Thursday, April 7, 2011

Couple's honeymoon covers cyclones, fires, floods, quakes and a nuclear disaster

Honeymoons aren't always easy for newlyweds, but six natural disasters? When Stefan and Erika Svanstrom of Stockholm set out on their four-month-long honeymoon with their baby daughter on December 6, they said they got more than they bargained for - immediately they were stranded in Munich, Germany, due to one of Europe's worst snowstorms. But that was just the beginning.

After that, Mr Svanstrom said, they experienced the devastation of a cyclone in Cairns and the flooding in Brisbane, and narrowly escaped the bushfires in Perth. Just before the trio arrived in New Zealand, the 6.3-magnitude earthquake hit Christchurch. "We were there, the whole town was a war zone. We could not visit the city since it was completely blocked off," Mrs Svanstrom said.



In Tokyo, they felt Japan's largest tremor since records began, Mr Svanstrom said. "The trembling was horrible and we saw roof tiles fly off the buildings. It was like the buildings were swaying back and forth," he said, adding that he survived the devastating tsunami that hit south-east Asia in 2004.

On March 29, the family returned to Stockholm after a much calmer visit to their last destination, China. Mrs Svanstrom said she could "only laugh". "You think: 'Are we weather persecuted? What will happen next?' It is almost absurd."

With news video.

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