Godt Nytt År!!

First of all, we'd like to wish all our family and dear friends a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

We spent New Year's Eve in Malmö with Erik's sister and her family. Erik cooked a wonderful pork roast - our last chance to eat pork for a while. I made blueberry pie. Five minutes before midnight found us out on the street watching the fireworks. Since Malmö is on the ocean, there were lots of glowing emergency boat flares floating down from the sky on parachutes. At the stroke of midnight, the cork popped and we enjoyed a nice bottle of champagne.


It would have been so nice to sleep in on New Year's Day, but we had to board a cramped Turkish Airlines flight to Doha. We stopped in Istanbul where we ran into several more orchestra members who were on the next flight with us. We weren't aware that our second flight was going to stop in Bahrain to let some people off and even more on. When we landed in Doha, many people stayed on the airplane. I'm guessing that the plane was returning to Istanbul with the Bahrain passengers and probably some from Doha as well. T.A. is so uncomfortable and inconvenient that we have vowed to try to avoid it in future if at all possible. However, all of the bother was almost worth it when we came across this sign in Istanbul...

I'm pretty sure I had a few "Antigue Hems" on my person, but they didn't originate in Turkey, so I don't think there was any danger of arrest.

And now, a beautiful last look at Sweden. We already miss being there.