Getting to Know You: Thess
I’ve been admiring the beautiful travel pages posted by our next interviewee for a very long time. I am happy to introduce you to Thess from Sweden! She’s been a member of our community since 2007 and just recently updated her AKA card. Here’s her new AKA card how she describes herself:
My real name is Therése, but everybody but my mother calls me Thess. And it’s pronounced with a “T”, not “TH”...And my maiden name is Larsson! But with double S - very Swedish! I was born here in Sweden in 1969 and grew up in a small rural community, Mölltorp, with only 700 households. Everybody knew everybody and their business… My mother was a teacher at
the local elementary school and my father was a fighter jet navigator at the nearby Airforce base.
I have a sister, Tullie, who is two years younger than me. She now lives in Seattle, WA, with her husband who works for a big Swedish company there.
I LOVED school from first grade and onwards, but I’ve never actually graduated college…I was studying to become an electrical engineer, but life just got in the
way! I did, however, spend my Senior Year of High School, as an exchange student at DSF High in Henrico County, Richmond, VA. It was a great year and a fantastic experience! I made wonderful friends that I still keep in touch with, and the family I stayed with is still, very much, my family!
I met my husband, Leif, in a club on his birthday in 1997. He asked me to dance, then he asked me to his place for a nightcap - and I never really left… 18 months later, he proposed to me during a tropical thunder storm on Gili Trawangan - a tiny island off the coast of Lombok in Indonesia. Eighteen months after that, we got married here in Gothenburg. We don’t have any children. Simply because I’ve never wanted any… But Leif has a son from a previous relationship, and Alexander is now 20 years old. He’s a very talented golfer, and attends college in Augusta, GA, on a golf scholarship.
I think my sister and I have had cameras stuck up our faces since we were born! Our parents took a gazillion photos of us all the time! So taking up photography as a hobby was not too hard. I’m the one of all my friends who ALWAYS carries a camera! My friends give me a hard time about it, but they always call me afterwards
to find out if have a photo of this or that
I’ve always loved everything that has to do with music! I used to play the guitar, and I’ve spent several years doing ballroom dancing. Books are another passion! I read as much as I can! All kinds of books. I listen to audiobooks when I drive and when I do accounting at work, and my Kindle is never far from me.
And then there’s this thing I have about shoes… I’m 5’9”, but I love really high heels! When I travel, I buy shoes! Jimmy, Alexander, Christian, Manolo and Coco are my friends and they all live in my closet!
Thess, our digital scrapbook community is so fortunate to include scrappers from all over the world. Please tell us a little bit about what it is like where you live in Sweden.
I live in Gothenburg (Göteborg), which is on the west coast of Sweden. It’s about three hours north of Copenhagen, Denmark, and four hours south of Oslo, Norway. It is the second largest city in Sweden after our capital, Stockholm. Gothenburg was the port almost every Swedish immigrant to the US sailed from. My own ancestors left Sweden via Gothenburg and ended up in Minnesota…
This is a worker’s town. Lots of industries and the biggest port in northern Europe. Only Rotterdam is bigger. Volvo was founded here as well as SKF and Hasselblad. Gothenburg was given city priviliges in 1621 by King Gustav Adolf II, and we have a lot of history in the area as well as old buildings, churches and castles. Half a million people live in the city, and about a million in the Gothenburg area. Sweden as a whole, only has 9,4 million people.
You mentioned once in a post in our forum that you own a store. What kind of store is it?
When I met my husband, he owned a small chain of record stores together with his (then) business partner. In 2000, he bought his partner’s share. When record sales started to dwindle due to downloading, we quickly closed down every store but the one here in Gothenburg. We started importing music merchandise, mainly t-shirts, from the US. Today, we still have a huge store downtown Gothenburg, where we sell just about anything music-relate: T-shirts, bags, caps, pillows, throws, bar stools, books, posters - you name it! But we also sell CD’s and vinyl records. We have a screen printing-facility where we print t-shirts and stuff for some Swedish bands. My husband and I go on tour with some bands and sell their merchandise. And we just opened up a coffee shop on the second floor of our store! Filled
with memorabilia that we’ve been collecting through the years!
That is fascinating, Thess! You and your dh are entrepreneurs and I admire you for that! Since it is the month of December I would be interested to know about your traditions and customs related to the celebration of Christmas.
I love Christmas and traditions! But I have to confess that I’m not very good at keeping up with traditions since I don’t have any kids, and I work roughly 7 days a week during November and December. In Sweden, the four Sundays of Advent are important. We light a candle for every Sunday in Advent and have special candleholders to hold the four candles. This is the tradition I love the most! Maybe because I love candles or maybe because it takes less of an effort than putting up a tree! When Advent comes around, we usually start drinking Glögg! It’s similar to the German Gluhwein or the English Mulled Wine, but still different! You put raisins and almonds in it too! We also make Pepparkakor (ginger cookies) and Lussekatter. Lussekatt is a sweet bun, flavoured with saffron and raisins. Those are my favourites!!! We also drink a special soda/pop at Christmas time, called Julmust. It looks like Coca Cola, but tastes very differently. It’s more like a Root Beer, but a lot sweeter!
Then, of course, we have Lucia! On December 13th, we celebrate Sankta Lucia (Saint Lucy) of Syracuse! Processions of girls/women in white gowns with red sashes around their waists go through churches, schools, businesses and towns. The first one, depicting Sankta Lucia herself, wears a crown with candles on her head. The following girls hold candles in their hands. All the candles symbolize the fire that refused to take Lucia when she was sentenced to death by burning.
