Scandinavia - land of the midnight sun

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Ah, the cool breeze that hit us when we got off the plane in Stockholm made us feel at home right away. All the coniferous trees, lakes and familiar wildflowers that we saw a few minutes later just confirmed our feeling that Canada was somewhere right around the corner. Not that any of us was really homesick, it was just that it felt so energizing to unexpectedly feel at home so quickly.

Landed in Stockholm on June 22 via Frankfurt, Germany. The flight from Hong Kong was fine and the hop from Frankfurt was spartan but speedy. We were whisked away by our friends Roy and Suzanne Widjedal to their summer home on the Baltic Sea. After a great Swedish meal (the first of many) we toured the town of Trosa and the Waldorf school en route to Stockholm.

Swedish people were very friendly and very easy to communicate with. The first 2 days in Stockholm included the National Art Gallery, Smorgasbord lunch at the Grand Hotel, Vasa Museum and the museum of Swedish Children's Literature (prominently freaturing Astrid Lindgren, the author of Pippi Longstocking among others). We took two one-hour sightseeing cruises around the smorgasbord of islands that separate Stockholm from the open expanse of the Baltic. We toured on foot around the cobblestone streets of Gamla Stan which is the oldest part of Stockholm and stepped into both the Royal Palace (the royal family lives in a castle on the outskirts of Stockholm these days, so we had the run of the place) and the Nobel Museum which commemorates all the winners of the 6 annual prizes over the past century or so since the Swede Alfred Nobel died and left his controversial will behind. Then Renee tried bungee trampolining in a park in downtown Sttockholm - an elastic harness allowed her to jump quite high!

Our hosts, the Widjedals, spoiled us with a continuous smorgasbord, taking it upon themselves it seemed to ensure that we tried every dish ever created in Sweden. Of course we had to go and catch our supper in the sea first! Turned out, that wasn't hard at all. We caught over 200 herring between us in about 2 hours - Keith alone caught 92. No fish story either - and that does not include "the ones that got away". We told the kids that this would be the best fishing day of their lives. The Widjedals of course knew where the good spot was, out between two islands where the fish funnel through. And of course there is the little fact that there are 5 hooks on a Swedish fishing line. Sue was the only one who actually hauled in five at once, but Keith more often than not hauled up four at a time. We ate BBQ herring, pickled herring, herring in a variety of sauces, herring cake... We also had a third tour of the archipelago in the Widjedal's wooden dory - this one lasted almost til midnight. It was still light out at that time of course - we were at almost 60 degrees north latitude - and the night was only about three hours long.


We certainly did do a good Viking imitation, spending as much time in ships as we did on land. We took a three hour cruise in an old seamboat from Stockholm one day to Mariefred, a wonderful little town in the Swedish interior. We found it amazing how little of the shoreline of Swedish lakes and rivers are built up or disturbed in any way. It was like a National Park - there were virtually no houses visible, although I understand that because of the Swedish peculiarity of building back from the shoreline a few dozen metres with a veritable woods between house and water, there may have been many more houses there than one would realize. At Mariefred we toured Gripsholm Castle, another one of the 5 owned by the Swedish royalty, which doubles as an art gallery, the largest portrait gallery in Northern Europe. We read that we could return from Mariefred to Stockholm via a narrow gauge railway but it turned out to not be running, which we did not discover til after the boat had departed. There was a major railway station fairly close by (3 or 4 km as it turned out) so, as the taxis in the little town were all booked up we were told and the bus meant a two hour wait, we walked.

The other major highlight was the midsummer celebration in which many people of all ages from the region gathered together to sing traditional songs and dance around the midsummer pole. Wonderful way to get reacquainted with neighbours and be patriotic at the same time.

On Sunday, we had to say goodbye to the Widjedals (thanks again for everything - what wonderful ambassadors for your country you are) and we drove over 7 hours to Denmark. We stayed at a farm stay place for 4 nights near Kogsbolle on the island of Funen which was surprisingly almost completely lacking in odour even though it was a pig farm. Highlights of Denmark were the Hans Christian Andersen museum and festival, the recreated village Den finske Landsby, Helsingor (Elsinore - Hamlet's castle), the little mermaid, Copenhagen and Tivoli Park, Egeskov Castle and grounds and the Viking Museum. Denmark is a pastoral land of beautifully tended farms, bicycle paths and wind turbines (30% of Denmark's electricity is created by the wind - the highest percentage of any country in the world). We are famous in Denmark now the kids say - we got our picture and a short article in the Odense daily newspaper as the chosen tourists of the day at the H.C. Andersen festival.

So again we had to leave before we were ready to, this time to drive the autobahn in Germany. Yes there are parts of the autobahn where there is no speed limit. We quite liked it when there were 3 lanes on each side, you just stay in the middle lane and let the crazies doing 180 go by on the left. But when there are only two lanes, it's insane. The trucks are in the right lane doing 90 to 100 km per hour (they not legally allowed to go any faster). You can stay there and putt along or risk your life by getting out into the left lane. Trying to maintain any speed between 100 and 150 is impossible. So a day and a half of that was plenty and Switzerland's sedate autoroutes with speed limit 120 came as a relief.

More about Switzerland in the next installment...

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Comments

[Les<]

Highway
Did you have someone (other than the driver) take pictures of the no limit highway? I guess it doesn't matter beacause we won't be able to recognise the fast cars passing by... Thanks again for so kindly sharing your trip. We're taking notes... Who knows, we might visit some of those places one day...

[Gig and Heather]

Hello
Just wanted to say how much we enjoy your accounts of adventure. Always informative and entertaining. An amazing gift you've given your children! Things are good here. Looking forward to visiting when you return. Gig and Heather

[JohnD]

Is that you in the water? Looks like you shaved
Its hard to believe you've been away so long and have gone so far. You've entered the "familiar" part of your trip. Really enjoying following you around. by the way the ex-Expos are leading their division by 6 games. jtb

[Janice]

We used the blog update as one of our bedtime stories. The girls want to say hello to Keith and Renee. I am happy to see that John is also complaining about your lack of shaving, Bill. Take care Janice, Katharine and Juliana