Midsummer comemoration!!

This past friday Sweden comemorated its most beloved tradition - midsummer, the longest day of the year.. Families and friends gather for a typical lunch with fish, potatoes, meatballs and a lot of akvavit, song and dance, embracing the essence of swedish summer.
One usually is put together with someone else on the table through a game, meaning that you will be sat together with total strangers if you dont know them, but if you are lucky, it can be quite fun!! After lunch everybody is invited to dance around a pole which represents fertility (it looks like testicles, really).
Maybe you have heard about the "small frog-dance"? That's it, one impersonates those little frogs and atempt to look as stupid as possible, but us brazilians find it pretty odd and embarassing, so we attempted to look as cool as we could, under the circumstances (...)

This friday my sister (the famous sizzle 1, Daniel - my boyfriend and his friend John Malkovich (aka Tobias) drove to the heart of Sweden - Dalarna. There, we stayed at Daniels moms place, and from there we drove to where the party was going to be held - at Fredriks place, one of Daniels friend. He has a house looking out the lake "Väsman" - it is so beautiful and infinite, full of small islands..an eternal source of inspiration. There, we met up with no less than 75 people. We mingled and even met some brazilians we weren't expecting to meet. I was a bit nervous, so I drank about 3 glasses of punch in order to "losen out" - I am becoming swedish in that sense, aint' i??.
During the huge lunch, which everybody contributed with, each country sang a typical song of theirs, just for the fun of it. Us latin americans chose La Bambas song - I know, maybe not the best choice, but it was easy.. So we stood up proudly, and sang a little. T'was fun!!! My table date was a colombian guy, quite nice actually. I had luck this time as well. My sizzle sat right in front of me, which made it even better as well. After a long lunch and many many sips of akvavit and song, we went and sat on the roof of Fredriks house. There one could see the view of this gigantic lake Vässman. It was definetly my favorite place to be (obs! I do not suggest anyone to climb the stairs and sit on the roof if there is any trace of strong alcohol in the veins!!! ) The rest of the day was spent dancing salsa, dancing to typical swedish music at its best - think Carola, Basshunter, Lena Ph.. Behind the house we found a warm swedish wooden bath tub where we sank our feet and ate chips with strangers, while being eaten by small mosquitos... total bliss! Towards the evening all the damn summer bugs were eating us all up, so we decided to go and sit in this small cottage which had a fire lit on. The cottage looked more like a fishermans house, and it was too, the cutest little cottage I have ever seen in Sweden. A perfect end to the evening. We wrapped up by eating hot dogs outside.

The clock was 4am and we were dead tired, dying to get home, dying to take off our shoes!!!! Daniel attempted a failed peep talk with us, suggesting we should walk home - Hence - that would take about 45min, but you know girls, so we called a taxi instead, which would take 45 minutes to come, and that didnt make Daniel very happy. He tried really hard to get us motivated to walk home and enjoy the beautiful swedish nature. You know, when an over the top energetic swede tries to put some somewhat spoiled brazilians to move their asses after 12 hrs of partying, he will not succeed!!
However, when your shoes hurt, when you have been bitten all over, when you are drunk and halv asleep, nobody gives a bloody f* about the swedish nature!!!!¤#&¤!!!! =) So we got our way, and the taxi arrived 15 min later.

I really enjoyed this midsummer. I met an incredible amount of weirdos - who became odder with every drink they took, but i had quite a laugh at them. Swedes at their best, quite amusing to me actually.. I never laughed so much at them.

Midsummer was indeed the longest day of the year - it never gets quite dark..and the party goes on..

All in all, it was worth the trip. I had my sizzle 1 sister with me this time and my xuxu!!!! The only negative experience we had this weekend was when we were on our way home and bumped into notorious swedish nazists. But that is another post, that would only spoil my cute midsummer post.

The pictures and videos above are from the view of the roof, one of the 5 tables at lunch, the midsummer dance around the pole, my sister and I, the stairs to the roof, dancing and getting drunker, and drunker..and stupid(er) :P