I have to say, Gothenburg has certainly been living up to its reputation this holiday season. When I moved over here, I kept hearing it was the best place in Sweden to celebrate Christmas. And with the downpour of snow we’ve had lately (sooo glad I took my thicker socks back with me), the beauty of the whole thing has been mindblowingly aesthetic.
I think, knowing that I'd miss Thanksgiving (or the American one, at least; we celebrated the Canadian one here in October, thanks to a couple well-intentioned classmates), I started looking for the Christmas stuff to occupy my tourist time in late November. So, I have a lot of things to post when classes have wrapped up and I'm sitting on my various trains for the Christmas holiday...
I'll start with this one though: a couple weeks ago, I went with three friends to Tjoloholm Castle in Halland, Sweden for a massive three-day Christmas Market. We drove for 45-minutes through snowy fields of dried-yellow grass and red Swedish cottages to this great estate with three barns, a small cottage-village, a sandstone chapel, and a grand brick villa near the water. There, even before December had dawned upon us, vendors from all around Sweden were selling julost, julkorv, julchoklad---juleverything. We roamed and feasted on fantastic roasted almonds, handmade jams, traditional candies, and smoked hams in the estate barns; sat in the pews of a small church and listened to local Christmas jazz; had a snowball fight on the terrace of this old, Swedish country house; and sipped glögg near candle-lit lanterns as the field got dark.
And after it was done, we migrated back to civilization, where we dined again on our souvenirs and listened to Swedish artists all night long. Beautiful night. Beautiful memory.
More to come on my Swedish Christmas experience...it's just beginning, so stay tuned.
I'll start with this one though: a couple weeks ago, I went with three friends to Tjoloholm Castle in Halland, Sweden for a massive three-day Christmas Market. We drove for 45-minutes through snowy fields of dried-yellow grass and red Swedish cottages to this great estate with three barns, a small cottage-village, a sandstone chapel, and a grand brick villa near the water. There, even before December had dawned upon us, vendors from all around Sweden were selling julost, julkorv, julchoklad---juleverything. We roamed and feasted on fantastic roasted almonds, handmade jams, traditional candies, and smoked hams in the estate barns; sat in the pews of a small church and listened to local Christmas jazz; had a snowball fight on the terrace of this old, Swedish country house; and sipped glögg near candle-lit lanterns as the field got dark.
And after it was done, we migrated back to civilization, where we dined again on our souvenirs and listened to Swedish artists all night long. Beautiful night. Beautiful memory.
More to come on my Swedish Christmas experience...it's just beginning, so stay tuned.
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| Tjoloholm Castle |
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