Greetings from Frankfurt. A dream trip is drawing to a close, or at least trying to. As we were preparing to board the flight from Edinburgh to Frankfurt this morning around 5:30 am local time, the pilot made an announcement at the boarding area to the effect of “I’m not sure if you’ve seen the news yet, but the Frankfurt airport is completely shut down.” My mind immediately went to tragic possibilities. Instead, I was relieved (I guess?) to learn that environmental protestors had intruded the perimeter and glued themselves to the runway. Outrageous! It felt like a game of TrapDraw bingo and something that Randy and I would be gleefully covering in the natural course of a Chop Session. Thankfully, the Germans dealt with it swiftly and things are back on schedule after a moderate delay.
Today marks one month away from the US and judging by the news and the weather across much of the country over that time, I picked a great time to leave. This column will be more of a notebook dump than some of the previous iterations of this column, and intersperse golf and personal travels throughout. I get a lot of travel questions and requests for advice on itineraries and such, so I’d like to flesh this out more once I have time, but for now, here’s a brief overview of where I’ve been and some observations from along the way.
The Midnight Troubadour
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We set off JAX-IAD-MUC-ARN on June 25th. This was our first international flight with the kiddos and they did wonderfully. Explaining to Freddie how time zones work, talking about the map and why we were flying so far north, and pointing out different planes to Freddie and Gustav was a highlight. We also got to fly upstairs on the A380, so going up the stairs on the plane when we boarded was a thrill for him. With the connection in Munich, we didn’t arrive in Sweden until mid-afternoon, which was actually ideal as we could head to the hotel straight away and then not have to keep the kids up for 12-14 hours to get them on schedule.
Gustav refuses to wear anything that isn’t a sports jersey, so we hacked this during our trip and started buying him nice-looking European soccer jerseys once we got there.
It was hot in Stockholm when we arrived - a high of 85 Fahrenheit - and people were apoplectic about the “heat wave.” We’d decided to stay in Södermalm, which is a bit like the Swedish version of Brooklyn, and booked the NOFO Hotel, both for value and proximity to a great park across the street. Within twenty minutes of arriving, Freddie was playing soccer with a neighborhood kid around his age across the street in the park and within an hour or so they’d arranged (in English, which most Swedes speak better than Americans do) to meet the next day at 6 p.m. That made me really happy. It showed the power of sports and the perks of being a kid (it’s also one of the things I love about golf - I feel like I get the adult version of this often.) We hung out in Stockholm for a few days, ate a bunch of ice cream and Toast Skagen, went to a lot of parks, visited the Gröna Lund amusement park in the city, and picked up Freddie and Gustav’s Swedish passports. I cannot emphasize enough 1) how bad Gustav was at the police station where we had to fill out all the paperwork and get pictures taken and 2) how patient my wife Alex was with him - she is a saint!
After a few days, we headed out to meet up with Ann & T (Alex’s aunt and her fiance, both of whom featured prominently in Tourist Sauce Season 8, Episode 1) at a house out in the Stockholm Archipelago near Värmdö. We played a little golf, ate some delicious food, and enjoyed a couple of long Swedish summer evenings by the water.
