Thursday, July 27, 2006

Me and my brother Chris kayaking this past Monday on Lac McShane, north-east of Montreal near Sainte-Agathe.

Three more photos:

-my dad Lars Erik and my uncles Svante, Nils Olaf and Thomas
-my mum Philippa, Svante and Nils enjoying my dad's little dog that had been in a box for decades and only just then been rediscovered
-a nice picture of my farmor Ingrid's funeral




Thursday, July 20, 2006

My grandmother's funeral took place this past Friday. My father's brothers flew into town from afar: Nils from Norway, Thomas from British Columbia and Svante from Sweden. Svea and Tessa, Thomas' daughters and my two Canadian Vikander cousins, also came from Toronto and BC respectively. It was a sad occasion, but it was a real pleasure to see everyone. We call these photos "Vikander: The Next Generation" (no offence intended, of course, to the Vikander cousins in Sweden!)




This is the last of the Denmark posts. It might all make a bit more sense if you go five posts down and start working your way up in the order I posted them. That being said, the tightest chronological link is between the 1st and the 6th post, both in Sweden. Do not read anything into this fact. It is just a coincidence.

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Anna and I spent three days in this cabin in southern Sweden. Even excluding the bog story (see a few posts below), it was a real adventure. It seemed like fate was working against us in a quite comical way. Anna borrowed her mother's car, but the battery konked out on the ferry. After pushing it off the boat and getting it restarted, we drove to the closest village but couldn't find the house because the roads didn't have names anymore. We then found the house but realized that the keys were still in Copenhagen. Luckily, we visited home helpful Swedish neighbours who, after putting their two Doberman outside and giving us coffee and open-faced sandwiches, helped us break into the house through a second floor window! Anna was great through all this with her Swedish, while I (almost a native Swede!) was reduced to smiling and giving moral support. Once we were in, I managed to bump my head on the low door frames four times the first evening! But we triumphed in the end and had an amazing time. It would have been great if we could have stayed there longer.






A nice picture of me and Anna's friend Kristina. Below, Rikke beating us at darts.




Grilling on the Common in Copenhagen with Anna and two of her friends, Rikke and Martin. They were both in Montreal a few years back when Rikke was at Concordia University on exchange, and they'll be married next month.




Some food from Scandinavia: Danish "Cold Bowl", a dairy drink that I'm told is drank in copious amounts but only in Denmark and only during the summer, Ikea hotdogs and Swedish frozen products from Copenhagen, and an open-faced Swedish shrimp sandwich from the ferry linking Denmark and Sweden.




The temperature topped 30 degrees while I was in Denmark, so Anna and I twice drove north of Copenhagen to the beach in Hornbaek. You can see Sweden across the water.






I'm now back in Canada, and it's been a quite unusual week. Family visiting, my grandmother's funeral and of course the famous "Vikander: Next Generation" photos. But before I put up some pictures from the past week, I'll first show some photos of my time with Anna. We spent a few days in a small cabin that belongs to Anna's family in the Swedish woods. It was just lovely, but the fact remains that instead of a toilet we had an outhouse with a bucket. The photos were taken on our last day and show me dealing with the contents of the bucket. If it were a B-movie, I think you could call it "Return of the Swedish Bogman" or "It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken".








Monday, July 03, 2006

A little late on the 3rd of July, but nonetheless a happy Canada Day to all of you out there! I'm here in Copenhagen relaxing with my girlfriend Anna, and so far we've spent two wonderful days lying on the beach. Apparently, people in Denmark find if funny that there is actually a thing called Canada Day, and I admit that it would be a bit funny to think of France Day or United States Day. I've learned that Denmark also has its share of quirky things. For example, the word for island is just: ø ! And the word for stream is just: å ! Incredible! There are more things, but I'll save that for another post. If the letters don't turn up properly on your computer, the first is an o with a line through it, and the second is an a with a dot on top. :)