Going Besök

Migrating to Wordpress

besoka — Sat, 8 Feb 2025 05:51:00 GMT

After struggling with this old platform out of nostalgia and symmetry, I've decided that it's just too old, broken and frustrating. It appears to be running an old version of Cloudflare that causes it to fail for increasingly random reasons - eg the phrase "(70s or 80s)".

Anyway, I've decided to use my Wordpress blog instead, so read all about our latest trip at

https://conjectureblog.wordpress.com/category/travel/

* Helsinki 2: Heavenfloati (notes)

besoka — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 16:18:00 GMT

Helsinki II - Heavenfloati

Day 1 = Sun 12 Jan

Train
- Possible snowplough at 3:30am
- Woken up in Tampere
- Packed up and off at Helsinki
- 2 Cabs to accom
Accom
- 2 level penthouse in Docklands-ish part of town
- Emma succeeds again
Walk
- Possibly last fine snowy day
  - Predicted to turn warmer and rainy, which would wash all the snow away
- Harbour road
- Helsinki Seaside walk
- Islands
- Park 1
  - View of coast
  - Sled hill
    - The size of a ski slope
    - Lots of people sledding
    - Long runs, taking maybe 30 seconds?
    - Kids having a great time
- Park 2
  - Another sled hill
  - View of harbour
- Harbour
  - Kuappahalli toilets
  - Grilli makarra
- Cathedrals looking nice in afternoon light
- Lux installation
- Esplanadi
  - Groups of people in pink jumpsuits
    - Possibly students?
  - Robert's Coffee
- Boulevardi
  - South Park sled hill
- Blocked roads and footpaths on harbour
- Home
Shopping
Dinner
Sauna
Bed

Day 2 = Mon 13 Jan

Slow start, catching up on sleep
Walk solo
- Past Playground and canals
  - Past Santakatu and under underpass under "Porkalaka" that Emma and Chris missed yesterday
- Past cemetery
- Around bay to beach
  - Hietaranta
  - Outdoor gym
  - Icy beach, walked on sea for about a foot after much testing
  - Lots of photos of snowy beach
- Along to Sibelius monument
  - Further than I thought
  - Asked directions "Missa sibeliusmonumentti on?"
    - Finnish guy answered in English (-:
    - Not far, just 100m on
  - Nice monument and interesting pinebush with snow on it
  - Busfull of Chinese kids
- Over to "Ilmatar and the Scaup (duck)" statue
  - Kalevala creation story
  - Home via rock church
- Rock church
  - Went inside
  - Nice
  - Meltwater trickling down rock inside in one place
- Souvenir
  - Suomi shirt
  - Only had M
- Went to join Emma, Carl and Granny for snowman building
Snowman Snow had just got wet enough
- Rolling snowballs
- Kit from Xmas present
Dinner
Dryer not drying, had to hang everything up around the flat
Drinks at Clarion Hotel Skybar
- Robust = Roibus infused brandy + ...
- Plum something that tasted like medicine
Home for sauna with Emma

Day 3 = Tue 12 Jan

Last full day
Weather was warmer and grey
- Slushy
- Stayed in and packed
- Seen everything on my list and not keen to add more
Made a quick snowman in the courtyard on the rubbish run

* Apukka Arctic resort (notes)

besoka — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 16:17:00 GMT

Apukka Resort

Day 0 = Thu 9 Jan

Arrived at Apukka
- Emma checked in
  - Kid on phone didn't notice his suitcase was making the automatic door open and close for half an hour
- Dropped our luggage and picked up out outer clothes
  - The guys doing the clothes were Greek
  - Big coveralls and boots
Snowshoeing
- Guide was an Austrian of Congolese parentage (Aime?)
- Walk along lake (ice is about 0.5-1.0m thick)
- Into forest
- Erica and I up front group, Emma and Carl further back
- Carl's snowshoes kept falling off, then Aime's and others
- Stopped for Fika of bikkies and gloggi
  - Carl-friendly pepparkakor (I took a photo, "Semper" brand)
- Emma knackered by the end, walked back over lake carrying snowshoes
Igloo
- Checked into igloo
  - Luggage had been taken there already
- "Kami glass igloo"
- Upstairs mezzanine for our bed with glass ceiling
  - Kids downstairs
- Very cramped but cosy, barely room to open suitcases
  - Bit hard to see too, the lights were not bright and hard to find
- Short panic when Emma noticed her laptop bag hadn't been delivered
  - Went back and they had it behind the bar because a tag had fallen off.
Dinner
- M Sauteed reindeer and mash - tasted like corned beef\
- E Tenderloin, which she enjoyed
- Em Risotto
- Carl = Chef (Giovanni Ribisi lookalike) came over to discuss
  - Arctic char (like salmon) and veggies and chips
  - Carl happy, really good service
- Desert
  - Rosemary and cream cheese parfait with cloudberries
    - Tasted like really good vanilla icecream (really nice)
  - Erica had Chocholate cake and orange icecream, she looooved the icecream
  - Emma had Cinnamon and cloudberry sorbet, which was nice bit not as nice as my "parfait"
Back to cabin and everybody fucked about way too long, especially Erica
- Gin and cloudberry "tall drink" from 24hr market in Rovaniemi
Bed
- No aurora, even though app alerted Emma
- Internal reflections of fire-like LEDs
- Comfy bed and luckily I didn't need to go to the loo since that was down a lomng ladder.

