Started a new blog just to catalogue my purchases at the Swedish selling out shop (hands up who still calls it that) mainly because I’m buying booze through layers of foreign languages and want to keep a note of what’s what. This is the first entry.
It’s been warm - verging on hot - here for over a week which gave me a hankering for some Spanish cider. You know the stuff, they serve it in wide squat glasses in tapas bars in Catalunya and the Basque Country, pour it from a great height to add air, or just to show off, I’m not sure. Anyhow it’s damned tasty and hits the spot on a hot day.
Being in a tiny town in southern Sweden it wasn’t a surprise to discover no Spanish cider on the shelves of our beloved Systembolaget. But they did have this. Cidre de Normandie. At 49 kronor it was worth a punt and sure enough it made a refreshing break from mowing the lawn but it let me down a little with its slightly metallic tasting fizziness.
Verdict: not an embarrassment, might consider again but not on my list of must haves.
Source: unsystematicsystembolaget
Swedish cleaners really clean up
People keep telling me not to cost compare individual things with the UK but to look at total monies in and out. No question, it’s good advice, but every now and then something appears so off balance it makes me question its absolute value to me.
Take a cleaning service. I had an estimate today, to clean our temporary apartment (25 square metres max), of 3,500 SEK. That’s about £325 in today’s exchange rate, and more than £100 over what I paid to have all 80 square metres of my old London flat cleaned.
Maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe they’re those naked German cleaners from Eurotrash [shudder}. Whatever the secret ingredient, I’ll be cleaning the place myself and spending a small portion of those saved kroner in my local Systembolaget where I can get an organic Albet i Noya cava for less than a tenner. Now that’s good value.
We wish you a merry Easter
A lot about southern Sweden feels familiar (thanks to Wallander) but waking to a snow flurry on Easter weekend reminded me that this is not a climate we’re used to.
Not that it phased little mister. Having taken most of Friday to explain that Father Christmas did not live with the Easter Bunny and would not be dropping any gifts off at the same time, he took one look at the snow on Saturday and said, “See? I TOLD you!”
Mummy 0, childhood fables 1
It’s hard to believe that two weeks ago this lake had a crackled crust of 5” ice. Today we celebrated the arrival of spring and Hunter’s return to good health (after a week of flu) with a lakeside picnic and the first skimming stones contest of the year.
