Day 6: Hospital and Mid-Summer's Eve

Nuri had the worst runny nose that I have ever seen yesterday and then last night he came down with a fever. Apparently a typical wait at urgent care in Sweden is 6 hours and we are at the beginning of the biggest holiday weekend of the year. Based on advice from Cindy and Anders, it was best to go this morning rather than wait until this afternoon or tomorrow, when the wait would surely be much longer. Since we only had the mid-summer's eve celebration on our itinerary, we headed out to a local hospital with an open barnakuten, children's urgent care. At first we thought we had majorly lucked out when we were the only people in the waiting room, but it turns out that hospitals here are similar to Disneyland in the sense that just when you think you're close to the front of the line, you turn a corner and there are more people in front of you. First they took down our address and other information at a registration window. Then we waited in the first waiting room until the nurse called us into an examination room. She asked us what was wrong and took Nuri's temperature and then led us over to the next waiting room (yay - new toys!) We then paid for our visit which would be free if we were Swedish and then continued to wait. Then we were called into a second examining room and asked to wait for the doctor. One great thing about having urgent care that is for children only is that you get to be seen by a pediatrician. The pediatrician was wonderful and patient with Nuri, which was fantastic. Considering that we had been debating about bringing him in, we ended up being really glad that we did. It turns out he had ear infections in both ears and we got some antibiotics for it. And the whole thing only took about 2.5 hours, which is about as long as it takes in the US, so I guess we lucked out.

We took the tram home and we were in time to catch the tail end of the mid-summer celebration in Slotsskogen park, where there was traditional Swedish folk dancing and a may pole. Sal and I had some good Swedish hotdogs, complete with fried onion topping. Then Cindy and Megan walked with us over to a pool with seals in it, which entertained Nuri for quite some time. They kept him so interested that he only took one nap today for the first time since we arrived. It turns out the park is full of animals, roaming wild, as well as a petting zoo that was closed yesterday, but we didn't have time to see all the animals, so we went home for a traditional mid-summer's dinner. We did see a few flamingos on the way out.

The mid-summer spread was potatoes with sour cream and chives, along with breads and cheeses, and zuchini. Pickled herring is also a traditional part of mid-summer, but Cindy's family is vegetarian and we had had herring yesterday anyway. Cindy and Anders sung a traditional drinking song, at the end of which we were all supposed to have schnapps, but there was unanimous agreement among those who tried the schnapps that it tasted awful. We had strawberries with whipped cream and ice cream for dessert (also traditional).

After dinner we sat around and played guitar hero until one of the Wii remotes ran out of batteries and then we sat around and talked. Cindy and Anders retired to bed at some point and the "kids" hung around and talked until late. Liam is moving to Oxford tomorrow, so his parents insisted he end his LAN party a little early so they could hang out with him before he leaves. They are really nice people and they were fun to hang out with.