Day 6 - Goodbye City, Hello Country - North to Falun!

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This morning we left the excitement of Stockholm to head north to the quieter, more rural landscape of northern Sweden. We thoroughly enjoyed Stockholm and could easily spend a few more days wandering about. But this is only a 15 day vacation so it’s time to get on the road. So today we’re heading north, at least a little bit to see the changing landscape of rural Sweden.

As we head north, the houses disappear, and we are quickly transported to a land for fields and forests similar to northern New England in the US. The only significant difference is the shape of the houses, and the fact that almost all of them are painted a dark red color with white trim. Evidently, this is a traditional color combination for northern Sweden that began in the poorest neighborhoods where poor people painted their houses with local materials including iron oxide and copper which yielded a dark red color similar to the color of brick. Poor people would paint their wooden houses this color to emulate the brick color of their richer neighbor’s actual brick homes. As Sweden began to shed its gaudy displays of wealth in favor of simple, practical design, painting their houses the same color as poor people was an expression of simplicity and humility. I’m not sure I buy the story, but dark red houses with white trim certainly looks idyllic among the dark green trees of the forest.

Our first stop of the day was on the outskirts of Upsalla, the fourth largest city in Sweden with a population of about 175,000. We visited the Uppsala Cathedral, the largest cathedral in Sweden. Originally built as a Catholic cathedral in the 13^th century it was converted to Lutheran in the 16^th century when the Catholics were asked to leave, and the Lutherans took over as the state religion. There are several tombs inside and the cathedral is one of the most ornate in Sweden.

The church was very nice inside for Sweden, but was certainly nowhere near the complexity of some of the Spanish or Italian churches we have seen. After visiting the cathedral, we returned to the bus to continue our journey to the center of Uppsala and our destination, the Linnaeus Gardens. Originally called the Uppsala University Botanical Gardens, it was first built in 1655 and was the foremost botanical garden in Europe for most of the 17^th century until it was devastated by fire in 1702. Now this is a botanical garden, not a decorative garden. Its purpose was to contain many varieties of plants for botanical students in the University of Uppsala to study.

When Carl Linnaeus came to Uppsala to as a botany professor in 1728, he was given responsibility for the garden, and over the next few years developed the sexual system of identifying plants and the Latin naming convention still used to this day. Our tour guide for our tour of the Linnaeus Gardens was none other than Carl Linnaeus himself, or rather an actor dressed in period costume guiding the tour as if he were the 18^th century Linnaeus himself, explaining his life and accomplishments. He was great! He never broke character and was funny and a bit naughty as he went into his life, marriage, children, and career. It was great fun, and we thoroughly enjoyed his presentation.

Ray, one of our fellow passengers from New Zealand asked me if I had noticed that Jody only seemed to be taking pictures of the deadly poisonous plants. I told him that I fully trusted her and that I was certain that I wasn’t in any danger, but to let me know if Jody was beginning to gather samples!

After our tour of the Botanica Garden, we wandered into town to explore downtown Uppsala . It was a nice little town, certainly much smaller and slower paced than Stockholm but we managed to stop for our favorite lunch of Gelato and Coke Zero. After lunch, it was time to get back on the bus and head out to Sunborn for our optional tour of the home of artists Carl and Karin Larsson. There were a few who bypassed the tour, so after Arpi dropped us off with Maja, the guests who were not participating continued on to the hotel.

For the rest of us, it started to rain, but fortunately, the tour was mostly indoors. Now this was a tour that turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Evidently, Carl Larsson is the number one artist in Sweden, but Jody and I looked at his work, and it just wasn’t our style. But the tour wasn’t a display of his artwork, it was a tour of his home where he lived with his wife and 7 children. The house was a craftsman type house that had multiple unique room additions along with artwork painted onto many of the walls and furnishings depicting parts of his daily life.

In addition, Karin Larsson was an artist in her own right, and out tour guide showed us examples of the same painting painted by both Carl and Karin and both were equally good. But since Carl had decided to become the painter, Karin decide to express herself in weaving. But her weavings were not very well accepted as they were far too modern with bold colors and geometric shapes. In reality, her weavings would be right at home in 21^st century design.

Tours of the house were given by young pretty blonde Swedish girls wearing dresses of the period designed by Karin Larsson herself. Our tour guide had some unpronounceable Swedish name that I would not begin to know how to spell. She did mention another Swedish tradition that I found interesting: there is a celebration called “Name Day” where each day of the year has a name associated with that day, and all people with that name celebrate their “Name Day” on the corresponding day. I doubt the Swedes have a Richard day or a Jody day.

By the time we finished the tour, the rain had stopped and it was time to head to the hotel. Maja had warned us about the hotel. It’s called the Grand Hotel, and it may be the grandest hotel in Falun, but Falun only has 37,000 people so that isn’t very grand. It’s not bad, we slept in much worse on or motorcycle trips, but it was a step down from the Hilton in Stockholm.

After we settled into our rooms it was time to venture out for our final adventure: dinner at the Restaurang Skedvi Brod. This restaurant features environmentally friendly selections and is a “farm to table” format. The restaurant is in a side room in what can only be described as a commercial packaging facility, but the food was great! For appetizers, we could have steak tartar or some vegetarian thing. I had the steak and Jody had the veggie thing. I was a bit reluctant about raw beef, but it was actually delicious. For the main, we both had the brisket with boiled potatoes, and it was delicious also. But for dessert, we were supposed to have ice cream with strawberries, but they called to let us know that they were out of strawberries and would be substituting rhubarb instead. Yuccckkk! In the end, we had just the plain ice cream and it was great. Our dinner companions were Ray and Dot – the Aussies, and Ray and Sheren – the Kiwis and they always make for great dinner conversation.

After dinner, we were both pretty tired and ready to get back to the hotel. Tomorrow we are off to Lillehammer, Norway, site of the 1994 Winter Olympics. It should be fun!

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