Last year, when I visited Sweden, I was lucky enough to meet “Sandra In Sweden”.
As I noted at the time…
She’s an American married to an Australian and on her blog she writes about their life in Stockholm. They’ve been in Stockholm five years now. This month Sandra and I have swapped lives. She and Robert have been visiting Robert’s family in Australia. Co-incidentally, Robert spent much of his early life in Young, which isn’t far from where I used to live in Wagga Wagga. So while they’ve been travelling around the region visiting family and friends who live in the Riverina and Central West and visiting places I know very well, I’ve been in Stockholm visiting the places they know very well. While they’ve been enjoying the sunshine in Australia, I’ve been enjoying the ice and snow in Sweden. For me, the ice and snow are interesting and exotic, not so for Robert and Sandra. I got an email from Sandra the other day asking when I was returning to Australia. Suddenly it became obvious we had a small window of opportunity to meet each other. So at about five o’clock today, I paid a visit to their fantastic apartment on Sodermalm, which, incidentally is the place in Stockholm I’d most like to live. Literally ten minutes after they walked in the door of their house, I was there to “welcome them back”. Over an hour or so we chatted about our lives, and made some interesting observations about both Swedes and Australians
Ten months later, our lives were reversed again as she and her husband were visiting Australia. We went out for lunch in Chinatown at my new favourite restaurant, Red Chilli. I’m pleased they enjoyed it as a different, but still authentically “Sydney” tourist thing to do.
Later in the afternoon I had a nap, ahead of catching up with some friends, including The Best Judge, as well as a couple of fellow ABBA fans. A fun and wild night was had by all.
Thank goodness for the cool change which came through mid-afternoon just as I walked Robert and Sandra to the car-hire place.