Great weekend, great week

Let’s face it: We love it here! With less than 2 months under our belt, we have already hosted our first party, our first weekend guests and a couple of dinners. Even though Stockholm is a massive city and walking over to your friends’ house is not an option, it still feels really easy to get around and to go out and do stuff. When people come visit us, it’s even easier of course! ;)

This past Friday we had another ‘Dublin connection meet-up’ when my old friend and first roommate from Dublin, Hameed and his girlfriend Helene came over for dinner. Hameed was over in Stockholm for a long weekend to visit Helene who is doing an internship here. As always, it is great to catch up with old friends, and as always, it feels like no time has passed since we last met in Edinburgh 2 or 3 years ago. Ethan was thrilled as well as Hameed and Helene brought gifts for him. Who can blame him! ;)

The weather in Stockholm is absolutely gorgeous right now and on Saturday we met up for a long walk around Kallhäll with a new acquaintance, Helen and her kids. Helen is originally from the UK but has been living here for the longest time and she showed us new routes to Centrum *exciting, eh!* and we also headed over to the shops to buy ‘Lördagsgodis’, which is a Swedish weekly tradition where you go out on the Saturday and buy sweeties. The idea is that you don’t necessarily give your kids sweeties for the rest of the week and instead create a buzz around ‘Lördagsgodis’. Works like a charm!

Helen also gave us a good tip for an awesome kiddy pool relatively close by so on Sunday we hopped on the pendeltåg and headed over to Bro and their communal swimming pool where they had recently built and extension with a baby friendly adventure pool with little slides, baby size Jacuzzi-type tubs, non-slip steps, colourful animals that were squirting water, palm trees and last but not least: balls! We have never heard Ethan say the word ‘ball’ so many times in a row before, it was like he was possessed! Good times!

On Monday evening it was no rest for the wicked as we had another dinner guest that had reserved a seat at the table at Chez Harrison-Helin. Our friend Henrik came over to try Shaena’s fantastic pasta. I should mention that Shaena has finally managed to find the last ingredient to her, yes her, signature pasta recipe; Heinz Chili Sauce, and needless to say, she was absolutely thrilled to find out that Sweden, which already is ‘the promised land’ compared to the UK, could also offer decent pasta ingredients!

Oh, and yesterday when I came in to work one of the guys handed me a goodie bag with a huge selection of sweeties and a bottle of 12 year old single malt to say thank you for helping him out with one of his clients. I love my job! ;)

We have arrived!