Day 1 = Fri 10 Jan

Breakfast
- Usual hotel fare but jolly nice
- Chef (Rihho?) once again did a great job catering for Carl - bacon, hash browns and baked beans
Reindeer sleigh
- I grabbed us some mittens
  - Easier to keep hands warm since fingers can warm each other
  - I found slipping thumb out of its bit and balling fists helped when my hands got cold.
- Local Bjork-nosed guide "Jannika" from these parts
  - Her partner and daughter own reindeer, and she works on the family farm
  - I didn't get the impression that she was Sami though
- Nice walk to reindeer pens and fed some lichen to some reindeer.
- Then a fika of warm berry juice and some reindeer facts while we waited for the reindeer to be ready.
  - All reindeer in Finland are (technically) owned - there are no wild reindeer
    - Finns don't like to say how many reindeer they own, though
      - "Enough for a small swamp"?
  - Curved toes on traditional Sami boots are to hook into skis
- Jumped into sleights 2 per sled
  - Me and Erica, Emma and Carl and Granny (who joined us for the day) by herself.
- Reindeers pooped and weed - drilling a yellow hole in the icy ground.
- Through the forest and then out along the (Apukka) lake
  - Rising sun (11am) touching/illuminating the tops of the pine trees like giant candles
- Really great experience
Walk on lake solo
- Dropped everyone off for lunch, but decided to go for a walk as still full from brekky (and stingy)
- Walked out on lake, past last footprints.
  - Probably ruined a few photos for other people, but wanted untouched snow
- Meditated for 15min (boots good, feet not cold in snow)
- Breeze smelled like the "birch-scented" sauna oil
- Gorgeous - naturegasm
  - Lots of photos of forest and snow and island
- Sun low in South and moon slightly higher in North
- Snow angel
Back home for a beer and wait for the others
- Emma and Chris changed Emma's bandage on her finger
- Chris headed back to town and I dragged Emma out for a walk on the lake
Walk on lake with Emma
- Lovely out there again
- Sun setting, and a couple of stars
- Sky clear, fingers crossed for some stars tonight at least
Back home for a rest before dinner and Night Train
Night train
- Greek guide and Spanish guide
  - Finnish driver
- Old bus on skis pulled by a snowplough
  - Not the cute one, but possibly warmer
- 30min drive out, pretty dull and a bit more crowded than I prefer
  - To frozen swamp with a couple of koti huts and fires
- Guide started telling us about the science when we asked if the light behind him was the Aurora
  - He said yes, so we all went over to look.
  - Dim, but noticeable, though Emma was in the koti at the time trying to get hand warmers working for Carl
- Guide and driver helped us take photos with Aurora
  - Some trick to do with focusing on the ground first to set the light and then pointing up and shinging a torch
    - Anyway, the Finn knew what he was doing and took photos for us.
    - Interestingly, the Aurora shows up better in photos than it does to the naked eye
- Then the Spanish guide fucked off to the other group with the Greek and left the Finn to tell us interesting things and hand out the food
  - Grilli Makarra
    - pre-cooked sausages grilled over the fire on pronged skewer
  - Gloggi
    - warmed berry juice
    - "I'll hand out the chewies."
  - Reindeer in Finland
    - 180000 limit (so as not to stress the environment)
  - Sami and Finnish legends about Aurora
    - Don't whistle when there's an Aurora or a fox (or old men) will come and eat you
  - The Finn seemed to do most of the work of the other two
  - Aurora didn't really reappear and we were getting very cold
  - On bus back about 10min in there was an Aurora alert on the app and it sounds like we missed a sighting at the resort
    - Oh well, no guarantees we would have seen it or that it was any better than we saw out on the swamp
    - Full moon didn't help
  - Back around midnight
    - Very tired next day

Day 2 - Sat 11 Jan

Up early for last breakfast
- Erica being annoying and I had to sit at a different table because I'd offended her somehow
Husky ride
- Whole family packed into one sled
  - Me driving and the other three wedged in instead of as pairs
  - We all protested but no joy
  - Erica in tears
- Farkin cold
- Kids hated it and decided it didn't happen
  - Because they were painfully uncomfortable and cold
- Puppies afterwards
Another solo walk on the lake
- Sunset was more impressive than Aurora
- Dug down through snow to ice (about 20cm)
- Meditated
- Feet not cold in snow (snow warmer than air)
Train station
- Cemetary IV
  - Found Emma's great-grandparents grave
  - Farkin cold (painfully so)
  - Decided that this must be why Finns have "sisu", since they live in an environment that is literally used by scientists to simulate pain (ice-fingers)
    - Danes: "Hygge" = "Let's hang out and get comfy together."
    - Swedes: "Lagom" = "Only take what you need."
    - Finns: "Sisu" = "Stop wingeing, we're all fuckin cold."
  - Lit the memory candle
- Restaurant (Alvari)
  - "Rovaniemi" pizza = Smoked Reindeer, pineapple and blue cheese
    - Actually really yummy
Train
- Compartment
  - Toilet converted to shower
    - I had a shower, it was cold
      - Brisbane cold, not Rovaniemi
  - Carl ended up in my compartment after a late reshuffle because Erica didn't want to share with Granny.
    - He took top bunk
    - He also enjoyed sitting by the window and watching the scenery
    - And he also propped himself up on his bunk to enjoy the scenery as he listened to his sleep story
- Scenery
  - Oulu
- Forest
  - Mostly dark but saw Big Dipper
- I listened to a Ghost Notes podcast and went to sleep pretty easily

