Swedish Neighbors & Inspector Morse

We're lucky to have such great neighbors across the hall from us. Elin and Magnus Bjork are from Sweden, and have the most adorable one-year-old, Rebecka. They have been in Oxford only three weeks longer than we have, so it's nice to have neighbors to ask questions to or share household items with. They also have a car, and have kindly offered to take us grocery shopping or on other trips to explore England. Last Thursday I took Elin up on her offer to drive to Swindon, about 30 miles south, to the Outlet Shops. Of course I'm not going to pass that up! So the three of us, (Elin, Rebecka and myself) took off on a little road trip. Mind you, the Swedish drive on the same side of the road we do in the US, so her car had the driver on the left side, but we also had to drive on the left side of the road. We also didn't know, but when we made it into Swindon we were approaching the World's Largest Roundabout, which was one large circle in the middle, and then 5 more roundabouts entering into the middle one. At this point, we realized we were an American and a Swede trying to navigate in England, and thought we were doing well right up until entering the roundabout. They even have tshirts that say "I survived the Swindon Roundabout". Pretty funny. Anywho, here are a couple of pics from our shopping day.

Last night, they also invited us over for pitas with lamb burgers. They said in Sweden people don't eat much lamb, which we said that it's not as common in the States either. But we gave it a whirl (well not Brian, he had a veggie version), and it tasted great. I then stayed longer to watch one of the Inspector Morse movie espisodes, and Brian went to bed, as he hasn't been feeling well this week. Inspector Morse is a beloved character in Oxford. He was created by author Colin Dexter, in a series of novels. They were then turned into TV movies during the 80s and early 90s. Inspector Morse episodes are all based in Oxford, and the movies are really fun because you can pick out all the different locations which were filmed in town. The actor who player Morse I believe passed away in the last few years. But now there is a brand new TV series spin-off called Lewis, based on Inspector Morse's side kick. Since we still don't have TV, we haven't yet seen an episode, but eventually we hope too.