Adrian’s class has been working with the theme of “Stockholm” for the past few months.

In a normal year, the class would have made several trips to various parts of Stockholm to see all the things they have been talking about: the Old Town, the City Hall, and so on. The coronavirus pandemic put a stop to all that, so the kids have been limited to theory.

Today Adrian and I made a trip to the city to at least see the Old Town. Old Town is normally so full of tourists that it’s no fun – all those families of five walking side by side, foreign tourists spreading cigarette smoke, etc. But today is a working day so there won’t be many locals walking around, and all the tourists are staying away anyway. So it should be really empty, I thought. Let’s seize the opportunity!

It turned out exactly as well as I had hoped. Beautiful sunshine, no people, clean streets… We almost had Old Town to ourselves. This was a great way to see Old Town.

We visited a few of the most famous sights: the royal palace, the Riksdag buildings, Stortorget (where a famous bloodbath took place five hundred years ago), and the narrowest alley in town. But also the street where the executioner used to live, as Adrian told me, and Slussen, which did not look like Adrian had expected at all.

There were lots of little shops to look at as well. Mostly souvenir shops with various kinds of viking- and moose-themed objects, and Pippi Longstocking – but also little odd crafts and design shops. This is the shop of HildaHilda, who make textile goods with quirky designs of pigs, dachshunds, daisies and other nice things. I really tried to find something we needed or at least could use but couldn’t think of anything, but I think we’ll be coming back here to buy presents for people.

We had excellent though expensive pizzas for lunch at Stortorget, at a nearly empty restaurant. (And within great hearing range of the church bells of Storkyrkan.) We’ll likely never get another chance at that!

The weather is warm enough to move the tomatoes outside.

Adrian is hanging around, literally, watching me re-pot them.

Last night’s sunshine was all gone this morning. Hot porridge and hot bread from leftover bread-on-a-stick dough went down quite well in the cool, cloudy morning.

The bread/cake/bannock things were not part of the meal plan at all, but were so delicious that I think we’ll plan for them next time.

After breakfast, Adrian tested the hammock – fired up by Ingrid’s talk about how wonderful it is to sleep in one. And during much of walk home, he was already planning the next hike, when it would be his turn to get the hammock. We’ll see.

Walking home is never as much fun as walking out. The distance that felt like nothing yesterday, was suddenly long for the kids’ legs. “Are we there soon?”

Had this been a normal spring without a coronavirus pandemic, there would have been various scout hikes and camps in May. With the pandemic, all larger scout events have been cancelled, along with so much else of society. Instead we went camping/hiking on our own.

There are several beautiful nature reserves around Stockholm, and Paradiset and Tyresta are the ones I like best. Adrian and I camped in Paradiset once before and it was such a nice spot that I thought we could go there again, this time with the whole family.

A closer look at the map showed that the shelter where we stayed last time, on the shore of lake Trehörningen, was just a kilometre from the parking lot. Back then Adrian was six, didn’t want to walk any long distances and left all the carrying to me… This time there’s four of us, all with strong legs and proper rucksacks, so we could walk a bit longer. The first scenic spot is likely to be the most popular one – further away we might find a spot with fewer people.


That was the plan. There were several tents in the woods around the first shelter, so we didn’t even turn that way. When we got to the second shelter on the shore of lake Långsjön, we found quite a crowd there as well. Eric spied a flat-looking place with what seemed to be a fire place on the other side of the lake, so we headed off there. There was no shelter there, but a good flat spot for a tent, and much more peace and quiet than at the shelter. Technically you’re really only allowed to camp at designated spots… but this spot had clearly been used for camping before, so we figured it would do no harm if we stayed here.

The original plan was for Eric to sleep in the shelter, me and Adrian in the tent, and Ingrid in a hammock. Everyone gets their preferred “roof” over their head. (Ingrid had tried sleeping in a hammock on her last scout hike and absolutely loved it, best thing ever.) Without the shelter, we were three in the tent, which was a bit cramped but OK for one night. I don’t really expect to get a good night’s sleep on a hike anyway.

Now that we had shelter, the next question was firewood. With all these people out in the woods, the nearest box of firewood was already empty when we passed it. I emptied my rucksack, and Adrian and I walked back to the first shelter to pick up firewood there. Luckily the box there still had some.


When we got back with the wood, it was definitely time for dinner: falafel wraps with salsa romesco and cucumbers.

The firewood wasn’t for the dinner (its easier to fry up falafel on a stove) but for even more important things: bread on a stick, and a grilled banana dessert!


After dinner – and before dinner, and during dinner – Ingrid and Adrian played with slingshots. I once tried to make some using some random elastic bands but those didn’t work too well at all. Now I had bought some proper slingshot bands, and they made a big difference.

Rocks flew best, but there were almost none in the forest around us. There were plenty of pine cones, though. Ingrid experimented with different techniques and angles and differently shaped cones, trying to shoot them as far as possible.


The weather was absolutely lovely, with blue skies and a hot sun, and barely any wind. And we were on the east side of the lake and thus had the evening sun shining on us until late. Only after the sun went down behind the trees on the other side of the lake did it get a bit cooler.

The schools in Sweden are all open, but Ingrid’s and Adrian’s Estonian lessons are taking place online – I’m guessing because the teacher would otherwise be travelling back and forth between schools across town, and that’s not good from the point of view of infection control.

