Sweden Day 4

Today started sort of late… I got up at 6:30 and got out the door to breakfast at about 7:30. I had the same as yesterday because I liked it and I am not really into the actual Swedish Breakfast concept. That said I headed over to the train station to get to my 8:30 train to Hallsberg (I heard it pronounced mainly Hallsberry) where I would switch to Örebro. Things did start off very wrong however in that the train to Hallsberg was 1.5 hours late due to signal troubles on the tracks. All the trains were very delayed in the morning and some were waiting longer than us. Now… you’re probably wondering why I would bother with going when the train was going to be that late or even going to be half that late. First off I had set my mind to doing it and the Savard stubbornness had kicked in and 1.5 hours was my limit and the train arrived with 2 minutes to spare. So I set out on the nearly 2 hour ride and it went by fairly uneventfully. Of course I knew I wasn’t making my change which should have happed an hour and 10 minutes before I arrived but I spoke to the woman at the desk and she set me on the next one that would get there. Since I had the rail pass I didn’t have to pay anything and it was only a couple stops up. I didn’t sit in the first class section for this ride and it wasn’t bad. The first class seats are better but there was nothing wrong with the regular second class seats. In any event I got to Örebro with it being slightly overcast and obviously having just passed through some rain but the whole day managed to be overcast and wet feeling but rain free. The temperature was probably in the 40F range.

Örebro is a large city it appears and I had actually landed at a small station, I had figured there would be a larger station but there wasn’t an accessible map to work with. I took a guess as to which way to head and did manage to find my way to the city center and from there I found Örebro Slott. The doors were open and I went in and found a small gift shop. The woman told me they are only open for guided tours on Saturday and Sunday but they had a history of the castle exhibit in the west tower. I had to exit the front gate and stay inside the moat to get into the west tower. It was kind of neat. The tower wasn’t gigantic and it was self serve but I liked what was there. After leaving the castle I tried to find Wadköping which is an open air museum in the lines of say Sturbridge Village and after some walking along the canal I managed to find it. It was indeed open (there was no charge) but the exhibits were minimal and like the fortress in Kungälv any of the costumers weren’t bothering with the day. Since there really wasn’t a lot of people there I could understand it. I had read that it gets big in the summer and at Christmas. Still I wandered it for a bit then wandered around the town for a while. I found my way back to the center of the city and eventually decided to have lunch at a place called Lokus that appeared to be run by Polish people. I had a hamburger with fries that they had put lettuce and Russian dressing on. The burger wasn’t over cooked but it was very thin, sort of a large version of a McDonald’s or Wendy’s burger. I didn’t take a picture of it because there were two elderly, very nervous women playing video gambling of some sort right in front of me as I ate and they kinda disturbed me. It wasn’t anything spectacular to look at anyway… That said it wasn’t all that bad.

Even though I had given myself 5, now 4 hours to see the town I was done quite early. I went back to the train station and hung around until I realized that I was at the wrong station just a few minutes before the train I was supposed to take arrived. Fortunately this station was before Örebro Central. I had assumed that Örebro would have a large station with shops and restaurants and such and had been surprised that all it had was this tiny little stop, but I was right in that it did have more. I just missed it. In any event I wasn’t likely to shop and had already eat so no big deal. The train ride back was uneventful and I was on the actual train I was supposed to be taking back as well so it worked out ok. The ride was also uneventful and I managed to nod off for some of the two hours it took. It was completely on time besides which was nice. When I got back to Stockholm I figured I would get dinner and headed up Drottninggatan which is sort of their version of Newbury street though probably a bit longer. It is the main shopping artery of the new town. I also knew that this would be directing me nearer to the hotel which was fine with me. The restaurant I chose was called Restaurang Drottninggatan (that’s Drottning Street basically). There I had meny 3 which was a set menu meal. Accompanied by a Czech beer I had first a baby shrimp in creamy dill salad that was wrapped in thinly sliced smoked salmon served on a dark rye toast accompanied by a small collection of greens and tomatoes. I skipped on the toast which was stale feeling and the greens which were undressed but the salad itself was good though I am not 100% fond of smoked salmon. The main course was deer in a red wine reduction served with black mushrooms and a cheesy kind of baked porridge (not quite polenta) and a ligonberry relish. I liked the deer though the offers were medium or well and though their medium is more rare than America’s medium the shape of the meat left a couple spots that were pretty much well done and those spots had a much gamier taste than the lesser cooked areas. I still very much liked it. The accompaniments were very good too and I ate pretty much everything. I finished with a coffee and a pear poached in red wine accompanied by a rum raisin ice cream. The ice cream was potent tasting. I liked it. After dinner I headed back to the room to write this and get rested for tomorrow.

The pictures from day 4 can be found here.