I listed the meals we ate. But somehow it was harder this time, keeping an eighteen-year-old and a fourteen-year-old and an eight-year-old happy all at once.  We didn’t do a lot of lingering in cafés–unless there happened to be free Wi-Fi, in which case everyone was happy to linger. The ever-resourceful Lulu did, however, manage to keep a journal with admirable diligence on this trip.)

I had plans to–at the very least–jot down notes as we went. I’ve always appreciated Pico Iyer’s advice that one ought to write down first impressions of a place right away, while everything seems new. (Did I do it? Nope. And I call myself a writer. Sheesh.)

We’ve been home for a week. I had big plans of catching up, posting about the places I hadn’t blogged about yet: Ribe, Denmark; Munich; Salzburg. (But two days after we got home–when Mr. T was still jet-lagged enough to wake up every night at 2:00 a.m. and stay up the rest of the night playing–we left again, for a long holiday weekend at the lake with family. Which was relaxing and all, but it didn’t leave me any time to catch up in this space.)

The trouble with grand plans is that they freeze you up, and make it impossible to accomplish anything. I wasn’t sure how to catch up here. Should I post about the places I hadn’t written about yet; should I post about traveling with kids in general? Should I write about how this trip was bittersweet–the last before H. goes to college, and the first in which he’d have preferred to be home with his friends rather than traveling with us?

I finally decided to stop planning this post and to just write it. Plow forward with a few highlights of the rest of the trip as they come to me, before I forget them–since I didn’t take Pico’s advice when I should have.

So, random highlights from the rest of the trip:

Making dinner in our little kitchen nook, in our bed & breakfast in Ribe, Denmark, with nothing more than a tiny toasting grill. Open-faced sandwiches, green salad and Greek salad. Not very Scandinavian of us–but we were craving veggies. * Eating it in the gorgeous courtyard garden, which we could only get to by walking out our small front door, going down the cobble-stoned street and around the corner, and through a fence. We finally hit on the idea of passing our plates out the bathroom window.

Visiting the original Legoland in Billund, Denmark and being just as amazed that so many kids in one place could have blond hair as we were with the Lego models of the world’s cities. And amazed too at the fact that Ben and Jerry’s is a big hit in Scandinavia. There’s something funny about hearing Scandinavians order Cherry Garcia * Being in Ribe for their midsummer celebration, which involves having everyone in town follow a woman dressed as a witch alongside the river, as the sun begins begins to set at 9:30 p.m., while local children dressed in old-fashioned rags berate her in Danish, and then everyone gathers to sing a song about some fellow named Sankte Hans, and watches a scarecrow-replica of the witch lady get shot down a zipline across the river into a great bonfire (and, apparently, as the old lore dictates, back to Germany.)

Re-watching The Darjeeling Limited with Chris and H on H’s computer before our own sleeper train overnight to Germany. Sweet lime, anyone? * Finding out, on said sleeper train, that sleeper train compartments sleep six, while we are a family of five. Which meant, of course, that someone (who came to be known as The Stranger) would be joining us to sleep. This freaked the kids utterly out. Turns out that The Stranger didn’t board the train until 12:30 a.m., after we had already gone to bed. Although I did mumble a little awkward hi in the dark as he stowed his backpack under my bunk. He climbed up the ladder and on to his upper bunk, and then disembarked before the kids woke up. Although I woke up when he left. And couldn’t help singing to myself lines from the old Supertramp song: Goodbye stranger, it’s been nice… * Drinking 1-liter large steins in a Munich beer garden, and watching the locals carefully salt and then eat heaping plates of shaved white radishes. Next time I’m trying those.

Commenting on a few favorite blogs in the Apple store in Munich as Chris waited in a very long line to buy an iPad cover. * Seeing the beautiful sanctuaries built in recent years at the concentration camp at Dachau, to promote peace and healing.

Watching Lulu try on dirndls. She decided not to buy one, but not until the salesgirl had tied at least fifteen different-colored silk aprons around Lulu’s waist, one after the other, searching for the perfect shade. * Seeing the German team win their World Cup game against England in a beer garden, and then watching the Muncheners take over a wide boulevard to parade and party and celebrate.

Discovering that the laundry room in our hotel had a vending machine with giant bottles of cold bubble water for 80 euro cents. There was a heat wave in Munich, and we couldn’t get enough of that cold, cheap bubble water. The machine also sold big bottles of beer for one euro each! * Taking Mr. T to the modern art museum on Sunday morning while the older kids slept.

Leaving H behind with a high school friend who’s in Munich for the summer, while the other four of us took the two-hour train ride to Salzburg, Austria for the Sound of Music tour. (Lulu’s choice.) Saw many of the film’s sites while our tour guide charmed us with his sounds-exactly-like-Arnold-Schwarzenegger accent and his lederhosen. I wish you could hear how he said streudel. Sht-ryoo-del. * Taking a break from the Von Trapp sites for an exhilarating summer luge ride down a mountainside metal chute.

Finding out, for the 11-hour plane ride home, that the plane had been overbooked, and we’d been bumped up to business class. Private compartments, seats that reclined to beds, chilled silverware and food that actually tasted good. What a way to end a trip.

And so ends a trip which began as yet another grand plan. I’ll never forget the sunny hej hej we got from all the Stockholmers (it means hello and sounds like hey hey) and I’ll never forget the young Munchener who teased us when he thought we were English, after the Germans beat the English soccer team. We talked to him for a minute amidst the celebratory crowds and he whispered confessionally to Chris, “We’re a new generation. Not for Hitler.” It surprised us. We thought he knew that we knew that–that we’ve known it for decades.

No matter how carefully you plan a trip, you never know quite what will happen, or what will stay with you in the end. Which is one of the very best parts of traveling.