* Rovaniemi (notes)

besoka — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 16:11:00 GMT

Day 0 = Sun 5 Jan

Flight (Finnair)
- Gorgeous view of Finland from above (daytime flight)
  - Snow-covered-ice-covered-lakes
  - Forests in between
  - Granite boulder fields
- Listened to Sibelius 2nd Symphony and blissed out
  - Travel blues lifting
- Landed in Rovaniem1 at about 1:30 and -25C
Taxi to accom
- Another brown taxi driver
- Really helpful (also the Finnish guy at the airport)
- Beautiful scenery
  - Hoarfrost on all the trees
- Farkin cold
  - Like being naked in Brisbane winter
Accom
- Korkalonkatu, which Emma simplified to "Krakalakin St"
- Small penthouse
- Lucky Granny had decided to find her own because not really big enough for 4 (barely big enough for 3)
  - But great location
  - Also a sauna in the bathroom
Went shopping
- Little Tardis of a K-market
- Reindeer soup, blueberry juice
- Moomin tea
Then a walk by myself to Lordi square
- Sampokeskus - named after the cornucopic macguffin of the Kalevala
- Rival Santa hut
  - Cutting Santa's lunch and badmouthing the wait time
  - EUR35 for a photo?
- Walk to river
  - Rovan-yay-me!
- Back home via different supermarket
Dinner
- Reindeer soup
  - Like cream of mushroom soup, but with smoked reindeer instead of mushrooms
  - Very nice
- Karhu (The bear, Brown bear, Angry bear)
Sauna
- Part of ensuite
- Very relaxing
- Sauna oils - Birch, Pine tar, Smoky, Eucalyptus (empty)
- Cold shower after
Sort throat at bedtime
- Possibly due to extreme cold or extreme heat of sauna?

Day 1 = Mon 6 Jan

Breakfast
- Blueberry pouring yogurt turned out to be blueberry soup, still nice though
Testing clothes
- Balcony was enclosed but outside temp
- So got Carl out there with all the layers to check
- Me too
  - Bottom = Undies, thin trakkie dacks, (optional inner pants), pants
  - Top = Merino undershirt, T-shirt, Cotton knit long sleeve shirt, fleece, windbreaker/raincoat
  - Feet = normal socks, woll socks, boots
  - Hands = Women's jogging gloves, Goretex ski gloves
  - Head = Normal beanie, extra beanie, neck/face warmer (more practical that scarf), N95 mask also quite an effective facewarmer
Walk with Carl
- Towards river
- Through park with sled hills
  - "Angry Birds park"
- River with sign saying "Don't walk on the ice!!!" next to lots of footprints on the ice.
- Back past the apartment to wave through the window.
- Shops again - Moomin bag, cocoanut water for Carl
  - Shop attendant greeted us and I thought he was saying "Do you need help?" so I said "No, thanks"
  - And he said [Finnish accent] "But I greet all my customers! It's my way of being polite!"
  - He seemed quite upset, poor guy, but it was kinda funny how dramatic he seemed.
Lunch and chill
- While Emma and Granny went for a walk along the river to have Fika ("kahvitauko")
- Finnish TV
  - Movie: Toivelauluja
- Chill with the kids
  - Got Erica a bit excited about Arktikum Museum (there's animals)
  - Also got her a bit excited about trying Reindeer soup
Walk after Emma got home
- Apparently the next 2 days are take with Santa Clause and Ice HOtel
- Walked to Arkticum to check how far
- Saw lights on horizon, not sure if Aurora through cloud, or city lights reflected in cloud
- Shopping - no
- Walked home via river
  - Initial patch of light probably city, but about 4 other patches that were probably Aurora through cloud
- Went to K-market for Reindeer Soup
Home
- Erica liked the reindeer soup!
- Meatballs for me, but she left me a bit of soup
Snow ploughs out cleaning the streets
- Specialised front-end loaders
Sauna before bed
- Cold water in bowl in basin to cool beer
  - Lapin Kulta = Lapland's Gold/Treasure (also name for sweetheart)
- Löylya = to throw water on a sauna

