LearnSweden Blog

Mid-Winter Festival :: Complete

        

Lotta In the Trees

        

Though we are in February it is time to think ahead and prepare for the great fall harvest. It is the best time for pruning the branches on our apple trees and it makes the trees stronger to hold all the apples that we want to have this summer and fall. We have four different apple trees in our yard in Gotland. The most important for us is Stenkyrka, which is an old sort from Gotland. That tree will give us plenty of lovely apples in about half a year. Stenkyrka is also the apple of Gotland. Every part of Sweden has it own apple. Like this:
 Blekinge: Melonäpple
• Bohuslän: Veseäpple
• Dalarna: Tunaäpple
• Dalsland: Oranie
• Gotland: Stenkyrke
• Gästrikland: Malmbergs Gylling

Stenkyrka is a small village in the north part of the island of Gotland and of course the apple is from there. But surely you can find it all over the island. Some people say that Stenkyrka is the most delicious apple in the world. I am sure someone from Gotland said this, but I agree.

     

As Lotta prunes the trees she does so meticulously. The goal is to be able to throw a hat up through the center. This ensures room for the new growth and plenty of sun for our wonderful apples.

       

                                

         

                                                           

       

The Visby Difference

      

What a difference, Visby in summer and Visby in winter. Six month ago when we were walking around a warm summer's day in Visby, the town was crowded with people. Mostly tourists in shorts and T-shirts, sitting in cafés having a cold beer, walking around visiting all the shops or having a fresh ice-cream from the many who are selling cold ice-cream. Gotland has about 50.000 inhabitans, and most of them are living in Visby. In summertime the people in Visby are about four times as much. In summer you'll find people everywhere, you will find a lot of different shops and you will find a lot of open galleries and other interesting things.

          

        
\Wwhen we visited Visby it was an empty town. Just a few people walking around, just a few shops open and absolutly no ice-cream to buy. Now I am talking about the old town. Just outside in the shopping center, the commerce is the same as it is in summer but not as crowded as in the summer. Anyway yesterday we found a few more people than usual, but that was because of the big book sell and it was Fettisdagen and the cafés were serving semlor.

      

     
But is Visby worth visiting in the winter? Absolutly is my answer. You can still enjoy the beauty of this medevial village, with all the beautiful houses, the ring wall and of course you will find open shops, restaurants and cafés.

         

A Fettis Dag like no other

After 7 long years Daniel and Crown princess Victoria are getting married. It was announced yesterday morning and by yesterday afteroon the happy couple were talking to the press. (Swedish version) and (English Version) about the proposal. We can expect a beautiful wedding in the spring of 2010.

           

Grattis to both of them. We wish them much happiness. I don't know about anyone else but I'm excited about the wedding. We will have to send Per to take photos or maybe I'll come over the pond to take the photos myself. We could have a LearnSweden Wedding Weekend.

                             

The thought of all that happiness kicked up an appetite and all I can say is thank-god it was Fettisdag. This is just the official name for the official Semla eating day. We were eating semlor here and Per was eating semlor on the very icy island of Gotland. Ha det så bra så länge!

        

       

       

        

        

    

The Semlor Recipe

Tomorrow is Shrove-Tuesday in Sweden and Fat Tuesday in the US, also known as Mardi-Gras. I blogged about our beloved buns here and in that post I promised the recipe. So without further adieu The Semlor Recipe !  Have a great Day .

       

1/4 cup butter
1 cup milk
1 oz yeast
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp cardamom
3 cups flour
1 lightly beaten egg

filling:
the scooped-out portion of the buns
2 oz almond paste
1/4 cup cream of milk

garnish:
1 cup whipping cream
2 Tbls sugar

To make the buns: crumble the yeast in a bowl. Melt the butter or margarine in a saucepan, add the milk, heat until lukewarm (not over 100 degrees). Remove from heat and stir in the yeast until it is completely absorbed. Gradually stir in the salt, sugar, one egg, cardamom, and most of the flour. Work the dough until smooth and shiny, then cover and let rise 30-40 minutes. On a floured surface knead the remaining flour into the dough. Divide into 12 parts and hand roll into smooth round balls. Let rise 20-30 minutes on a greased cookie sheet. Set oven for 475 degrees. Brush with the beaten egg and bake in the middle of the oven 8-10 minutes until golden and baked through. Set them out to cool.

