The True Spirit of Scandinavia - An Elderhostel Trip

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Day 12 - Friday - June 12, 2009 - In route to Sweden
It's still raining this morning. I wasn't surprised as I had heard heavy rain pelting the hotel roof during the night. The hotel had a very nice buffet breakfast and great coffee. It's fun eating the soft boiled eggs out of the little egg cups with the tiny spoon. I guess it's something of an art to crack the top open and eat it without getting any shell in your egg.
Our bus left at 8 am for the ride to the main train station in Copenhagen. It's a good thing we left early because we hit a lot of stop and go commuter traffic on the expressway. It took over an hour to get to the train station. We were warned at the train station both by signs and by our leader to watch for pick pockets and luggage thieves and not to leave our luggage unattended or it would probably be stolen! The bus let us off on the lower level and the single elevator was not working! So we had to haul one suitcase at a time up the concrete flight of stairs and leave the carry on bag behind and then return to bring it up. However, we managed all right and no one stole anything!
We caught the express train for Stockholm at 10:15. A short time later I noticed that we were on a bridge with water on both sides of us. Out in the sea we saw a group of wind mills turning in the wind. They must be on some kind of a platform. We were told many people object to having them near their houses because they are noisy and unsightly. Someone said we were crossing the Baltic Sea between Denmark and Sweden. We were amazed that the train was so quiet and smooth . We seemed to be just gliding along!
Around noon we walked thru the train to the restaurant car. I had a tasty shrimp and hard boiled egg sandwich on a roll and coffee. Even the train has wonderful coffee! From the train windows I saw fields of emerald green some with grazing cows, lakes and rivers, an abundance of red wooden houses and barns, forests with the tall narrow pine trees standing so close together they were practically touching and other woods of full grown Christmas type trees. I was puzzled as to why the trees were planted so close together when one of the men in our group pointed out where a section had been clear cut. He said a machine would come in and remove all the roots and stumps and then new trees would be planted or another crop of some type.
After a while a young woman got on and sat across from us. We had a table between us to put our books and water on. We began to talk to her shortly before we arrived in Stockholm. She was from Copenhagen and was going to visit friends in Stockholm. She had been working as a landscape architect in London for the last few years and married an English man who was still there. She had recently returned to Copenhagen to work on her PhD. Her husband would be coming to join her soon and he was hoping to find work in Copenhagen.
The train pulled into Stockholm at 15:39, so we had a journey of five and a half hours on the train. We now had to reverse the procedure and get our luggage off the train and up the escalator and in the bus. All was well except for the fact that the escalator came to a dead stop about half way up! So we had to carry our suitcases the rest of the way. (Next time I will definitly bring a smaller suitcase and less clothes!) Paul Reichberg, our site coordinator, met us at the train station. Carl, our group leader, had told us to watch for a man who looked like the scientist from the movie, "Back To The Future." And sure enough, we agreed when we saw him, there was a strange resemblence! We boarded our bus and looked at the buildings of Stockholm through rainy bus windows.
The Tollare Folkhögskola is located in Saltsjö-Boo, Sweden a short distance from the city of Stockholm. The main part of the city where the train station is located is on an island. To get to the folk school the bus went into a tunnel 2 to 3 kilometers long. And from this tunnel were other tunnels brancing out. We passed through two or three tunnels and crossed several bridges. The school is located above a lake in a manor house and in several other buildings up various hills surrounded by forest. Our meals are in a separate building, our lectures in yet another building up a rather steep hill, and the building where Gene and I are staying is in yet another building further up the hill. The laundry is in the basement of a bulding down the hill in another direction! To find the room with the washers and dryers you almost need a compass or GPS! We had dinner and then a short introductory lecture. Afterwards we played cards with two women in our group who are staying in our building. We found a social room in our building and taught them a new game called mish mash. Good night from Sweden. Phyllis and Gene

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