Day 4 - A Quiet Day On The Bus With a Fika, Some Gottis And Swedish Meatballs

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Today is a quiet travel day as we make our way to Stockholm for the next two days. The itinerary shows us arriving in Stockholm around 4:00PM, dropping our stuff at the hotel, and hopping on a boat to head out to dinner. Maja decided that it would be too hectic to try to head on out to dinner after a long day on the bus, so the dinner was postponed until tomorrow night after we had rested. Good plan!

So, this morning we hit the road at 8:00AM and left the metropolis of Gothenburg behind to head northeast the 300 miles cross country to Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Along the way we plan to make a couple of stops and still make it into Stockholm by 4:00PM. The first stop is at the Grannabergets Friluftsmuseum which is just a long fancy name for the open-air museum above the town of Granna. But the real reason for our visit was for a fika – coffee and snack.

We arrived at about 10:00AM and the narrow one lane winding road looked impassable for something the size of our motorcoach. But thanks to the impressive skills of Arpi, our driver, he made it seem like nothing. I’m still not sure how he was able to turn the bus around in the tiny parking area! When we arrived, the small restaurant at the top of the hill was preparing our fika with fresh coffee and 4 different pastries – just what we needed after 2 hours on the bus. It was all delicious!

After our fika we wandered the grounds which contained a series of small 17^th century cabins rescued from different parts of the country and set up in this museum to show what life must have been like back then. From our vantage point at the top of a hill, we could see the town of Granna below. Granna was founded in 1652 and today has grown to over 2600 residents. It is located along the banks of the 800 sq-mi Lake Vattern and provides ferry service for the tiny island of Visingso located in the middle of Lake Vattern. There is also a large caravan park where campers can enjoy some summer recreation. Looking down, we were able to see the town and watch the ferry in operation. We wandered around some of the hiking trails before we realized the steps were taking us down into the town and that we would have to climb back up all the steps when it was time to leave. At that point, we decided it was time to head back to the bus.

After leaving Granna, we headed back out on the highway back towards Stockholm, most of the countryside looking a lot like New Hampshire. There were lots of hills, evergreen forests, interspersed with a lot of silver birch trees, with large granite outcroppings along the highway. A couple of hours later, we spotted our next stop, the Rasta Expresso House stretching across the highway. This is an interesting rest stop, built as a building that spans across the highway like a bridge, it contains a series of rest stop shops and restaurants accessible on either side so that it is available to both the northbound and southbound lanes. There are separate gas stations on either side but the building is common to both and accessible on either side. Maja warned us to make sure which entrance we entered so that if the bus wasn’t there when we exited, we must be coming out on the wrong side.

Inside the building there were a couple of cafeteria style restaurants, but as we had just finished our fika a couple of hours ago, we decided this called for our European lunch of champions: gelato and a Coke Zero. Jody had the Cappuccino gelato, and I had the licorice and the caramel. This time the licorice gelato was a dark black, the color of real black licorice.

In addition to the gelato and coke, the Rasta Expresso House also contained hundreds od bins of loose candy which the Swedes call Gottis, about half of which were black licorice in various sizes, shapes, and fillings. They also had a bunch of salted licorice, which Maja warned us was an acquired taste. I tried one and quickly realized that I had not acquired the taste, and probably never would. They give you a scoop and a bag, and weigh what you choose and you pay by the kilo. I tried not to buy too much, but I love black licorice as much as any Swede. Assuming, of course, that it is unsalted.

So we headed back on the bus for our final leg of the journey to Stockholm, and Maja decided she would try to explain to us some of the stereotypical differences between Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians. According to Maja, the Danes are the laid back, fun loving, cheerful, cosmopolitan Scandinavians. The Swedes are a lot more uptight, rigid, and especially the Swedish men have a reputation for being a little too well dressed, a little too well groomed, and with every hair in place. As for the Norwegians they are or more accurately were the peasants of Scandinavia. They are very individualistic, anti-social, and obsessed with the outdoors. The reason is that up until 1905, Norway was actually a possession of Sweden. But it had no resources, very little agriculture, it was not part of a trade route, and the people just worked very hard just to remain alive.

But in 1905, the Norwegians asked Sweden for independence, and the Swedes figuring that Norway was just a burden on the taxpayers of Sweden, granted their request. The problem Norway had was that they wanted a king to rule the country and there was no one living in Norway of royal blood, so there was no one to take the job. Not knowing what to do, they asked Denmark if they had a prince who was not in succession to be king of Denmark who would be willing to leave Denmark and become king of Norway. Luckily, one of the crown prince of Denmark’s younger brothers who would likely never become king of Denmark agreed to become the king of Norway. So he moved to Norway, learned the language and became King Olaf V and was evidently a great ruler for Norway. Soon afterwards, Oil was found in the North Sea, and despite many lawsuits by Denmark, Sweden, and even England, North Sea oil is primarily the property of Norway making it now one of the riches countries in Europe. I’m sure Sweden now regrets giving Norway its freedom.

We finally arrived at the hotel and this time it’s a Hilton, really nice room. Since we had the evening as free time, we decided to head into old town Stockholm in search of dinner and some souvenirs. Old town Stockholm is actually the name of a small island in the center of town that contains the royal palace, a bunch of the oldest buildings and a bunch of shops and restaurants. With its narrow medieval streets, old town is closed to vehicular traffic, and is only open to pedestrians. We found the main tourist street for souvenirs and managed to score a few t-shirts and some other souvenirs. By the time we finished shopping it was getting past 5:00PM which is really getting late for old people from Florida like us.

We had asked Maja for a recommendation for dinner and she quickly recommended Kaffegillette, a local café and bistro famous for its Swedish meatballs. It is located next to the old town cathedral, and its basement rooms are part of the old cathedral catacombs. We wandered around the island and it didn’t take long to find the cathedral, and from there the Kaffegillette. We asked to be seated in the basement, but it was early, and they hadn’t yet opened it up so we settled for an outdoor table and ordered some Swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes. They looked like the ones from Ikea, but tasted much better! After dinner, since we had already eaten gelato at lunch, we decided to try their chocolate cake for dessert. It turned out to be a chocolate lava cake with real whipped cream and it was delicious!

Our bellies full, we headed back to the room for a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow, we have a busy day and we want to be sure to be well rested as our adventure continues!

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