To make the filling: cut off the top of each bun and scoop out a hollow in the bottom half with a spoon. Mix the scooped-out bits with the almond paste. Add cream to thin the mixture to a soft, smooth consistency. Fill the buns with the almond-paste mixture and put the tops back on. Using stiff whipped cream in a pastry bag, squeeze out a wreath of whipped cream around the top of each bun, then sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve.

Did you say Bandy or Brandy?

Mid-Winter Festival Day 7

It was an email from Per like no other. "Signe and I are having a father-daughter evening to go and watch bandy. The best part,however, is the bandykaffe. You know coffee with strong alcohol....(long pause)..........Signe will only have coffee while I enjoy my bandykaffee.  Well that's a relief, thought I.

I could only make one reply....Did you say bandy or brandy ?  Yes was the answer.

So what's Bandy?

(Per's Answer)

Sweden is the World Champions this year in the ice sport called Bandy. They won the finals against Russia. There are only a handful of countries which play this fine sport and Sweden is one of them. Other countries include: Russia, Finland, Norway,Ukraine,etc.

            

Today my daughter Signe and I were invited to a game between Hammarby,a Stockholm team, and Västerås. It was a very cold night at Zinkensdam, which is in the South part of town. Bandy isn't only a sport it always includes a culinary delight. First we had a Goulash Soup with a choice of wine or beer. Next came a great game of Bandy and then during halftime came, in my opinion, the most important thing.....Bandykaffe. To be able to manage, outside in the cold we need this cup of coffee with strong whisky or something simular.

   

Okej... to answer Valarie's question 'What is Bandy"

Eleven players on skates playing on a field of ice as big as a Swedish Association football field. Using a small ball and sticks, each team tries to score goals.   

Bandy is played on ice, using a single round ball. Two teams of eleven players each compete to get the ball into the other team's goal using sticks, thereby scoring a goal. The team that has scored more goals at the end of the game is the winner; if both teams have scored an equal number of goals, then the game is a draw. There are exceptions to this rule, however.

The primary rule is that the players (other than the goalkeepers) may not intentionally touch the ball with their heads, hands or arms during play. Although players usually use their sticks to move the ball around, they may use any part of their bodies other than their heads, hands or arms and may use their skates in a limited manner. Heading the ball will result in a five-minute penalty.

        

                          

      

It is such a fast game. Signe and I talked about how we wouldn't want to be a goalkeeper.
After a very chilly evening we both went home, warm after a Bandykaffe, but chilled after a cold night.

    

A Lithuanian Spa Retreat

Mid-Winter Festival Day 6 : Get Away

           

Last weekend, my wife Lotta and I had the great opportunity to go the Lithuania and get a few days away. We felt so tired and needed something relaxing. We investigated what to do and found that we had flying points with SAS, with a world of possibilites we decided to go to Lithuania. This is one of the countries we hadn´t visited yet, so it felt like a good decision. We flew away Friday and stayed to Sunday. As we wanted a SPA, we Googled and found a good one in Palanga on the Baltic coast and that there was a flight from Stockholm, via Copenhagen to Palanga.

        
So after two hours in two planes we arrived in a snow white airport in the middle of nowhere. Some taxis stood outside and we took one to the Palanga SPA hotel, a ten minute drive as  we passed the small city center of Palanga and arrived to a big new hotel, just five minutes from the beach.

       
Here we had a lot of SPA treatments, very cheap and done by very professional therapists. We mixed the treatments with relaxing by the indoor pool and saunas. Together with relaxing reading and good food served from the restaurants at the hotel we had a wonderful and relaxing weekend.

    
The dinner at the hotel was superb, with Tuna fish, duck, strawberries and a wonderful Sicilian red wine.
The other dinner we had was at a small restaurant in the center of town. It was more local and suited us better with in the Lithuanian style. Cheese, heering and kale, together with local beer. Just cost nothing and tasted wonderful.
This was a wonderful weekend and after that we both felt so relaxed and prepared to work again.

         

                       

                               

      

  

How to get a new life......

Mid-Winter Festival Day 5

Learn A New Language.

