Lussekattor or Saffron buns

It's that time of year again! Saffron buns making or as they are called in Swedish "Lussekattor"! Every Christmas we make this delicious sweet buns that turns a glorious color yellow due to the saffron that has been added, and yes saffron cost a fortune... But what do you do, it's only Christmas once a year:)

This year I had 2 helpers, Max and Sam!

Tuesday night sailing

Captain Tim said: "10-15 knots wind, should not be too windy so bring Max with you out!" Lots of happy shrieks erupted in the Guth household as Max got to join me for my Tuesday night sail... After last weeks colission when the 44 ft ArcII rammed os in the stern I just hoped for a less eventful evening race this night...

Max heading down the dock towards the Kuivato.

Getting ready to cast off

Psyching each other out..

Like mother like son..

Captain Max steering the boat out towards the starting line

On the lookout for the racing marks

It turns out that when we got to the start line the winds were more like 20-25 knots, with quite the swell!

We put one reef in the sail for the first race, and Max was safely tucked away in the companion way enjoying the ride!

He did not flinch or get sea sick..

For the second race, we went with 2 reefs in the main sail and we shortened the jib with about a foot, Max is happy as can be!

Relaxing sail for Max, while we other worked hard to ensure we stayed ahead of all the other boats, "Barefoot Children" were ahead of us and we used all our strategies to keep the distance to a minimum.

Tuckered out after 2 races, we came in second place on both races which netted us a comfortable overall 1st place!!

Four more weeks of races left.. lets see if we can keep that first place!

Pike Fishing

Gene has had his eyes on pikefishing in Sweden ever since my cousins son Adam spent this past Christmas with us and entertained everyone with pictures and the tale of how he caught an 11 kg (aprox 22 lb pike) in the lake Levrasjön. Of to Levrasjön we went for a day of pikefishing. The lake had this magical emerald shine to it, and Adam had filled the cooler with all the essential foods for Pike fishing like, cinamon buns, choclate balls, sugar soda and plenty of licorice candy:) The boat sped of

Ven

The famous Astronomer Thyco Brahe was given the island of Ven from the Danish Kind Frederik II, in 1587 as an appreciation of his services to the royal court. On the island of Ven Tycho Brahe built the worlds first  scientific research centere where his main focus was to study the stars before the telescope was invented!! You might wonder how can you study stars withou a telescope? Well for Thyco it was a no brainer, he used a sextant and various other astronomical devices that could measure the angles of the stars as they related to the horizon. He would then measure the same stars over and over again and see the difference in distances and derive his theories from that.

Ven is an amazing island in the middle of Öresund, with rolling hills of crops, amazing vistas and fun little gravel roads to bike on. The circumfrance of the island is about 11 miles, that makes it an easy day trip. They make their own ice cream, (thumbs up from Max), their owwn Canola oil, and the best part they have their own Whiskey distillery where we tried some of their home brew!

Rolling fields with Rye

Fun gravel roads for biking

Crazy Drops down towards the ocean

Tycho Brahe observatory

Gene and Max learned a new summer game

Harbour

25% grade of upphill climb

 

Ahh.. summer fun !

 

  

 Morfar and Gene happy with the Whiskey selection

Legoland

No visit to Sweden is complete without a visit to Legoland, in Billund Denmark. It is a 4 hour car ride from Lund Sweden. The trip used to be WAY longer before they build all the bridges between the different straights of water. My friend Louise and her son William joined us for the trip. They normally lives in Durham, NH. She is also from Sweden and her parents lives just an hour car ride northeast of my dad!!

Snekkersten, Denmark.

A high preassure system has landed itself over Sweden and is here to stay. Another glorious day with temperatures in the mid 80's a nice breeze and it is beach time! We took the ferry from Helsingborg to Helsingör in Denmark and got picked up by my uncle.  My cousin's son Gustav who is a year older than Max was staying with them for the weekend, so we thought it would be fun for the boys to get together. We started of the day with a quick visit to the technical museum of Helsingör, a place where you could see every machine imaginable. My favorites are the evolution of the bikes! Back to the house for some lunch Danish style!! Yum! After lunch we all went to the beach for some swimming in the ocean again. Who can restist when the water temperature is close to 70 degrees!

Domsten

My childhood friend Sofie invited us for lunch and a swim in Domsten, a tiny village 10 km north of Helsingborg where my grandparents had a house and I spend every childhood summer there. We finally moved there fulltime after third grade. It was so fun to show Max and Gene my elementary school, the windy road thru the woods down to Domsten, remminice about bikerides home and once I even rollerbladed the 2 miles from school to home.  Max and Sofies son William made fast friends, even though he is 2 years younger and just spoke a few words of Swedish. William immediately found his fixed blade knife and asked if Max and he could run up to the woods and carve some sticks.. Of course, since this is Domsten with very few cars and a way of life how it should be! A quick walk to the harbour and swim in Öresund, the straight of water between Sweden and Denmark. Max and William spotted some kids fishing for crabs from the docks in the harbour and begged to do the same. After luch they left by themselves for some crabfishing adventure, while Gene and Anders (Sofie's Husband) bonded over strategies on how to best play the game "Clash of Clan". The day ended with a ride back to Helsingborg, in style!!

Nimis

The weather gods promised some sunshine and we decided it was time for a visit to the nature reserve "Kullen" that is located on the Northwest tip of Skane. My main reason to go there was to visit the country of Lalandia, where the Artist Lars Vilks built a giant driftwood sculpture called Nimis!! It is built illegally on a Naturepreserve, the authorities wants to tear it down and years of legal battles has taken place between the Artist and the authorities. Prompting him to sell the sculpture to various individuals like the famous artist Cristo. His last stance was to proclaime a soverign state called Lalandia in order to ensure the sculpture gets to stay!

Berlin to Sweden via Train

By the time we finally figured out the subway system in Berlin in a way that made it easier to get around, it was time to leave... We so wished we had more time, we would have loved to explore some more beer bars, taken a cruise on the river that flows threw Berlin and go to the Postdam castle. It also turned out that there is an old concentration camp only an hour via train outside Berlin, that would have been interesting to see... Now we know that Berlin has so much to offere and we would love to go back.

Instead we jumped to the train to Sweden, an apparent semi high speed super efficient train that sped through the German country side. Gene got a bit woosy from the rocking. First changeover took place in Hamburg, changing from a German train to a Danish one. Next stop was Puttgarden where the whole train rolls on the ferry!! Pretty crazy but yes that is how it went down.NExt stop after that was copenhagen, change trains there to get on the train to Helsingborg!! All in all the trip took 8 hours or so.!! As we arrived in Helsingborg, the temperature had plumeted to less than 60 degrees with a narly wind, wow it was so true that the further north you go the colder it gets... The night also got much brighter with prolonged dusk and a sun that does not set unteil after 10 pm!!

Berlin Sight seeing

We decided upon a walking tour of Berlin with an English speaking guide
We got to see:
The Berlin Wall
The former death strip
Stand over hurlers bunker
Benelplatz: Nazi book burning
Checkpoint Charlie
Reichtag and government quarters
Brandenburger gate
Memorial to the murdered Jews
SS and Gestapo head quarters
Museum Island