Monday, November 03, 2008

Sweden Epilogue

So the limitation with going to Sweden for my birthday trip is that a lot of the touristy places are closed for the offseason, nonetheless there was still a lot to do and I enjoyed the trip thoroughly.

Eventually the rain had to catch up with one of my vacations and this turned out to be the one but it was not the whole trip anyway. I enjoyed walking in the cooler weather much more so than if it had been really hot but I suppose that it would never be really hot in Sweden.

The food there was overall fantastic and even the small cafeteria type places have a great eye for presentation besides being good cooks. I walked a lot but I ate a lot so I probably only made it to even on the weight loss/gain situation.

The small prop plane was definitely interesting and clambering on and off a plane directly from the tarmac was different.

I would definitely go back to Sweden again but it would likely be best to go in late spring or summertime just to have more attractions open during the course of the week. The time of day that things open doesn't seem to change year round. Scandies are late starters and that won't change so 10 to 11am no matter what. Having a full northern summer day and not having anything open for hours after I get on my way might be kind of maddening but I guess wandering would still be fun. The countryside I saw also looked spectacular and if you're into outdoorsy things it looks like a great country to visit in summer weather.

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Sweden Day 9

Not much to say about today really. I got up moderately late and went down for breakfast at about 8:30. When I got back to the room I finished the last minute packing and then watched TV until about 10:00. From there I marched down to central station with suitcase in tow. I should mention the tiled nature of the sidewalks, even though mainly downhill, coupled with their rain troughs made it a very bumpy ride to the train. From there I was able to catch the Arlanda Express right at the time I got there and use the last day of my rail pass for it so it didn't cost me anything extra. As with in Denmark, finding an Icelandair checkin booth is not easy and I found the SAS self checkin booth then dropped my bag off and had to cross completely across the front of terminal to get to the gate I needed. The terminal after security is small but it did have a couple shops and a cafeteria to eat lunch. I had what was called pasta with pesto which turned out to be a sort of ravioli with a dryish pesto filling covered with a creamy zucchini and mushroom sauce. It wasn't bad but just not what I was expecting. It probably could have been kept a tad bit warmer though.

The plane to Iceland boarded on time and we were 3 hours and 15 minutes in the air. The plane for Boston also departed on time and we even arrived in Boston about 20 minutes ahead of schedule. The rest is a ride home from my brother then unpacking and watching at least some of the Patriots game.

The picture from day 9 can be found here.

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Sweden Day 8

Today started out the latest of all because I was heading to Skokloster Slott. Skokloster Slott is a non-military castle built in the middle 1600s and used mainly as a summer home until the early 1900s when it was occupied full time. The upper floors are all preserved as is from the 1600s due to several family rules and the generally agreeable to antiques weather that Sweden has. In any event before I get into tons of details on it I was up at 6:45 but didn’t really get moving till a bit past 7:30 and ate breakfast at about 8:30. I knew I didn’t have to be to Skokloster until 11:30 because that is when the castle actually opened up. I basically headed to the train station at 9:00 and got on a 9:40 train to Bålsta station which turned out to be very much a suburban train/bus station with pretty much no amenities. That ride took about 50 minutes and from there I had to wait out the 11:00 bus which would take about 25 minutes to the castle. It was sunny out today but a bit cold and since Skokloster is north of Stockholm, probably a bit colder there than what I left behind in the city. The wait wasn’t that bad though due to the sun and it was over before I knew it. The bus ride was uneventful if curious for the fact that there were stops on this route that were literally in the middle of nowhere. I assume there are times people need it and fortunately they only stop if some presses the stop button but it really felt like having a bus stop on my own street in North Andover which would be beyond strange.

