TRAVEL BUG

We had a visitor this weekend, one of my mom’s cousin’s granddaughters, who is the same age as Karin (or at least the same age as Karin will be on Wednesday). Her name is Cassy and she’s my second cousin once removed. (She and Karin are third cousins). She emailed me a couple of weeks ago out of the blue and explained who she was and that she was backpacking around Europe and was wondering if we would be up for hosting her for a couple of days. She had gotten my name and contact info from her aunt Kim, who stayed with us for a weekend back when I was a teenager and lived in Germany. “We’d be delighted!” was my response.

We had some back and forth trying to get plans coordinated, because she originally was going to come 2 weekends ago, but it wasn’t optimal because both Anders and Karin were out of town, and I had a big AIC event to prepare for on that Sunday. So she ended up coming this past Friday. She’s already been in Ireland, Scotland, and Amsterdam, plus a day in Copenhagen before coming over on the train to Sweden.

We’ve never met, and I’m unsure I’ve even met her mom, though it’s possible, if she was at the big family reunion we had back in 1995. Her mom would have been newly married at that point, and Cassy wasn’t even born until 1999. We’ve not seen a lot of her side of the family because they mostly all live out in California. My mom saw her cousin  Barb (Cassy’s grandmother) and her husband at their cousin reunions which happened once a year for awhile, but it was rare that Barb’s 4 girls or their families made it to the Midwest. I did get together once or twice with one of Kim’s other sisters who lived briefly in Chicago the same time I was there.

Anyway, Karin and I picked Cassy up at the Lund train station at 4:30 pm after work, and discovered that she had arrived in Sweden with literally just the clothes on her back and her carryon with her computer and toiletries in it. Her backpack was missing. Luckily, she had the foresight to put a Bluetooth tracker tag on it before she left the US, and she could see that the bag is actually still in Amsterdam, but neither the airport nor the airline could confirm that, give her ANY information, or respond to her requests to have it forwarded to her next stop. Baggage at airports is a nightmare mess right now. Karin gave her some stuff to wear Friday night, as we had planned a dinner and invited Cate (another of my second cousins who is actually married to a Swede and who lives in Malmö. Cate’s mom is Barb’s sister) and her husband Magnus. We had a really fun night and Anders made a fantastic grilled rosé pepper salmon, potatoes from our garden, and steamed broccoli. Cate brought gelato and fresh strawberries, and we sat out on the porch and had a really lovely evening.

On Saturday, we got up early-ish and Karin, Cassy, and I headed out. We stopped at Karin’s apartment to let Cassy go through a huge bag of clothes that Karin was donating, and then headed to Malmö for a canal boat tour. It was partly cloudy but we got lucky and never actually got rained on. After the boat, we had an excellent sushi lunch at Gustav Adolfs square at Icha Mochi, and then we caught up with the Malmö Pride parade, before walking over to Folkets Park where the center of Malmö Pride weekend was taking place. It was a LONG walk there and back and Karin wouldn’t let me stop at the Sci-Fi bookstore because she’s a meanie. We also stopped at H&M so Cassy could buy a few more essentials, since there is no knowing when her bag will actually turn up, and she hasn’t been able to get any straight answer on compensation from the airline or her travel insurance either. Unreal.

Karin had a birthday party to go to Saturday evening and after checking with her friend that it was okay, she invited Cassy to tag along. I drove her back to Karin’s place at 6 and they spent the night partying and then clubbing. Cassy was forewarned that we were picking her up at 10:30 Sunday morning for an excursion, but that didn’t stop the girls from rolling in after 2 am, haha!

Sunday morning, Anders and I drove first to Lund to get Cassy and then we drove 1.5 hours north to Älmhult and visited the IKEA Museum. We had lunch first in their restaurant, which was really good (I had a salmon/shrimp langos). The museum was excellent: very informative with lots of fun and interesting exhibits, even if it was basically very over-the-top IKEA marketing all the way through. Afterwards, on the way home through the beautiful Skåne countryside, we stopped at Wanås Castle and had fika in their café. Strawberry rhubarb crumble pie for me, lemon meringue pie for Anders and a very Swedish chocolate ball for Cassy. Anders made dinner after we got home, and it was a thoroughly enjoyable weekend.

This morning, Anders drove her to the train station to put her on the train to Copenhagen at 7 am. She flew to Vilnius at 10 am though her arrival time isn’t until 8 pm TONIGHT. Which is nuts. She is staying with family there for about a week before deciding where she wants to go next. I’m a little in awe of this 23-year-old…traveling all over Europe on her own, deciding from day to day where she wants to go, and already dealing with the travel trauma of a lost bag. She plans to travel for approximately 6 months or until her money runs out, whichever comes first. 🙂  She saved up for a year and did a ton of research to figure out all the logistics. Pretty impressive! Martin and Karin did the same kind of thing when they did their trips to South America after graduation.

Makes me wonder why I never did any kind of Eurail traveling around when I was their age. Guess I had already done so much traveling in Europe with my family while we lived there that it never even crossed my mind to do some traveling on my own.

It was nice to have a visitor to force me to plan some touristy things in my own area. Mom and Sarah are coming so I need to step up my game!

Mood: impressed
Music: A1—Caught in the Middle