How many languages do you speak?

I get this question all the time here in Puerto Rico, and apparently O gets it as well – about me, his wife, not about himself (he speaks Spanish, English and more French than he thinks). He told me yesterday that he brags about his wife who speaks several languages and understands even more (Danish, Norwegian, understand written Dutch). However, personally I always feel a little embarrassed when I start listing the languages – Swedish, English, French… and nowadays I guess Spanish but not so much Italian anymore.

First of all, because it is not that many – not if you have lived in Brussels where almost everybody [in the European Commission / Parliament circles] speak at least three languages. And secondly, because I don’t write French very well, nor Spanish and my Italian is almost non-existent, so I don’t think that those languages count fully. Some people will find this statement false modesty, but really, I know a lot of people who speak these languages (and others) much better than I.*

When I lived in Italy 2000-2001 my Italian was passable – I communicated with my Italian friends in Italian and I could get by, but I haven’t spoken many words of Italian since 2005 when I visited an Italian friend in Valencia. Since then I have concentrated on learning Spanish and the languages are just too similar [for me]. I have an Italian ex-colleague who is married to a Spanish woman; they both speak each other’s languages + French (and English of course) and they now live in Portugal and are learning Portugese (only Romanian missing!) - I don’t know how they do it, but maybe it is different when your mother tongue is a Latin language?

How do you define knowing a language and what do you consider to be fluent? I do consider myself to be more or less fluent in French, even though my grammar could be much better… I read books in French, as well as in Spanish (and used to read also in Italian), which I think is a great way to improve your [at least passive] understanding of a language. It doesn’t matter that I don’t understand every single word, as long as I understand the context.

Just today I was asked the question again, and after the “oh’s” and ”ah’s”, I felt once again the need to explain that as a Swede, living abroad, you need to speak other languages as nobody speaks Swedish… And remember, I have lived in three bi-, tri- or quadlingual countries; Puerto Rico (Spanish & English), Belgium (French, Dutch & German) and Switzerland (German, French, Italian & Romansch), so I am used to people speaking more than one or two languages around me.

A lot of my friends also speak at least 3 languages, and have lived in at least 3-4 countries – so I am not that special. Take the example of my three best friends from my hometown [in Sweden] who live in Oslo (also lived in Denmark, France, Switzerland, Tanzania); Copenhagen (previously lived in France, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Italy and Switzerland) and the south of France (as well as Spain). All of us have foreign partners and communicate in different languages every day – at home, at work and in our social lives. It is not something we think about too much, we just do it 

Recently I have read a very interesting book, The Story of French by Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow, about the history of the French language and I will probably come back to this publication, but what is interesting with the Canadian authors is that they are a bi-lingual /bi-cultural couple who speak both English and French. Jean-Benoît is French-speaking from Quebec, and Julie is English-speaking from Ontario. Apparently they had a period when they swapped the language spoken at home every other week! A very interesting method to guarantee language equality and improve both persons’ linguistic knowledge. Maybe something O and I should attempt, but at the moment I am just looking forward to my B-I-L arriving tomorrow, which will force me / us to speak Spanish at home for a week!!

Read more about my own language history here.

*) And I was taught to compare myself to the ones that are better than I, not worse. I guess my father’s way to make sure that I excelled in school…

Dreaming of a home of our own

On Saturday O and I found a dream apartment… in Brussels!

It had a small terrace overlooking the Park, 400 metres from a metro stop, including a garage (box fermé as it is called in Brussels), a small kitchen that needed refurbishing but already with a double-sink (Hallelujah!!), a huge living room with big windows in two directions and two bed rooms. We immediately tried to call friends in Brussels, could somebody help us check the place out? Maybe O’s brother could get a Ryanair ticket from Zaragoza to look at it…

This morning we found out that the place was already sold – of course! When things seem too good to be true, they usually are… Obviously somebody was quicker than us to react and scooped up a lovely apartment with lots of potential…

An empty kitchen just when I had moved in (2003). I shared the apartment with a French friend for a while before she moved upstairs to the attic flat just above (when she moved out, my boss moved in – upstairs, not with me, but that’s another story)

I got this outdoor set of table and chairs from a Spanish friend who was leaving Brussels when I needed furniture for the kitchen (my flatmate brought the old table with her when she left). Another Spanish friend broke one of the chairs, and I think O might have broken the other one… Spanish men are heavy!?