As you may have guessed this castle was way out in the middle of nowhere. It is right near the ocean and on a common throughway that ships used to take to get north to south along Sweden however and that is partially why it was built in the particular location it is in. The other being that it is right next door to the still basically preserved childhood house of the man that built the castle. He wasn’t royalty but a military general who had a lot of success in campaigns in Germany especially. For his efforts in the wars he was awarded a large area of land around where the castle is as well as 7 castles in Germany. This is partially why it was a summer home for him. The structure of the castle is taken from many of the German castles he had seen however he built the interior in a much more French style so as to be fashionable. Being a square building with a courtyard the exterior is outside of the fashion for the time where it instead should have been in the shape of an H. That said he stuffed the place full of all sorts of art, artifacts and even had a very large armory of weapons that dwarfed the size of the collection in the Army Museum. The castle offered a guided tour in Swedish or in English. For obvious reasons I took the English tour and was joined by the guide, named Eva and two Frenchmen who seemed likely to be college students. It was very nice having such a small group to work with because the tour became more of a conversation than a narration and the guide was very friendly and knowledgeable and answered any questions we asked. The castle has 77 rooms but we only visited a bunch on the second floor and then a couple on the third floor. They cannot have people go through certain rooms because it may damage the ceilings below them. The majority of the renovation work was done in the 19th century then redone in the middle 20th. The castle is the largest privately built/owned castle in Sweden, however the government bought ownership for preservation purposes in the 1960s and it became a museum at the time. There is supposedly a large history of it being a museum ever since it was built and the owning family apparently did not turn away visitors. The size and scope of the collection in the building is incredible. We saw a lot of pieces of art and furniture and the weapons collection was immense, and we barely saw any of the rooms in it. The guide assured us that every room is very much like the rooms we were in and all of the material is fairly well preserved due to the nature of Swedish weather. There obviously were spots where the sun had done damage to the gilded leather wallpapers or some paint or another but overall the quality of what was in there was very well kept.

After the castle I took a short trip to the church next door. It was apparently built on the foundations of an old cloister from the 1200s or so. The current church was also built in the middle 1600s I believe but the various paperwork I could read on it was a tad confusing. It obviously was modernized as it went along. When we were on the tour one of the Frenchmen asked if the castle had a chapel and the guide responded, no actually, then as she thought about it she said it is very curious because almost all castles have chapels of some sort but she had never realized or thought about it before. It is possible the family came to this church right next door or that they didn’t hold religion in high esteem. As I remember looking through the rooms that were shown to us I don’t really recall seeing much by way of religious artifact in the building. By the way, the perception that most of the riches were stolen, she said, is inaccurate as most of what he had in there was purchased, less than 10% was looted from war and most of that 10% she said was in books in the library which we didn’t get to see. She said the library was contained in 7 rooms and that the owner was an avid reader. The library can only be visited by special permission and accompanied by the librarian. But I was talking about the church. It was a fairly solid Scandinavian church, mainly of brick on the outside and was very warm inside so I hung out for a minute or two but not very long. From there I went over the only thing that looked like civilization in the form of a gas station/convenient store that probably isn’t open if the castle isn’t open. During the summer there is a boat launch right there too and they appeared to have a marine shop in there as well. I bought a cup of coffee and verified that the next bus to come through didn’t arrive until 3:30 and it was about 2:00. In order to kill time I decided I would get lunch of some form in the small cafeteria in the castle and had a bowl of creamy vegetable soup with 2 forms of bread. This was the first time my bread was not from a communal basket and they had a multigrain bread that seemed to be a soda bread rather than a yeast bread and one of their cracker like breads that I had seen all over but never tried. Both were on the blander side but ok. The soup was good and I had a Mariestads Export beer to go along. This was actually a good beer and I enjoyed it. The blond color was slightly darker than most of the Swedish beers I had and the flavor was actually very full.

After killing that time I walked out across the street and took pictures of the bomber (**Update: My brother has notified me that it was a C-47 transport not a bomber**) that was set up next to a hotel in a field. It had obviously seen the ravages of time but it was still very cool and I was curious why it was there but was not able to find out. The spot where the plane was also afforded a couple good pictures of the castle. I walked back after that and it was fairly close to the time the bus was going to arrive so I waited out the last few minutes and had an uneventful ride back to Bålsta station where the train back to Stockholm was actually just waiting and was able to get on right away. The train ride back was also uneventful and I was back in Stockholm Central Station at about 5pm. I figured my best bet was to get something to eat before heading back to the room to get things sorted out for the flight back on Sunday. I wandered around a bit indecisive about where to go and what to eat but finally opted to eat at China Sweden, obviously a Chinese restaurant. I had spicy Szechuan chicken, which came with boiled white rice and another Mariestads Export. The food was good but in Sweden the concept of spicy is much like it is in the Boston area which means not really spicy at all so far as I can tell, at least at this restaurant. After eating I headed back to the room to get set up to come back home.

The pictures from Day 8 can be seen here.