Countdown to Sweden

In approximately 172 days, I will be boarding a flight to Sweden. I'm an "information" person, and as such, I have been looking up a lot of information online. My husband is already thoroughly sick of me bombarding him with details, so I've decided to start this blog so that I have somewhere to chronicle the information I've found, and to share my experiences.



I've been to Sweden once before - during Dec 07 and Jan 08. I had an awesome time over there, visiting my friend and her fiance in their home country for the first time, meeting their families, and experiencing their beautiful country and culture. I thoroughly enjoyed experiencing Christmas Swedish style, including the tradition of watching Disney cartoons, and the visit of Kris Kringle to deliver presents to us all on Christmas Eve. And the Julmust. We can't be forgetting the Julmust. My obsession and increasingly desperate attempts to sniff out the ever-decreasing quantites of Julmust in the shops as it approached New Year's Eve became a source of amusement for my Swedish hosts.



Of course, being from Australia, I found the cold and the lack of daylight in Sweden at that time of year to be quite a shock, especially having left a rapidly warming-up December behind back home. By the time we travelled to the north of Sweden after Christmas, there was only about 3 or 4 hours of daylight in the day (we were below the Arctic Circle).



This time, I will be travelling to Sweden in late June for my friend's wedding. I'm really looking forward to having the experience of Summer in my birthday month. I had always wanted to have my 30th birthday in Sweden and have the experience of having my birthday in Summer for once. Having a Winter birthday really bites. Alas, I don't have enough leave from work saved up, so I will arrive a couple of weeks late. My friend has assured me that we will do something nice as a belated birthday celebration for me.



Of course, I won't be travelling by myself. My husband and two young sons will be accompanying me. By the time we leave, my older son will be 4.5 years old, and my younger son will be 2.5 years old. I'm really excited to have the opportunity to introduce my boys to my friends and their family and to share the experience of travel with them, but at the same time, I am really dreading the thought of long haul flights with a toddler and a pre-schooler.



So, any suggestions on how to survive a long haul international flight with two young, very energetic boys? Especially the one on the way over which has a 7 hour stopover at Hong Kong?

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