To the Motherland We Go (Sweden!)

Being but a humble Nebraska citizen and never venturing outside the borders of the United States, I still take pride in my Swedish lineage and I refer to Sweden as the Motherland. I did a report on the country when I was in fourth or fifth grade; I remember sending off for some information on the country and the details from the info packet that stuck with me are: that the Swedish enjoy smörgåsbords, and those smörgåsbords sometimes contain smoked reindeer meat. I think I drew a Swedish flag, too.

Now, I know that there's more to Sweden than tons of food and unfortunate reindeer. They also seem to enjoy pickled herring (thanks to my recent reading of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)! Seriously, though, I've always wanted to visit. This last weekend we went to see my grandmother (in McCook, NE, not in Sweden) and we were talking about how her parents both came over from Sweden when they were very young and that she and her sister used to correspond with a cousin who lived in Sweden. I told her we should go to Sweden sometime and it sounded like she'd be on board! I think it would awesome to visit but the chances of a trip are pretty slim. The biggest factor would be the prohibitive cost. Flights alone would probably cost over $1,000 per person and then we'd have to pay for lodging, attractions, food, local transport, etc. A trip of this magnitude would require a lot of saving and massive cuts to my frivolous spending habits (but who couldn't use some of that?). Who knows how serious my grandma actually was when we were talking, but I want to go someday. My wife is on board as long as we can get her some nice tropical beach time before we head to the far away Scandinavia. Also, we're not going anywhere until I finish school and get a real job. I graduate a year from now so we're looking at a year and probably more before we can do any serious travel.

I've looked a little bit at www.visitsweden.com but I haven't found anything that clearly breaks down cost. There are some links to travel agencies that I'll have to peruse later. I'm thinking it would probably be easier and less stressful for us if we went over there with a tour group but it may be a bit more expensive to have the luxury of someone else telling you where to go and making sure you don't get lost.

With the help of Google Translate, I leave you with this:

Må rökt ren hålla dig genom de långa vinternätterna.