On July 7, I crossed over Norway and arrived in Sweden, eager to begin my life as a European.

After one night in Stockholm, Annelie and I went to Göteborg, where I presented a paper at a conference.

After the conference, we took a holiday and went to Fjälla, near Norway, to visit A's brother Stefan.

We also spent a couple of days on the island of Koster with Jonna's parents and the kids.

Koster is a fantastic place for sailing.

It's also a good place for picking wild strawberries.

We went for a hike around the island to have a picnic and swim--or watch others swim, in my case.

Koster, and all of Bohuslän, is characterized by archipelagos of rocky little islands.

After a couple of days on Koster, we went back to the mainland; there are no cars on Koster, so we walked to the ferry.

Back in Fjälla, we had a party in the recently completed playhouse and drank black currant juice.

A book and a cat--what more do you need? OK, someone to read the book to you. And maybe someone to feed the cat.

Holiday over, we took the train back to Göteborg, to collect Annelie's stuff and start the last stage of our move.

Back in Göteborg, we stayed with Kristina and Martin for a night, said goodbye to the city...

...and rented a big white van. Bigger than we needed, really, but it was still great to drive.

We picked up a bunch of things Annelie had in storage and drove back to Fjälla, where she had stored more stuff.

On the way we crossed the Uddevalla Bridge, a cable-stayed bridge very much like the new Zakim Bridge in Boston.

We also drove through some sudden rain showers.

Back in Fjälla, Joel and Edit were happy to see us again.

In fact, they got dressed up and made us a cake to send us off on our way up north.

Then it was just a matter of putting more stuff in the van.

And we started our two-day drive north.

We said goodbye to the fields of Bohuslän and the west coast.

We went through a town named Ed.

We drove though Dalsland, which is a bit more forested and has lots of nice lakes.