Having birthday we´ve liked before. But to celebrate that you are 60 and more is more to complain. And therefore we haven´t celebrated that birthday my wife and I. But of course, my wife gave me a new Citroën Picasso when I got 60 and I gave her a journey to Germany when she got 60?. The journey we made last week. We were there four days and we lived on an upper floor with five rooms, but we were alone, so it was cool. It was very cheap too, 128 ? for four days. If you want to know what most Swedes do in Germany (and we too) you can read episode 11, but now I´m going to talk about other things. The Germans speak a German language, it reminds of Swedish. I speak German and my wife too. Therefore we like to go there and it´s rather nearby (at least North Germany). If we start at 8.00 in the morning we arrive at Burg at 18.00, a distance of 700 km. Burg is a town with half-timbered houses or houses made of bricks, very nice, and with very kind people. It´s situated on a little island between Denmark and Germany, enough for us (Before in the eighties till 1992 we went to Spain, a distance of 3200 km one way, too long for me nowadays). There is a little harbor with restaurants where they serve different kinds of fish. Something that seemed a little odd to us was that they eat outside the second part of October. And if you imagine that it was only 5º C when we were there, you´ll understand that it wasn´t very warm in the restaurant. But people speak and sometimes there are opportunities for a foreigner to practice his German. Another thing we noticed, was that in the evenings one doesn´t see very much light in the German houses, at least not in the surroundings where we were, outside the centre. Something that made me nervous happened when I checked the tyres. One was almost totally empty and the first that struck my mind was: ?A puncture ? good Lord!? We went to check the pressure but I´m no mechanic and I didn´t know what pressure it should be in the tyres. Well, then it´s an advantage to know the language. I could introduce myself to a German gentleman and ask him if he knew the right pressure for my tyres. The gentleman took over the command and filled the tyres and recommended me to check them later. I felt relieved, because having problems with my car is something I don´t like to have in any country.

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Here´s the continuation of the Swedish course: family = familj father = pappa, far mother = mamma, mor child = barn son = son daughter = dotter brother = bror sister = syster grandfather = farfar (the fathers father), morfar (the mothers father) grandmother = farmor (the fathers mother), mormor (the mothers mother) I = jag you= du he = han she = hon it = den, det we = vi you = ni they = de big = stor little = liten tall, long = lång short = kort thin = smal fat = tjock dark = mörk blond = ljus, blond white = vit, vitt black = svart red = röd, rött yellow = gul, gult green = grön, grönt blue = blå, blått gray = grå, grått rosa = rosa, skär lilac = lila orange = orange ten = tio twenty = tjugo thirty = trettio fourty = fyrtio fifty = femtio sixty = sextio seventy = sjuttio eighty = åttio ninety = nittio hundred = hundra twentyone = tjugoett twentytwo= tjugotvå twentythree = tjugotre twentyfour = tjugofyra twentyfive = tjugofem twentysix = tjugosex twentyseven = tjugosju twentyeight = tjugoåtta twentynine = tjugonio (Use the same ?method? for the others. Thirtyone = trettioett, thirtytwo = trettiotvå etc.) Sweden = Sverige Spain = Spanien Finland = Finland Norway = Norge Denmark = Danmark Germany = Tyskland France = Frankrike Holland = Holland Belgium = Belgien Portugal = Portugal Russia = Ryssland US = USA That´s it, this was all for today. I hope you´ve learnt a little and that you know that it isn´t difficult to speak Swedish!

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The day before yesterday I had my friend Mikel from Bilbao on visit. We went to Malmköping, a little picturesque place near us. We had lunch on a hotel with some atmosphere. We had a typical Swedish dish, raggmunk (potatoe pancake) with pork and lingonberry jam. I spoke Spanish all day long and got very tired. To sit with an exercise book, a pen, a dictionary and a computer isn´t so tough. Talking a language is something different. One has to take rapid decisions; should I use ser or estar? (there is no difference in English and Swedish); is it necessary to use the subjunctive or will presence do? O boy! This night I didn´t need rocking. Spanish is the most popular language of those the pupils can choose as second language. Not so many want to study German or French. (English is compulsory). They say that Spanish is easier than the other two. I don´t know. Maybe at the beginning, but when the pupils must differ between ser and estar, it gets difficult to study Spanish. But in other ways it´s easy. The orthography is consequent. It´s easy to pronounce the words and they have two gender German has got three and moreover, the prepositions before the noun decides which case one should chose for the gender. For a pupil twelve years old confusion is complete. English has almost no consequent orthography. One has to know the pronunciation for every single word? Well, Spanish isn´t so difficult to learn. To return to my day with Mikel we went for a walk through the town. He who knows Swedish rather well wanted to learn the names of the trees that grows in my country. I could enlarge his knowledge with at least some species, because he already knows many. And to end this episode I give you the names of the Swedish trees I know: pine = tall, spruce = gran, juniper = en, lark = lärkträd, birch = björk, maple = lönn, elm = alm, ash = ask, aspen = asp, lime = lind, bird cherry = hägg, alder = al, sallow = sälg, weeping willow = tårpil, rowan = rönn, chestnut = kastanj, honeysuckle = kaprifol

