Waaaaay Back to December 2012

Bath House

I never did tell anyone what I did for my Chrisrmas vacation.   I went on a mission to find a hot spring.  according to a lovely travel App in my Ipad on touristic stuff in Sweden, it says that there is a hot spring in Umeå....Every person I mentioned to this to prior to my departure very politely without actually saying I was wrong, told me that this was something they did not think existed.  As a matter of fact, there are no hot springs anywhere in this country or the neighboring countries. Yet, the Swedish way of saying "No you crazy fool, there is no such thing" is to say - "wow, I didn't think there was a hot spring in Umeå"....Yeah - no hot springs.   This was the closest I got...

A nativity Scene or our Christmas Tree

At the time, it was such a very very very nice trip, even the lame ass train rides.  I was starving for interactions with something familiar, with food, people, company, friends - anything that wasn't Sweden.  For people who I could relate and lament with and for anyone to understand my sense of humor.  I needed to be around people who understood pop cultural references and where I didn't have to explain every part of the joke or memory.  I was so happy to leave this area even though I was heading farther north, farther into the darkness of winter.  It was way colder and really dark.  It had been a while since Ive experienced a Fairbanks winter.  This place was similar.

Sami hut

Paulina was such a wonderful host, making sure I saw parts of her city even though it was winter time and everything was closed.  Which reminds me.  Everyone takes the holidays off.  Meaning, if you expect places to be open while you are on Christmas vacation - the places you are going, those people are also likely on vacation too.

Down town

 Most of the activities that could be done or that were scheduled - they were all done/open up till Dec 23 and didn't resume till Jan 2.  But I got to see the Sami market place that is right behind her house (closed Dec 23), one of the museums, a sculpture park that is part of some campus outside of the city, and went skiing in and around her back yard.

I know Ive told lots of people this when they asked about how my Christmas break was, I will say it again.  The best word to describe it was Eclectic.  Christmas dinner was spent with 11 people and they were from all around the world, with the Russians out numbering the rest of us with 2 people from that 1 country.  Granted it is a big country so I suppose its allowed 2 representatives.  Natalia was from Moscow and Phillip from St. Petersberg.

Cool church

Most of the other people I do not remember their names or am too embarrassed to try to spell their names.  But there was 1 Armenian, 1 Argentinian, 1 Swed, 1 Canadian, 1 Ecuadorian, 1 Japanese, 1 Latvian  1 Mexican, 2 Russians and me.  Dinner was great because there were so many different dishes.  It was also great because we all had similar frustration stories of how we tried to cook a traditional dish from where we were from, but because we didn't recognize the ingredients or couldn't find the same things or somehow had to massage the recipe to fit the Swedish system...how the dish should really be.  (example of a lamentation)

I went to midnight mass with Paulina and Kenichi in this really cool looking church.  It was not as melodic as listening to mass in Latin, but it was still interesting to see the rituals done in this church and of course to not understand a word of it.

This was painted that morning and plowed
by the next morning.  Snow Graffiti 

We had a great time watching the fireworks from the hill behind Paulinas house.  It was so foggy out that you could barely see anything, but still, it was fun.  The hill overlooked a major portion of the city and you could sort of see fireworks from different sections of the city.  We ate the grapes at midnight 12 grapes in the last minute.  One grape per month = one wish to come true.  So far its been 2 months and neither of my first 2 wishes have come true!!  Silly tradition.

One of the strangest and coolest things in the bigger grocery stores in the bigger cities are these scanning machines.  You check out these little scanners and as you put items into your cart you scan it and it automatically creates your bill for you.  You can basically "check out" as you shop.
 It really is based on the honor system to a point.  They do randomly check various people so you could be stopped at any point.  But basically when you get to the check out counter, you go through a special line that all you have to do is swipe your card for payment and go.  Don't really have any photos at the moment.  Will have to remember to bring in my camera the next time Im in a big city.
Some silly signs:

This is a meeting place for people to hold hands?

I think outfart would be more releving

Wow, somebody loves Patrick!!!