When O moved in with me, in early 2007, he made this extra counter space from two Ikea Bekväm tables and a spare counter top from the bargain corner.

The bed room just when I had moved in, 2003

My bed room in 2005 – with my cuddly seal called Umbrella on the bed!

While I continue searching for our future home in Brussels, a few things strike me:

• If apartment ads were half as staged as the Swedish ones, you could actually see how the place looks like instead of focusing on open cupboard doors, dirty laundry, unmade beds and other blurry images of the objects for sale
• Does anybody actually cook in Brussels? If the kitchens have been renovated in the last 30 years, it is with shoddy materials, no sense of practicality or planning…
• Can anybody work as a real estate agent in Belgium? There is a myriad of companies (and their photos don’t look a single bit more professional than those of the individuals who pose their ads on immoweb.be*) that don’t seem very professional or serious. Sometimes you will see the same apartment for sale by 4-5 different agents. Different angles on the photos but still all as bad…

Some of you might remember a similar, an equally ranting post about apartments in Spain… scarily almost exactly a year ago (28th August)! Scary, because we are in exactly the same situation as a year ago, not knowing too much about the future and I keep surfing the internet to look at apartments and dreaming of a home of our own…

An interesting looking tile job on the bathroom walls – compare with the kitchen wall.

Living room in 2003 – the red colour was really not by choice, I don’t even like red and prefer blue. However, the cheapest Beddinge sofa bed was sold in red, and then I found a cheap red and white rug… Later on I bought a white corduroy cover for the sofa and a white carpet, definitely more my style!

Dining room when I had bought a proper dining table! The same coat is in THREE of the photos and illustrate the lack of a place to hang coats by the front door. My father finally put up a few hooks behind the door in the dining room (see the photo below, the coats can be seen through the glass in the door).

The dining room later on became the living room… but I don’t seem to have any photos of that arrangement.

The photos are from my old apartment in Brussels – not staged and I would never try to sell an apartment with them! Obviously this was before my blogging days, as I have hardly any photos of my home without people in them. I was just thinking that it was a pity that I didn’t take photos of the rooms before we moved, it would have been nice to have as a memory, when I thought of my father’s photos (on a server that I can access remotely)… Every time my parents came to visit, my dear father seemed to have taken photos of my home! (some of them are mine though) 

This is the kind of photo people would post on the internet when trying to sell their home – you don’t see anything of the kitchen, just all the stuff… O and I had so much food and kitchen utensils, as you can see. Maybe that’s why I don’t have many photos of the last 8 months in the apartment – it was just too full of things and furniture when O had moved in!

*) The equivalent of hemnet.se in Sweden. A website to find houses and apartments for rent and sale in all of Belgium – both for real estate agents and individuals selling their homes without the “help” (??) of a professional.

If you are European and you aren’t going to vote…

…you should be ashamed of yourself*!!!

There is no excuse – nobody who reads any newspaper and / or watches the news can have missed that the European elections are taking place tomorrow**. I just can’t believe one survey made in Sweden which claims that 1 out of 4 Swedish voters do not know about the elections!
My busy friend Å in Copenhagen wrote on her Facebook status the other day: “[I] took a two minutes detour for democracy while rushing between work and kindergarten and speed-voted for the European Parliament. So anyone claiming “I did not have time to vote” will need to look for another argument…”
If you have other excuses why you are not voting – check out this blog (in Swedish) for some reasons why you should vote!

If you are still wondering how the European Parliament and its elections work – check out this FAQs on BBC News, information in Swedish here and this link to the European Parliament itself.

The European Parliament in Brussels

We are 375 million Europeans in 27 countries to vote for the European Parliament, which means that it is the biggest “trans-national election in history” (according to BBC News) and if that isn’t a reason enough to exercise your right to vote, consider that TODAY (6th June) the 65th anniversary of D-Day was celebrated in Normandie! See how far we have come with European integration since that day in 1944! Think of that and don’t tell me that the European Union isn’t important!

The Berlaymont building in Brussels which houses the European Commission

Why are Swedes such Euro-sceptics together with the British? Well, I think that it is very much a problem of how we look at Europe – as the Continent, or in other words as them, not us. We don’t feel as European as a Belgian, German, Italian or French. In most countries on the Continent the European flag always flies next to the national flag, and people cross borders and use Euros without considering it “travelling abroad” anymore…

The City Hall in Aix-en-Provence, France flies the European flag

The City Hall in Zaragoza, Spain with the European flag

The European flag outside a theatre in Lisbon, Portugal

My 89-year old grandfather is one of the anti-EU Swedes (but according to my father he has already voted!) and I think for his generation in Sweden it is a question of fear – they remember the mess of the Second World War, which happened mostly on the Continent and not in Sweden (even though both Norway and Finland were very much involved). So, while Europeans his age remember the war and therefore support the European idea, he and his generation in Sweden still want to keep out to avoid involvement.

