March - April 2025
Read time: Approximately 20 minutes for average reading speed (~2500 words, not including photo captions & short videos… ~30-40 minutes for leisurely perusing of all photos, captions, and videos)..
(Note: See January’s blog post to understand how to toggle captions on and off of photographs below.)
What We’ve Been Doing
It’s been a busy couple of months ! Here are some highlights from March and April as we get ready to head in to summer…. In addition to moving, lots of fun events and also lots of cold bugs circulating and sick days between the two of us. I’ve never had 3 colds in the span of period of a few months in my life! That on top of getting acclimated to life in a new city, keeping up with working out, eating healthy, commuting to my our language classes, job interviews (yes!), this blog post is a little later than normal. I hope you enjoy!
March 1-2: Nordic Coffee Festival (Gothenburg, @nordiccoffeefest on IG)
Nordic Coffee Festival… what can I say? We went last year not really knowing what to expect. Turns out Scandinavia is an absolute epicenter for coffee - the highest consumption of coffee per capita is all the Scandinavian nations. Their mindset for roasting and appreciating the best coffee is also top notch. The result is all of the independent roasters from some of the world’s best coffee roasting countries gathering under one roof. You can wander around and taste all of the best coffees over the course of two days while meeting and speaking to the actual roasters in many cases. They range from roasteries run literally by a husband and wife in their spare time from their day jobs all the way to giants like Coffee Collective. It’s so fun to watch and participate in the process of the growth of these awesome businesses. We always walk out with five or six bags of beans of the favorites we tasted that year (this is all we can drink in the 3 months or so that roasted coffee beans hold their flavor… as we also get subscription coffees: Coffee Collective|Copenhagen, Muttley & Jack’s|Stockholm, and KaffeBox|Norway).
Our top choices from this year, in no particular order:
Nordic Roasting Company: Copenhagen, Denmark (@nordicroastingco on Instagram, ships worldwide)
Paper Mill Coffee: Tallinn, Estonia (@papermillcoffee on Instagram, ships within Europe)
Good Life Coffee: Helsinki, Finland (@goodlifecoffeeroasters on Instagram, ships worldwide, was awarded Best Roaster at last year’s festival)
Lehmus Roastery: Lappeenranta, Finland (a teeny town in southeast Finland near the Russian border; @lehmusroastery on Instagram, ships worldwide)
Kaffa Oslo: Oslo, Norway (@kaffa_oslo on Instagram, ships worldwide)
Balck Coffee: Kalmar, Sweden (@balckcoffee on Instagram, appears to only ship to Sweden… incredible fermented coffees!!)
(If you are a coffee fanatic and want to coordinate with us to bring some bags back for you to the USA on our next trip at some point, don’t hesitate to reach out… we always bring extra suitcases with us back to the USA!)
We bought our 2025 Festival tickets last fall knowing the timing would mean we’d likely be having to come back to Gothenburg from Linköping after having moved. In the end it could not have worked out more perfectly; because March 1 was a Saturday, our key handover to the apartment management company didn’t have to happen until Monday. So, the movers came February 27 & 28 (a Thursday/Friday), we slept in our apartment with our Japanese futons and the bare minimum so we could go to the coffee festival Saturday and Sunday morning before driving to Linköping on Sunday evening! The cleaners came and did our professional cleaning while we were at the coffee festival Sunday morning. We came home after they were finished cleaning, packed the last stuff into our car and drove to Linköping later that same day.
Morning of Day 2 of 2 of Nordic Coffee Festival… Sundays at the festival are a little less crowded and a little more relaxed after the first day of high levels of excitement all around…
March 2: Leaving Gothenburg and First Night in New Apartment (Linköping)
After day 2 of the coffee festival we drove northeast to our new home. It was surreal and bittersweet to leave our Jungmansgatan apartment in Gothenburg. It had been our first, first-hand contract apartment in Sweden. We never imagined we’d be leaving there. We drove with our X5 full of stuff and arrived to our new apartment in Linköping for the first time after dark on Sunday evening. Linköping is 3 hours from Gothenburg and 2:20 from Stockholm. Our new apartment is on a street called “Valhallagatan”. “Valhalla” is from Norse mythology and is the name of Viking heaven more or less - a pretty neat name for our new street!
