I think my shrimp is looking at me.

January 13th, 2011

My last full day in Gothenburg was very entertaining. In the morning, I was allowed to be lazy and I finally started to update a lot of the pictures up onto my facebook. I have to admit that I may be already starting to get a little homesick. I’ve stayed away from home much longer in the past, but I was always close enough to home to just jump in my car and leave whenever I wanted to. I think just knowing that I am so far away makes missing home a little worse.
A little after noon, Gunilla’s brother, Håkan and his wife picked us up for lunch. We ate at a restaurant called Långedrag Värdshus. It is a really fancy restaurant that is on the Atlantic Ocean. I think it is the prettiest restaurant I’ve ever eaten at. It also happens to be one of those restaurants where you only get three choices: the dish of the day, a salad or some stand-by dish. Since the dish of the day was some sort of soup that had three different types of seafood in it, I sprung for the stand-by dish. The best translation they gave me for it was “hamburger that is nothing like McDonald’s.” I should hope not.

I feel like half of my blog is spent describing food, but I can’t help it. Each meal I have is better than the previous one! This meal was the best beef, the best mashed potatoes and a yummy cooked apple. I felt like Remy from the Disney movie Ratatouille. I had one bite of the meat and that was amazing. Then I took a bite of the mashed potatoes and the meat together, and that was even better. Maybe I’m just too poor to go to restaurants like this in the US, but otherwise I would think that Swedish food (errr, food in Sweden) is much better than American. After lunch, we had coffee. Coffee was included in the price of the meal because they assume everybody would buy it anyways I think.
After fika, Håkan took us on a driving tour of where him and Gunilla grew up. They showed me the old house they lived in as well. In fact, when my great-grandfather Charles visited, he had stayed with Gunilla and Håkan’s parents.
This is really important because I definitely think it is because of Charles’ last visit to Sweden that has allowed me to also visit. When he visited, Thorlief, Gunilla and Håkan were young kids and they remember meeting him, asking him questions about his American cars and seeing American money for the first time. I also think it should be said that not once in my entire time in Gothenburg did I spend one dime. They wouldn’t let me. I wanted to buy a postcard to send to my parents and even though it was less than a dollar, I wasn’t allowed to buy it myself. This is because when Charles visited, he took the entire family out to dinner at the fanciest restaurant in town. Gunilla still remembers how good the dinner was and she remembers his generosity.

Next they took me to a church that is at a high point in Gothenburg. From there, we could see the bridge, the harbor and what seemed like the entire town.
After all of this, we got back home and had only a few hours before dinner. Gunilla had called a few cousins and invited them all over for dinner. So for dinner it was Gunilla, Arne, Thorlief, Ewa, Håkan, Håkan’s wife (whose name even if I did remember, I don’t think I could spell the right way), Birgitta and myself. Birgitta’s grandmother was Teckla, who was a sister to Charles. I was really hoping most of the dinner would be in English. However, no such luck because Birgitta and Håkan’s English wasn’t so great.
So when we sat for dinner, Gunilla showed me what we were eating. It was fresh shrimp caught from the Atlantic Ocean just that morning. They were the kind of shrimp that have the eyes, the antennae, the legs and my first one just happened to be pregnant and was full of eggs. I wish at least one other American had been there with me because I was laughing at myself. Thorlief had to teach me how to open them and he was like, “It’s really easy, you just twist and rip the head off like this and then just pull the legs and skin off and... done! Bon appetit!”

I’m not really what one would call a seafood person. All of the Swedes were really confused by this. “Don’t you live on a big lake?”
Ummm... Can you eat the fish out of Lake Michigan? I’m not even sure if you’re really supposed to swim in it or you might get cancer or something.
In the end, I really liked the shrimp. And Gunilla had bought pizza (something she knew I would like) for the main course.
After dinner was fika, and I tried my best to listen to all their fast Swedish. Listening to a different language is actually really tiring. At one point I was only half listening and Birgitta suddenly turned around and in broken English demanded to hear my Swedish. I always feel awkward when people say that to me. What do you want me to say?
I said a few sentences and she said I sounded pretty good for not knowing much Swedish. I Swedish-gasped at that...and that was the end of the conversation.

I was grateful that I got to meet the people that I did. I made sure we took a picture of everyone. It’s kind of a funny picture because I don’t think people pose for pictures in Sweden the way Americans do. They like to take candid pictures; which is why I think no one but me is smiling.
After everyone left, Gunilla taught me how to make kräm. I can’t wait to subject my friends to my Swedish recipes when I get back to Champaign.