American war monument in Bastogne, Belgium

What I can’t understand is that the younger generation is still sceptical – haven’t they realised the marvels of being able to travel, study and work anywhere in Europe? Not having to worry about visas and work permits…

Arrivals and departures at the Venice trainstation – cross-border trains to Geneva (not part of the EU) and Slovenia

And if you are one of the critics of the European Union, without exercising your democratic right (obligation!), I believe that you have no right to criticise – there are lots of Euro-critical parties to vote for!

I am European and I am proud of it! GO and VOTE!!

The European flag in Bruges, Belgium

*) In Swedish there is a saying that goes something like “you will never be a prophet in your own home[town]” and unfortunately O is one of the Europeans who hasn’t voted! I have told him that it is unforgiveable, especially as he has lived and studied / worked in two different European countries, and is married to another European! Without the European Union we probably never would have met…
**) Some member states, such as the UK and the Netherlands have already voted earlier this week.

Living in Brussels…

Every spring for the last three years I have been wondering about my future. Three years ago I was wondering if we were going to move abroad – O had been offered to move to Texas, two years ago I was wondering when we were going to move to Puerto Rico, one year ago I was wondering when and where we would be moving next and… Well, once again I am wondering when and where!

There is a big probability that we move back to Brussels at the end of the year, and it doesn’t feel too bad actually. Both my visit last summer and my most recent Brussels trip in February, made me realise that I wouldn’t mind returning to the capital of Europe!

Here are some of the Brussels thoughts I wrote down over a coffee at the sandwich shop Pulp by Schuman in February:

It is easy to:

• live in Brussels
• to get addicted to the international life in Brussels
• to leave Brussels, i.e to travel to other European destinations (London 2½ hours by train, Paris 1½ hours, Amsterdam 3 hours)
• to get a kick out of using all your language skills in one day



• to eat cheap and well in Brussels
• to find a charming apartment with high ceilings with stucco, and old fireplaces in Brussels
• to fall in love in Brussels
• to make new friends in Brussels
• to get quick and good health care in Brussels
• to figure out the metro system as there used to be only 2 metro lines – this has been changed since April

However it is also easy to:

• to get stuck in Brussels because you can’t think of a better alternative
• get so tired of the rain (even though I managed to get sun stroke in a local park my first summer in Brussels)
• to find a crappy, draughty old apartment with a tiny toilet
• to get shockingly high electricity bills from trying to heat a draughty apartment
• to become very annoyed with the complicated bureaucracy
• to get your heart broken in Brussels
• to realise that all of your friends have left Brussels in the last year
• to always be late if depending on public transport, especially buses and trams



• to be sick and tired of the traffic
• to live in Brussels and only see the Grand’ Place when you have visitors
• to live in Brussels and never see the Belgian countryside
• to live in Brussels and not speak / learn French
• to not recognise the city after a year away…

Personally it would be easy to move back for O and I since we know the city already (despite the last bullet in the list) and we still have quite a few friends who live in Brussels, even though we have a lot of friends who have left – including some Belgians! And it would indeed feel like moving home.

Bilingual and bi-cultural, is that a problem? (Part I)

On Friday evening we participated in a French-Puerto Rican cultural event at the Alliance Francaise – a book written by a French author, Laurent LeMaitre, was being launched. We listened to the bilingual presentation of the book by the author himself, his wife – the translator from French to Spanish, and the father-in-law who runs the publishing company. Afterwards we mingled with Puerto Ricans and French people, and we made some new friends during the evening.

A bilingual street in Brussels – the name of the street means Street of the Fat Tower in French, but what does it mean in Flemish!?

The event made me think about us bilingual and bi-cultural couples… Every time I explain to people that my husband is Spanish, I get the question – which language do you speak together? This is especially puzzling for people who hear that we met in Brussels, a French-speaking city (officially bilingual, but not really). I always say But of course we speak English… but I guess that is just obvious to the two of us!!