Day 2 = Tue 7 Jan

Santa Clause Village
- Bus from City Centre, near Granny's place
  - Italian bus driver who couldn't quite remember the timetable on the way back
  - "Ah forget it, just-a take a photo of the timetable at the stop."
  - Stop at Santa Park and then Santa Clause Village
- Finding our bearings
  - Info
  - Tickets to get a time to line up for Santa
    - Helpful elf lady
  - Photos of "Arctic Circle"
- Lunch
  - Erica's "emu" for the morning
  - Ended up with Santa's Pizza and Burger
    - Tempted by the "Reindeer and Peach" pizza, but left them to it and went exploring
    - Reindeer rides were nice to look at
    - Mrs Santa Clause Cafe had a nice walk in
- Lined up for Santa
  - Told the wait was an hour, but only 20min
  - Met the big guy and got some photos
  - Erica had a meltdown about choosing the right photo
    - The one she liked of herself had the rest of us blurry and/or awkward
    - Granny finally put her foot down, but Erica in tears
    - As we were leaving the Elf handed Emma a copy of the other photo for free with a "Here, Merry Xmas"
      - So awesome
      - [One day a young elf took pity on me]
- Missed sunset but went for a walk around
  - I showed them Mrs Santa Clause, lost Granny, found Granny
- Walked to find the huskies for a look
  - Granny had seen them from outside when she was here in summer years ago
  - But looks like they were behind a wall now
- Everyone tired and cold by then, so waited for the bus home
Back in town
- Granny went home and Emma and Carl went to buy Carl some under-gloves
- Erica and I went home
Walk to Church and lake
- After Emma got home, I went out for dinner supplies
- But first I really wanted to check out the church nearby ("Rovaniemin kirkko")
- It was gorgeous, with hoarfrost-laden trees all around and floodlights
  - Even the graveyard was pretty, and neat
  - All you need is a good snowplough and everything looks neat
- Down to Kirkkolampi ("Church pond")
  - Looked pretty, but no time for a lap yet
    - Snow-covered-ice-covered
  - Resolved to bring Emma
  - Local teenager preparing to cross ice, didn't stay to watch.
- K-Market
  - Jams - Cloudberry and Lingonberry
    - Tastes the same as IKEA jam
  - Smoked Reindeer
    - Cross between salami and mushrooms
  - More Reindeer soup
  - Karhu 8% - "Angry bear"
Decided to blow off Snow Hotel visit
- And spend more time seeing Rovaniemi
- Church, Sledding, Arktikum
Emma's finger
- Driving finger
- Sore all trip but now looking infected
- Had got some antiseptic ointment a few days ago, but we're off to Apukka soon, so best to try and get some antibiotics
- Trying to book Dr appt
Sauna and bed

Day 3 = Wed 8 Jan

Emma off to Acute Care Clinic nearby with Granny for her finger
- She saw a podiatrist/physio who said it looked fine (though, presumably, longer and higher up than they were used to seeing?)
Winds overnight have blown some of the frost off the trees )-:
- But got to see the difference between frost-covered trees and snow-covered trees
Sledding with Carl
- Angry Birds (themed) Park
- Easy hill
- Harder hill
- Hill with snowplough mound
- Carl loved it
Walk with Emma
- Around Church pond
  - Lovely
  - Quiet neighbourhood (Rauhankatu = "Peace and Quiet St")
  - Art
  - The Lord is my Shepherd in English and Finnish
  - Lady on Cross Country skis
- Church
  - Still gorgeous
  - Looked for grave (E8 from Anders email)
  - Dug snow off a few graves (8 from each end of a few rows), no luck
  - Found directory and then dug down to some Oikarianen graves
    - Dug down through snow, not, y'know, dirt...
  - Another look suggested that we were in a different cemetary and the one Anders was pointing us to was further out of town
    - Oh well
  - Went inside
    - Nice lady priest
    - Nice paintings (looked a bit like really good chalk drawings, but obviously more permanent)
    - Altar, ceiling, along alcoves in walls
      - One of a reindeer herder
Home for lunch
- Convincing Erica to actually go out for a change
Arktikum
- A bit of effort getting Erica out the door
- But a nice walk across town
- Good museum exhibits
  - Science
    - Arctic climate
    - Northern lights
    - Arctic animals
  - History
    - Sami
    - WW2 and the destruction of Rovaniemi
    - Salmon
Shopping
- Returned cans
  - Good system
  - You take the cans to the supermarket and put them in the machine
  - It gives you a docket with a barcode,
  - which you scan at the checkout for a discount off your bill
- Both supermarkets
- Unplugged beeper ("Bee-boo!")
Dinner banquet of leftovers
- Including Piirakka (Pirog - borrowed from Slavic)

Day 4 = Thu 9 Jan

Packed up and headed to Apukka Resort
The usual stress and bother.
Cab to resort

* Helsinki 1: Kamppi ( notes)

besoka — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 16:00:00 GMT

Helsinki 1

Day 0 = Thu 2 Jan

Helsinki
- Russian capital of Finland, moved closer to Russia than the old Swedish capital of Tuurku
  - Not the introduction to the second act of a regrettably broad pre-War production of Dante's Inferno by the CWA Peking Opera Appreciation Society
- Small fishing village that grew from 4000 in 1840s to ??? in ???
- Mostly built during the Tsarist Russian occupation, and probably fairly contemporaneously with Brisbane
Landed in Helsinki
- The shops said everything was "Normal", which was a relief
- Lunch at airport
- Cab to accommodation
  - Honest driver
Accom
K Supermarket
- "Kamppi" shoping centre
- Shopping in Finnish
  - Luckily (for me) Swedish is an official second language in Finland, so all products had Swedish names (and ingredients) somewhere
  - Meatballs not Carl-friendly, but found sausages that he might like
    - They seemed traditional and tasted a bit like kabana
    - Update: He didn't like them, oh well, I'm happy to finish them off
    - Plus a "Finnish Saturday sausage", which might be like luncheon meat
    - Update: He didn't like that either "It tastes like jelly if it was made of meat."
  - Having to weigh the fruit and veggies and pop a price sticker on the bag
    - Forgot to do one bag but checkout guy did it for me
  - "Post Malone" at checkout asked (in Finnish) what I assume was "Hey mate, can I hop in front of you, I've just got a couple of tinnies?"
    - Speaking of, while Sweden sells 35% beer in supermarkets, in Finland you can buy 8% Karhu beer.