Sort of how it sounds when the locals pronounce København. Known to us as Copenhagen.

Luckily almost everyone in Copenhagen speaks English, because all of our combined understanding of Spanish, French and Italian helped us not a whit in Scandinavia. People spoke Swedish or Danish around us, and we couldn’t snatch out even a word here or there. And somehow, Danish seemed even trickier to interpret than Swedish. Chris joked that it seems to work sort of like this: whenever there is a letter l followed by a vowel in a word, you just throw in the syllable “huven”. There seem to be lots of extra syllables going on in those words.

But the kids figured out the word for hot dog pretty fast. Pølse. There are carts everywhere, and the quality (so this veggie-head hears) is much better than your typical American dog. They stuff them into a bun with a hole down the middle.

We stayed in a very cool apartment. Renting apartments is generally much cheaper than staying in hotels when traveling, and the internet makes them easy to find. Works out great with kids, because you get a kitchen–and sometimes even a tiny washing machine.

We watched the crown princess of Sweden marry her beloved on television. It was fun to think that just days before we’d walked very near to where they were. My favorite part: when they answered the do you take this man/woman question with ja! Somehow that cracked Lulu and me up.

I took a photo of my new Swedish clogs in the reflection of our Danish refrigerator.

We saw all the classic Copenhagen sites. The harbor.

The statue of Hans Christian Andersen. (The ever-popular-with-tourists Little Mermaid statue has swum off to China for the summer.)

Hippie-haven Christiania. Reminded us an awful lot of Telegraph Avenue, back in Berkeley.

Tivoli gardens. Rides to make teenagers happy, and gardens to please a mama. Beautiful.

We walked and walked. Saw interesting public art.

And more captivating gardens.

And pretty jars in a coffee shop. It took fifteen minutes to get our lattes. And they cost six or seven bucks, when converted to dollars! But at least the shelves were stunning while we waited.

The National Museum of Denmark was wonderful. It had one of the most amazing children’s areas I’ve ever seen in a museum, with big plastic medieval meats and viking costumes.

We also enjoyed the English language tour at the Museum of Danish Resistance, which tells the story of Denmark during World War II. Fascinating stuff–now we need to go home and watch Flame and Citron, a Danish film about two actual resistance fighters, which came out a few years back.

Since I didn’t eat pølse, I dug into sandwiches. I love all the dark, hearty, seedy bread in northern Europe! Accompanied by a beer, of course.

Chris and I walked over to the harbor to watch the Danes play Cameroon in the World Cup on a giant screen. Man, those Danes are a patriotic folk. There were red and white flags everywhere.

We were lucky enough to experience what happens when the Danes score a goal. Out comes their inner viking!

It was fun to be there with them. Danny Kaye had it right.

We only had three days in Stockholm. I wish we’d had more time; it’s a gorgeous city, and there was so much more to see. Someday.

My mother’s grandparents emigrated from Sweden to Minnesota. It was only after I did a little internet research on the family that I learned of the great emigration of Swedes to America during the late 1800′s. One-fifth of the population emigrated to America, many to Minnesota (like my great-grandparents–and the American Girl doll, Kirsten!) Most of those emigrants were from an area in the south central part of Sweden called Smaland.

Most of my ancestors came from Smaland, from small towns near Växjö. These days in Växjö, there’s a museum and research center called Utvandrarnas Hus (House of Emigrants) which focuses on the Swedes who left for America. Unfortunately, it looks like the museum will be closing after this year. We were lucky to find it still open, and stopped by on our way down south.

(Remember how I wrote about white balance in photos a few posts back? Well, the white balance is really off in this photo, which makes it look like a bad Polaroid. But I don’t have access to my photo editing software here, so it will have to do.)

The museum was interesting. You can get a sense of what sort of information they cover on their website. They had a nice area on the renowned Swedish writer Vilhem Moberg–you can also read about him on the museum website. Moberg wrote a series of four novels about the Swedish emigration to America. I’m reading a translation of the first book, The Emigrants; I started it hoping that it would be informative, and didn’t anticipate how much I’d enjoy it. The books were made into a Swedish film with Liv Ullman. It doesn’t seem easy to find, but I’m hoping to see it after I read the book.

We stayed on an island off the coast of mainland Sweden on the Baltic Sea, called Ölund. The king and queen of Sweden have a vacation home there, and there are windmills everywhere.

We stayed at a hostel and working organic farm called Solberga Gård, which means sunny hill farm.

It was beautiful.

I just wanted to take photos the whole time. The main house:

A second guest house, below. The barns and houses in the Swedish countryside are almost all this shade of red. Apparently the original red paint pigment was a byproduct of the mining industry in Sweden. You can read a little about it, and see some other examples on the charming blog red.house

Lulu especially loved the swing.

The Swedes and Danes love their bikes. There are bike riders everywhere, even in the big cities like Stockholm and Copenhagen.

I found more Swedish beehives.

There were organic seedlings for sale.

And purple and white lilac bloomed all over the island. So utterly fragrant–it made me think of what a Swedish grandmother must smell like.

We also visited some fantastic castle ruins on Ölund called Borgholms Slott. There’s a great aerial photo of the castle if you click that link. It was fun to explore the ruins, and there were beautiful views of the Baltic Sea.

I’ve still been struggling to get internet, so I’m behind. Next stop: Copenhagen!

Can you guess?

And if you haven’t figured it out yet:

I’m a little behind on posting, due to lack of internet connection, and having to take turns with a single power cord adaptor (sharing with teenagers who need their international Facebook fixes!) But I’m hoping to post more photos in the next few days, because everything is so darned beautiful.

Until then, hej då!