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Sweden has been a monarchy since many centuries. I´ve written about the development in the episodes about history. Head of State is the king. Our king is constitutional, that is he has no power, the power has the head of government (the Prime minister). The king has only ceremonial functions and ought not to express his political opinions. Our present kings name is Carl XVI Gustav. The queens name is Silvia and she is not of royal descent. They have three children Carl-Filip, Madeleine and Victoria. If we had had the old constitution Carl-Filip had inherited the crown. Now Victoria will do that (The royal family´s most important function is to be material for magazines with readers who are totally free from intelligence). The political life is dominated by the political parties. In Sweden we´ve got two political blocs, left wings and right wings. The left consists of two parties, the social democrats (labour) and the left wing party (the former communists). The other bloc consists of four parties, moderaterna (the right), folkpartiet (liberals), centern and kristdemokraterna (religious) There is also a green party, miljöpartiet, now in coalition with the left parties. The parties that get most votes in the elections are socialdemokraterna and moderaterna. The rest of the parties have fewer than ten per cent of the votes (each). The present government is a coalition with the Conservative parties. Some parties run a risk to disappear (out of the parliament) because there is a limit on four per cent of the votes to be represented in the parliament. There are also parties outside the parliament that haven´t reached four per cent. Amongst them are the feminists (FI) with one per cent of the votes and the Swedish Democrats with nearly three per cent of the votes. This was a little about the political life in Sweden. If You want to know more You can search on Google. The Swedish kings from Gustav Vasa to Carl XVI Gustav (the present king): http://se.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm7HIy2nk6g

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My wife has vacations the Easter week. We thought we would enjoy the spring in our weekend cottage. But the weather had surprises for us? As fast as we came into the house the temperature fell, the snow began to fall and the Christmas feeling we missed in December was suddenly there, at the end of March. The cranes, who had returned from Spain to enjoy the Nordic spring, found themselves in heaps of snow and the anemones hide under the bushes. A friend in the Basque country says it´s the same there. In January almost spring and in March winter weather. We went home to some friends to have dinner and saw the birds who came to eat feed in the apple-tree And even the mouse was there to eat. There is ice on the lake again and it´s dangerous to travel on the roads. I who have changed the snow-tyres to summer tyres with the risk to get fees on 120 euro if the police will find me on the road. And because of that we couldn´t take the car to do things. Kerstin got tired of everything, put on a disc with Swedish Christmas-music. We got depressed and went to Åland.

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For a foreigner it may seem a little sloppy the habit to walk with sticks. They say that it was the Finns who were the first to walk with sticks without skis. I thought it seemed corny too when I saw it the first time. But eventually I´ve got used to it, and it´s strange, I´ve also begun to walk with sticks. I felt a little grotesque the first times, but now I walk without to blush. The first times there could come some characters and ask: ?And where are the skis?? I use to answer: ?Can You see any snow??. Then they shut up and I can continue my walk. But now it´s so common that people stick-walk so nobody cares. A winter like the one we have this year, without snow and warm, it had been impossible to ski where I live in Sweden, and therefore it has been perfect to go stick-walking. And if there is snow I dare not put on the skis, because my sense of balance is bad, I´m too fat and rather tall, and I´ve got spindly legs. That´s why it´s better to walk without skis and with sticks. And my doctor says it´s good for the health. To walk like this gives 40% better result when it comes to the energy consumption, and it trains the whole body, not only the legs. It´s necessary to have sticks with elasticity. To walk with ski-sticks can be a little hard. Before I used to swim in the municipal swimming-bath. But then I got problems with my neck. Walking with sticks is a very good alternative then, very healthy. And to conclude, if you want to be effective when walking, I recommend You strongly to walk with sticks.

