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.

On our way back home, somewhat tired, somewhat sad to be leaving, but also glad to be home soon. The trip could maybe have been a day or two longer, but now we’re leaving on a high note.

Picnic and bathing at lake Pangodi. The weather was warm, the water not so much at first, but OK once I got in and started swimming.

Board game night, with Bang as the main focus. It’s one of the few games I’ve played that becomes much more interesting with more players, so we usually end up playing it when we’re meeting up with our friends in Estonia and have a big crowd.

Over the years they’ve added various extensions to the base game, and it’s becoming hard to keep up with all the additions. I kind of liked the base version better – with all the extras the game is more chaotic and less about planning and strategy. But he kids all prefer the over-the-top chaos version.

We visited my father and his wife, and made sushi together. I was mostly too busy talking to take any photos, so most of these are not mine. Ingrid photographed some of the sushi materials; Adrian photographed me from various angles.

The book I’m enjoying is Estonia’s most famous and well-known cookbook – the wonderful Raamat maitsvast ja tervislikust toidust (“The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food”) from 1955 which contains everything from very traditional Estonian recipes, to lots of Russian baked goods, to instructions for using all sorts of fish that I’ve never even heard of. It was strange and exotic already in the 1980s.

The annual trip to Estonia isn’t complete without an outing to Otepää adventure park. 11 years after our first visit (when I was pregnant with Adrian and not allowed to do any of the fun stuff so Ingrid was the only climber) and it’s still fun.

Both kids are now tall and agile enough to manage all the ordinary tracks. There used to be special track labelled the “path of suffering” but I saw it has been removed. I guess not enough people cared for all the suffering. None of us three had ever tried it; the initial rope climb straight up was more than enough to deter us.

The highlight of the last, fifth track is the rather spectacular “Tarzan leap”, where you hold on to a thick rope and swing from a platform about 10 metres above ground, to catch yourself in a net 20 metres away. (With a safety harness of course.) Scary but exhilarating.



After the climbing tracks you’re treated to two zipline rides back and forth across a wide meadowed valley.

We went canoeing on Ahja river with our Estonian friends.

Vesipapp arranged the tour for us and were very helpful. We met them at Kiidjärve, where we got our canoes and oars and life jackets – and instructions.

Also plastic jugs for scooping out water from the canoes, but my boat mate and I soon had our division of labour down so well (left side of the boat for her, right side for me, and swapping halfway through the trip) that there was very rarely a need to switch oars from one side to the other. Our canoe barely got a tiny trickle of water at the bottom – nothing you could scoop up. But the teams with more… ehum… athletic paddling styles got rather wetter.

We started at Kiidjärve and had a bit of lazy paddling down the river to begin with. Then a long dammed lake, which was easier to navigate but required more paddling. At the end of the lake at Taevaskoja a representative from Vesipapp helped us carry the canoes over the dam and get them in the river again. From there on it was easy but exciting going: a gentle river, but with constant bends, underwater rocks, logs both under and over the water, low-hanging trees, etc. And beautiful views!

Note to future me: the 12 km trip from Kiidjärve to Porgandi, which was supposed to take 3 hours, took us 4, even though we only had a short break in the middle at the dam. The shorter, 9 km route to Otteni would probably have been enough.

Credit goes to Ingrid for the photos with me in them. It took some manoeuvring to hand over the camera from one canoe to another without risking dropping it!

Apparently Rally Estonia, part of the World Rally Championship, is happening in Tartu right now, and Ingrid wanted to see it. Adrian and I weren’t interested, so we went dog walking with a friend instead. Although we did watch some of the rally on TV, and it wasn’t entirely boring, but the half hour we saw was enough for me.

On the ferry to Tallinn. After two missed summers due to covid, we’re on our way to Estonia again! Eric stays at home for some peace and quiet, and to take care of Nysse.