Midsummers eve - good excuse?

Well of course there's no way to get away from a lot of good food and drinks on midsummers eve in Sweden, that's just reality ;-)

The positive
We took a lot of walks, both up the hill to the Örenäs castle and down along the road until it turns.. We also took a long walk around the lawn (midsummer pole gathering) outside the castle, where around 500 people had put up blankets and taken out wine, beer, strawberry cake, champagne, cookies, snaps, and so on. Everyone enjoyed the sun gazing, in a 30-35 degree weather - without wind for once - everyone was cooked, but still in a very joyous mood. Around 150 people, from 3 (younger ones being held and not counted) to at least 75 years old, formed 3 gigantic rings around the midsummers pole. The rings were covering half the lawn, almost forcing people to move their blankets back - but since it meant moving into the shadows everyone took it with laughter and joy :-)

In the food department, a while after getting home (and talking to my hanni(k)), we had most of the ingredients for a swedish holiday meal: only two kinds of sill/herring though, but accompanied by new-potatoes, lax/salmon, meatballs for my stepdad, great brownbread, dill (don't know in eng/ger) etc, there was enough to fill the table up on the platform on the hill of the house lawn :-)

The Negative
Well every great side must have some small negative side to it I guess... as long as we don't let it be too important in the overall context of things, we will remain positive as should be :-)

The negative of this day was of course for the workout bet: I managed to eat cream, sugar and butter (of course not by itself, but with the meals, snacks, deserts etc) while drinking beer, snaps and some irish coffee... at least I had bottled water with some of it, and I think for each beer I had tonight, there was one walk sooner or later. Counting the number of beer and number of walks would give an equal number in other words :-) so the negative still had something positive to think of ;-p

The strange
Don't know if I need to say more than: The neighbour ;-p
When we walked up the hill to the Örenäs castle lawn, she sang along with the folk songs, almost dancing. When looking at the ring dances, she seemed to whish she had grand children to dance with, and when leaving she sang along in the classic melody about small frogs with no tails and small ears :-)

The happy
It seems as though there was a wedding in the village today, at least there was a very loud party lasting until late at night :-)

The cute
My hanni of course (L)