InsaneJournal

Sweden: The Text.
And a link to Sweden: The Pictures. For whatever reason, Flickr refuses to keep the pictures in the order that I want them in, so bear with me and keep in mind the text itinerary as you peruse the photo side of things. Consider this the brief highlight reel. PAI make brief appearances. They were mostly quiet, which was good, because this was not research for them.



Sunday, Sept. 9/Monday, Sept. 10:
--get to airport 3 hours ahead of time like good little nerd. sit and poke self in eye for 3 hours.
--we are told to do "something" with our bags in Frankfurt
--fly to Philly.
--clouds/rain/turbulence. Vossler & I are not happy.
--had worst sandwich ever in Philly airport.
--got 20 minutes of sleep on overnight flight.
--tea on planes to/from Europe is quite good
--Frankfurt is a hideous-looking airport
--got first security pat-down of my life.
--may now be married to security woman in certain cultures, given the circumstances
--husband got pat-down by gorgeous German guy. Life is not fair.
--PAI very disappointed to be incorporeal in Frankfurt airport.
--passport stamps ought to be shiny. They are not.
--stuck in line forever getting boarding passes (this is the "something" we had to do in Frankfurt)
--were people who run through airports
--Frankfurt is arranged in one big damn line, and smoking is allowed inside of the airport in Germany. I have never run through second-hand smoke before. I dislike it.
--had to go through security again.
--made flight. Wish never to return to Frankfurt airport again, but will in one week.
--Twins deny this airport is in any way their fault.
--land in Gothenburg, Sweden. Airport is lovely.
--pick up rental car.
--nearly die twice before are 1 kilometer from airport, but then we get out of tourists-driving, and all is well.

Monday, Sept. 10:
Now, we get to the actual sights. Monday was a big day, despite having been up for more than 24 hours by its end. We went to Skara, the 1000-year-old city, to see the cathedral, which has been around--in various parts and remodellings, of course--since AD 1000. Skara also has the Skara Misal, a very old, very beautiful church ledger, that pushed all of my shiny manuscript buttons. We went to the public library and the librarian let me paw over a facsimile copy [Swedes are nice. As a nation, they are nice people.]. We also went to the Vastergotlands Museum, which was phenomenal in that it had a replicated medieval village in it so I got some nice close-up views of medieval building methods. Thatch is thicker than I thought, which makes a lot more sense, and yet much less, given the dependence on fire for light and heat, etc. Trogdor, you know.

Also got to see a salvaged long-boat, which was fantastic. I have many measurements of things, according to my feet or my stride or my height. Should have thought to bring a tape measure, but I am not that smart. There was also a beautiful exhibit on a set of 16 3000-year-old shields on display that had been pulled from a local lake.

After that, though, we were beat. We headed north to Lidkoping for the night, walked for pizza (only restaurant open within walking distance of the hostel, and it's Italian. Go figure.), and passed out for 12 hours.

Tuesday, Sept. 11:
We got up very early (6:00), and hit the road by 7:00, drove west to Husaby Kyrka (another church). We didn't get inside of this one, as it was not yet open for the day, but there was a really fantastic grave marker there (big rune-stone taller than me), and the memorials to the first Christian king (Olof Scotkunung) in the area. I believe he had been buried there at one time. (This is the difficulty with signs in Swedish when you don't know Swedish. I have a lot of homework/fact-checking to do.)

From there, we drove to Varnhem to see the Cloister ruins. Everything was covered in grass, and it would be a lovely place for a picnic. There was also an archaeological dig going on there, because there were ruins beside the ruins of an even older structure, but it was not open while we were there. You see, Sweden closes (as far as tourists are concerned) at the end of August. Please visit during summer.

Then to the grocery store for lunch-fixings. We left with a loaf of bread, PB & J, a box of grapes, and D'aim bars (SO TASTY GOOD TOFFEE AND CHOCOLATE GOODNESS), and then went on to Karleby, where we saw a bunch of Bronze-Age burial tumuli. Then we drove south, toward Asa and our next lodgings. We stopped at Mocklehult--a nature preserve where we walked beside a lake for a while and we saw a lean-to built Les Stroud-style, and I was ambushed by a character that I don't know what to do with. Thence to Asa, where perhaps the most interesting evening of our journey unfolded:

