April in Paris

Doris Day dreamed about spending April in Paris. She imagined sitting in sun-filled sidewalk cafés surrounded by gardens with flowers in bloom. Poor Doris - Mother Nature didn't comply, and her April in Paris was grey, soggy, and cold.

I'm wondering what April in Göteborg is going to look like. We're all ready for Spring. Saturday, most of the cafés put out their sidewalk tables, and the conservatory-builders are busy putting all the glassfronts back out on the fronts of restaurants on the Avenue. Any day it's sunny (like it is today), Swedes stop to sit on any available bench or staircase and soak in the sunshine. But yesterday we had flurries...

So, do I dare put the patio furniture back out on the balcony, or is that like washing the ski jackets anytime before June - tempting fate? My rainboots stand at the ready as do the flipflops. 4 days 'til April....

Havets Hus

Winter returned today - it snowed overnight - but Sprout and I decided to take advantage of his p.d. day to go on a field trip anyway. We drove up the E6 and over to the coast to visit an aquarium - Havets Hus or House of the Sea. (Hav - sea, et - the, s- possessive, hus - house)

Havets Hus is an indoor aquarium. All the water in the tanks is pumped in directly from the sea, so it was cold in there. Water temperature is currently about 3C. We pretty much had the plaice (ha!) to ourselves. (You could say we went just for the halibut! ha!) We were up close and personal with starfish and halibut, dogfish, wolf fish, sea urchins and stingrays, eels and small sharks. The photo is of the touch tank - you are invited to reach in and touch the critters. I reached in and touched a starfish and it was the most disgusting thing I think I've ever felt in my life. Sort of mushy. Just gross (but I'm sure his mother loves him). Andrew was willing to be the touchy-feely guinea pig for everything - crabs, sea anemones, starfish, mussels. He thought they were all kinda soft. His hand got really cold though. It just so happened that we were there for feeding time in the tunnel. You walk through / under the tunnel while the diver is in the tank with a bag of herring she is hand-feeding to the fish (halibut and some bigger ones too). That was very entertaining, seeing the fish snatch lunch, then watching it disappear bite by bite.

Speaking of bite, what would a day out be without lunch? The café attached to Havets Hus was serving fish (isn't that cannibalism?), so Sprout opted to look elsewhere, and we ended up with pizza (totally fish friendly). We took a different (shorter) road back, and had to take a ferry to cross the fjord. Cool!

A grand day out.

http://www.havetshus.se/index.asp?selectedLang=en

The Russian Hat

Say what you will about wearing fur, here in Sweden, it isn't an issue. Women of all ages wear fur coats. In Prague, we saw fur trim everywhere. In Moscow where Peter now spends most of his time, people wear fur hats by necessity. -15 and snowy means you bundle up when you go outside.

I don't have an issue with wearing fur. I inherited my coats and when I wear them, it's a connection to other great ladies from my family. The black lamb was my grandmother's. The mink stole was my mother's. The red fox muff belonged to my other gran. The swakara belonged to Aunt Elsie I think before it wound it's way via my gran, to my mom who had it restyled. It's very elegant and a shame that it has to sit in the closet in Canada, and quite frankly I'm glad to be in a country where I can wear it proudly and show it off because it's beautiful.

This is the story of my Russian fur hat.

Peter is good to me. He got it into his head that I should have a fur hat to go with the swakara fur coat. OK. Picture a Bond girl - Sophie Marceau in "The World Is Not Enough" - she had a nice hat. I could wear something that made me look that fabulous. In my mind's eye, it would be black and elegant, blend nicely with my dark hair, and be the sort of accessory that said 'wow' not 'whoa'.

Peter found this one in a shop in Moscow one weekend when he was wandering around. The woman in the shop tried several on and modelled them for him. It was quite the show apparently. It's silver fox, and having been an earmuffs-wearer for years, I'm surprised how cold my head gets when I don't wear it. I think it says 'whoa' rather than 'wow', but I wear it anyway. And like my furry boots, I tend to think it's the sort of thing that people who know me would say, 'Ya. That's Shep'.

Oslo 2011 World Cup Nordic Ski event

Oslo is still partying but we are ready for bed. We spent the day at Holmenkollen in the hills above Oslo at the World Cup Nordic Ski Championship. Canada took gold in the Mens Team Sprint - their first ever. (Congratulations to Alex Harvey and Devon Kershaw) We were at the awards ceremony (as were Prince Daniel and Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden) and the crowd cheers for our athletes were loud. The kids thought it was exciting. Peter sang Oh Canada at the top of his lungs (slightly off key). People in the crowd congratulated us on "our" win as they walked by (because they had heard Peter's singing and cheering).

The entire day was a nordic snow party. We took the tram up to Holmenkollen this morning - car was packed full of spectators AND a 4 part choir who serenaded us all with norwegian folk songs on the way there. We followed a school group through the ticket gate. Now, there's a cool field trip - hey kids let's go to a world cup skiing event. We went to watch ski jumping - this was the prime directive and fortunately we got more than we thought we would because the first event of the day was the mens' nordic combined. Ski jumping landing areas look flat on tv. Holmenkollen's is a bowl - the landing ramp is really steep and the run off goes back uphill. They poke everygreen branches into the hill as distance markers and targets for the skiiers as they're coming in to land. It was incredibly foggy. You had to listen for the swoosh of the skiiers leaving the jump farther up, then wait for them to appear out of the fog for their landings. Man could they fly! Meanwhile, there's music over the loud speakers and every 5 jumpers or so, the announcers do a 7th inning stretch to keep us all warm and perky. (New lyrics to Everybody Dance Now - VM ski i Holmenkollen - sounds odd, but it worked, after we all Got Down On It)

There was X-country skiing too. We found spots at the finish line and watched the Canadian women miss out on the final (they were 4th in their heat of the team sprint semi), saw Harvey and Kershaw's finish, and saw the frenchman take the gold for the nordic combined. Such athleticism - they collapse at the finish line, literally on the ground in the snow, because they're completed épuisé.

The big event of the day for me was supposed to be the qualification round for the Mens large hill ski jump, but they had to postpone it because of the weather. As disappointed as I was (am) to have to miss it because they're running it tomorrow afternoon, I wasn't surprised. The wind picked up about 4pm and they were due to jump at 6. Apparently they can jump through fog safely (?!) but not wind. Talk about a leap of faith.

I love Norway.