This past weekend it was time to celebrate Midsummer again – a Swedish holiday and a new tradition to celebrate it together for my close group of friends (last years celebrations skipped the blog for some reason, but they looked a bit like this!)
After hosting the celebrations in London in 2013, we decided to take the party up to Aberdeen this year, visiting our good friend Martin who lives there.
For me the party got started at Gatwick airport where I had two double gin & tonics in order to calm my nerves about the flight (I am a bit of a scared flyer).
I met up with my two good friends Dave and Neil at the airport, and we made our way into Aberdeen together to meet up with the rest of the crew. We dumped our bags and Martin took us to some cocktail bars in the city.
To make things fair we decided to pay one round each – which resulted in six rounds in total – with the last two ending up being a bottle of champagne between us and some super strong cocktail to finish the night off.
Having been forced to leave the first place in a hurry because they had to close, it was a welcomed surprise to have the whole back of a bar, including the dancefloor, all to ourselves as it resulted in lots of dancing and singing – just the way it should be!
Safe to say that we felt pretty rough the next day and it didn’t look like our official midsummer celebrations would live up to last years madness. After having some breakfast I opted for staying in bed for an extra 3 hours because my stomach and head just didn’t feel right.
The girls went over to Martins apartment to start preparing the food for the evening celebrations and I eventually joined them around 3pm.
Martin really came through with the traditional food and drinks, and with a little bit of Cata’s help with food shopping and making meatballs and beetroot salad – we ended up with loads of amazing Swedish food and drinks.
Starting from the left on the picture above, we had:
Gravad Lax (Dill-cured Salmon), Lemon Wedges, Gravlax Sås (Dill-cured Salmon Sauce), Rökt Lax (Smoked Salmon), Homemade Swedish Meatballs, New Potatoes with Dill and Butter, Homemade Beetroot Salad, Midsummer Herring, Tomatoes & Cucumber and Sour Cream with Chives.
Martin had gotten hold of some Akvavit and Gammel Dansk for traditional Swedish shots, Dave brought some Jägermeiste,r and Cata and Martin had bought plenty of beers, cider and a big bottle of Gin the day before the rest of us arrived in Aberdeen to keep us going all night.
So even though none of us felt like drinking or thought we would when we started the day hungover, the good food, good company and a round of charades after dinner somehow helped us ease into it again.
We ended up playing this hilarious game where you’re in two teams and write down around 20-25 different artists on pieces of paper for the opposite team.
Then you have one person per team per round singing songs from artists that he or she randomly picks out from a hat and in 60 seconds the rest of the team members need to guess as many artists as possible and get a score for each correct one.
The losing team for each round had to take a shot and more you lost, the drunker you got. It was boys vs girls and sadly the girls were not very good at the beginning of the night, but we got better as the boys got more drunk ;)
It was SO MUCH FUN!! And I don’t know how, but we managed to get through ALL BOOZE apart from the beers and half the Gammel Dansk.
An amazing effort considering I was pretty sure the night would end up being a somewhat mediocre evening due to everybody being so tired to begin with.
We were even worse for wear the next day, but we somehow still managed to cook up a lovely fry up and clean the entire apartment that we had rented. Of course it started raining as soon as we left the flat, so we decided to go and do some indoor activities – ie go bowling!
We went to Codona’s amusement park just by the beach in Aberdeen and after bowling for about 2 hours, Martin drove Ina to the airport and the rest of us decided to explore the amusement park a bit better.
We went on the Ferris wheel and I was super scared every loop going upwards. Not sure what it is with me and heights, but I just don’t like situations where I feel like Im dangling in the air with no real control (I know, it doesn’t make sense, but that’s just the way it is).
Then Cata convinced us to go on this mini rollercoaster called The Crazy Train – I wasn’t convinced that it was a good idea to do this when we were all so hungover, but I am so happy we did!
I ended up in a proper laughing fit throughout the entire ride and was laughing so much I was crying. So much fun!!
Then the rain came back and we ended up having a takeaway pizza before headingout to the airport to take our flight back to London.
It was such a fun weekend and a great reminder that I am incredibly fortunate to have such amazing friends.
The one thing I took away from Aberdeen was that it is very grey and rather depressing, not sure how Martin stands it!
Can’t wait for next year now as rumour has it that we might be celebrating Midsummer in Singapore (!!).