Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Hell On Djurgården

When Axel's mom asked me at Friday's preschool drop off if Jamie and I would like to join them at Junibacken, a playland based on popular Swedish children's stories, I thought it sounded super fun. And indeed it was fun, just not for me. In fact, it was one-hundred-percent stress and the scene of my more horrible moment so far as a parent. Junibacken is in the city, on the island of Djurgården, which is also home to the Vasa Museum, the Nordic Museum, the ABBA Museum, the amusement park Gröna Lund, and Skansen outdoor cultural museum. Needless to say, it draws a lot of tourists, and Junibacken, being itself a tourist destination, was totally packed with people from all over the world. I cannot overstate the packed part. And a lot of these people were adult people, TALL adult people who made it impossible to keep an eye on your small, fast-moving person. So I lost Jambo, for, like, three minutes but it felt like the three most horrible hours of my life. I know these moments will happen (I will never forget when I was about nine, walking home with a friend after school one day without telling my folks, watching TV at her place for a bit, then finally strolling home to find my hysterical parents on the phone with the police reporting my disappearance) but obviously I want them to be few and far between. Leaving Junibacken behind me on Saturday was the only part I liked about it and while I'm sure there are times when it isn't as crowded and is lovely, I'm never going back to see. Oh, but on the upside, how cute are these kids?

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