Even proper names change in different languages – Jozef, Joseph, José, Josef…

At the event on Friday I spoke in French to two French girls married to Puerto Ricans and O talked in Spanish to a French guy married to a Puerto Rican woman; and of course the language issue came up! Both the two Puerto Ricans married to the French know how to speak French; but one couple speaks mostly Spanish at home and the other couple speaks mainly French. And we, the Swedish-Spanish couple, speak English at home, but we are slowly trying to introduce Spanish as well…

One way of solving the bilingual street sign problem in Brussels!

First of all we all agreed that it is very difficult to change language as a couple – if you met in English / French / Spanish, you will probably continue speaking that language. This is clear in the example of the two French-Puerto Rican couples – the couple speaking French met in France, the Spanish-speaking couple met in Puerto Rico! O and I are different though as we, a Spaniard and a Swede, met in a third [bilingual] country with a third language (French), we speak a fourth language (English) and now live in a fifth country which is also bilingual! [I would probably need to make a diagram here]

One of the girls told me that she has a French-Swedish friend who lives with her Spanish boyfriend in Sweden (or it might have been a Spanish-Swede with a French, but nevermind!) and the couple speaks English together. The girl had complained about the language issue and said that it was very tiring to not speak her mother tongue[s] in the relationship and especially when having to speak a language that is not neither partner’s language. So, obviously the question to me was, is it a problem speaking a third language together? I answered that I have never felt that it has been a problem for O and I that we speak English in our relationship – not something that annoys / tires us, nor something that has caused misunderstandings. I overheard O telling the Puerto Rican husband of one of the girls that he thinks that my English is better than his, but that it is still not an issue in our relationship (that is another discussion which I will save for later).

Whether or not different mother tongues in a relationship becomes a language barrier depends most likely on the level of understanding and as well as on the personalities of the two persons! In a way it is more democratic to speak a third language, which is foreign to both partners. It can also be construed as unfair if one person learns to speak the other language but not vice-versa. However, I have never felt that way when it comes to my efforts of learning Spanish, and O’s almost inexistant Swedish. There are quite a big difference between having to learn Spanish, a world language and the only language my family-in-law speaks, and to learn Swedish, which is not really a useful language outside of Sweden and when English works pretty well inside of the country as well! I also believe that learning Spanish will be very useful for my future career, regardless of where we end up living.

Ale’s rocks (Ales stenar) – a viking settlement on the south coast of Skåne, Sweden

Not learning your partner’s mother tongue can nevertheless be interpreted as an unwillingness to get to know his / her culture and background. In our case I believe that O is showing a huge interest to adopt Swedish culture – eating Kalles Kaviar and Herrgårdsost (Swedish cheese), enjoying watching Swedish films, celebrate Midsummer’s eve and inviting friends to Adventsfika (Swedish celebration in December) and absolutely loving IKEA! He is interested in learning Swedish and I am sure that he will pick up quite a fair amount eventually.

This kind of questions is not just applicable to bilingual couples, but also any expat who lives in a foreign country – with or without a foreign language. Do you try to learn the new language or do you get by in English (or any other second language)? Do you expect people to be able to speak to you in the languages you know?

I have so many more thoughts on this matter and I haven’t even touched upon culture, but I will save it for Part II…

All the photos except the one of the Spanish map are from Brussels, a city which is officially bilingual (French & Flemish / Dutch).

Friday theme / Show & tell: Abandoned

The last Friday theme chosen by Västmanländskan in Skåne is abandoned. Since I realised that I still haven’t shown any photos from our visit to Brussels in February, I have chosen some abandoned scenes to publish today:

An abandoned metro station – this is actually the busiest metro station, Arts-Loi (Kunst-Wet in Flemish), but not just after a train has passed!

A few abandoned Metro newspapers in Flemish… Brussels is officially a bi-lingual city – French and Flemish – but most people speak French (or English, or Arabic, or Turkish…) and therefore there are always Flemish Metros left at the end of the day while the edition in French disappears quickly!

An abandoned park – Parc Cinquantenaire (Jubelpark in Flemish) was quite empty on a misty February afternoon but I love walking in “my” park. I have so many memories from this park, which is situated just opposite my first office building (Breydel). We used to eat our lunch sandwiches in the park, I participated in one or two Friskis & Svettis sessions there and I have had a few pic-nics on the lawns…

An abandoned jogging trail in the park – I used to jog here and the trails would be full of other joggers. I always met the same old man, he was in a great shape which was not surprising as I never ran at the same time so I figured that he spent hours (??) jogging every evening!

