Baptism

Gustaf Vasa Church Dome, originally uploaded by Let Ideas Compete.

J and I went to a Swedish baptism this Saturday. The mother was from Maine and had married a Swede. She moved to Stockholm with him approximately two years ago and now speaks Swedish fluently. It helps to have a spouse to teach you the language.

Anyway, J represented the "American" side because her relatives couldn't fly out for the ceremony. J read two passages from the Bible in English. The rest of the ceremony was in Swedish. After the baptism, the proud parented treated us to a fine meal at a nearby restaurant. We all had a delicious meatball which was about the size of a grapefruit. It was made of a mixture of veal and venizon.

After the meal, we took the train to their apartment and had "fika," the traditional coffee and sweets in mid-afternoon. J and I had quite an adventure trying our limited Swedish on the grandparents, who spoke very little English. Most of the relatives on the Swedish father's side were from northern Sweden in a small mining town called Skellefteå. From their descriptions, it's a very picturesque seaside town of 35,000 people.