Thursday, November 14, 2013

A Day For Polka Pig

So many of my best memories from my time in Sweden come from things that we saw and did OFF camera - exploring the incredible cathedral in Linköping one rainy day alone, bike riding around Stockholm with Shane and Becky, dancing with those school girls in Söderköping and hanging out at the pizza shop with those school boys in Trollhättan (reported in previous blog posts), and the list goes on and on.

Another one of those memories comes from our trip over to Gothenburg - the city we visited during episode 4.   On our way there, we stopped in a beautiful little town called Gränna...for lunch, for exploring, for shopping and for some polkagris (a red and white pepermint stick candy - the name which literally translates to 'polka pig' in Swedish.)

After we ate a delicious lunch in town, Mike, Shane and I took a walk down to see Lake Vättern - and what we initially thought was going to be an easy walk ("I see the water right over there...let's just walk towards it.") turned out to be not as easy as we thought...as we walked down various streets, across school playgrounds and through people's yards.  But the pictures and the views were worth it!  And I broke off from the other two on my walk back and found the most amazing little yarn shop with the nicest ladies sitting inside knitting.  They showed me the store and we talked about the fact that I crochet (they were NOT ready for that bit of information) and they let me spin some yarn from some local wool.  I SPUN YARN.  It.  Was.  Awesome.   Actually one of my biggest regrets of the whole summer was NOT buying something from them! But man oh man am I so glad we stopped in Gränna...and that I stopped in that little shop!

Since it wasn't on the episode, my pictures and thoughts on Gränna have just been laying around....UNTIL NOW!   Enjoy a few shots from in and around our day in the town of polka pig!!!!
 Heading into Gränna...just off the freeway
 Our driver, St. Eric, leads the way in to buy some polkagris
 Polkagris wars!!!!
 The onsite factory at the first polkagris factory we visited
 The Polkagris Man
 John and Shane share a moment outside the shop
 happy shoppers!
 Dianne and I posing
 Becky showing us how to really pose
 WAIT!  how did this get in here!?
 Farewell, polkagriskokeri!!!
 Looking out at the lake
 city center of Gränna
 main street of Gränna
 looking out over the houses to the lake
 looking back up to Gränna from the lake
 more of the lake
Mike posing with the lake in the back
A panoramic view of the lake area

1 comment:

Marie said...

I am glad i found your blog. It's nice to see how positive you are though you need to go trough a lot during the show. Glad to see that you discovered Gränna. I grew up in a small village not far from gränna. I went to high school here and my first job was actually in axels polkagriskokeri. I was 15 years then and it.s almost 30 years agoo. When we worked there we ate the polkas warm and before they were ready and stiff. Very nice and very
dangerous for your teeth.