Another abandoned angle of the park – no sight of the famous wild parrots! My parents always used to see them when they were visiting but Parc Leopold is a better parrot viewing park.

An abandoned sign hidden behind the base of a statue, I guess the cyclists don’t need to get off their bikes anymore…

The kitchen and living room windows in my old apartment in Brussels. I abandoned it in September 2007, and still miss it!

O abandoned his apartment on the second floor in this building to live with me in my apartment in January 2007. He drove me home on the first night we met and it turned out that we more or less lived on the same street (different street names though), 220 metres apart!

The other Friday theme participants can be found here:
Anki, Anna, Anne, Annika, Cecilia, Christel, Desiree, Emma, Erica, IngaBritt, Jemaya, Lena W, Leopardia, Lia, Mais-oui, Marie, Marskatten, Mia D, Millan, Moster Mjölgumpa, Musikanta, Nilla, Norrsken & Stjärnfall, Petra H, Saltis, Sara, Simone, Sparkling, Strandmamman, Taina, Under Ytan, Victoria, Victoria V and Västmanländskan.

Next month the themes will be chosen by Musikanta.

Wednesday recipe: Tarte au citron meringuée (Lemon meringue cake)

Some of you might remember my blog post about a book I read a few months ago – Julie and Julia by Julie Powell. Well, I finally decided to try out one of the recipes from the cookbook that Julie writes about; Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and what better recipe to try, than my favourite French cake ever – Tarte au citron meringuée! Lemon cake seemed especially fitting for Easter – maybe because of the yellow colour?

In Julia Child’s book the cake is simply called Tarte au citron and I have actually modified the recipe so that the cake would remind me more of those great lemon cakes I have eaten in Brussels over the years… I think the best lemon cake in Brussels can be found in L’amour fou (in Ixelles), one of my favourite restaurants! Have the big club sandwich and then a huge slice of tarte au citron meringuée for dessert – according to the on-line menu it will only cost you 13,55 € for the full meal. Mmmm, I think I need to plan a visit to Brussels soon and include dinner at L’amour fou!

Opps, forgot to take a photo of the whole cake… but at least you can see the consistency of the cake this way!

Anyway, most of you don’t live in Brussels and will probably not visit any time soon, so here is a recipe to try at home:

Tarte au citron meringuée
Pastry base:
100 grams butter
2 decilitres flour
3 tablespoons sugar
a pinch of salt
Mix everything together and add more flour if needed. Cover the base of a greased round springform cake tin (removable bottom) with the pastry dough and make a few holes with a fork. Bake for less than 10 min in a 160 degree oven.

Lemon filling:
1 1/4 decilitre sugar
4 egg yolkes
peel of one lemon / 2 limes
3 tablespoons of lemon / lime juice
Whisk the egg yolkes and sugar together until thick and light yellow. Add lemon peel and juice. Prepare a “bain-marie” (water bath) by putting a [preferably stainless steel] bowl in a pot with simmering water, and add the egg and sugar mixture. Stir with a wooden spoon until really thick. NB Don’t let it boil or the yolkes will coagulate.
Pour the mixture into the pastry base.

Meringue:
4 egg whites
3/4 decilitres sugar
a pinch of salt
Beat the egg whites and salt until almost hard, add the sugar and continue beating until you can turn the bowl upside down without the eggs pouring out (ask the help of a strong man if you don’t have an electric whisk!!).

Pour the hard-beaten eggs carefully on top of the lemony mixture (already in the pastry base). Bake for 30 minutes. Sprinkle icing sugar on top and serve either warm or cold. The cake might sink a little when cooling but don’t worry, it will still taste great!
Enjoy!!

And don’t forget to look out for the film based on Julie Powell’s book – Julie & Julia, it should be coming out this year!

Friday theme / Show & tell: Coffee

Despite good intentions I haven’t been able to participate in all the Friday theme’s this month, despite all the inspirational subjects chosen by Simone “Fritt ur hjartat“ in Uddevalla.

However, today’s theme “coffee” is perfect since I had a quiet fika this week in Pulp (coffee and lunch chain in Brussels) and pondered over my tiny but cheap caffe latte about Brussels… (photo above is from last summer though)

I think that is what coffee is the symbol for me: some time ‘off’ whatever you are doing to either be social with family, friends or colleagues, or to have a quiet time of reflection on your own.

