My turn

Every six or seven entries, Dennis tells me it's my turn (I tell him not to worry, I'll do my fair share when we're in Europe). Anyway, here are my thoughts for today. We were in Saskatoon briefly on the weekend to celebrate a milestone birthday for my sister and I used this opportunity to pump Mom and Dad for information about different sites in Norway and Sweden that we should take in. It's a little harder on my side because the family connections are more diluted. There is the daughter of a cousin of my Mom's Dad who lives in Kolbu, Norway (I think that's the relationship; I'm sure I'll be corrected if need be) and so we looked at pictures of her, her family, her mother, etc. from the trip Mom & Dad took with Grandpa Torgunrud in the 70's. It was fun to hear their reminiscences and see the farm where my ancestors came from. I had tried to establish email contact with Kari but had no luck - I decided I'll try once more, using the correct type of o in her last name. I also got an oldish email for her son. If neither of these work, I will have to resort to snail mail and ask her to respond to me via email. I also saw pictures of Hestra, near Boras in Sweden which had been the home of my Dad's father and his family. There's no more family there anymore but I'm still hoping to be able to see it. It turns out that there is some family (Erickson's) in Sweden on my Mom's mother's side. Mom never even knew they existed until a couple of years ago. My grandmother's father died when she was eight so she may not even have known a lot about his family. I've come away armed with a few names and email addresses so we'll have to see what comes from this.

Other than family locations, I've been given a few recommendations of things that would be interesting to check out - Viking graves near Stockholm, a Stave kirke at Trondheim, Grieg's house. I'd be interested in seeing where my sister Gina spent a year as an exchange student - Lulea - but it's pretty far north so that might not happen. As an aside, when I was expressing concern about my propensity to motion sickness, Gina told me that she's heard that it helps to eat Granny Smith apples, the greener the better. I may have to try it out, there's always Gravol as a backup.