Asa is not a "town." It is a handful of houses and one youth hostel sprawled in the middle of nowhere--20 km to the nearest gas station kind of place. And it was, oddly enough, on our way, so you can sort of see how very un-touristy our tourism was. So, we arrive at our hostel at 4:30, and no one is there. That's normal--perhaps the check-in window is 5-7, not 4-6 here. Some are like that. Then I read the note beside the door: "I'm not here regularly. Call this number when you arrive." Er. We have no phone. But surely there is a pay phone somewhere in one of these towns. ...an hour and a half later, and a hundred kilometers later, there is no phone to be found. We drive back to the hostel to wait and hope someone remembers that we do, in fact, have a reservation and arrives. Worst case scenario, we sleep in the car. At 7:30, someone pulls in. It is not management. It is two twenty-somethings wearing work coveralls, and one of them has his cap full of mushrooms. But they have a key, are staying there, so we dive out of the car and hope there's maybe a phone inside the hostel, because even if we're inside, we can't get into a room. And thus we met Karol (I think that's the Polish spelling of Karl) and Bartek (pronounced with really pleasing little rolls on the r's), a pair of Polish brothers working construction in Sweden for the summer. After a bit of overcoming the language barrier and the sheer ridiculousness of the situation (Karol had a phone, but it didn't work in Asa), Karol knows someone where we can call. So he hops in his truck and we hop in our rental car, and we fly down an unlined, twisting road through the forest toward we don't know what. Turns out to be the guy whose roof he's repairing, and said guy is all too happy to help. We show him the reservation page, and the number, and the guy tells us, "Oh, wouldn't work to call that number anyway. Magnus is on holiday. But there's another fellow taking care of the place. I'll call him." So, he does, and in two minutes of very rapid Swedish, we have a code to open the key box outside and get our keys to the front door and our room. We offer profuse thanks, offer money, are waved off, and then we fly back to the hostel.

We settle into our room, and Karol gives us the grand tour, and we sit at the table in the kitchen while he cleans his hat-ful of mushrooms. He made us Polish tea (really, really tasty strong black tea--not bitter at all), and we talked about music and politics and the names of mushrooms, once we arrived at the English for "mushroom." Karol said, "Fungus," and we said, yes, that works, too. He pronounced it, "Foongoose," and that was awesome. Once you translate from Polish to Swedish to English, the ones he had were called "Little Chicken" and "Under-Mushroom." So, he washed and chopped and boiled--in Sweden, it's not as intimidating to sit in a room while a perfect stranger wields a very large kitchen knife--and then Bartek came in and beat some eggs, and they made an omelette. We declined many offers to have some, as A) it was their dinner B) I do not eat eggs. I find them vile and noxious. C) still a little leary of eating mushrooms I haven't ever seen before. Then I left the room for a moment, and when I came back, there was a plate of eggs in front of my chair. So, I did what any decent person would do: I ate them. The mushrooms were delicious. The eggs were still as noxious as I remember eggs being from when I was 5 and my dad made me eat some, and they were...very over-easy...but there was no way I could refuse after how gracious they'd been. So, I choked it down, and actually enjoyed the mushrooms part. We offered PB & J (our food of champions for the trip), but they were enjoying their dinner as it was.

It was one of the strangest and most fantastic moments of my life. This is the kind of kindness from strangers that gives me hope for humanity--such generosity of spirit. I regret not thinking to get a picture, or even the proper spelling of their names, because I will write about them again.

We sleep, and head farther south in the morning.

Wednesday, Sept. 12:
Oland, ho!

The bridge to Oland (the long island on the east coast of Sweden) is 6 km long. That's a long bridge. And the Baltic Sea is beautiful. We hit up Borgholm Slott (castle), and there are many pictures of that so I will save the sermon.

Driving along: Camels. Dromedary Camels. In Sweden.

From thence, we drove north to Byxelkrok and Neptuni Akrar, which I found to be one of the most evocative and "helpful" places on the trip. It's such a desolate place in many ways--rocky beach, plates of limestone instead of sand or even small rocks where the surf breaks--but beautiful in really melancholy ways. I think it could become important in my research, a location in the novel.

Then to the ruins of Saint Brigida's Chapel. This was another place that felt good to be in. The stones that were mortared together have such wonderful color--there's red granite deposits on the island, and granites flecked with purple, and some white and black--and it was so lovely when the sun hit it. There had been a 3-meter-high stone cross at the edge of the water near this chapel, but this winter a storm finally knocked it over after 800+ years. It's in a museum, being restored.

From there, we go to Seby Gravfalt, a kilometer-long set of burial mounds and stone monuments. And Ismantorps Borg, which was another absolute marvel to me. A stone "fort"--no mortar, as far as I could tell, larger than a football field, full of more stone dwellings (the stone from the walls are still piled as they were, though they do not "stand"). And also full of sheep. A whole herd, like 60 sheep, grazing inside, because there are a few openings in the walls (so people could come and go, of course), and all of these historical treasures are in pastures, because the Swedes were farming and raising livestock before these things were "historical." It's kind of fascinating--when Ismantorps Borg was being used, there probably were sheep there then, too.

Thence to Ottenby, and sleep.

Thursday, Sept. 13:
We go to Jan Lange lighthouse, on the southern tip of Oland, and have to part the Sheep Sea to get there. Sheeps in the road, blocking your tourism. We see the ruins of St. Johannes Kappell, some Roe deer (pictures didn't turn out for that), and we get buffeted by the wind.

Eketorps Borg, another big, old, stone fortress, had a museum and is usually filled with reenactors when it's open, but it was not open, so we just walked around the fort. That was sort of helpful, as they had some buildings "under construction" so you could see how the medieval citizens of 3 separate periods put together a living space.

Barby Borg: Big bowl made of dirt.

Karlevi Runestone: This was awesome. Another grave monument, this time to a Danish chieftain, around 1000 AD, and there's a bit of verse, written in runes, praising him. The original grooves have been painted in red, so that one could read the whole thing, if one could, in fact, read runes.