Early to bed
- Took a Zyrtec antihistamine to try to
  - 1. sleep better
  - 1. reduce immune symptoms that aren't actually fighting the virus (which I assume happens in the bloodstream, not the nose)

Day 1 = Fri 3 Jan

Good night's sleep
- Zyrtec worked
- Though possibly also finally over the cold as well
  - Though I don't sound like it, now in Old Man River mode
Travel blues setting in (though didn't realise it till later)
Walk around
- Went out for an hour while Emma and Chris got ready to go to an art gallery
  - Still planty of sbnow around, but the footpaths had turned to slush underfoot
- Walked across Mannerheimintie, past Central Railway Station with it's famous statues
- Up past the Cathedral
- Down to harbour
- Back up Esplanaadi
- Crazy Finnish joggers - one layer of lycra and slippery footpath!
- Down Mannerheimintie, past Lönnrotinkatu and Kalevankatu
- Ducked into Moomin Shop
- Great location! The whole walk took only an hour.
Back home
- It started snowing!

* Tried the "Finnish Saturday Sausage", turned out to be a lot like Devon.

Off again for another walk, this time in the snowing snow.
- Erica had a migraine
- Carl was still mad at me, though I hoped he might get FOMO
- Temppeliaukion kirkko (Rock Church)
  - 8 Euros to get in, so had a wander around and over
  - Nice photo of "the other Dome of the Rock" (the one nobody is fighting over) with the clearing sky behind
  - Checked out the "souvenir canon" in the shops around
  - Headed along "Aurorankatu" (Aurora St) to ...
- Finlandia Hall
  - Looks a bit like QPAC in Brisbane
  - Lovely view of the lake nearby
  - Lots of snow
    - Beach volleyball court and deck chairs in the snow
    - BBQ and picnic table in the snow
  - More cool buildings in the area
    - Did the whirlwind home
    - via what I think was a walkway that used to be a railway cutting.
  - Dropped past Kamppi for more supplies
Emma took Chris to check into Scandic *

Day 2 = Sat 4 Jan

Slow start

Went off ahead again
- Vanha kirkkopuisto (Old Church Park)
  - So pretty with fresh snow, but church was closed.
  - Old tombstones
- Lönnrotinpuistikko
  - Lönnrot monument
  - Elias Lönnrot and Väinämöinen
- Moomin shop
  - Weird angry Moomin shirt, but bought a happier Tshirt
- Aleksanterinkatu main shopping street
  - Stockmann department store
  - World Trade Centre
    - "The Horcrux of Capitalism"
- Past Senaatintori and Helsinki Cathedral to back down to Harbour
  - Markets on waterfront
  - Sauna complex on far side under skywheel
- Uspenski Cathedral
  - Orthodox Cathedral presumably built by the Russians
  - Impressive but weirdly small on inside
  - Lots of bling though
Finally got word from Emma that they'd finally left and were on their way to the Cathedral
- Joined them at Cathedral
- They didn't want to go inside for some reason
- They headed off to Uspenski Cathedral while I looked inside Helsinki Cathedral
  - Bigger than the Orthodox place with less bling
- I headed over to Kuappahalli
  - Food hall / deli
Emma messaged and said they were looking for somewhere to eat
- I said Kuappahalli, she seemed dubious but we went there and it was lovely
- Erica had reindeer burger/kebab
- I had a lihapiirakka (meat pie)
  - Beef and rice baked in dough
  - plus a Karelian pasty (karjalanpiirakka)
- The rest had baked potatoes
  - Emma got the cook to get Carl an unbuttered one (using the allergy card she'd printed), which he fluffed up and added salt to
    - Carl enjoyed it
- Back to markets
  - Over-mittens for Carl, though possibly too tight
  - I got a grillimakkaraa (grilled sausage)
    - Which was very warm (lammin), and I ordered in (mostly) Finnish!
- Walk along Esplanaadi to Moomin shop for everyone else to shop
- Emma and Chris went to fika at Karl Fazer
  - I took the kids home

Shopping again
- Saw the "Aussie Bar" and had a quick look in
  - They had soccer on the TVs, so marks off for that
- Dropped off and took down rubbish
  - Oddly specific pictures on "general rubbish"
    - Nappy, coffee and toothbrush
Another walk in the nighttime
- Might as well
- Went in opposite direction
- Stockmann
- Esplanaadi
- Harbour
- Cathedral
- Railway Station
  - Found "Olivia"
- Home
Ice cold water on tap
- Shower with cold water to end
- Icecream headache
Dinner and YLE Uutiset
Packing and podcast

Day 3 = Sun 5 Jan

Mostly packed, so brekky and out the door to the cab across the street at Scandic with Granny
Nice drive to airport
- Past Finlandiatalo and lake
  - Pizza Talo
- Taxi drivers are all brown in Finland too (so far)
A relaxed hour wait at airport
Flight (Finnair)
- Gorgeous view of Finland from above (daytime flight)
  - Snow-covered-ice-covered-lakes
  - Forests in between
  - Granite boulder fields
- Listened to Sibelius 2nd Symphony and blissed out
- Landed in Rovaniem1 at about 1:30 and -25C

* Stockholm (notes)

besoka — Fri, 3 Jan 2025 15:43:00 GMT

More notes only, though this one loaded with less swearing at least.

