I've been out and about since 9 am and now I'm frozen to the bone. The coffee at the restaurant barely helped and now I'm so happy to be home with a big cup of tea.

Our first stop this morning was Sigtuna - the old capital of Sweden, from a thousand years ago - and of course, Tant Brun. It's a café situated in a small wooden building from the 1600's. The roof is very low so you have to watch your head!


Here you can see the view over parts of Sigtuna and the lake Mälaren. This point was actually meant for people, in historical days, to watch out for unwelcome ships.


Me and Vanessa then went to Naturhistoriska riksmuseet, which we barely got through in two hours. It all looks the same as when I was there five and fifteen years ago, except for the exhibition about gay animals and the one about climate changes.

The former one got me thinking about how researchers tend to be influenced by society in their own time and culture. It used to be said that "homosexuality must be abnormal since humans are the only ones doing it" - while this exhibition wanted to show that homosexuality is quite common also among animals.

Now I'm off to a hot shower and to prepare myself mentally for tonight - I WILL wear a skirt despite it being -5 degrees and windy in Stockholm.

My friends Ruth, Willie and Vanessa came by today, together with Ruth's sister Eva and her friend Anja (did I get the names right?) for a house-warming fika. There was indeed a lot of cookies - they brought both lussekatter, wienerbröd, chokladbiskvier, some German cookies and also carrot cake. They left some for me and now there is only this left:


It's a sweet almond cake in the bottom, filled with chocolate cream and then covered with more chocolate. I love them very much but even I can't have more than one in the same evening!

We have been planning tomorrow night, talking about the weather appearing to be much colder in Stockholm and discussing the women who are still brave enough to wear only stockings in -5 degrees.

And I've realized now that not everyone in the world have experienced their toes going numb from cold.

My new place - so far. Now I'm off to Ikea.

You'd think shopping right before Christmas would be stressful. After 7 pm tonight I had the entire mall practically to myself - and the sales have already started!

So I got myself these as an early Christmas gift - less than 5 euro. Sorry, they were the last pair.

Just for the cuteness - this is my great-uncle Lennart at the age of 4, picture taken in the late 1920's.

He is still alive and if I'm lucky, I might be able to visit him this weekend!

I'm still alive... I've kind of missed writing in my blog so here I am again!

The beginning of this semester was quite stressful for me, so I fell out of the habit of posting. Now I'm just about to move to Stockholm, for my internship at the local newspaper Mitt i Stockholm - while also doing schoolwork and travelling for Christmas - so it's not much less going on now. I'd hate to live a boring life, though.

Today I've just been lazy and catching up on sleep, as I might need that for the coming weeks. Although I did do some genealogic research while in bed - enough to find out I have yet another German ancestor. I suppose it really is time for me to learn German - or at least visit Germany for a holiday!

This weekend I visited my aunt in Ö-vik. Then I also photographed some of her old pictures she got from my grandmother. I might even have found one of my great grandfather's brother, who died as a child. No names are written on the back and I can only get clues from other pictures of his parents, taken 30 years later. What do you think?


This would be taken around 1910 if it's them. The older boy would be my great grandfather - or some complete stranger. These people don't look similar to anyone else in the family.


Frans and Helga Andersson - my great great grandparents, photographed by my grandfather in 1940, funny enough in a village named Ulrika.

Here's also some Swedish snow - or rather "rimfrost" - for any of you who might miss it.