Two vans, five people, and one broken dog successfully crossed six countries to finally move us to Malmö, Sweden. The broken dog really eases passage through customs checks. (French lady, totally wooed. German customs official, confused enough to shrug us off.) We’ve been here six days now. We stayed at an AirBNB location for two nights, then rented a car and moved to a second AirBNB location where we’ll be until March 7.

Things we’ve mastered so far in Sweden:

• Not running over pedestrians and cyclists and not getting run over by cyclists.
• Bacon.
• Giggling at all the words with Fart in them.
• Finding the vet, being late to the vet, and getting scolded by the vet for being late and having our dog in apparently archaic staples (I blame England).
• Swedish words: Hej–hello. Tak–Thank you. Hiss–Elevator. Hot chocolate–varm choklad. Exit–Utfart. Entrance–Infart.  Weighing produce at the grocery store. (You put your bulk produce on a scale and print out a bar code for check out. Fortunately, there are pictures.) Accidently pushing buttons at the grocery store. There are little doorbell like buttons in the aisles. I guess for calling for help or something? I leaned on one accidently while John browsed and apparently all those announcements repeating over and over again in Swedish were me holding the button down. Nice Swedish lady stopped to tell me what I’d done. (Not sarcastic at all–she was really nice.)

So I’m from the US.  Been in the UK now for 4 years (2 years in Scotland, 2 years in England) and still discovering things.  Today it was that Cream of Wheat (which you can’t get here) is semolina. So I had my first bowl of cream of wheat AKA semolina today.

I’m also learning how to make English muffins, because they don’t know how to make English muffins here.  I’m not sure why Americans decided to make this awesome, crispy, chewy breakfast delicacy full of nooks and crannies, then give the English all the credit.  But there you go.  Once I perfect them, I will post what I’ve done.

I am a fiction writer and scientist.  Hopefully I can find a few interesting things to share as a lot of big changes are coming my way.  I’m having a baby.  I’m moving from London to Sweden to start a new job.  I’m trying to get my fiction out there.  I like to experiment in the kitchen.  I have a crazy dog.  I read.  A lot.  So we’ll see how this blogging thing goes.