            

I bet you saw this one coming. Learning a language at any age is an extremely rewarding experience. We all know that babies are the best learners. Their openness,energy, and playfulness allow them to learn languages with ease. Children who have one adult speaker for each language can learn up to five different languages before the age of 5 or 6.  Has this age passed you? Don't worry you are never too old to learn. Leonardo Da Vinci learned Latin at the age of 44. Let's say, for example, that you wanted to learn the Swedish language. Here are a few tips for accelerating your language learning:

• Be willing to make lots of mistakes. Don't think of mistakes as failure only as feedback. Babies don't worry about looking stupid,cool, or instantly achieving perfected success. They just jump in and speak. Your progress is directly connected to your willingness to play and to accept the fact that it isn't perfect. Keep motivated. A Viking ship wasn't built in a day.
• Just like a talking one year old who babbles...repeat words and phrases over and over again.
• To jump start your language learning why not try a blended language learning program online? I bet you saw that one coming too. LearnSweden uses an approach of online self-paced lessons along with live classroom language meetings conducted by one of our native Swedish teachers.  So you study Swedish when you have time in the Learning Center. We are open 24/7,365. All of our lessons are right there at your fingertips and our friendly teaching staff is there to help your success.
• Learn words and phrases related to areas of passionate interest and then work out from there.
• Place Swedish post-it notes all over your house. Put them on everything. You can take the post-it note down once you have learned the word.
• Read the Swedish language whenever you can. Why not start in English and work towards Swedish. There is a wonderful online daily english newspaper about everything that happens in Sweden. www.thelocal.se  You can move over any word and click on it and the swedish word will come right up. It's a really fun way to learn Swedish.
• Are you a poet and didn't know it ? Turn your refridgerator or cookie sheet into a poetic magnet haven.  The magnetic poetry kit has a Swedish version containing 500 words to support the poet in you. You can find them at www.magneticpoetry.com
• Learn all about the culture. We have culture sections within our courses at LearnSweden as well as cultural courses to aid you in your preparation to travel to Sweden. To get you started on your virtual tour of Sweden start here www.visitsweden.se. While there why not join their wonderful community of Swedes and people who love Sweden. It's called Community of Sweden. The forum is in English so no worry there.

There is a chinese saying which says:"For every language you learn you get a new life". The meaning behind that is simple. Every language has it's way of viewing and experiencing the world we live in. With each language you learn you acquire new food,literature, music, theater, views on science,politics,religion,celebrations and traditions.Though our language is Swedish, these guidelines can be applied to any language.

Lycka Till in your new language learning endeavors. To learn more about LearnSweden you can find us here www.learnsweden.com

        

                           

Playing For Change

MidWinter Festival Day 4:

I can honestly say that I cannot remember a time when music hasn't been in my life. Before arriving at the gates of LearnSweden, I've spent a life in music, playing with my family, as a soloist, composer, teacher and as a Community Music School administrator. Music still continues to play a large part in my daily life as I share and enjoy my children playing and creating music. Happily,the tradition continues. As I write this my daughter Mimi is practicing piano getting ready for an upcoming concert.

           

         

During these dark days of winter why not brush off that guitar sitting in the closet and bring back the joy of music ? Perfection isn't needed just a ready heart. If playing music seems like a daunting task why not enjoy someone elses playing?

                            

Recently, I was introduced to the work of a wonderful inspired man named Mark Johnson. His is a journey which started in the streets of the United States and continued to travel over 4 continents;Europe,Africa, and Asia discovering how the power of music has to connect the world together.

Three years in the making Mark Johnson filmed spontaneous live music performances around the world. "Throughout the film, musicians from different locations that have never met eachother join together to re-create songs such as Stand By Me and One Love."

To learn more about Playing For Change and the Playing for Change foundation please go here. Money earned from the sale of this wonderful DVD goes to benefit the Playing for Change Foundation: "Building and Connecting Music/Art schools around the world."

For your enjoyment 'Stand By Me'.

                

                

Poster for the new DVD

                                

Remember and Re-Connect

MidWinter Festival Day 3

On these cold, gray, and dreary days remember the bountiful harvest of last years garden, the wonderful meals eaten outdoors and...........

                            

            

                              

 plan it all again !