Harlaxton 2.0: Married, with children

Hej Hej Thank you for being interested in our time abroad! Permit me a little background. When I was 19, I studied abroad at Harlaxton College, long-referred to as the British campus of The University of Evansville. Baker University, my alma mater and my employer, has had a "partner" relationship with Harlaxton College for nearly 30 years. I remember, before it was cool to do so, working to be "present" in the Harlaxton experience, as I was oft-worried that it would be my one-shot abroad. To my great fortune, that semester abroad was the first of several travel adventures, and, somewhere in the intervening 18 years, I developed and nurtured my professional dream to be a professor, to be a professor at Baker, to work in international education, and to return to Harlaxton College as a visiting faculty member. I recently read a journal entry from 2007, just before I finished my doctoral work, to that end--"How cool would it be to teach at Baker, and to one day return to Harlaxton?" It's very cool. Our family of five will be in Europe from August-December, and will end 2016 in Australia with my in-laws before returning to the U.S. in mid-January.

Sometimes on this blog I'll wax-on about how incredibly fortunate we are--please know that this does not escape me. I've nearly teared up twice, today, about that very thing. Sometimes I'll focus on what it's like to travel with three children--prior to this experience, several people looked at me askance when I told them we were trying this, but, five days in, I'm so glad we did. Sometimes I'll talk about how travel makes me grateful for home. Sometimes I'll write about how my lens has changed since I was traveling at 19, or about daily life at Harlaxton, or about traveling abroad with three generations, as we plan to do in September when my folks visit. Sometimes I'll write about how this experience changes or otherwise illuminates something about our family's function--Ben isn't working while we're abroad, and our family routines are already much changed. Also, there will be a lot of pictures of food.

As I write, we are in Stockholm, experiencing Scandinavia for the first time. Ben and I sat down several months ago and discussed our personal goals for this experience, and one of mine was to travel somewhere new to me, and I was pretty clear that that somewhere should be Scandinavia. I do have Swedish heritage, despite what Andrea Howell will say in these comments, and I love water, coffee, not being hot, feeling cozy, and socialist democracies. So, Denmark and Sweden, what up?

We flew Kansas City to Detroit to Paris to Copenhagen, and the universe knew what it was doing when it gave us these kiddos--our only meltdowns, even with a delay, a missed connection and a 13-hour-layover in CDG, were about turning off or walking away from technology. This happens routinely at home as well. When we finally arrived in Copenhagen, at about 1:30 in the morning, we collectively passed out and then hit it with a great exuberance the next morning about 8:30, when we took a walk from Nyhavn, along the canal, through the royal palace, and on to Tivoli, the world's second-oldest theme park, where we spent much of the day, a good-call when traveling with exhausted children--we were able to get about 14 hours of energy from the kids, though Gabe, our youngest, did fall asleep in my lap at dinner. A great waitress (Psychology major--woot woot!) kindly gave us recommendations for where the locals eat, and we walked to paper island, an old paper-mill district filled with hip food trucks and lots of summer-loving Danes, for dinner and people-watching. I loved that, and I loved Tivoli--it was perfectly charming. Ben had virtually no sleep but the kids and I slept very well on Sunday evening, and we had a nice walk through Nyhavn before taking the bus to get our train to Sweden on Monday, midday. I'm sure it helps that our children are so damn cute, but every Danish person I encountered was warm and helpful--that has largely been true in Sweden as well, as people have approached us to see if we need help (we usually do.) What memories stand out from Copenhagen--watching my children play on street trampolines, watching our boys' joy in the bumper cars, winning Galoppen, the horse-racing game at Tivoli (this makes me more like my other true love, Richard Ayoade); eating some boss Hansen's ice cream at paper island, and the general warmth of all the Danes we encountered. Copenhagen exceeded my expectations, and we never even made it to the Little Mermaid.

Given the aforementioned lack of sleep, Ben was in need of some serious rest on our 5-hour train to Stockholm, but did stay awake long enough to play The Bridge with me while we crossed the Oresund bridge. If you haven't seen the American version, good for you--watch the Danish/Swedish version. Playing The Bridge pretty much just means talking about The Bridge--make up your own rules, it's cool.

We have tried our first Airbnb experience in Stockholm, and I have loved it. We're staying in a flat in the Sodermalm, just south of the old town (Gamla Stan) and very near a T-bana (Metro) station. Here's what works--we've done breakfast and dinner at "home" each day, and there's a playground just three blocks away, where we spent much of today. There's a washer and dryer, critical with children, and it turns out that it's really just the differences that fascinate children. Here's what they have to say, in response to the questions, "what did you like best about Copenhagen? Stockholm? and, What have you noticed is different?" As at home, Ebi is interested in the food, Sacou wants to Parkour everything, and Gabe wants to push ALL THE BUTTONS.

Ebi-Jumping on the road trampolines; playing at the park; people here talk differently; the houses are small.

Sacou--Jumping on the trampolines; I like the donuts (kardemmumabular, me too!); people talk differently (Sacou is totally copying, btw)

Gabe--Going on planes; going on underground trains; "I don't know anything else."

I intend to ask them this each night, but have made the mistake of asking them while they are watching the i-pad, the first day we've broken it out so far on the trip. Crickets.

I am working hard to manage expectations of self and others on this trip, and we were pretty wiped on Monday night, so I hit the grocery store (I love foreign grocery stores) and we had pizza just down from the flat. On Tuesday, a beautiful, sunny day, we took the T-bana to Gamla Stan and then walked to a tram, eventually lunching outside the Vasa museum and visiting the nearly 400-year-old warship, which was actually pretty darn cool. I am proud that we navigated the T-bana with three kids and they enjoyed the tram to Djurgarden and the ship building "games" at the Vasa museum. One other thought about the kids and what they notice--Ebi stops to read all the signs of panhandlers, largely written in English, and says, "we need to help [them] get back to their kids." It is challenging to explain homelessness to your children.

We'd hoped to take the Waxholmsbolaget boats to island-hop today, but it's been a cool and rainy day, so we went for Family Fika (coffee and a pastry, in this case a delicious kardemummabular) instead, which was fantastic, and spent about five hours at the park today. We all played for about an hour, then I had an hour to myself to walk through east Sodermalm today, looking at these wonderful old cottages near Sofia church, and spending some time alone at the church. We had fantastic falafels for lunch (the kids loved this hip spot) and then I played with the kids for a couple hours while Ben had some adult time. Ebi made a Swedish buddy, who was six, and whose English was better than mine, basically. Tonight we're having an indoor picnic, and then I am picking up a rental car tomorrow  (wish me luck) and, after more fika (I'm all about those buns) we will catch a p.m. ferry to Gotland. I hope we can do some island-hopping when we are back on Monday, as it seems like a real treat.

Recommendations so far? Hotel Bethel in Nyhavn, Copenhagen--let us all 5 share a room, greeted us at 1 a.m., incredibly considerate, good location, good breakfast. Kardemummabular.

Thanks for reading.

R