This morning, as I stumbled around all our bags in the hotel room, I felt like I was some modern version of the character in an E. M. Forrester novel traveling around the Continent with steamer trunks. And yet, although tourists are always told to "pack light", there are limits to what can be left home. You have to deal with cool, rainy days as well as hot weather. The are beach and bike days, but there are also more concerts and more formal restaurants. Buying things when you need them may sound good, but it is not always possible to find the stuff you need. And sometimes, like John's swim trunks in Dubrovnik, it is way more expensive than at home.
The Rex Hotel is not a bad place. The rooms are clean and the neighborhood is safe. But I also think that in Europe there is this sense that unless you are paying a great deal for a room, you should be slightly uncomfortable. Things are deliberately spartan in a vaguely military or monastic way. It cannot be significantly more expensive to make a soft bed than a hard one. An extra pillow would hardly break the hotel budget. Yet you begin to feel after a while, I only paid 100 Euro for this. I do not deserve two pillows. Or a comforter that actually fits on the bed. Long after sin has been dismissed as an archaic notion, Northern Europeans still cling to asceticism and self-denial. Just ask the Greeks about that.
At breakfast — one where I felt that we really did not deserve to have more than two choices of marmalade — John and I planned the day. We looked over the starred recommendations in Rick Steves. He almost dismissed the Royal Palace and Gamla Stan, and said that Skandia and the Vasa ship were the must-see sights in Stockholm. Skandia is a collection of historic houses rather like Sturbridge Village. John was pretty sure that we had seen Skandia and loved it on our last trip to Stockholm many years ago. I did not recall that, although I remembered a similar place is Oslo. Either way, we decided to go there. We packed up our stuff and put it in storage. We will be changing hotels today — but more on that later.
I suggested that we take a bus to Skandia as it was farther than John wanted to walk and the subway did not come close. He was skeptical, but agreed. Most of the busses I have seen in Stockholm have been at least half empty. This one, unfortunately, was the exception. I suppose it was because it was heading towards the amusement park on a warm July day, but it was packed with families. And it was slow as well. John does not do well standing for long periods, but at least he found a spot where the bus flexes so he could try to sit.
When we entered the park it not only did not seem familiar to me but did not to John either. "Maybe we didn't come here," he said. "I don't remember any of this." Skandia does contain historic village structures and people are there dressed in period clothes to provide some background in Swedish and English. But it also has a wide array of children's attractions. There are endless places to buy food. About a third of the grounds are devoted to a small zoo with Scandinavian animals. It is interesting, but somehow the history gets a little lost in all the other stuff.
But we still had a pretty good time and saw some really interesting things. There were these old “allotment” cottages. After people had moved to the city, they still wanted to grow their own food. So they were given tiny plots of land in the suburbs where they put not only farmed but had a one room house for weekends.
The two old gals who were the docents here were having their lunch break among the flowers and vegetable of their plots.
There were lots of old farmsteads.
and old church,
and a bakery where John bought a couple pastries that looked and smelled better than they tasted.
Some of the farm houses had a special section used only when there was a wedding or a funeral.
These also contained guest accommodations.
On many of the farms, women spun wool and died yarn.
In the “town” section, we had an interesting chat with the docent at the printer’s house.
We were fascinated to learn that they nailed the wallpaper on so that if they moved they could take it with them!
The city workingman’s house was pretty spartan, and apparently a dozen people were probably crammed into two or three small rooms. The only source of heat in the winter was this tiny stove that also was used for cooking.
We were fascinated to see the Temperance Hall. Apparently the Swedes declared war on drinking about the same time Americans did with about the same level of success.
There were gardens both rustic
and formal.
We love all the hollyhocks in Sweden. They really do not grow well in Southern California.
The industrialist who had helped create Skandia moved his childhood home there.
We were not as fascinated by the nordic animals on display, but we were fascinated by the lynx
and the wild boar.
I think this was a wolverine, or maybe it was a ferret. Why can’t these animals wear name tags?
There were birds everywhere.