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Here´s the continuation of the Swedish course: family = familj father = pappa, far mother = mamma, mor child = barn son = son daughter = dotter brother = bror sister = syster grandfather = farfar (the fathers father), morfar (the mothers father) grandmother = farmor (the fathers mother), mormor (the mothers mother) I = jag you= du he = han she = hon it = den, det we = vi you = ni they = de big = stor little = liten tall, long = lång short = kort thin = smal fat = tjock dark = mörk blond = ljus, blond white = vit, vitt black = svart red = röd, rött yellow = gul, gult green = grön, grönt blue = blå, blått gray = grå, grått rosa = rosa, skär lilac = lila orange = orange ten = tio twenty = tjugo thirty = trettio fourty = fyrtio fifty = femtio sixty = sextio seventy = sjuttio eighty = åttio ninety = nittio hundred = hundra twentyone = tjugoett twentytwo= tjugotvå twentythree = tjugotre twentyfour = tjugofyra twentyfive = tjugofem twentysix = tjugosex twentyseven = tjugosju twentyeight = tjugoåtta twentynine = tjugonio (Use the same ?method? for the others. Thirtyone = trettioett, thirtytwo = trettiotvå etc.) Sweden = Sverige Spain = Spanien Finland = Finland Norway = Norge Denmark = Danmark Germany = Tyskland France = Frankrike Holland = Holland Belgium = Belgien Portugal = Portugal Russia = Ryssland US = USA That´s it, this was all for today. I hope you´ve learnt a little and that you know that it isn´t difficult to speak Swedish!

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Dear readers and listeners. Here comes another episode. I think I´ve told you that I´ve got a site on the web called don Gerardo where I´ve made some interactive exercises for pupils who study Spanish. At the beginning it was for my own pupils, but with more and more exercises I thought I should put them on the web, so everybody could practice. The site has up to now had 299.516 visitors. Sometimes, with so many exercises, there are errors on don Gerardo. One day a man named Kjell, and who practices Spanish on don Gerardo, informed me that I´d spelled six hundred wrong in an exercise. I corrected the error and wrote an e-mail to tell him. This was the beginning of a correspondence between us. He asked me if I thought that it was stupid of a man at the age of 63 to go to Peru to study Spanish together with youths aged 20. I answered no, and told him my own experiences in Valencia, where I studied Spanish together with pupils just a little bit older than the pupils I taught in my school. This gentleman was in Peru when he was a sailor many years ago and then he was there as a tourist 2004 and 2006. Near Cusco he came to know the people in a mountain village. He decided to help a gril in that family. He helps the family economically and materially and the girl does well in school and has good notes A, A, A, A, etc. But he had a problem, it was difficult to communicate with the family, but he can´t enough Spanish yet to be able to read their letters they send from Peru. Then he asked me if I could help him to translate them. And of course I accepted the offer. But it wasn´t easy. There were points missing, comma, there were capitals but not where they ought to be and sometimes there was phonetic spelling. But the letters showed a good spirit and warmth which moved me. Since the girl´s mother couldn´t write more than Quechua (Indian language) she had a translator who wrote in Spanish. And then it´s like this: I´ve translated some letters from Peru, translated from Quechua to Spanish by a translator, to a man from Sweden who can´t enough Spanish. It´s a small world! And one could add: Thanks to internet?

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Sweden is a country with much equality between men and women. We part the housework. There are laws that make it possible for a father and a mother to stay at home with their child after birth. During that period you´ll get the same benefit as for sickness. My wife and I shared the time at home the first year with our child. 1983 it was very uncommon that the father stayed at home with the baby. I felt a little as pioneer. My wife was at home the first six months and I the last. It was a good time, with baby's bottle and nappies and everything? But, normally it´s the women who take the mayor part of the time at home. I´ve always liked cooking and now, when I´m retired I like it even more. My wife is a teacher of house craft and doesn´t want to come home and make food another time. And then it´s good to have a husband who likes to work in the kitchen. The working days I cook and in the weekends we share the work. To cook food while drinking a glass of wine is the best there is. My son likes cooking too. I don´t know if it´s an heritage from me or my wife. I hope that I´ve been a good example when I´ve worked in the kitchen. When I attended a course in Valencia I stayed in family at a lady named Carmen. There lived also some French girls who hardly touched the food. One day I volunteered in cooking for all, something my landlady appreciated very much. No sooner said than done. With minced meat, onion, potatoes, carrots and some more ingredients I made beefs with rings of onion with an exquisite sauce, and a salad from grated raw carrots. My dinner was appreciated by all. Afterwards, when we were alone, the French girls asked me if I could cook instead of the landlady, because they liked my beef so very much. Of course I felt flattered, but it wasn´t fair to my landlady who in my opinion was an excellent cook.

