Day 11

It's supposed to be bedtime, but we were all hungry and it's light outside so we went on a food hunt.  Dad and Holly wanted pizza, but go figure, everything was closed...  Except McDonald's.  It's not so easy to order here.  They don't have the full menu posted.  Instead they have the giant flat screens with select menu items posted.  They have slightly different names too.  Yesterday we had Daim McFlurries (which means Heath Bar).  Today we wanted the two cheeseburger meal, but that doesn't exist, so we settled for the QP Cheeseburger and the Fiesta Burger (quarter pounder with cheese and a Mr Tasty).  They cost 42 each.

We've learned that 25% sales tax sucks.  We've also learned that they often leave the denomination off the total when speaking.  When they DO say the denomination it's either Crowns, Pounds, or Dollars but they're always refering to the Swedish currency of Kronor...  The exchange rate is 7.4 SEK per 1 USD, so we paid over $5 per sandwich.  ouch.

I posted a few more pictures on Day 5 if you want to go back and look.

Brian - Mom would love if you would call Grandma Schmidt sometime and let her know how things are going here and that we won our first game.  Comment back if you can do that.

Happy Anniversary to Mom and Dad!!!  We went on the hunt for seafood tonight, but settled for some pasta scampi and baked char at a non-seafood place.  You live, you learn... but it was just nice to go out and celebrate 41 years!  And they still hold hands. =)

Day 10

We went on a bus tour today and got to see the Palace where the King and Queen live.  The princess just got married a week ago, so that was big news here.  We saw the church where that happened and some of the decorations are still up.  We saw where Tiger Woods has a flat for when he and Elin (sp?) stay here.  There are 86,000 lakes in Sweden, so that's why Swedish people like to live in Minnesota too. =)

Stockholm has 2 million people.  They were voted the greenest city in Europe for all of their recent green efforts.  Most people here do not drive cars.  They have vowed to be petroleum free in 20 years.  All of their public busses use biodeisel (that's the clean stuff, right?)  Most people use public transportion or they ride bikes.  There are bike lanes everywhere.

Sweden's biggest holiday was the Friday that we got here.  It was mid-summer's holiday.  It's like Christmas, Thanksgiving and the 4th of July all in one.  It's a big family holiday where no one works.  Everything is closed and people are out in the parks celebrating the longest day of the year.  We have 18 hours of sunlight, but even when the sun officially sets, it's still light out.  We woke up at 3am two nights ago and it felt like 9am.  It was hard to get back to sleep.  The darkest part of the day is around 1am, but it still looks like dawn a bit.

We watched Canada play Sweden last night and neither team looks great.  Canada won 12-6.  Today is a day off, but we're watching film for a couple of hours and then have a walk through before dinner.  Tomorrow we'll watch Austria vs Finland and Germany vs Sweden.  We play Finland on Thursday and then probably Germany on Sunday for the gold medal.