Parenting tip

Midsummers day was spent with grandma and grandpa in Nabbared. Grandpa fired up the stove in the sauna and I enjoyed some traditional sauna-bathing with Clara by the lake. Filip was down with a fever and sadly could not join us in the sauna…

Afterwards Clara wanted to go for a quick ride in the rowing-boat. We didn’t have any life-jackets with us, but went for a short trip in the 60 cm deep water along the shore-line.

This is a perfect activity for a parent. You have your child trapped in a place they can’t escape from, and get half an hour all alone with your child without any interruptions. Just enjoy the scenery and talk about anything and everything – and boy does Clara like to talk right now…

I think we’ll try this again next time in Nabbared.

 

Bergamo

I spent last week in northern Italy. The European Association of Cardio-Thoracic Surgeons organize week long courses for residents and for the second time this year I went with two other colleagues to learn more about congenital and adult cardiac surgery.

The courses are held in Bergamo, an old and very beautiful city that sits at the foot of the southern alps. You can get cheap airway tickets with Ryan Air  - they fly to the local airport just a few kilometers outside of town. 

Lectures were long and (mostly) interesting, but we also had some time for pleasure. In the area you find four alp-lakes with beautiful scenery. One day we drove to one of them, Lake Garda were we rented mountainbikes. I can recommend Los Locos bike shop, which offer great service, nice bikes and helmets for €15 per day. I bought a map with the trails marked, but this proved to be was unnecessary, since many of the excellent hiking / biking trails were easily found and clearly marked with signs.

Here are som more pictures from the trip:

 

We had enjoyed exceptionally good weather in Sweden before the trip. In Italy the weather was nice all days except one. But as our returning airplane approached Göteborg, we found things more “normal”. The photo below shows Hisingen as we prepare to land at Säve airport…

Why I love Sweden

I apologize to all my (few) readers – I’ve been traveling with work and unable to update my blog for a while. But I’ll start with a short report of the Swedish national holiday – June 6.

I think most swedes have looked with some envy to our neighbours in the west and their may 17 celebration, but this year there was no jealousy – our Swedish national day was nearly perfect. The weather was stunning. I was free from work so we joined Espen & Johanna, Ulf & Sofia, Chris & Mary, Gabriel and a whole bunch of cousins on an outing to Amundön. Sunbathing, swimming and playing in the water, eating pizza and scubadiving… The only bad thing was that Matilda was sick with a sore throat, so she stayed home to recuperate. 

Here are some pictures:

 

The top picture is a stitched panorama, the bottom is a picture of a rather large and agressive crab (and a smaller fish) that we found while scubadiving.

Spinning around

Today I got an email from a friend – “Enjoy the weather and take your kids on an outing”. I thought that was a rather nice suggestion. Every monday we try to have family time (“home evening”), so today we decided to go bathing in Stensjön, a lake close by. I think we all enjoyed the “spinning exercise”, and daddy got to take a few pictures:

 

Techincal info: Camera strapped to daddy’s chest, aperture priority with EV -1 and f22, SB-28 fill flash with second curtain sync (manual setting 1/16) and continous low-speed shooting with locked remote control.

Of course, this setup made it difficult to get the picture perfectly composed every frame:

 

P.S. It’s fun to have some swimming-goggles. Especially when they are color-matched to the swimmingsuit and latest fashion:

 

Watching Gustav

Daddy’s watching Gustav in the carseat. Camera is sitting close by. He’s a little camerashy at first, but soon brakes out in his regular smile!