Stefan and Erika Svanstrom, who have a remarkably positive attitude about their four-month ordeal, brought their infant daughter with them on what they'd hoped would be a globetrotting adventure to celebrate their marriage. Instead, the pair encountered a monster snowstorm, a major tsunami, two earthquakes, catastrophic flooding, and a cyclone as they made their way through the doomed itinerary of Germany, Bali, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.
While in Munich, the Svanstroms first found themselves stuck in the snowstorm that blanketed Europe in December. Hoping to escape, they made their way to Cairns, Australia, where a disastrous cyclone forced them into a group shelter with thousands of others seeking refuge. Once the family arrived in Brisbane, flooding had put much of the city underwater. The Daily Mail writes they "narrowly escaped" bush fires in Perth.
"We escaped by the skin of our teeth," Stefan told the AP of their time in Australia. "Trees were being knocked over and big branches were scattered across the streets."
A few hours before the newlyweds arrived in New Zealand, a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck. Two days after they finally got to Tokyo, the devastating earthquake and tsunami hit, sparking a nuclear crisis in the nation's power plants.
The bride told The Times of London (article behind a paywall) that at the beginning of the trip, in Germany, she thought "things will get better. We're in love. And just think of the beaches we're heading for in southeast Asia."
But when they arrived in Bali they were met by a monsoon.
"We are thinking, are we weather haunted? What will happen next?" Erika, who just started a new job in the Swedish Parliament, told the paper. She might have a point--her husband says he also survived the 2004 tsunami in southeast Asia.
They returned to Stockholm on March 29, after a delightfully uneventful final stop in China, they told the Swedish Expressen newspaper.
"At least we are fortunate when it comes to love," she said.
The couple told Expressen they've been flooded with media requests from all around the world as their story went viral, and may even be flown to New York to appear on Good Morning America. They've also been offered money by the Swedish travel company Ving to take a trip to Aruba, which is--knock on wood--usually disaster-free.
Article courtesy of Yahoo
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