Not All Bad Luck

Stefan and Erika Svanstrom could arguably be the most famous/infamous Swedish couple of the year. This is because they claimed to have unbelievably terrible luck on their honeymoon.

First reported in Stockholm's Expressen newspaper, the couple started on their 4 month long honeymoon in Dec 2010. Along with their infant daughter, the couple first went from Stockholm to Munich, Germany where they were caught in a deadly snowstorm. They went to Southeast Asia where they were caught in the monsoon season. They then went to Australia where they were greeted by 1) bush fires in Perth, 2) flooding in Brisbane and 3) a category 5 cyclone in Cairns.

The Svanstroms then was supposed to fly to Christchurch, New Zeland for the next leg of their honeymoon but on the same day of their flight, Christchurch was hit with a 6.3 magnitude earthquake. Undeterred, they then went to Japan where…I think everyone knows what happened there.

Now I feel for the mess of a honeymoon they had but I question if you can call everything that happened “bad luck.” I grant you the cyclone in Australia, the earthquake in Christchurch, the tsunami in Japan; yes, you can call those “bad luck” but if you are coming to Southeast Asia in Dec, there will be rain because that’s the monsoon season and it comes at that time every year.

Ditto for Germany. Never been to Germany but a snow storm in Dec can’t be that unusual over there right? So I won’t call it pure “bad luck,” it’s a small matter of bad planning with a dose of bad luck. There is a difference!