No Death Curses at the dinner table! - Random Swedish Adventures

Ok so the title was something I had to say to my kids today while we were eating dinner...  Its the sort of thing that you never imagine yourself needing to say until you have kids - joining other such examples as:

- Don't put that in your mouth,
- Why is the toilet green,
- That isnt supposed to go up your nose, and
- Seriously if you dont leave it alone, it will fall off.

We managed to find Harry Potter on television (English with Swedish subtitles) and the kids watched that while Kris and I prepared dinner - Spaghetti and Knottbuller (meatballs).  Turns out the kids like the meatballs (like you get in Ikea) and they sell for 18kr per kg - which us about $3..  Of the 13 days we've been here, we've had them 3 nights.  Anyway we made it to dinner and the kids start chucking death curses at each other from Harry Potter - fortunately they still cant do "avada kedavra" properly, so instead we get "Advadaka, Advadaka", which probably just causes mild discomfort or burning behind the ears. And then of course mini Hermione (Alana) does the perfect reproduction of "Its Wingardium Leviosa, not Wingardium Levi-oh-sarr".  If Harry Potter was real I dont think any kids would ever make it there, they'd be dead from siblings death curses or in Azkaban by now...

Currently we are in temporary accomodation until the house we will be renting is available (27th Nov).  The place is an apartment on the 5th storey of an block right near Malmo Central station - while we're definately going to get fit climbing the stairs, it is very convenient for public transport and only a 10 minute walk from my work (where I start on Monday). The only real issue we have is that there's really only two bedrooms (There's a lounge, bedroom 1, bedroom 2, a toilet, a bathroom, a sitting room and a kitchen/dining.)  That means initially we had all three kids in the same room.  That really didnt work as they slept well the first night because they were exhausted but we were ready to try some death curses of our own when they were still talking at 11pm the following night.  So we moved Cameron into the sitting room and he's been sleeping great.  Alana and Tomas have good and bad nights - since we've mostly spent the last two days at home (Kris came down sick with the cold I had) they've not burnt off enough energy and hence don't settle well for sleep.  Kris just threatened that the next one she hears talking will be sleeping on the balcony.

The view from our apartment is pretty cool - there's a building site (which I think is building the next extension to Malmo Central Station), but there's also some cool old buildings.

This is the old Post House that is out of our south window:

Central Station has been pretty handy - there are 8 platforms and trains going as close as Triangeln Hyllie (Pronounced Hilly-ah) which is the site of the big Emporia shopping centre and as far as Copenhagen, Stockholm, Gotheburg and other parts of Sweden.

This is "The Green Thing" as the kids call it - the building that is being constructed between ours and central station:

Currently Sweden is taking in thousands of refugees from the wars in Syria and the Middle East.  They come via Europe to Denmark and then take the train across to Malmo.  There's a big Red Cross gathering point near where we are and all of our immigration paperwork is delayed due to the flood of immigrants.  Sweden has been very welcoming and there are lots of signs near Malmo Central Station like the one below (It reads - Refugee? Welcome to Malmo in a variety of languages):

One thing I love about Europe and Sweden is the age and majesty of some of the buildings.  We came across this church on our walk back from the shopping centre - it's St Petri' Kyrka - Saint Petri's Church.

And we also found this sculpture - it's titled "Immigraton" and has a group of people on a giant fish.

Overall, Sweden has treated us well so far - we've been on a few little exploration trips and we've worked our way around the shops for food and other neccessities such as power adapters and ipad chargers.  Pretty much everyone speaks English if you do, and some even have apologised for starting in Swedish.  We've definately got some work to do on our Swedish but we're working hard - in the background I can hear Kristine's iPad "Springer, Springer" which means "to run"...