A holiday well spent in Sweden

Over winter break, I spent two weeks in Sweden with my boyfriend, fellow VTSU Castleton student Walter Lundström, and his family. I had a lot of experiences, but my favorites were getting to try new foods, going into Stockholm and spending time with his family.
My first day there was exhausting since I flew out at 5:30 p.m. and landed at 7 a.m. in Sweden. The Jetlag was the worst that first day.
But after acclimating, I got to try the traditional Swedish Christmas meal, which was interesting and nothing like an American Christmas dinner. You get two separate plates, one for the cold food and one for the warm. Some of the food I had to try included pickled herring, radish with salt on it, cheese pie, and this other type of fish.
The first week I spent shopping, spending all the money I could on clothes, shoes, candy and accessories. I truly believe everything is better clothes-wise in Europe, so I had no choice but to spend a ton of money on new clothes.
In my opinion, H&M and Zara are way better in Sweden than in America and have way better options to choose from. I also had to buy a new outfit to celebrate the New Year, because I had no idea how dressed up they get until my boyfriend told me what he was wearing, and I did not want to look like a messy American.
It was extremely weird not watching the New Year’s Eve show that goes on in New York City, and my first time ever not seeing the ball drop at midnight. In Sweden, I was six hours ahead, so I was basically in the future when it hit midnight back home.
It was interesting hanging out with his friends. Two couldn’t speak any English and I am not good with Swedish yet, so that made from some interesting times.
At midnight they were all so excited to show me the fireworks that normally go off, but because it was snowing so much, we barely saw them, which gave me a chance to brag that Americans do fireworks shows way better.

In my second week, we spent a lot of time in Stockholm, going to different museums and basically just being a tourist with my personal tour guide. We went to Skansen, which is the zoo, to see some of the winter animals like reindeer and moose. One cool thing about the zoo is that all around are these old, historical buildings that were moved there from all over the Nordics. We also went to the Army Museum, which was interesting since my perceptions of Sweden was that it is a very peaceful country, but they were not always so peaceful from what I learned.
We also visited an ice bar. I think it was a bit overhyped, and the Ice Hotel, which is in the North of Sweden, is probably way cooler than the bar, which is made to promote the Ice Hotel. We also went to the Avicii Museum, which was super cool getting to hear the music process and also getting to hear unreleased music by Swedish pop culture icon Tim “Avicii” Bergling.
Pinchos, which is a restaurant, was another very fun experience with my boyfriend’s family. You order everything through an app and your meals are very small, which is good in case you don’t like it. Not tipping waiters, however, was so weird to me because of our tipping culture in America.
The food overall was really good there were some dishes his parents made me that I questioned. Since his dad is from the North of Sweden, I just had to try some traditional dishes from the North. One dish called Palt, was a potato dumpling with pork belly in the middle – and not my favorite meal.
I did get to try reindeer stew, which was not as bad as I thought it would be. I would eat it again.
Overall, my second trip to Sweden may have been freezing but was so much fun. Everything there is so nicely organized and clean. In my opinion, everything is just better than it is here. I loved getting to spend time with his parents and listen to them talk about their home and what fun things happened during the holiday season.
I am sad I missed the Christmas Market that is hosted in the Old Town in Stockholm, but I did get to go to the Old Town and see what everything looked like in the snow. My favorite moment was driving around hunting for the Northern lights, which I did get a sneak peek at, but it wasn’t the best viewing of them. I can’t wait to go back and spend more time trying new foods and spending all my money on clothes.
