Visitors in Stockholm: Part 1

I was a bit of a slacker about taking pictures in Stockholm while the girls were visiting, I guess I was just enjoying myself too much! So even though the girls were here more than two days I'll just be recapping in 2 posts. Dale had to work while the girls visited so it was just me and them exploring. I have heard much praise for Skansen, and open air museum on the island of Djurgarden and Nicola really wanted to see a Moose so we headed there. Most of the booths were closed this time of year but we still had fun looking at all of the Swedish animals and the examples of Swedish architecture. It must have been feeding time because all the animals were out and about, I even got this picture of an owl flying with a duck in it's beak!

We all agreed the Moose and Reindeer seem smaller here, anyone know why? Those are Moose in the picture above and Reindeer below with the Stockholm city scape.

We had so much fun looking at the animals we decided to eat them :) Ok, ok that might not have been the thought process but after Skansen we went to Östermlam Saluhall for a beyond delicious lunch or traditional Swedish food. We scarfed it down too fast to take pictures but oh man, we were in heaven! At the Saluhall we bought some reindeer meat and a moose sausage. After not finding much information online about how to cook reindeer meat I called up Mountain-Man-Mike in Colorado and he suggested we soak the reindeer in milk overnight and then cook it on the stove. We had read online that marinading the meat would hide the reindeer taste so we didn't put anything on it. Here's Dale with our reindeer meat in the middle of the pan and some pieces of the moose sausage around the outside.

Overall we decided the reindeer meat was good but nothing out of the ordinary. The moose sausage on the other hand, had a really distinct flavor to it and we all thought it was the better of the two. Although it was in sausage form so this could have skewed our opinion. Hopefully the Saluhall will have Moose meat one of these days so we can try it for a more fair comparison. Sorry Rudolf and Bullwinkle, hopefully Santa will forgive me!

Love Always,

Matilda

KTH

Here are some pictures of the KTH campus that I took after a meeting with the people I will start working with next week. Everyone is very nice and the work will be interesting and of a good variety so I think I'll be very happy there. Also, all my co-workers are native Swedes so I'm hoping I'll be able to learn a good amount of Swedish from working with them.

The picture below is the left half of the building I'll be working in (but my office is in the right half on the 2nd floor) and this building is the main building for KTH.

Outside "my" building is a courtyard and as I was leaving my meeting it just happened to be about dusk and I liked the lighting so I snapped this picture.

I walked from the meeting to Dale's office to meet up with him to go get our ID cards, our last administrative task in moving here. There was a nice viewing looking over Östermalm from the KTH campus.

I didn't feel like dragging my fancy camera to the meeting so these are all from my point and shoot.

Love Always,

Matilda

Östermalm

We had a great time wondering around Östermalm after visiting the Östermalms Saluhall. Upon leaving the Saluhall we found a shopping mall and it had a Zara so I had to go in! :) Probably something about recently selling/donating most of the things I own and then moving the rest of the stuff into Emma's garage or hauling it half way around the world, but I don't really have a desire to buy more things. So, I didn't buy anything but hopefully I'll be cured of that notion soon. Then we stopped for a late lunch/early fika of sandwiches and coffee. My cinnamon latte was the bees knees! I took a picture because I just love when coffee has pretty foam, I'm weird I know!

Östermalm has very beautiful and old, streets and buildings. Dale really liked this stairway and made me take a picture, you can sort of see the building style here.

At this point we'd been walking for many hours so we were ready to head home. As we were waiting for the bus after taking the subway I took this picture of Solna, the district in Stockholm that we live in.

This is a pretty typical view of Solna. And that concludes our Östermalm adventure.

Love Always,
Matilda

Östermalms Saluhall

This weekend Dale and I walked around Östermalm. We hadn't been to the area yet and I had read online about a food hall there that I wanted to check out called Östermalms Saluhall.

Immediately after exiting the subway at Östermalmstorg we saw the food hall and headed in to check it out. It's a beautiful old building filled with 20 or so different stalls selling vegetables, cheese, meat, and fish. Everything looked divine! Having a very limited vocabulary of animals in Swedish, we opted out of buying most things but will return once we've got a better grasp of what they are selling. We did, however, buy a delicious beef and veggie lasagna which we took home for dinner. Here's a couple pictures inside the food hall.

The lobster on the left labeled "Norsk Lobster" is priced at 890 SEK per kg that's about $62 a pound! The lobster on the right is about half that though, so it's super reasonable! Ha! And why do they sell the lobster already cooked? Can anyone help me figure that out? 

And here's a fish spread. I prefer my meat least resembling the animal it came from so this wasn't the most appetizing to me but Dale thought it all looked great! We'll definitely be coming back here.

Love Always,

Matilda