This stork had no children in tow.
But I think this goose might have had a family.
We decided to have lunch at the first and only place we have seen in Sweden that advertised itself as a smorgasbord. It was not an expensive place, just it was just a little pricier than most of the other offerings, enough that John assumed, quite correctly, that families would go elsewhere. Neither of us dislike children, but teachers on vacation would just as soon spend time with adults. In fact, at times watching the kids was quite entertaining.
After that, we went down to see the Vasa. This is clearly the biggest tourist attraction in Stockholm and it probably should be. The Vasa is the most perfectly preserved seventeenth century ship. King Gustav wanted to have the biggest and most powerful navy in the Baltic. AS part of that program, he spent an enormous amount on a new warship, one designed to have an unprecedented two full canon decks. The ship was to be the pride of the navy. But a few minutes after it was launched the ship listed to the side in the wind and began to take on water through the lower canon deck. Within minutes, the ship had sunk to the bottom of the harbor. The pride of the Swedish navy had never even left Stockholm. Dozens of men were killed.
Around 1960, Swedish archeologists wondered if they could find the remains of the Vasa. They did so without much problem, and to their surprise they discovered that the soil and the minimal salinity of the water had almost perfectly preserved the ship. It took years, but they raised the ship, cleaned and preserved it, and then built an enormous building around the ship. It is an amazing sight. Some of the ropes are even original, knots almost four hundred years old.
The color was a big surprise to the historians. Examining the wood they discovered little bits of paint throughout. It turns out that these ships were painted bright colors, almost gaudy to modern eyes. We take color for granted. But when I talked to people in Eastern Europe who had lived under socialism, all of them commented on how everything back then was gray. The buildings were gray, the clothes were gray, the smoky skies were gray. And when they experienced the West, the first thing that struck all of them was how colorful it was. It was an overpowering experience for many. I am sure that this is what the seventeenth-century world was as well. Most people lived in a dull gray world. And there was something almost overwhelming about seeing color. We forget that the Baroque era was obsessed with power. And ornament and color was that era's version of "shock and awe."
So here is the wood as it appears today
and as it was originally painted.
John was feeling quite tired at this point and he did not want to deal with the bus again. I agreed we should take a taxi. I have since learned more about Swedish taxis. The government issues taxi licenses as it does in other cities. It limits competition from ride-sharing apps. But it does not actually regulate the fare as happens in most of the rest of the world. Before taking a taxi, the passenger is supposed to read the posted fare chart and make an informed decision. In practice, this is almost impossible. We certainly had no idea that we were supposed to do this. And we paid for it — a fifteen minute cab ride with a driver who really had no idea where he was going ended up costing us well over fifty dollars! I was livid, but there was not much I could do.
We picked up our bags from the storage room. We are changing hotels tonight. The Rex was part of the package deal with the bicycle tour. But for the last couple nights I wanted to stay at a big, modern American hotel. I had thought that the accommodations on trip might be less the comfortable, and I wanted something spacious with comfortable beds and a big bathroom for our last couple days. So we are staying at the Radisson Blu Waterfront, a stylish modern building right by city hall. It is probably the most architecturally interesting hotel in Sweden.
The desk at the Rex offered to call a cab for us. I somehow figured that hotels had a better idea of who the good guys and the bad guys were in the cab business. And I should be grateful for that as this time our ten minute ride was a fairly reasonable twelve dollars.
The Radisson was everything we expected it would be with one exception. We had a miserable view. Instead of looking out on the waterfront, our spacious comfortable room faced an office tower, one of those depressing structures from the eighties that Skidmore, Owens, and Merrill built all over the world. John went down to the desk to see if the charming young man who had checked us in could give us a better room. He explained that the hotel was full that evening — one of the larger Viking cruise ships had taken most of the rooms for their guests — but promised see what he could do tomorrow. Ah well, at least the bed was comfortable and I had two pillows.
We spent a quiet evening. Tomorrow will be our last full day in Sweden and we plan to do serious sightseeing.
