Summerhouse visit

The train strike is over, they were able to agree the day before one of the busiest travel weekends in the country, Midsummer. I made it to the summerhouse by two trains and a bus. We celebrated the Midsummer Eve rather quietly, with boiled eggs and pickled herring. There was also a group of folkdancers entertaining at the local community park. Saturday we went (by bus + train) to visit my mother’s friend for some pretty good homebaked cookies. Sunday evening we attended a concert themed “In the rosegarden” at the local church. Very high quality soprano singers.

The visit at the summerhouse was nice, but it was somewhat darkened by the number of machines that broke down, or had already broken down. It started with the brand new TV, which, after many discussions, was exchanged with the help of a neighbor who brought it to town (we don’t have a car). We got a new one of the same brand and it works better. Then one morning the opening mechanism to the microwave oven broke, so that the door couldn’t be opened. I had to use a lot of force to get my mother’s porridge out… Amazing. The fan above the stove is also broken and the weather station lost the connection to the main receiver, and wouldn’t start again even after the batteries were exchanged. My mother said “What’s next!?” and we were both thinking of the fridge, which has been repaired three times in recent years. They don’t make durable household machines anymore, that’s for sure.

My mother has been busy writing her life story. A few years ago she was given a book in which to write down her family information, and this book will be given to her first grandchild. She hasn’t had the opportunity to do anything about this until now, and we have spent quite some time talking about the questions in this book. She needed documentation and I went home yesterday, partly to get family photos copied for this. Now she also got one more book for the second grandchild, so she will be very busy with this project.

During my visit we also went swimming in the small indoor pool at Furuboda (too cold in the ocean) and visited the local historical museum (for the first time ever and we have lived in the area since the mid 80’s).

I’m back home now, also to water my plants. One didn’t make it, but it’s ok. During my absence a painter has been here to fix the damages from the window exchange earlier. It looks good, the damages are not visible anymore. The entire building has also been painted now, in the same color as before, dark yellow.

I have one more week of vacation and I haven’t decided what to do really, but I’m returning to the summerhouse tomorrow. Today I was at work, and the first thing I see in the lunchroom is a newspaper article about the dangers of working during your vacation. Many people answer e-mails and phonecalls even though they shouldn’t, and I am of course one of them. There hasn’t been that much to attend to, I have mostly sent the messages on to my colleagues. Today I got two work-related questions and had to send documents to a colleague. I try to go there late afternoons and hide in the stacks to do my research, but they spot me anyway.

Crowded trains

There hasn't been that much going on here. The weather is nice and I have stayed at home for the most part, mainly because my train pass expired. I have of course been busy with Olga's biography. I also admired the guy who stood on my balcony, first cleaning, then painting both the roof and ceiling of it, and the wall (in three different colors). It's a little strange to have builders walk past your balcony and windows every day, and I have to make sure I'm properly dressed... It's at the end now, the scaffolding will be gone soon.

The train strike is still going on, unfortunately. The summer pass (travel in the entire province at affordable price) started this Sunday and I made the mistake of going to Malmö. Getting there was ok, but on the way home the train was extremely crowded. I have experienced worse train rides in my time, but still, it was not pleasant. It will be 28 years of daily commuting this fall. Incredible what I have put up with all these years.

At work my colleagues seem to be doing fine. They were surprised to get 120 requests from the same person yesterday, but they managed. It has slowed down at the library, but we get these hobby researchers during the summer and they can challenge us quite a lot. I'm visiting my workplace right now, and from the documents posted on the intranet I can conclude that I have been elected member of a committee here and that I will be in charge of a workshop I have never heard of. Interesting.

This upcoming weekend is the Midsummer holiday, and I plan on going to visit my mother at the summerhouse. I might stay there for a while if the weather is good.

Travel diary from 1894

Last weekend was also fairly long, three days, since the national holiday is June 6. We normally don’t celebrate it much. I usually go on a shopping trip to Denmark that day because the stores are open there, but the train strike is still going on, so I decided it was too much trouble. Instead I have done some short trips to different malls. I also spent Saturday at work, to avoid getting strange questions from my colleagues. I did some research for the biography. Other activities at home include a thorough cleaning of the bathroom, handwashing blouses, a minor reorganization of the wardrobe and some cooking. Today was very hot, 26 centigrades, and I did basically nothing. I went for groceries at 7 in the evening and almost melted away. We are not used to this kind of weather, I hope it cools down soon. Frequent readers of this blog (if there are any at all) know that Swedes have to complain about the weather, no matter what.

