March 20th

Today is the Thursday before Easter. In Sweden, employees have Good Friday and the Monday following Easter off of work so they can spend time with their families. While Jon was at work this morning – I tried to finalize our plans for Helsinki, Finland (where to see, what order to visit everything, confirming travel w/ cruise line, etc.).

Jon called around noon and said most people were going home for lunch and not returning to finish off the day. So, I met him for lunch at a pizza restaurant between our apartment and his office. We ordered the lunch special – schnitzel with the salad bar. At a Swedish salad bar they have a bowl with sliced carrots (similar to the lettuce bowl in size). It is common to grab a lot of carrots because they have an oil salad dressing that they cover the carrots with as well. The oil salad dressing is similar to Italian dressing consistency – but it is made with different ingredients. Everything was delicious – we were glad to have leftovers to take home with us.

For the rest of the afternoon we gathered up some things that we wanted to bring with us this weekend to Helsinki. Then, we decided to bike over to the BIG Coop so Jon could get another pair of sunglasses (he lost it somewhere between the Ice Hotel and the Train Station in Kiruna). While we were over by Coop – we decided to see what all is in the other stores surrounding it. Rista (?) had a lot of discounted products, there was a computer store, a children’s store, Dress Man was a clothing store. We were hoping that in one of the stores by the Coop we would find an electronic chess game that we could play while we traveled. But, since we didn’t find it in any of the stores near Coop – we started to bike back home. On our way home, we saw a store, Brio, that had signs for lego’s on the side of the building. Jon went in and found a magnetic chess game for $3!

After a dinner of leftovers, we spent the rest of the night relaxing. Until….around 7:30 we heard a knock on the door. No one ever knocks on the door so we were slightly alarmed. Jon got up to answer the door, while I hid behind the wall..hehehe. There were 2 little girls at the door dressed up as ‘Easter witches’ with handkerchiefs over their heads and freckles painted on their faces. They said ‘Glad Påsk’ and handed Jon a picture they had drawn of the Easter Bunny and colored it in with colorful pastel markers. Quickly, I ran to the refrigerator to grab some candy for them! We weren’t sure if that was what we were supposed to do – but that’s all we had. After they left we both felt like the little girls must have thought we were weird people because we had NO CLUE! So, we searched online for the Thursday before Easter in Sweden. This is what we found:

In Sweden long ago, Easter was thought to be the witches' time. In west Sweden they lit Easter bonfires around which people would scream and yell to frighten away the witches. On Maundy Thursday the witches were said to fly off to "Blåkulla" and return again on the Saturday. Read more about the Easter traditions on the pages created by Luleå University.

The traditional Easter week in Sweden lasts from Thursday to Monday, and kicks off with a trick or treat-like candy hunt. Children dress up as påskkärringar (Easter witches) with long skirts, headscarves, painted red cheeks and freckles and go from house to house wishing people happy Easter. They get sweets in return for a drawing or song. Legend has it that the witches fly to Blåkulla (Blue mountain) the same night to meet the devil.

After the little girls left – we decided if any other children came we were going to give them U.S. coins because we don’t have any Swedish coins. We were a little disappointed when no one else came. We watched a movie on T.V. and fell asleep.