It all started with a bad cold at Christmas. I had it first. The son caught it 24 hours later. With fevers of 105 F he was really miserable the night before New Year’s. Obviously too miserable to take the team bus to Sweden on Januar 1 for a basketball tournament, too miserable only to think about basketball – and knowing this made him feel even more miserable.

You know what’s next … Starting 2018 with regret was clearly not an option. Hence, we booked a ferry and a room, saddled the car and skipped the fireworks at midnight by going to bed early. The next morning we went North:

by car to the Baltic sea, by ferry to Denmark, then crossing the country, through long tunnels and over even longer bridges to Sweden where we arrived in the early evening.

Just like the team bus. In the country of yarn.

The writing of a school presentation on the French Revolution began on the ferry. Just like a new pair of socks. Looking back, it seems as if the ferry trip was the only relaxing and quit moment of our journey.

Everything that followed was like a dream: the cities of Lund and Malmö between late sunrise and early sundown, houses without curtains and in every window a star, a light, a light arch. Restaurants that would close at 7 pm every night (we loved the Mediterranean and it’s fisksoppa), cafés with delicious carrot cake, Ikea in every detail, very cool design everywhere else.

At Malmö’s FormDesignCenter we came across a very small but very exquisite exposition about Ann-Marie Nilsson (Marc O’Polo’s first designer in 1967 as I know now). At Lund we discovered Tant Hulda, a yarn store so wonderful, it made it to one of the top 10 stores I’ve ever been to. The next day and really by chance we ran into a knitting circle of four charming ladies at Ulletuss outside of Malmö. I can still recall their happy hej hej to greet us, their hej då for goodbye. The very helpful shop owner recommended the Hemslöjden Skane Store in Landskrona to us and I am so happy we went. After all, it was there that I found the perfect yarn for the Birkin sweater I am planning to knit the sooner the better.

In between, there were (of course) basketball games in all of Lund’s sports halls (some were won – unfortunately not all of them), rain coming from all directions (and without intermission) and friendly people everywhere. We had a blast!

Last night we came back to Berlin. My cold is as bad as it was before we left, the son has not played in one single game (too sick) and in our piggy bank is a big hole. We don’t care. We loved Sweden. All three of us did.

All that’s left for tomorrow is to polish the presentation on the French Revolution (son), a book review (son) and the correction of the last in-class test in French (son), as well as testing the new yarn (me!). Maybe another blogpost with pictures of my souvenir yarn. Sounds like any other Sunday.

Daily routine will start on Monday.

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My New Year’s resolution? To write every single blogpost in German and English. Let’s see how that goes …