No photo today, because we were too busy packing for our upcoming 10-day trip to Slovenia. Adrian got his new passport just a few days ago, so we won’t need to queue for another temporary one. But we are expecting potentially a lot of queueing at Arlanda airport. And our flight leaves at 8 in the morning, so we’ll be getting up at 4 to make sure we don’t miss the flight.

This photo is from our stay in Estonia. Adrian is eating reheated one-pot pasta straight from the pot.

My father and his wife kindly made their apartment available to us during our stay there. It’s always interesting in a way to live somewhere that is not at home, because it makes so obvious the things that I take for granted. The things that I miss when I don’t have them – and the things that I realize aren’t that important after all.

This apartment has a much smaller kitchen than our own home, so there is no dishwasher, and the microwave was on the blink. With just the three of us, and nobody cooking any fancy meals, we didn’t really miss the dishwasher. It just made some of us sometimes (like Adrian in the photo) prioritize differently, so there would be less washing up.

We did miss the microwave. I’m so used to having leftovers from dinner for lunch the day after, or for a snack if someone suddenly gets hungry. A microwave oven makes that so much easier.

And then there are the things that I know I would miss so badly that I don’t even want to try – sharp knives being the prime example. I bring two newly sharpened kitchen knives (one small, one large) with me to every trip where I know I’ll be preparing food, but I don’t know for sure what knives I will find there.