“this is probably the greatest place I’ve ever been…in my entire life.” – a.c.h.

pictured: 'tough as nails muscles' by christina (no, it's not photoshoped...there's just a perfectly placed shadow)

Yes, urnatur is something special, especially when it’s “free”. Not only are we staying in a lovely room, drinking real alcohol (like other Scandinavian countries, the only alcohol you can purchase at local stores is only 2.5% - for the real stuff one must go to a special government store), and eating delicious meals – but we are learning so much (partially, well no, fully, because we kinda use hakan as a living, breathing wikipedia genuis.)

pictured: some old chinese lady mowing the lawn

And even on a day like today where we didn’t really do anything new – we mowed the lawns and raked hay – there were still some magical moments to soak in. take the knots in wood. Do you know where they come from, what they are, why they are? Well, after the knot incident at appelfabriken, I really wanted to know. And of course who better to ask than hakan. Upon asking him why knots come to be, he gave me a peculiar look, as though he really wanted to make sure he understood what I was saying (aka I asked something stupid). Then he went on to explan that they are where the branches grew from of course. And of course! I hadn’t ever made the connection that branches grow from deep within the tree’s trunk – making knots of different sorts. Hakan also told me about some special plant cells – conifers grow them on the outside – that are compressed and serve to direct the plant toward sunlight. These cells also help if you are using a spruce branch as a “weather stick” (apparently a homemade device that can “predict” weather – when it’s more humid the stick goes down, when it’s dry it goes up).

pictured: the wood fired hot tub (alex actually is terribly sunburned - this image has been overly color corrected to make him normally white)

The dutch journalists had their last evening with us tonight, and therefore wanted to take a picture of alex and I in the “wood fired bath” (hot tub) this evening. How lucky for us! A warm 40 degrees Celsius, with a fire constantly burning on the side, this felt great. So good, we ended up sitting in there like two lobsters (alex literally looked like a lobster with his sunburn) until we had pruney fingers and toes. Sometimes we feel more like we are on vacation than at work here.

pictured: lunch (potato salad with asparagus), coffee and cake break, stone fired pizza time

But, we’re definitely working much harder here than at the last two places. Longer hours and harder work. But we like it. Not just because of all the perks, but because it’s fun to work with hakan and ulrika and to learn all about the wilderness. We don’t even want to take a free day because it’s so great here. We’re secretly fantasizing that when hakan and ulrika grow old they’ll leave us this forest. Oh, if only.

Side note…last night hakan took us on a ride to search for moose (Sweden has more moose per acre than anywhere else in the world)! Unfortunately no moose were seen, but it was great to see the forest, and listen to hakan talk. Plus, we saw a baby deer – something that’s apparently quite rare here. And we learned that there’s a house for sale that’s probably just $20,000. Hm, hm!

pictured: two prunies being goofs