First tour - Justin came in and hung the lights so I could get a good video tour. This is literally my first time seeing the apartment completed.
Our temporary storage is in the attic of the old building next door while they finish the other buildings which will eventually have all of the storage for the new apartments.
Our first time in our apartment (December 6, 2024). We came to see how the location felt and assess the noise levels as it is adjacent to a fairly busy road. The walls had just been poured and the drywall was not up. The pre-fab bathroom is behind us through the plastic sheet. We couldn’t even see the views yet as there were plastic tarps over the roof and top floor with scaffolding (we got an idea of our view from the unit directly below as the plastic didn’t obstruct their view).
March 4: Fat Tuesday = Semlor in Sweden
Semla season is from Christmas until Fat Tuesday. We have tried semlor (the plural of “semla”) in several places now. It is a large cream puff with almond paste/sauce in the middle (mostly hidden under the cream). We tried a few in Gothenburg and Linköping… I’d say this is the most iconic fika food in Sweden after kanelbullar (cinnamon buns).
March 18: Justin’s First International Business Trip (Our First Experience with the Awesomest Airport Ever)
A huge part of experiencing any city we live in is the airport/airport access. Originally we assumed we’d be flying in to Gothenburg or Stockholm and adding the 3-4 hour train journey to Linköping on top of the near 24 hours of 3 flights/layovers we normally take to get home for visits to the USA… We are delighted to find about 3 flights/week out of “LPI” on KLM to Amsterdam. It’s a 10-minute drive from our house (vs 30 minutes at Gothenburg) and the parking lot is smaller than most USA grocery stores. It’s the smallest airport I have ever been in, actually, beating out Kansas City by a landslide. It’s so small the same lady working the gift shop is also making the announcements for flights.
Justin took a cab to the airport and I just hung my head out the bedroom window to wave goodbye.
The whole Linköping Airport! It’s tiny and I love it!
The airport is so small, I parked and walked inside to wait for him, then decided, no, I will just walk the two minutes back outside and watch his plane land and come back in.
April 12: Lakritsdagen (Licorice Day)
One of the biggest surprises when moving to Sweden was the size of the licorice sections in the grocery stores! I don’t know how there is such a difference in the number of people who love licorice here in Sweden as compared to the USA (where most think it’s gross), but there is even a special day dedicated to licorice. They even have entire stand-alone stores for licorice from Sweden and all over (mostly Europe). We busted out my collection to celebrate the day…
Lakrits Roten - have stores all over Sweden carrying a huge assortment of brands and types.
Haupt Lakrits - where I have purchased my licorice advent calendars for Christmas.
Lakrids by Bülow - from Denmark, where I will try my next advent calendar (most of their licorice is gluten-free)
April 20 & Easter Weekend - Costco and Muttley and Jack’s (w/o Muttley & Jack)
So - Easter is a four day weekend here. Now that we live only 2 hours and 20 minutes from Stockholm we made the day trip over to get our Costco membership and visit Muttley & Jack’s brand new café in Södermalm area of Stockholm. We’d been subscribing to Muttley & Jack’s coffee since we tried it in our KaffeBox subscription service. We get two bags of coffee from a new roaster every month. They ship worldwide out of Norway and I’d so recommend it if you would like to treat yourself or another coffee lover to something cool… LOTS of fun for us as we’ve discovered so many good roasters over the time we’ve been here. Muttley & Jack’s opened their very first physical cafe and we were dying to try it for months now and we got to meet Jack at the Nordic Coffee Festival (see photo above)! Jack does coffee tastings in the evening on Fridays and we would have stayed for the tasting but we were both still kind of sick (so many colds/flus going around this spring!). Next time! See the photos and video from the coffee shop, our Easter candy/decorations and the video from Costco below….
Inside of Muttley & Jack’s in Södermalm neighborhood in Stockholm.
April 21: Justin Turns 41
Justin’s birthday was the day after Easter this year (the last day of the 4-day weekend). So we celebrated on the actual day with Swedish pancakes and kladdkaka (see below for the recipes) and went to dinner at a place within walking distance to our apartment in town with some of the best reviews. It was a low-key, cozy Portuguese place known for it’s top-notch foods (“Restaurant Alfama”). The owners are a husband and wife and work to import charcuterie, cheeses, olive oil as well as Portuguese wines (he works with the state liquor authority here). It was really fun to have him as our server and get to speak to him and ask any questions on food or wine. We’ve had incredible Spanish food before but never Portuguese and so it was fun trying something totally new but adjacent to something we have already loved.