My grandmother’s cousin sent a very interesting document he had found in his father’s belongings. First an explanation: my great-great grandfather was a sailor and he seems to have been quite adventurous. He had actually lived in New Zealand 1872-1878, before his marriage. In 1894, then married with three children – one was Olga, he made the journey back to New Zealand, this time with his brother-in-law and his family. The latter family stayed there until 1908, when they moved on to Australia (we visited the descendants there in 1998). My great-great grandfather tried to urge his wife to sell the house and emigrate with their children, but she refused. She was very religious and was worried that the children would not get confirmed properly, as she did not think New Zealand to be a “godly country”. I have known about this story my whole life, but I didn’t know that my great-great grandfather wrote a travel diary during his voyage to New Zealand in 1894. It took a little more than two months by train and ship from Copenhagen, via Hamburg, Bremen, Southampton, through the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, India, west and south coast of Australia, Tasmania and finally Wellington. The diary is an incredible account of the people they met, the sights they saw and even what they had to eat. He had sailed the seven seas since 1869, and you can tell he had been in those ports before, he commented on it. After three years in New Zealand he returned home. He never managed to persuade his wife to emigrate. If he had, this would be a completely different story…

Long weekend at the summer house

Wednesday last week I went to visit my mother at the summer house. It was a long weekend (Ascension Day), so my sister and her family also visited. There was lots of work done; we cleared all the roofs of the unavoidable pine needles and moss, had a cracked window exchanged, cleaned all the windows thoroughly, and washed the south house wall with the water hose and a brush. My effort here was not that extensive, I basically held the ladder my sister was standing on while cleaning the wall. We got soaked, but it turned out very well. The wall will be painted later. Other activities included soccer practice, lego building, bubble blowing and other games with the kids. There was time for a short fleamarket round also. Since my sister had the car, my mother also stocked up on groceries.

I returned home Sunday. I didn’t dare to stay longer because there were rumors about a train strike for the limited stop-trains. Unfortunately, it came into effect early Monday morning. This is causing lots of problems for about 80 000 commuters in the entire southern part of Sweden. There are some towns in the northwest that now have no train service at all. At least I can go on the trains that make all local stops, but they are very crowded since all passengers now have to go on them. I definitely can’t go anywhere during rush hours. Those who have cars have the option of using them, of course, and this is noticeable on the roads. Getting from here to Copenhagen is possible, but takes a very long time. It requires a train ride, a bus ride, and a metro ride. Lots of people have missed their flights from Copenhagen Airport because of this. There are news of the strike being extended also, and I’m very unhappy about this, since I am dependent on the trains.

Monday I went to work (by train) to make preparations for a social club activity. I went grocery shopping, using the storage round car. Tuesday I went once again to work, to participate in the actual activity, a barbecue. We had planned on having it in the park outside the library, but it rained, so we moved it to the staff lunch room. Not the actual barbecue, but the eating part. We have an open air deck right by the lunch room, so we grilled the sausages there and ate indoors. It went surprisingly well and we had a very good time.

100th birthday party

I went to Stockholm by train Thursday, to stay with my mother’s relatives. Friday I went shopping in town a little, but I spent most of the day at the Swedish History Museum. I can’t remember ever having been there before. I toured the exhibits about gold and silver treasures, Vikings, textiles from the 17^th and 18^th centuries, and the history of Sweden 1000-2000. I also listened to a guide, who gave more details about the special exhibit on the battle of Gotland in 1361, where a few thousand people were killed when the Danish king Valdemar invaded the island. Not the best museum I have visited, but all rather interesting, especially the Viking exhibit.

My grandfather’s birthday party Saturday was amazing. It was at a restaurant near his home, a 40 minute train ride for me. Almost 70 people attended, some had travelled very far (his nephew from Denmark and his former hunting friends from northern Sweden, for instance). The 100 year-old seemed to be enjoying the event, as he has always loved parties. He said he gets tired quite quickly these days, but that’s no wonder. His mind is clear and he still plays bridge and solves the most difficult crossword puzzles. It’s not easy to find a suitable present for someone turning 100, but we ended up giving him a basket with food items like jam and biscuits. Other people gave him flowers, mostly. The buffet was very nice, and the cake too. It was a warm and sunny day (perhaps a little too warm), but we all had a good time. I don’t see those relatives much, as we are spread out all over the country.