Day 0 = Sun 29 Dec

Train to Stockholm
- Got to Stockholm Centralen
  - Tiny old slow lifts that took 2 people at a time
    - Long distance train station that doesn't seem to think people have luggage
  - Found our T-Banan station - Another lift
  - Off at Gamla Stan (1 stop) - yet another lift
  - Geez people, get some decent lifts
Found our accommodation about 70m from train station
- Warren of a flat on the ground floor of a townhouse
- Very high ceilings (12 foot at least)
  - Ceiling height on this trip averages out to "normal" after Örebro cellar.
- Monkbrogatan (Monk bridge street) near the corner of Yxsmedsgränd ("Axesmiths alley")
Back to Munksbrohallen supermarket at T-ban station for supplies
- Then back again when my attempts to feed my family were rebuffed with extreme prejudice by all concerned
- Falcon Bayersk
  - "darker than a light lager but lighter than a dark lager"
  - Quite nice
- Pågen Limpan bread and Maasdamer cheese, yum
  - Swedens TipTop but with rye and possibly molasses?
  - "Classic Swedish loaf is baked using wheat and sifted rye flour together with sourdough and syrup"
Went for my usual walk by myself
- Through Stortorget
- Markets closed after Xmas, but stalls kind of clogging up the place and possibly wrecking the view - will see tomorrow
- To harbour near "modest" Xmas tree
- Walk around towards Skeppsbron to see Gamla Stan across the harbour
- Back to Kungsträdgård to see the ise skating and lights
- Around past the water rushing out of Malaren, to Drottningsgatan (Queen St) mall
  - Restrained myself from going into pub, rewarded self with another Falcon Bayersk later
- Back past Riksdagen, bought glögg
- Along Västerlånggatan to Järntorget and then around past Slussen.
- Past "Mazzarini" cafe, sadly closed for the Xmas season
- and back to supermarket for more supplies and then home
Soup for Carl
- Turns out he was hoping for carrot soup(?!?)
- Told off by Erica as she ate the Caesar salad she'd complained about me buying in the first place.
Bedtime
- Big foldout couch in living room
- Sensor light

Day 1 = Mon 30 Dec

Solo walk
- Riddarholmen and lake
- Stortorget
- Harbour
Group walk
- Södermalm towards Mojang
  - Makers of Minecraft
- Couldn't find Mojang but photo out front
- Up Skinnarviksberget
  - Granite outcrop in Södermalm with nice view of lake, Stadshuset, Gamla Stan
- Past Chicago dance studio
- Home via "beach" at Slussen
Emma and Chris off to see Gamla Stan after lunch and before sunset
- Followed later with the kids
- Stortorget has been half cleared of little Xmas market cabins/wooden shipping containers
- Hot chocholate and cinnamon buns/blueberry pie + alcoholic glögg in [Kaffekoppen](https://cafekaffekoppen.se/en/gallery)
- Girls went off souvenir/art shopping
- Took Carl home via circuitous route involving Harbour, Järntorget+CoopSoup
- Went off alone to shop at Munksbrohallen
  - But detoured back via bridge to Södermalm and Munkbrohamnen "beach" on other side of Gamla Stan T-banen
Ladies jogging gloves OK but a bit of stuffing about with two sets.
Catching Erica's cold
- Bad night's sleep

Day 2 = Tue 31 Dec

Nyårsafton (NYE)
Cold
- Frost on ground
- Quick walk to check layers - too many
- Went to Slussen and back past playground on Prästgatan
  - Gamla Stan triangles within triangles
Skansen
- Got 82 ferry from Slussen to Djurgården
- Lovely views of the harbour and Gamla Stan
- Walked up to Skansen
- Erica wanted to see the otters
  - Memories of Lone Pine - "Wanna see the emus"
- Found seals and an otter
  - Also Wild Boar + piglets
  - European Bison
- Moose enclosure empty
  - Also Arctic fox
- Carl cold hands and a bit miserable (despite new Goretex gloves)
  - Mine too - thought I'd packed my new Goretex gloves but hadn't
  - Found toilets and washed hands in warm water and dried under warm air
- Found warm tent for lunch
  - Wood fired stove
  - Reindeer burger
    - Actually beef burger with fried reindeer slices on top like bacon
    - Still really nice with cloudberry cream cheese and lingon BBQ sauce
- Animals were more awake after lunch
  - Saw Moose (älg) and Arctic Fox (fjällräven)
  - Erica excited
- Walked back via some old Sami buildings
  - Baba-Yaga storehouse on chicken-like legs (treetrunks)
- Setting up for Nyårsafton På Skansen
  - Annual New Years telecast
- Ferry home, more views of Gamla Stan but this time in the evening
- Coop soup for Carl
Walk by self to check out souvenir shops
- Always a "Canon"
Identified NYE spot for fireworks if we're still keen by midnight
After dinner I watched some "Doobidoo Nyårsspecial" while everyone got ready
Walk after dinner
- Found a good spot at Munkbrohamnen "beach" to watch fireworks lit over Mälaren
- Got text from Emma they were ready, so went and got them but they just missed a burst of fireworks. This was my fault somehow.
- Waited and saw a few fireworks and then walked past Riddarholmen and over to Slottsbacken and the harbour side
- Saw a few more fireworks going off on that side, climbed statue plinth for a bit
- Walked home via Stortorget
- Dropped everyone home and went back to my banana lounge at Munkbrohamnen.
- Went home about 11:30.
At home
- Discovered that we had a good (warm) view of the same Mälaren fireworks thorough the living room window
- Put on "Tolvslaget På Skansen" on SVT Play
- Watched fireworks out the window and filmed and took photos (and Emma did moreso)
FB post
- The fireworks here are a bit more DIY "light it and run", with no apparent organisation or geographical pattern, though with often impressive results. So they've been going off stochastically all night with increased activity around the hour and at midnight. But our window happened to point in roughly the right direction to view those lit over Lake Mälaren in warmth and comfort.
Ring Out Wild Bells poem
Erica ate 12 grapes in Spanish tradition, I jumped in the ait at midnight in Danish tradition
- Very late to bed.
- Still got cold, bad night's sleep again.
- Would kill for some pseudoephidrine (or even real ephidrine, just not the pseudo-pseudopehidrine)