April 22: First Day at New SFI School
We missed the registration for the next round of admissions to SFI by a day when we got to Linköping. In any case, I got started at my new school in the SFI Course Level D full time again by April 22 (about 7 weeks after my last day of Swedish in Gothenburg). It’s a relatively major change as now my teachers are all actually Swedish (with English learned living in England and thus a thick accent)! Whereas in Gothenburg I had all fellow immigrants as teachers (who were phenomenal teachers teaching from a place of having immigrated and learned the language themselves… I had such huge respect for them and absolutely loved them). The main difference is the native speakers use a lot of extra words that we must train our ears and brains on… We also get a more authentic “language melody” from a native speaker. If you’ve ever heard spoken Swedish, it has a bouncy, almost sing-songy way of being spoken. In Swedish they refer to that as a “språkmelodi” (“language melody”). It is not something easily mimicked, at least in my opinion. The students are a bigger mixture from places like Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Uzbekistan, Russia, Ukraine, Peru, and Afghanistan. I am the only (native) American English speaker and am sometimes looked to for what the English translation of certain things would reliably be (next to the British English words from the teachers). My class in Gothenburg was 90% Ukrainian and so having such a new mixture of different countries we have little to no experience with coming from the USA is very interesting for me.
The building for my Swedish Language classes on the west side of town (a 30-minute bike ride on the lovely bike paths, or a 13-minute drive).
General Highlights of the Month: Språkkafér (Language Cafés), Cycle Paths in Linköping, Gripens out my window
Language Cafes - Determined to become a better speaker in Swedish I threw myself into something called “språkkafér” (Language Cafés). This is where a mixture of foreigners looking to improve their language meet with fluent volunteers who are either immigrants or native speakers (with a lot of patience!). It was incredibly nerve-wracking for me in the beginning but fast became one of my favorite things. It’s neat meeting people who immigrated here a few years or decades ago. It feels like a glimpse into my future. Also I realized it is much less anxiety-inducing to speak poorly with anyone who has been in your very shoes learning the language than to a native Swede. There are four language cafés in walking distance to my apartment on four separate week days! They are free to attend and are at a library or church, often with fika served (tea, coffee, snacks). Funny story - after speaking in Swedish for several minutes, the very first person I spoke to at my very first språkkafé then mentioned she is originally from Canada. Turns out she immigrated here as a young woman in 1967. Small world as I, too, am from Canada. When I told her that she jumped up and gave me a hug and broke into English with the same accent as my Dad. See photos below (“Inki”). What a joy to meet her (she was also my “jam advisor” for the Swedish pancakes - see below…).
Cycling paths - When we moved here, we got a “New to the City” magazine and a Linköping Cycle Map! Linköping is incredibly proud of their extensive and amazing network of cycle paths. In 2024 and 2022 they were voted Sweden’s best cycling city of regions of comparable size. Not having to dodge cars all the time, I am not quite sure what to do with myself while riding! Sometimes I can’t believe our luck in the places we end up. For an example: my Swedish Language classes (SFI) school is on the other side of the city. I designed a route to avoid the busy downtown area which follows a creek and then goes through forest and grassy fields. It is 5.4 miles long. After I did it for the first time I realized the only stoplight I had to stop for was to cross the street in front of the school! For winter, the cycle map details which paths are cleared and salted in 1 cm and 3 cm of snow.
Gripens - A total bonus treat - when we were in town for seeing the still-underconstruction apartment, the guy showing us around mentioned we will have a prime spot for watching the goings-on of the Gripens (the fighter Saab manufactures locally). Many mornings have included a dash to the north windows when I hear the characteristic roar of those fighter engines… See the video below - it’s tough for my phone to stay focused with the trees and clouds.
Often several times a week around 9:30 am, I am treated to my own personal air show. Nothing, NOTHING is as thrilling as the sound of this fighter slicing through the air. My iPhone has a little trouble staying focused between the clouds and the trees, but I tried to get the best shots here.
