Wonderful Days!

Taking a break in preparing this afternoon's event of Erik and Syssa's birthday/go away/ sleep over party.

I've had a wonderful and busy week, visiting with friends.
Lunch with work friends on Tuesday,
A house full of kids on Wednesday,
Zoo with friends on Thursday,
and swimming with friends yesterday.

This week we have also spent a lot of thoughts, phone calls, planning on the logistic problems to get us from Germany to Sweden. Tried the train... hard to get all baggage with us. Tried the rent-a-car deal... hard to get a one way rental over country borders. Tried the "maybe we should just buy a car when we get there" approach... hmmm the bags will still not fit in the kind of car we would like to buy. So there's no lack of options, it's just hard to figure out which one would cause less hassle...

We still cross our fingers that the whole trip will go as planned and no last minute changes will mess us up again.

So last night, as a relief from stress and too much on my mind I picked up my friend Kelly and we went to the old part of town called Old Colorado City. It's small shops, restaurants, art galleries, physic readers and coffee houses mixed up in a beautiful mixture.

We started off with a Greek Bistro visit, ate Mediterranean Pasta and Moussaka with warm pita bread... yumm!!!! The server was a frantic overly happy eager to please woman that had a wide smile glued to her face every time she came by our table, about once every 3 minutes!
Well, the food was very good anyways!!

We slowly walked down the road until we found this little place

agiasophiacoffeeshop.com

Fresh Coffee - Ancient Wisdom

In the Mission statement you can read the following:

"The very first coffeehouses in the western world were aromatic dens where people met to discuss business, politics and religion. Here at Agia Sophia we want to inspire that same historical coffeehouse culture by offering the very best coffee and specialty teas, along with pastries, desserts and a cafe-style lunch menu to satisfy your physical hunger, while our excellent book selection nourishes your spiritual and intellectual appetite."

It's warm atmosphere, walls covered with books just screaming to be read, it's fantastic vanilla latte was a beautiful combination. My only regret is that I didn't find this place long time before.

So, we're about to leave right at closing time around 10pm. The Father working in the store, dressed in long black robes with a black apron, wearing his long hair in a pony tail and with a long beard, was making pretty obvious signs that it was time to leave. We walk down stairs and I tell the other man working in the store how sorry I was not being able to come back now when I found this great place. I told him I'm leaving for my home country Sweden and he says, wow!! and then he yells out " Father Andreas, come here!!" And he says, "this lady is Swedish!!" The Father then response to me: "TJENARE" = hi there!! in Swedish.

So this priest in the Eastern Orthodox Church is a dude from Sweden, who like me, married an American and moved over here 12 years ago!!!!! Somehow he got interested in the Orthodox faith and the rest is history!!

Believe me, there's not that many Swedish Orthodox people, if any, so just that combination is kind of rare, and then that he happened to be right here in my hometown makes it even more unrealistic!

He recommended me a book to start with, but by reading just the titles of some of the books on the shelves I'll be reading a bunch more!!! We exchanged email and he recommended me to a church and priest in Eskilstuna Sweden in case I wanted some more book tips!

Talking about book tips; growing up in Sweden there was a children's TV program called boktipset where a new kids book was presented every week. when I asked father Andreas about any book he would recommend me to read we started singing the theme song at the same time. Kelly and the other man working at the store looked at us with big questioning eyes and we just started laughing!!

Great ending to a wonderful evening.

Well, now the party is just 2 hours away, I need to start preparing!!!