Tierp - Where the Birds Fly Upside Down

So I knew my last post might flop because it was raw, honest, and skewed from my experiences. I hope I didn't lose any readers because of one opinion piece. Anyway this is what I originally was going to write about- Tierp, the city I live in. The day after I arrived here from my move, I was 8 months pregnant and craving to nest. Well strollers and car seats were tops on my list. When we were in the second baby store I told the saleswoman there I understood little Swedish and asked to speak in English. We talked for a while and I introduced her to my partner Anton, who I told her was a Swede. She instantly switched to Swedish, which made me sad because her English was very good. One question she asked us was where we were living. We told her Tierp and she said oh the town "where the birds fly upside down". I had no idea what she was talking about even though this was not my first time being in Tierp. Anton said some places have sayings like that about them. Neither of us were quite sure what to make of the saying for Tierp.

Anton has lived in this area for 3.5 years. He used to have an apartment on the outskirts of town. According to the Swedish Statistics in 2010 there were a little over 5,500 people who lived here (Ypsilanti, where I'm from, has a population of four times that of Tierp). I'm sure it's grown since then. New apartments are being put in here. A month after I moved to Sweden, we moved into a place in the city to have room for our growing family. We like our place. When I look outside my kitchen window I see a playground, a large dirt parking lot filled with large green metal recycling bins, ICA (a grocery store), and some others shops in town. I like living basically in the center of town. The pool and baby cafe are only three blocks away, everything is in walking distance here. If you think it's too far or you're lazy, you could always pick up the bus. Tierp has four small grocery stores, four pizza joints, a few salons/hairdressers, a couple of florists, banks, and gyms. There are two second hand shops and nice library and several other shops and boutiques here. At night our parking lot is practically empty, on weekday afternoons, it's packed. It's sort of nice to see the hustle and bustle of a smaller town from day to day. I like having to walk to go places. It's nice to have the change of pace from having a car to drive everywhere, from now having to walk.

Before Rosalind was born, I used to hear a weird sound outside. I don't remember what it sounded like now or even know if I could describe it. During Fall I would look up in the sky and see massive amounts of birds flying around. Over a hundred black birds flying in seemingly coordinated shapes in the sky. This might sound unbelievable but it was like they where moving to a music only they could hear. It was odd and unreal. And guess what... boy oh boy did it look like they were flying upside down. I would say my mind was playing tricks on me, but I witnessed it more than one occasion I would say three or four times in total. I'm sure other people in town here have seen the birds and their strange behavior. I'm guessing that's why it's called the town where the birds fly upside down... but I could be wrong.

A mobile at baby cafe in Tierp, yep definitely upside-down.