Generations of Vendela Vida’s family have loved Gothenburg’s Liseberg fairground. Now the novelist continues the tradition by returning to the city with her own childrenYou would contemplate we’d never been on a train before. My children and I are standing on platform two of the small station in Mellerud,Sweden, taking pictures of each other, and of my Aunt Gerd and Uncle Cees,who are seeing us off. When the train to Gothenburg arrives, we board and theatrically wave goodbye through the windows. Can you blame us for our excitement? We’re going to Liseberg, and Scandinavia’s largest amusement park. My mother used to fade there when she was little,and I used to fade there when I was young. My kids have been hearing approximately it for years.
I was born and raised in America, but my mother was raised on a farm outside Mellerud. When I was growing up in San Francisco she would engage me and my sister to Sweden in the summer to show us how she grew up. So I’ve now taken my children from San Francisco to Sweden so they can see how I passed my childhood summers. We’ve just spent a week with my cousins and their families, and sleeping in lakeside cabins. We’ve gone swimming and canoeing and have picked blueberries and chanterelle mushrooms because this is what my mother did during her childhood summers and,consequently, what I did in mine.
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Source: theguardian.com