Yule Post

One does not only find special Christmas mailboxes in Finland - here in Sweden, during the month of December, one has the choice of posting in three different mailboxes:


And since it is the season, we would like to take this opportunity to wish our readers a happy holiday.

Snowy Stockholm

These weeks, Stockholm has been covered in a thick layer of snow..


.. and the short days result in very long shadows - even at noon:

The bikes are left in the racks...


.. while the toboggan run is much more busy ..


.. and it is just a lot more fun being outside!

Pepparkakshus (Gingerbread house)

Another christmas tradition the Swedes take very seriously is the tradition of building gingerbread houses.

In an era of cutting corners obviously you can buy a ready-made kit with walls and roof so the task is 'just' to assemble and decorate it.

However, some people do take the tradition MUCH more seriously and may partake in the Architectural Museum's Pepparkakshus 2009 competition. This competition has been running for 19 years and it seems to be an integrated tradition (well, at least to admire the contributions) among the Stockholmers.

Lisbeth saw a selection of the participating "houses" yesterday and was really impressed by the level of ambition and the imaginativeness. Below is shown the winners but all contributions can be seen on this list. The theme of 2009 was 'Monster' and the participants were divided into three groups: children, bakers and architects, and others. Our readers can make their own guesses as to which contributions are attributed to which participant category...

St. Lucy's day

From growing up in Denmark, we are familiar with the tradition of celebrating St. Lucy's day, but the Swedes take it to the next level. This time of year the common cinnamon bun (kanelbulle) has been replaced by the saffron containing lussebulle (also known as a lussekatt).


Furthermore it is more or less impossible to avoid running into several St. Lucy processions. So far we have seen them in the old town (the picture), at university, in the metro, and ... in the supermarket - both in the clothing and in the produce sections (!).

Where we are

The blog is rather quiet while we're travelling but if all has been according to plan, at the publication time of this blog post we should be staying here:

Crazy as well as qualified guesses on our exact location are welcome in the comment section :)