Sweden Day 7

Today started out at a reasonable time of about 7am. I did take it easy to start because as I’ve mentioned before things don’t open up early around here (or Denmark for that matter). So I even shaved like I should have yesterday but didn’t have the time to with having to get to the plane for Visby. I had breakfast at a little after 8am, then slowly walked downtown to scout out where the dinner cruise was supposed to be located and fortunately it was in a spot I already knew very well (more on the cruise or lack thereof later…). With that in mind I set out to find the Army Museum and took a few bad turns and got myself confused a couple of times so that I found it a little bit before 10am. Unfortunately I had reversed in my mind what time the museum opened and what time Skansen opened. The Army Museum opened at 11am. So I decided that since the location of the museum was actually pretty close to Skansen and the weather was still looking ok at this point I spent maybe 15 minutes walking over to Skansen and got in under the Stockholm Card without having to pay further. Skansen is an open air museum and has a variety of attraction in it varying from period housing that was moved into the museum to working craftsmen and such like you might find in Sturbridge village to a zoo of animals from Sweden a so on. It is very sizeable and I walked around from about 10:15 to about noon seeing as much as I could. There were a fair number of guests at the park though I am sure it is a very different scene in the summer time. The weather held to nothing more than a light drizzle throughout my visit and I was able to take a fair number of pictures successfully. In the photo album you will notice the pictures I took at the Army Museum first but I did actually go there after Skansen. At around noon I found what appeared to be the main cafeteria of the park and decided I would get lunch. They probably had started serving at about 11 and there was already a fair number of people in there. I chose to have the potato leek soup and the daily special which was lemon chicken with sugar snap peas and pineapple with a lemon sauce and jasmine rice. I also had a bottled beer that was better than any Swedish beer I had had to point and was very pleased with the meal and the beer overall. The soup really hit the spot…

After dinner I took the walk back to the Army Museum and spent about 2 and a half hours in there. No pictures of course… It is set up in 3 floors and the higher floor is the older history of Sweden and the Vikings and then their medieval armies and eventually into the armies that carried to just about the 1900s. There was a lot of reading and since all the boards were only in Swedish they had books on each floor that translated everything that was in the exhibit. They tried to do their best to point out where each text was on the walls or in the cases, but it was at times very confusing and I also caught myself wondering if the English translation didn’t have more to say than the boards did (perhaps because they explained more of Swedish history expecting that the Swedes would already know it). In any event the museum is not huge but there was a lot to see there and I read a real lot. Unfortunately the books were meant to stay in the building so I didn’t get to take it with me. There were a couple lines in them that made fun of the Danes that I would have liked preserved… In any event they had a fair amount of real pieces both very old and recent and a few replica pieces that were also noted. The second floor was dedicated to the 20th century and beyond including both the world wars and many other European conflicts. At this point they gave a more detailed account of the Swedish army and soldiers and even mentioned their participation in a fair number of other countries’ wars. The Swedes were non-participants in WWII and this is in part probably due to their location but also because they were willing to provide services to the Germans that staved off any attacks. This was mainly the ferrying of soldiers or prisoners around blockades. They state specifically that when the government felt they had built up their armed forces to a degree that they felt they could defend themselves from German attacks they broke off all aid to the Germans. That said they were technically a neutral country to the war. They had a large number of weapons in the weapons rooms which dated back mainly to the 1600s and moved into modern time. Any of the earlier pieces were displayed on the 3rd floor it appeared. They had a reasonable number and variety and included many that were Swedish from the more modern items and mainly Swedish weapons from the older pieces. From WWII on the weapons were mainly German, British, American and Russian. On the ground floor there was an artillery exhibit and a brief exhibit on Sweden’s participation in WWI. This was a special exhibit and as much as I would have liked to know what it said they didn’t actually have any English translations of it which was sort of disappointing as I am a WWI buff. The previous sections about WWI were more general and pointed out the limited involvement of the Swedes. The artillery was a series of cannons moved to mortars to guns and howitzers that spanned from very early cannons to fairly recent. The exhibit was not huge but it was well laid out through the timeline.

After getting out of the museum I walked into the Gamla Stan again and did a bit of shopping and killed some time just walking around (and even got myself turned around inside the old town and spent a few minutes trying to reorient myself). When I was all sorted out I walked back to the hotel. The wind had been picking up and at times was very strong and we had an occasional blob of rain that hit through though most of it was drizzly more than anything. I got back to the room at about 5 and warmed up for about an hour while checking some things online.

At 6 I headed out for the dinner cruise which was supposed to be to Vaxholm and back. Unfortunately after walking around the Strandvagen a few times I was not able to find any boats at all preparing to go out on any sort of dinner cruise. The sign said it should have been at departure point 16, but there didn’t actually appear to be a departure point 16 anywhere. I was there well before 7pm when it was supposed to start but I walked along both areas that had the various tour boats, especially where the company that was supposed to run the cruise seemed to have its boats, but there was nothing at all going on. I can only assume it got canceled due to either limited interest or bad weather or both. There was no sign anywhere saying it was canceled at all… Anyway, as I said it was supposed to depart at 7pm and I went back and forth until about 10 past without any luck. From there I decided I should just get dinner and after heading closer to the hotel I decided to try The London because they were advertising fish and chips and I thought that was what I felt like. Unfortunately, while the food looked good it was probably the least favorite meal I’ve had in Sweden and did nothing to make me think of the Brit version of fish and chips at all. The beer I had was Swedish and called Stor Stark and was a good blond beer. I am curious why the Swedes don’t export their beer to the US. I am sure the general nature of most of their beers would be found likeable by the average American. In any event this was a bit better than the majority of Swedish beers I had tried so there was at least that. The waiter never came back to offer me a second before I was done eating and I opted to just pay the bill and leave. From there I headed back to the hotel. There were 3 girls dressed up for Halloween that were probably in their late teens. I wished them a happy Halloween. In any event they were the only people at all I saw dressed up. It really still is not that big of a holiday outside of the US yet though I did see a few things here and there that suggest that perhaps it is catching on. I have taken pictures of many of them along the way in various days.

All in all it was a good day but the cruise was the first item I had planned on that I missed at all (I’ve even added a few things not planned, such as the Army Museum) and I am disappointed with that.

The pictures from Day 7 are available here.