Living La Vida Lunda: A blog abroad

The Minnesota Noices

  • India, Part 1

    India, Part 1

    I had a trip to India for work. There were 2 work parts – a work part and a personal part, so I will make this in 2 posts, spanning Mumbai, Mysuru, and Bengaluru. Part 1 is more my observations from the cities. My company has a growing footprint in India, both for manufacturing and…

  • Birthday week, part 2

    Birthday week, part 2

    …birthday week has turned into birthday month and it’s nearly December! At this point I will just try to choose a few moments to highlight and summarize the month of November. Erin and Melissa took me out for birthday lunch at Marvin, featuring “classic English suet pies” and wonderful crispy Mac and Cheese bites. We…

  • More excursions

    More excursions

    I keep expecting life to slow down as we settle in on Spolegatan, but it never really does. Lund, like most Swedish cities, is putting up winter lights, replacing water in the fountains with greenery, and adding seasonal decoration. I joined two international organizations for tours in Helsingborg and Malmö this week. In Malmö we…

  • The Logic Pit

    The Logic Pit

    Lily’s ultimate year of Twin Cities Theatre Camp was this past summer. The show was the world premier of an original work by Tim Kraack (who is also the music director of TCTC). I saw every showing and it hit me hard every time. Lily is the character “Charlie”, who leads the engineering team at…

  • The Celtic New Year

    The Celtic New Year

    The old traditions of Samhain, All Hallows Eve, Día de los Muertos, All Saints and All Souls have melded into an interesting mix of religious and cultural celebrations here in Sweden. It makes perfect sense that people mark the transition from summer-harvest-abundant life to winter-dormancy-death. And many cultures believe that “the veil between the living…

  • Hunting Season in the Grocery Store

    Interesting to see all this game meat in the local grocery store. Alg = moose, hjort = deer/venison, vildsvin = wild boar, vildandsfile = wild duck, and renstek = reindeer.

  • Autumn in Spain

    Our plans to visit my Spanish friend, Laura, had been on-hold since 2020 due to covid concerns and other circumstances. So I decided to take a solo trip. Even though it was not ideal to travel so soon after moving, I was tired of waiting for the perfect time. Laura’s daughter is spending a year…

  • The Castles of Outlander

    Outlander is a series of Historical Fiction/ Fantasy novels by Diana Gabaldon, which was introduced to me in 1996 by Sandy Katz, a teacher colleague from Poquoson HS in Virginia. I remember that she gave me the first book on a Friday and on the following Monday morning she had the second book waiting for…

  • Edinburgh

    Another long-weekend adventure with my friend, Stephanie. We headed to Edinburgh in that small window where the crowds have gone but the weather is generally still pretty good. Of course the death of Queen Elizabeth put a twist on our plans so instead the city was fairly crowded, with nearly all the typical tourist sites…

  • Cykeläventyr: Tirups Herb Garden

    The weather has been so nice lately, and I can only hope that Autumn continues this way! Erin and Melissa rode their bikes from Malmö to Lund, where Carole and I joined them for a cycling adventure! I am still not confident about biking except under the most perfect of conditions, so it was a…