Day 3 = Wed 1 Jan

Snow still on ground outside
Feeling pretty rubbish from cold
- Should isolate but nobody else does so would only be robbing myself of sightseeing
- Wore a mask most of the time though
Souvenir shopping with Emma
- Got some nice shirts
Walk with Erica
- Over to Normalm to see the water flowing out of the lake (Strömmen?)
- I wanted to walk down Prästgatan, Erica wanted pizza.
  - I thought she wanted takeaway so went past pizza buffet on Stortorget
  - Ended up in Sally's Pizza on Västerlånggatan
    - Took longer than I'd hoped, but lovely meal with Erica
    - Talked about Year 9
  - Back later than planned and Emma and Chris tapping feet waiting to go out themselves
Bit of a rest then out with Carl
- Carl wanted to spend his money from G&G
- Nice little Finnafallet-esque figurine
- And some fridge magnets for Mummy
- Walked the length of Prästgatan and saw playground behind Tyskkyrkan
Off to Supermarket
- Munkbrohallen closed so off to Coop one last time
Wrestled with blog
- "names" made it crash???
Dinner and packing for early trip to airport

Day 4 - Thu 2 Jan

Up at 4am
- though up most of the night with my cold
  - Missing pseudoephidrine, best I could get were fishermans friends and Vicks lollies
- Packed and in the cab to the airport
  - 40min ride throughg snowy pre-dawn
Airport
- Most bags between 23 and 24kg, which guy waved through
- Emma's bag over 27kg, so she had to wait in another line to pay for excess luggage
  - She reckons it was cheaper than you'd think
    - which is good enough for me, as an inverse Bogart "I don't mind the money leaving, I just don't like to watch it walk away"
  - Not enough time to redistribute things to my bag last night (late and I was sick and already in bed)
- "Priority boarding" was weird
  - "Priority" people boarded the bus to the plane first
  - Which meant they were the last off the bus and last onto the plane
Took off
- Got to see the archipelago, as the land disintegrates towards Finland
- Listened to Ghost Notes podcast and enjoyed a free coffee

* Örebro (notes)

besoka — Wed, 1 Jan 2025 13:39:00 GMT

More notes only. This blog is really glithcy about some content, so I've had to delete some sections to get it to save without it crashing to an error page. Seriously, the word "names" triggered it.

Day 1 = Thu 19 Dec

Last Scandic breakfast
- They were so awesome catering for Carl's allergies
Train to Örebro
- Faced backwards so listened to Star Guitar
- Yet again the backpack showed its value
- Saw the Swedish countryside change from Skånes broadleaf forests to the pine'n'birch of the rest of the country.
- Also saw a moose.
- People hogging 6-seaters
Örebro
- Met by Anders, Agnete and Annika
- Cellar dwelling
- Very low ceilings
  - Had to walk like a monk in prayer for a week
  - Jul lights everywhere
- Coop (Coop-a-doop)
  - Ärtsoppa
  - Köttbullar for Carl

Day 2 = Fri 20 Dec

Carl's birthday.
I took a walk to the castle, the kids needed a rest morning.
- Bit frustrating that we flew tham halfway around the world to sit in the bedroom and watch YouTube, but hopefully they'll get out more after a rest.
- Beautiful blue skies after some rainy days.
- Castle is still gorgeous.
- Also went to the supermarkets (ICA and Coop)
  - Huge cheese
  - Huge bread
- Ice in the puddles
- LL Cool J = "Look Left! Cool, Ja?"
Dragged Carl outside
- He discovered how slippery ice is, but didn't fall over.
Off to Anders and Agnetes for fika and then on to Anna's for (Carl-friendly) tacos
- Anders showed us a book of sketches by Eero
- Tapestry of Finafallet by Chris
- Tacos by Anna, with extra loving care for Carl