I don’t know why I was so surprised by the size of the caffe latte, it was the same size last summer! But I guess from having all those coffees in Starbucks while studying Spanish over the last months in Puerto Rico made me forget how tiny a ‘normal’ coffee with milk is in Brussels / Europe! But really – who needs half a litre of caffe latte? I never finish my Starbucks coffee… and I definitely preferred the 2 EUR-price tag at Pulp!

Oh, and actually it is not called a caffe latte in Brussels – the traditional name is “lait russe” or Russian milk, nobody seems to know why though!?

Have a short coffee break is usually the best way to enjoy the atmosphere while travelling, giving the feet a rest while checking out the guidebook…

Two coffees in Paris

Just a short post today since we are heading to Spain this afternoon and I still have to meet up with a few last friends.

This post was supposed to have been published Friday morning, but apparently I didn’t click on the right button

Have a great weekend and check out the other Friday bloggers: Anki, Anna, Anne, Annika, Cecilia, Christel, Desiree, Emma, Erica, IngaBritt, Jemaya, Jennie, Lena, Leopardia, Lia, Mais-oui, Marianne, Marie, Marina, Marskatten, Mia, Mia D, Millan, Moster Mjölgumpa, Musikanta, Nilla, Petra H, Saltis, Sara, Simone, Sparkling, Strandmamman, Taina, Under Ytan, and Victoria.

Wednesday recipe: A Swedish classic – Sandwich cake!

Finally some time to update the blog and since it is Wednesday, what better than with a recipe! We, or rather I since O is busy working, are having a great time in Brussels despite my cold (and subsequently the friends now have my cold…) and I have lots of stories and photos to share, but first that recipe:

On Saturday we celebrated Valentine’s Day by having a yummy three-course meal at home with our friends – a Greek (Y), a Spaniard (O), a French (S), an Irish (MT) and two Swedes (J + myself). The dinner was a joint effort and the team-building reached new levels when the tiny work spaces in the kitchen forced us to prepare the cake “in the air”, i.e one person holding the bowl with the cake batter, another one holding the cake tin while a third was scooping…*

The boys prepared some toasts with caviar as snacks for the champagne “apero”.

When we were discussing the menu O surprised me by suggesting that I make a smörgåstårta as a starter – mostly because I didn’t think that he remembered the Swedish word! During our 2,5 weeks in Sweden he called me “Miss Potatis” since I love potatoes but I thought that he had chosen the most simple Swedish word to learn, so I suggested he try with “smörgåstårta” instead / a bit more complicated Our friends thought that a sandwich cake sounded interesting so for the first time ever I tried to make one – and it was quite a success!

Smörgåstårta or Sandwich cake
- white toast bread
- 2 handfuls of boiled shrimp
- smoked salmon
- dill
- 2 deci-litres mayonnaise
- 2 deci-litres sour cream
- 3 chopped hard-boiled eggs
- red and black caviar (fish eggs)
- lemon

Cut most of the shrimp and smoked salmon in small pieces but save some for decoration. Mix sour cream and mayonnaise together – proportions about fifty-fifty (this is not an extremely healthy recipe!) and add the chopped eggs, shrimp, salmon and dill. Squeeze some lemon juice over and stir.
Cut the crusts off the bread slices (I forgot to do this!). Put 4 slices of bread on a big platter and spread a thick layer of the creamy mixture. Add a layer of sliced bread, and mix in some scoops of red caviar in the mixture before spreading it on the bread. Repeat so that you have three layers of bread and mix. Put in the fridge for 1-2 hours.
Before serving, add some shrimps, slices of salmon and lemon + small spoonfuls of red and black caviar. Serve as a starter or part of a buffet (smörgåsbord).

*) Reminded me of that classical joke about how many of x-nationality does it take to change a light bulb

Closed due to a cold

I was going to have lots of things to tell you about my breakfasts, fikas, lunches, dinners and drinks with friends in Brussels but instead I have been in bed sleeping or on the sofa watching Grey’s Anatomy. And no Friday theme either this week! I have a really bad cold that doesn’t seem to improve, rather the contrary…

Hope everybody is more lucky today than my host who got the kitchen blind in his head this morning and had to go to the hospital with blood everywhere, and my hostess who spilt coffee all over her… on Friday the 13th!!

Have a nice weekend and do what we are doing for Valentine’s Day tomorrow – celebrate it by sharing a nice home-cooked dinner with friends!!