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In English/På engelska Through contacts with the rest of the world the Christianity came to Sweden. The Vikings had contact with that religion through their travels and there also came missionaries to our country. The most known was Ansgar, who came to Birka 829, the Apostle of the North. He manages to convert the leader Hergeiry and they founded a little congregation with believers. After a conflict between this congregation and the other pagan population the congregation was dissolved and Ansgar had to come once again. But it lasted at least two centuries before the Christianity had become the religion of the whole country. One king, Olov Skötkonung, was baptized in the well in Husaby, and that´s a milestone on the way to a Christian Sweden. That was the first king who let himself being baptized and remained Christian for the rest of his life. In the year 1120 there were some episcopates in Sweden. And in the 14:th century lived the most famous Swedish person, Den heliga Birgitta (St Brigit). She had visions, she made pilgrimage to Trondheim and Santiago de Compostela. She founded the order Den Helige Frälsarens Orden (The Order of the Holy Lord) in Vadstena with monks and nuns. Sweden was a catholic country until Martin Luther showed up with his thesis's in Wittenberg. Olaus Petri, a priest who had studied in Wittenberg introduced the Protestantism in Sweden. He was priest in Storkyrkan (the big Church) and he was the first Swedish priest who got married. King Gustav Wasa liked the Protestantism very much because he could expropriate the wealth of the church. This was due to that the king was the head of the church in the Protestantism, and not like before, the pope. The Protestantism won finally in the year 1593.

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I have a site for Swedish speaking students of Spanish. It´s called don Gerardo http://www1.shellkonto.se/gertfors/spanska/dongerar_redirect.htm (my name Gert ?spanified?) and there pupils and teachers from any country where they speak Swedish can practice there Spanish. I sometimes get e-mail from users, and normally it has to do with errors in an exercise, but sometimes comes a message with praise to don Gerardo, that is me. Today a female teacher from Stockholm wrote and guess what she wrote me? No, of course you can´t know that, but she wrote that I´m an angel who´s got exercises for everything and everybody, not too bad? And in this way I´ve become an angel on the web. But, to speak the truth it isn´t the first time I´m an angel, with wings, glory and everything. It was a Christmas I wanted to do something different to surprise the family we celebrated Christmas with this year. You must prepare yourself if you want to be an angel. I equipped with my departed fathers nightshirt (just imagine how useful it is to save things!), some corrugated cardboard and a few meters of tinsel. And with help of these facilities I transformed myself into a beautiful angel. With scissors I cut two wings of the cartoon. I decorated them with some tinsel on the boards. I took on the nightshirt, fixed the wings with a piece of string and wrapped the rest of the tinsel on my head. And dressed up this way I went with my family to those with whom we were celebrating Christmas. I knocked on the door and the family who had awaited Santa was both surprised and glad when they understood that this year was a year for a Christmas angel. I can recommend parents all over the world to be an angel instead of Santa next Christmas ? it´ll be a roaring success!

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The autumn in Sweden is a symphony of colours. It´s the broad-leaf trees that show themselves brilliant when they lose their leaves. Birches, maples, beeches, ashes and oaks compete in being the most beautiful trees. Green, yellow, red and brown are the colours of the autumn. When the sun doesn´t shine so much the chlorophyll is replaced by other pigments. Pines, spruces and juniper´s take part without competing. They are always green and give colour to the nature in the winter. This is the first part of the autumn. When the trees have lost their leaves it´s a little bit more dull. When it´s fine weather it doesn´t matter but when the they extend their naked branches in the fog one wants the summer to come. Here, in Central Sweden, the sun doesn´t show as much as in the summer. It gets more and more dark and the 21 of December is the darkest and shortest day of the year. But we have a little sun, in the northern Sweden there is no sun in the day. And in the summer there is sun in the night too. One can say that we´ve got very varying days in Sweden. If I´m lucky, the snow will fall in November ? I like snow! The snow makes everything change. The ground is white and the trees are covered by snow and the kids make snowmen. The first snow always come like a surprise. And the first ice too. The car-drivers discover once again that they have to break a little earlier to avoid collisions. The work-shops are crowded by people who want to change to snow tyres. But please, now we have winter and not autumn! It´s time to finish this episode.