What We’re Eating
New Swedish Recipes for Fun Part 1: Kladdkaka (Gluten Free & Regular)
Kladdkaka is kind of cross between a brownie, fudge, and molten lava cake. I would say this is a year-round fika staple. It can be found in every grocery store usually fresh but definitely in the frozen section all year long. It uses the same ingredients you’ll likely already have on hand. It is really good from frozen - Justin and I actually might like it better cold/cool which would never be true for an American-style brownie. So you can make it ahead and have it on hand for when you need to whip out some dessert. Swedes top these (and most cakes) with whipped cream and powdered sugar - berries optional. I made a gluten-free version (with sorghum flour) to start and really liked how it wasn’t overly sweet. I then made a regular version out of the “Sju Sorters Kakor” cookbook (English: ‘Seven Types of Cookies/Cakes’… one of the most iconic Swedish baking cookbooks of all time - first out in 1945). We liked it so much I made another one as Justin’s birthday cake! I adulterated it with off-recipe chocolate chips.
Gluten-free version from da Carla is here (if you can use your browser to translate to English), otherwise email me and I’ll send you the pdf translated to English!
The glutenous version recipe is in photograph from recipe book below or you can actually buy “Sju Sorters Kakor” translated into English on Amazon! What fun! The name in English is “Swedish Cakes and Cookies.”
A kladdkaka should jiggle in the middle when pulled out of the oven while the edges are set/crispy. It will set a little more while cooling but the intent is to be like a molten lava cake in the center.
New Swedish Recipes for Fun Part 2: Swedish Pancakes (“Pannkakor” in Swedish)
As another treat for Justin’s birthday I made my first ever Swedish pancakes. Wow - I am amazed at how incredibly simple it was to do. Here is the recipe I used. (use your browser to translate to English, otherwise email me for the English pdf). Many of the reviews said the batter can be made way ahead of time (like the night before) for ease in the morning. Also I added about 1.5 tsp of vanilla sugar/sugar as the recipe had none. I used the same flour I bought to bake the cake and I might look for a different type next time as they may have cooked faster if they were less thick. Also - test ahead of time. The batter is super runny (unlike “American pancakes”, and you will find out how flat (or not) your skillet actually is here. I fortunately had a perfect stainless steel skillet but the first pan I used was really not flat. Still tasty, but not cute (see the crumpled mess in the photo below!). Swedes top with whipped cream and jam/jelly or fruit. Alternatively powdered sugar and lemon juice. Justin’s childhood friend’s Norwegian grandmother would make them these pancakes topped with fresh-squeezed lemon juice and powdered sugar and that is how he had previously eaten his.
Side note: My Swedish-Canadian friend (“Inki” mentioned above) directed me to the best jam to try - “Cloudberry.” I had never in my life heard of it. It is the fancier type of jelly here as cloudberries cannot be cultivated - they must be picked in the wild. Swedes love cloudberries (“hjortron” in Swedish). It is like a mild apricot/orange flavor. Really good!
Kalles Original and “Toothpaste condiments” (my phrase, not the real phrase/name)
Read any book about Sweden and somewhere in it will have mentioned Kalles. Go to any grocery store and you’ll immediately notice their walls of aluminum food condiments (see the first paragraph in this blog post). The refrigerated ones are caviar paste and the room temperature ones are “mjukost” (soft cheese). They come in every imaginable flavor (but mostly unimaginable, at least to my American brain - ham, shrimp, spicy, smoked, and combinations of the above… there is nothing I won’t try…). Russians have caviar and somehow Sweden has caviar paste - per Wikipedia it is a cod roe paste with a slightly sweet and fishy flavor that is actually really good on eggs (and can also be eaten on sandwiches or with knäckebröd (hard bread) etc.). Probably a flavor my tastebuds were conditioned to like while we were in Japan. Are you adventurous? Anything odd and existing in such quantity in a foreign land is a must-try… I’ll report back about mjukost at some point… Totally happy to lug some back for anyone so adventurous, curious or inclined to try in the USA…
We’d Love to Hear from You
No matter if you responded to none, one or all of the previous posts/emails, we are delighted to keep in touch with you all. What is your favorite summer activity - past or present? Bonus points for sending photos! Also please keep us in the loop even if life isn’t glamorous or fun lately. Sometimes life is just LIFE and we’d like you to share with us what is really going on - the good, the bad, the ugly! Can we bring anything back for you from Sweden (assuming you live in the USA)? Hugs!