Ingrid has “proper” lessons and tests and things. Adrian’s lessons are more like extended homework, but online.

Quite often one of the tasks is writing. Write x sentences about an animal, write x sentences using words from the previous exercise.

Normally he would write them in his exercise book. Now that the lessons are happening online, he writes them in Word on my computer.

He insisted that the document needed at least one emoji. Preferably lots, and weird ones – somehow homework in Word doesn’t feel like real homework and he doesn’t take it as seriously as his normal schoolwork. We agreed on one “teacher” emoji in the end.

I’m still thinking about the large mossy patches in the back garden. Could it be because the soil is more acidic there? The soil there is definitely different than in front of the house, much sandier and less full of heavy clay.

We should have some pH indicator strips somewhere, and even an electronic gadget to measure acidity, for the pool. But we seem to have put those away in such a good place that we can’t find them any more, even after searching through the kitchen, the laundry room/pantry/mud room, and the basement shelves.

We could buy new ones (and will have to, anyway, for the pool) but I wanted some answers today, now! Instead of shopping, we did home chemistry. Dug up soil samples, mixed them with water, and then tested half of each sample with white vinegar and the other half with baking soda.

The results were very boring. No fizzing anywhere. So I guess the soil is neutral. It is of course also possible that our chemistry experiment was too crude – perhaps we should have taken more of something, or mixed it better… but whatever, it’s not really that important.

But chemistry that doesn’t go fizz and bang and change colours is very dissatisfying. When we were done with the testing, Adrian got to pour the vinegar-mixed sample onto the bicarbonate sample to at least get some proper fizzing out of it. Much better!

In the afternoon we planted more strawberry seedlings. That is, Ingrid planted strawberry seedlings, while Adrian planted my hand tools (in neat, straight rows and at equal distances and at the same depth!) and I took photos.

We now have one box with older plants of either Honeoye or Zephyr (the sign says Zephyr but I thought we had Honeoye there) and three plants with this year’s seedlings: Polka, Florence and Senga Sengana.

I like jigsaw puzzles. Adrian likes almost any activity that he can do together with someone. So sometimes we do jigsaw puzzles together.

We do it together, but we have very different approaches. I focus on eye-catching, easily defined areas – distinctly coloured features, well-defined edges of things. I pick out pieces that appear to be part of that area, look at them to figure out what goes where, and gradually put them all together. Then I pick the next suitable area or feature and do the same thing.

Adrian’s approach is all trial and error. He doesn’t really look at the details of the pieces, neither colour nor shape. He just goes through all possible matches, methodically, one by one, until one piece clicks. Then he repeats that with the spot next to the piece he just put there. Like me, he works with one well-defined area at a time, because his approach only works if he has all the possible candidate pieces in a little pile. But he barely looks at the pieces, so what’s on them almost doesn’t matter. In fact he prefers the featureless single-colour areas – the empty skies and such – because it’s easiest to sort out all those pieces in one go.

Ingrid is away on a scout hike this weekend, which gave me that little nudge to also go out. So Eric, Adrian and I went for a spring walk.

Spring is at its best in leafy places, where there is birdsong and flowers, not in pine forests. I vaguely recalled a woodland with anemone carpets in Hansta. I wasn’t 100% sure of its location, but when we got there, it was exactly where I thought it was, and fully as lovely as I remembered it.

Last time we cycled past the woodland and only took a brief look. This time we left the bikes at home and walked, and took a smaller zig-zaggy path instead of the wide, cycle-friendly track.

Adrian found plenty of great sticks. (That was his main reason for preferring walking to cycling. You can’t pick up and carry sticks and staves on a bike.)

I spotted a black woodpecker. Well, first I heard it. I’d never heard one before – its call is not what I would expect from a woodpecker!

Later during the day we also saw a grass snake. They’re pretty common, I think, but I don’t see them often; this was a rare chance.

There were several concrete foxholes dotted around the forest. (Of the military kind, not the kind that foxes dig and live in.) In surprisingly good shape, given how old they must be.

We made our way to the wetlands near Väsby. There were probably all sorts of interesting birds there, but none of them had the courtesy to come close to the trail. The only ones I could see were the large, visible ones (one pair of whooper swans with their young) and the ones who are used to humans (plenty of geese and ducks).

The cafe at Väsby farm was closed, but we came prepared with sandwich materials, hot and cold drinks, and flapjacks. And because the cafe was closed, there were plenty of free seats and tables in the sun.

Adrian reduced his stick collection to just one ultimate walking stick and walked with it all day. And it was a really nice one – a straight, smooth piece of some deciduous tree, maybe aspen or hazel. Unfortunately it was a good bit taller than Adrian so whenever he waved around with it, or even walked carelessly, it came dangerously close to our faces, so Eric and I kept our distance to that stick.

When we came out of the woods again near the parking lot, Adrian finished off the walk by picking dandelions. They do quite well in a vase, apparently. At night they close up as if they had wilted, but they open again with the sun the next morning.

Breakfast outside. Me over here, the family over there.

Social distancing in the sofa. Me in one corner, Adrian at a safe distance.

He misses cuddles and hugs more than anyone. He keeps coming to me because that’s what he does, and I keep having to tell him to back off. Which is no fun for either of us.