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Almost the first time I published an episode on my podcast a man from Bilbao contacted me. He was in the leading group in a Basque school. His school had an interchange with a Swedish school, and therefore ha has visited my country nine times. And he has learned Swedish too! After having published some episodes he wrote to me that if I was interested he could correct the texts in my podcast. And of course, I said yes. Because of that we´ve had a rather frequent correspondence on the net, and my podcast has had a more correct language. And of course, I learn more this way. This autumn Mikel came to Sweden on another visit and he asked me if he could visit us. Kerstin, my wife, and I said yes ? with pleasure! And the 17:th of september Mikel came by train to Flen to be here nine hours. First we went to the summer house to have coffee. We were lucky, the weather was fine, and he liked the house and the surroundings. And he liked very much the cookies Kerstin had made for us. Then we went home to our place to show how we live in Flen. We visited the school where I worked earlier. It´s a very modern school with walls of glass and such things. A school where the pupils have to be in the same room, with other classes at the same time. An educational invention I never understood. Neither did Mikel, something that makes me very happy. After that we went home to me. I had two episodes not corrected and therefore we sat down at the computer to cooperate with the correction. In a pause we went to Harpsund, where the prime minister in Sweden lives sometimes. And we finished the day with an early dinner, a Swedish casserole.

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In English/På engelska The autumn is a time for mushroom picking walking. But in October the elk hunting begins, and then my wife doesn´t want to pick mushrooms or walk where there are hunters. I went for a walk the other day and suddenly I saw an elk on a clear cut area to the right. And here, in the south of Sweden, it´s not so common to meet an elk. I tried to get out the camera of my pocket, but it was completely impossible to get it out in time and the elk passed without being portrayed. I damned my habit to put the camera in my pocket, because if I had had the camera in my hand I could have been able to take a photo. I went on about a kilometer, and then I came across with some hunters on the path. I asked them if they had shoot any elk, but they said they had not. Then I told them that I saw an elk a little way from there, and then they began asking me where it was and they started to move, they called other hunters in the mobile, and such things. I don´t know if they managed to shoot anything, but I had at least seen an elk. They hunt many animals in Sweden. Elk and deer, stag and lynx, and even brown bear in the north. This year a bear killed an elk hunter. They found the hunter injured as if it´d been a bear (that had caused the injuries). Then they hunted and killed the bear that was guilty. It´s not common that bears attack people. In hundred years it has happened three times. But today I read in the paper that it had happened once again, but without being fatal this time. They´ll kill this bear too. It seems as if the bears come closer the villages this year. Some says it´s because there isn´t so much berries this year and that the bears want to find other food to eat. A grownup bear can eat 90 kg berries a day. It must get a layer of fat before it goes in winter quarters. But here there are no bears, fortunately. But my son Martin went to the north with some friends to fish. And they were some days just on a distance of some kilometers from the place where the bear killed the hunter. I don´t know if they´ll go there again?

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To wake up in the middle of the night day after day, and have to work the day after is trying. In my case I use to wake up between four and four thirty, which means that it´s impossible to sleep again if you must get up at six. Now when I don´t work. It doesn´t matter, and therefore I sleep well. Before I used to listen to BBC on short wave when I awoke or if it was possible to distinguish the emission between all the jamming I listened to the Spanish Radio for foreigners. Something that has changed this completely is the emissions on podcast. For instance, Radio Sweden has got a lot of its emissions on podcast and I download scientific programs that interest me. University of Berkeley has very interesting lectures on by a teacher named Margret Anderson that is interesting. I have them in my MP3 in the weekend cottage, very comfortable in my opinion. What´s best is that there are no jamming and you can listen to the programs whenever you want. I would like to find more podcasting in Spanish, programs of common interest (according to me) like history, religion and natural science. There is a lot for young people, but the liking changes with the time and nowadays that kind of stuff doesn´t give me very much. At the same time it´s necessary to find podcasts with ideas for my own podcast. Then it works like this. I wake up feeling it impossible to sleep again, I look for the earphones, put them in my ears and suddenly I can inform myself on any subject. I´ve got the mouse on the bedside table and I can maneuver the media player from the bed without any problem. A scientific program is an excellent medicine if one has problem to sleep. And if I´m not at sleep I can educate myself. That is, all alternatives are good! But of course, if you sleep irregularly the education may be a little chopped about. Fall asleep in a program about history and wake up in a program about the Noble Price?.. But the most important is that you sleep well!

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