We have Christmas Trees and presents and Santa Claus just like almost every other country! But here, Santa Claus is Jultomten. And we open our presents on Christmas Eve (December 24th)! If you have children, usually a neighbor or family member, will dress up like Jultomten and knock on the door to deliver a bag full of gifts! On Christmas Eve we eat our traditional Christmas food - Christmas ham, glazed with mustard and breadcrumbs. Meatballs, prinskorv (tiny sausages), different kinds of herring and salmon and Jansson’s frestelse (Jansson’s temptation) - a casserole made with potatoes, onion, heavy cream and anchovies. And Julgröt! A porridge made of rice, that you eat with milk, cinnamon and sometimes malt syrup.
Today, Sweden is the least religious country in Europe. Your typical Swede rarely goes to church. But on December 25th, a lot of Swedes go to church early in the morning to attend Julottan (the Early Christmas Mass). Then we take it easy the rest of the day, because the huge annual retail sales start on the 26th… That’s our “Black Friday”!
I appreciate your taking time to tell us about your Christmas traditions so much. As you may have noticed, I am of Scandinavian descent and in our family we carry on many of the traditions you have described. Next, I would like to know about your travel albums.
I’ve completed 8 travel books since I started digiscrapping! And I have 5 or 6 in the making, as well as yearbooks from 2006 through 2011, plus, a wedding album for my sister’s best friend. With all these projects, templates are life savers! No, sanity savers!!! One of the books I’m working on right now (Med Cruise) uses Lynn’s “Lots of Shots” series as well as Katie’s “Stamped n Framed” series. I rarely venture away from Designer Digitals for templates! My sister (yes,
she’s a digiscrapper too now) uses another designer for her books, but I feel like Katie, Lynn, Cathy, Ali and the rest of the DD Team can read my mind and feel my needs.
So far, I’ve done all my printing with Shutterfly as 12x12 AND 8x8 books. They’ve been good to me. But I am looking closely at Blurb and had one of my travel books printed there too, just to see the difference. The books that exceed 100 pages will definitely be printed with Blurb, but, s long as Shutterfly works for me as a digiscrapper - I’ll stay there. I keep the larger books in our livingroom at home. The smaller copies spend the winter at my office, and the summer at our summerhouse!
With all the traveling you do, what advice do you have related to carrying the camera gear you need?
I always travel with a backpack from Lowepro as my carry-on luggage. It holds my laptop, my “big” DSLR, a couple of extra lenses, my point-and-shoot, all the chargers, extra batteries, memory cards and adaptors I might need. It also holds my Kindle, my iPod and other necessary things! It’s kind of big, and can get quite heavy when I need to bring everything - but it is so convenient to get everything into one bag! My husband has a slightly smaller version of the same backpack and will take his laptop, my “small” DSLR and his (waterproof) point-and-shoot.
Then I pack another (empty) bag in one of our suitcases. Sometimes it’s a more traditional camera bag, sometimes it’s just one of my bigger purses. My backpack stays where we stay all the time! I never take it out for sightseeing and stuff! I just move the things I need that particular day to the smaller bag! Wherever I travel, I bring at least one DSLR and one point-and-shoot. I don’t always take extra lenses. It depends on my destination.
I have a versatile Tamron zoom mounted on my 50D most of the time, and it gets me through most situations! I travel with a small EHD. I copy all my photos to it at the end of every day, as well as to my laptop’s HD, but I don’t erase them from my memory cards! I do this when I’m back at home and have made sure that I have additional copies of every photo in several places including Flickr!
I organize my photos in folders daily, so that they are easy to find. Pics from all cameras are in the same folder, sorted by time taken. When I start working on a new travel book, I edit all the photos I want to use in Lightroom before putting my pages together.
If I were to give anyone advice or tips on taking photos while traveling it would be this: PHOTOGRAPH WHAT YOU EAT!
My sister and I started doing this just to drive our mother crazy, and it still drives my husband slightly insane, but what you eat while on vacation is a big part of the trip! It doesn’t matter if it’s a curbside wok-stall in Asia, or a Parisian restaurant with a star or two in Guide Rouge!
And maybe this advice, too:
Bring extra batteries for your camera!!! Memory cards are easy to find all over the world. But batteries for your specific camera model might prove very difficult…And don’t EVER forget your charger!
Your travel advice is so helpful! What’s on your agenda for future trips?
Well, we are going to Oban, Scotland next week (Dec 7th-12th) for a wedding! I’ve promised the bride-to-be a book on that event and my husband has promised her to wear a kilt! At the beginning of next year, we are taking another cruise. My in-laws turned 80 during 2011, but we haven’t had time to give them a proper gift, so, we are taking them to Dubai, and then on a cruise in the UAE and to Oman!
My best friend and I are planning another long weekend during spring. She’s the one I travel with when I don’t travel with my husband. Right now, we are talking about going to Krakow, Poland. Or St. Petersburg, Russia. The jury is still out on this one!
And my sister asks me twice a week when I’m coming to Seattle to visit…
That might be a “must” for 2012?
This is all so fascinating, Thess, that I really hate to end the interview. Let’s leave the folks with a link to your gallery and a favorite layout chosen by you:
Thank you very much for all you bring to our community in the form of friendship and inspiration!