In Farjestad, we actually found a restaurant and real food. We had kebabs, and pomme frits, and more of the curious Swedish "salad," which was much like cole slaw (which I don't like) without any of the creaminess--just oil and vinegar and cabbage, and that was good. Bill loved it. That made 4 days, 2 meals that required the application of heat to any part of it. That's...not how we expected it to be, but none of the restaurants on Oland were open.

And then we left Oland, and drove toward Tjaro. I had a really delicious ice cream at the Statoil. There is no place in Sweden that does not sell ice cream. No weather inappropriate for ice cream (though I was freaking freezing most of the time).

Tjaro is an island in the Baltic, only 1x2 km long. There are many pictures. I don't have the words right now to do it justice.

Friday, September 14:
We had our first real breakfast & actual Swedish food! I had probably the healthiest cereal I ever ate, and delicious still-warm bread with butter and strawberry jam, and yogurt, and tea. And there were sugar-cubes everywhere. That single-cubedly ruined any attempt at it being a healthy breakfast, because sugar cubes are good and crunchy and made for snacking. Balthier understands this. Vossler protests. Gabranth steals sugar cubes and denies it. Basch turns a blind eye. But Balthier and I, we understand. Sugar cubes = tasty. Bill contests this. But Bill ate caviar from a tube (caviar everywhere) at that breakfast, so what does he know? This breakfast explains why the Swedes are all so ridiculously good-looking, fit, and tall: all kinds of whole grains and produce and fresh-baked bread and nothing really sweetened.

Then we got on the boat back to the mainland, had a nice chat with the boat operator, who recommended a nice restaurant in Karlshamn, but we had to be past there by dinner time. :<

We go to a burial mound in Kivik, but we cannot see the actual burial chamber, because it is closed for the season. We are sad.

We drive to Kaseberga and there we saw my favorite thing: Ales Stenar. It's a stone ship, a memorial (possibly burial) roughly 1500 years old, almost as long as a football field. The stones are about 5 feet high all around, and the bow and stern stones are around 10-12 feet high, and the whole thing is perched at the edge of a several-hundred-foot drop right into the Baltic. The wind was phenomenal, and luckily it was pushing us back from the cliff, rather than toward, or it would have been too dangerous to look down over. But I stood there, and felt the age of the thing. It was amazing, and thrilling, and wild--filled with savage joy and melancholy and I was just floored. Not nearly the marvel that Borgholm Slott was, visually, but it's the rawness of the thing, like Neptuni Akrar.

And thence to Smygehuk for sleep.

Saturday, Sept. 15:
We go to Trelleborg. Biggest disappointment. Fakey reconstructed fort. No "history" to speak of. Some kids were "reenacting" outside of it with gift-shop-quality weapons. I vex. We leave.

Skegriedosen: Grave monument from 3000 BCE. So windy it was shaking the car. On to Foteviken. That turned out to be closed, too, but of a kind that we could walk around the Viking Reserve, which was a reconstructed Viking village on the edge of the sea that was quite accurate and full of helpful historical information markers.

Go to Mellbystrand. This day was ungood. So windy can hardly think. We do get pizza in Mellbystrand, but it is too cold for me to even get ice cream. People in next room have ridiculously loud and squeaky shoes.

Sunday, Sept. 16:
We drive north, and buzz through Landskrona, where we saw the Citadellet, which was quite impressive, but closed. Still so windy it hurts. I wanted to walk out on a pier over the Baltic, but the wind was whipping the water up over the pier, and it was so slick that one might actually fall in. Also, I had no desire to be cold and wet. We consider catching a boat to Ven, but the trip is more expensive & longer than we can afford.

At 2:19, we stop at Statoil for refill on gas, D'aim bars, and beverages.

AND I SAW A RONSENBURG.

I swear--this boy could have been one of the twins at 19. I mean, perfect match. But with a trendy haircut and tight black jeans. I would have gotten a picture, but we were walking out with our snacks as he was getting into his car and driving away. But. Wow. Bizarre.

We proceed to Varberg Fastnings Museum, and it is well worth sticking around the 2 hours for the museum to open. Couldn't take any pictures inside, but the Bocksten Man was such an awesome thing. His clothing was nearly perfectly preserved (awesome for research), and a professional doll/model-maker did a reconstruction of his face (based on his skull structure and DNA analysis) that's just really amazing.

Thence to the final hostel. We went into an IKEA (I'd never been before), and that was kind of terrifying. So many people. There was a full restaurant in it. Is that normal for IKEA? But the furniture is pretty awesome. And we had our 5th real meal of the whole trip: a Thai buffet. Then basically, we go back and go to sleep because we have to wake up at 3 a.m.

Monday, Sept. 17:
Board flight at 6:45. Hate Frankfurt airport again. Am grateful that I married the kind of boy who will give me his chocolate mousse on the plane because the food is dead awful. Fly back to NY with crazy drunk lady (do not drink and fly. if you cannot sit up, you should not be on the plane.). Drive home. Pass out.