Sunday I went to a town two subway stations away, to visit even more relatives. These ones I had never met. It’s my paternal grandmother’s cousin. I contacted him recently because I need help with Olga’s biography. It turns out that he has all his father’s (Olga’s eldest brother) documents saved, including the letters from Olga, photos and much else. I stayed there for hours, going through these papers. His father had been very meticulous and kept all documents. It was very interesting and I got answers to some of my questions. I was given the letters from Olga, which was great, as I need them for the book. I pointed out which photos I wanted, and he will scan them and send later. He had paintings of some of the ships Olga’s father and brother-in-law sailed on, and even a wooden model of one, apparently made by Olga’s mother.

I returned home yesterday, and I have now read through all Olga’s letters to her brother. Some of them can be used in the biography. They also shed light on something I had been wondering about. Olga occasionally wrote about someone named Ulla (which can be a woman’s name), but I now found out that it’s actually a cat!

New windows

Last week my windows and balcony door were exchanged. A very noisy and dusty job. In order to get the old windows out they had to use a sledge. There are damages from this that will be fixed later. I was at home during the work and it was not so easy to concentrate on the family history research when those guys were working in the same room. I spent three days cleaning afterwards. There was concrete dust all over the apartment, even in the laptop. Everything turned out very well, though. The new windows are air-tight (the old ones were absolutely not), they are easier to clean and there are now Venetian blinds in front of all the windows and also the balcony door.

This week I got a train pass that is valid in the entire province of Skåne. It was expensive, but I think it will be worthwhile, now that I have time to travel. I have been shopping at my favorite mall outside Helsingborg, and also at Ikea (got a freestanding clothes rack – I need more places to hang my clothes). Unfortunately, I had to go to the library one day to take care of some business regarding the social club activities. I try to go there late afternoons or weekends, so that my colleagues will not see me. I have also hidden in the library basement, in the microfilm reading room. I have searched for newspaper obituaries there, for the biography project. Didn’t find all of them, but there was one for Olga herself, luckily.

Today was the first really warm day for the year, about 20 centigrades and very sunny. This weekend is the carnival in Lund, which the students arrange every four years. I usually go to see the parade, and I made it onboard one of the overcrowded trains to go there today. It’s by far the biggest event in this area, about 200 000 people watch the floats moving slowly through town. The floats are pulled by trucks, and everything is decorated in extreme colors. The theme this time was the future and the students had been very inventive, there were references to current events, the upcoming election, the royal family, google, plastic surgery and other modern trends in society. In between the floats there were marching bands, also from other universities. It was fun to watch, but tiring to stand up for so long. Getting out of there was not easy, the number of people heading for the train station at the same time was just ridiculous. It’s not that crowded even in the biggest cities I have visited.

Some family news: my sister was able to get a job close to home, after having been unemployed since last year. My mother has now moved down to the summer house for the season.

Next week there will be a historic event in the Ericsson family – my grandfather turns 100! We are all amazed (including himself). The party will be the following weekend and we are all going, of course.

 

 

Big project

It didn’t take long before I visited my workplace. Just a few days after I went on vacation, a colleague was going to retire and there was a party arranged for her. It was nice to visit, but I realized that I can’t be there during regular work hours. I get stopped in the corridor by colleagues, asking me what I do there. I have a lot of research to do, and I need the databases at the library. I have many of them on my home computer, but not all. I have started the big project of writing my great aunt’s life story. Her name was Olga and she died in 1985. We inherited a box with her almanacs, where she had written every day for seven decades about the daily chores. Very brief notes, but still enough to understand what her life was like. It’s rare to get such a material and I really think she deserves to have her story told, even though she lived a normal, fairly uneventful life. There is lots of research required, because she wrote about people I never knew and she lived in a town I don’t know much about. There are many questions unanswered here, so I wrote to a relative on that side to perhaps learn more. He was very surprised to hear from me (we have never met), but said he had some information about the family to share. I have also looked into Olga’s parents’ aunts, uncles and cousins, to see if some of them emigrated, and there were several. So this project has all the prospects of becoming a huge one.

I have also done something I have been thinking about for quite a while – I went swimming at the indoor pool in Lund. It has a new pool for swimming, which is completely separated from the area where the kids play around in the water slides. It was my first visit since the addition, and it was a good experience. Brand new changing rooms and a hot sauna too.

Apart from this, I have discovered that there is a world going on in the daytime, which I have almost never seen. It’s rather nice to go shopping before 4 pm, there are short lines in the stores then. I have been to several malls and found some small things, a scarf, for instance. Other activities include cooking, doing laundry and watching TV. I also got a new passport. And in relation to this I borrowed four different travel guides for cities in Europe, so maybe I will go on a trip somewhere.