Sommmartider!

How do you know summer is upon us? The list of sommarvärdar, summer hosts, for the Swedish radio is published! Like every year, I had someone, in this case my co-worker, read up the names for me and said which ones I knew. This year, I recognized eight. It doesn’t seem like I am improving on this self-imposed quiz! My co-workers reactions were hilarious though when I had no clue about people she really thought I knew. “What do you mean, you don’t know Bert Karlsson?”

We were blessed with non-humid weather in Dizzel this week, so refreshing it made me sing all the time at work. I have recently specialised in adapting Swedish schlager and pop to what we do at work, so when lunch break comes around, I sing “Vi drar till Rewe” , and if my extra colleague isn’t showing up in the lunch room, I go to her office and chirp, “Är du hungrig, Johanna, javisst är du det”, fika is preceeded by a happy “Jag går och fikar” . And because my co-worker is also already in summery vacation mode, she peeled her banana yesterday, intonating, “Jeg spiser — en banan”.

This afternoon, we acually took what felt like a class trip – we visited out external colleague who lives in Essen. Yet another town with a reputation in which the term picturesque does not figure. But that only means you get there and get your mind blown by the idyllic landscape presented to you. So. ridicuously. pretty! Including baby geese!

Right: I had baked fika. Left: Behind the scenes of instagramming.

Summer also means I want to use my balcony which is 8 metres long and one metre wide. I started planting stuff last night and made one wrong move which left me slowly inching back into the apartment with serious back pain. Luckily, I have heat wraps, heavy medications and know how to google “ischias exercises”, don’t I sound like an 80-year-old? But it helped at least and I could work today. I could even go to the store tonight and buy three balcony chairs! Club 8×1 is opening tomorrow, I’d say.

When you really want to sit on your balcony but don’t own a car

I’m considering putting up a Turner above my sofa. Any thoughts?