In 1990, my parents and I lived in Oslo for six weeks while my dad worked on his ice research at the university there. After this time in Oslo, we embarked on a tour of the rest of Europe. Nearly every night for the next six weeks or so we stayed in youth hostels, which are cheap, no-frills places to stay overnight.

Most youth hostels have kitchen facilities available so you can make your own meals, and this was the case at one of the first hostels we stayed at in Sweden. After we packed up and left this hostel in the morning, we realized we had left our butter and cheese (items essential to our bread-based meals on the go) in the hostel's refrigerator. We turned around and made the relatively short trip back to the hostel, only to realize upon arrival that the hostel was locked up for the daytime hours (a cost-effective but sometimes frustrating feature common to many hostels).

Rather than waiting for the doors to get unlocked later in the day, or leaving our food there to age (waste a perfectly good chunk of Jarlsberg cheese? not in my family!), my parents and I embarked on one of our more daring plans. Once you find out what our plan was, however, you'll probably think that our other plans must have been not only few and far between, but also rather tame.

The window to the kitchen had been left open, so my dad stood on a lawn chair and hoisted me on his shoulders, thus allowing me to crawl through the window. There was much giggling during the whole process, and my mom, as usual, had the presence of mind to capture this Kodak moment on film. (Note to mom and dad--do we have this picture anywhere?)