Day 3 = Sat 21 Dec

Winter Solstice
- Sunrise about 9:45
- Sunset about 3:15
Trip to Finafallet and/or Skogalund
- Split up in cars, I was with Anna and Magnus
  - Tenants Union
- Snow started (on ground) just north of Örebro
- Skogalund
  - Sledding
  - Carl finally mastered turning, after ending up in the trees a few times
  - Fika
  - Snowball fight
- Finafallet
  - More snow
  - Snowmen - snow was too dry in Skogalund but perfectly damp in Finafallet for rolling big snowballs
  - Silence of snowy forestsWalk back to car (burned off some fika)
- Drive home
  - Lovely Swedish lights
    - Traditional chevrons and stars in windows
    - More strings of fairly lights than 2008, though all in tasteful warm yellow
    - Same in town too
    - So gorgeous
- Homemade smögåsbord at home
SVT Play recommendations
- Drömlandet
- Al Pincher

Day 4 = Sun 22 Dec

Walk to Örebro Castle
- Through town, Drottninggatan to Stortorget then on to Slott
- Castle looking good, but a bit cloudier and water in Svartån was muddy rather than tea-coloured.
- Museum in castle, but will ha ve to come back for it.
- Castle built in 12th century to guard the bridge (bro) over the gravel banks (öre), which is a strategic bottleneck through the region of Närke between Svealand (north-east) and Götaland (south). Turned into a Rennaissance palace in 1500s under the Vasa family, and then became a prison. Renovated in 1900s with plaster removed from walls in an historically-misguided romantic nnotion of what a castle should look like, which nonetheless turned it into a very charming stonework castle.
Walk to Wadkoping
- Erica spoiling for a meltdown.
  - Bored -> silly -> agressive -> finally provoked into tears -> sulk -> done
- Anyway, Wadkoping kinda ruined
Magnustaxi to Anna and Magnus's for fika with Martin.
- Carl - "Taxi mycket"
- Met Emma's cousin Martin and his daughted Julia
- They drove 2 hrs from Linköping
- Martin works in AI, an we had an interesting discussion about chunking AI

Day 5 = Mon 23 Dec

Rest day
- Update blog
Emma and Erica went to lunch at Castle Cafe and then to light candles at Siri and Kalle's grave
Afternoon walk to castle to see lights in Stortåget and around town
- The night before Julafton, so pretty quiet
Picked up some things from ICA
- Came out and it was snowing!

Day 6 = Tue 24 Dec

Julafton (Xmas Eve).
- Today is Julafton (Xmas Eve), which is the main day of celebration with family (I think Juldagen [Xmas Day] is traditionally reserved for church). And we woke up this morning to a light frosting of snow on the ground. So we got our White Xmas after all (or a close enough approximation that we're happy to call it so - tomorrow is a warm 7C, so it won't last)!
Snow still outside
- Went out for a quick play
- Hands quite cold in gloves, might need to look for better gloves or under-gloves (if that's a thing)
- Put on all my layers (5 top and 4 bottom) and went for a walk around the block. Seemed warm enough, hopefully good enough for Rovaniemi.
- Hands not so cold when body was warmer, maybe that's a thing?
Off to Xmas lunch at Anna and Magnus's
- Annika and Mattias and Leo
- Tasty Julöl from supermarket (and midstrength IPA)
- Lunch
  - Took great care of Carl
    - Meatballs, sausages, hand-picked kantarel, potatoes
  - Huge ball of cheese
  - Jonsons, Vasterbotten pie, Kantarel quiche, pickled herring, deviled eggs?
- Kalle Anka
- Visit from Santa
  - Anders was out but met him on the stairs
- Presents
  - Kids took turns being Santa
- Dessert
- Julklappar game
  - Trade with Magnus
Home
- Maccas for Erica and my own QP meal made from meatballs, cheese, pickles, senaps, ketchup and bread

Day 7 = Wed 25 Dec

Juldagen
Xmas video chat with Mum and Dad
- Xmas morning here, Xmas evening there
Ravgången
- Annika picked us up.
- Walk to lake with Annika, Mattias, Leo, Anders, Jack, Chris and us
- Anna told us not to throw stones on the lake near the picnic area, but OK later on.
  - We walked to where there were lots of stones already on the ice and so kids and I threw stones on to hear the weird "pew" sound.
  - Ice was a bit melted with layer of water on top, so sound wasn't as crisp as 2008.
  - Still got told off by a Swede. Förlåt!
  - The reason is that stone on the ice get frozen in place when it refreezes and skaters will run into them.

Day 8 = Thu 26 Dec

Annandag Jul
Ice skating for kids
- Local rink where Jack skates
  - Free?
- Borrowed skates from Jack
- Reindeer to hold onto
- Carl did surprisingly well
  - Skated with the reindeer and later without
  - Kneepads really helped since he could fall on his knees easily for safety or a rest
  - Now he reckons he wants to go ice skating back home "once a month".
- Erica also had fun.
- Magnus offered me his skates but alas they didn't fit (much to Emma's relief).
Ice hockey
- Örebro HK vs Skellefteå AIK
  - Örebro are red and white (blood and ice)
  - Skellefteå were yellow and black
    - Granny called them "the Bumblebees"
- Emma's cousin's son Gustav is one of the star players for the local Örebro HK team in the Swedish Hockey League
  - Met Suzanne and Anders B before the match (Gustav's parents), and yet another beautiful blonde Backström child (Gustav's daughter Bianca)
  - We'll see them tomorrow for lunch, but they sat in the team box tonight.
- Fun atmos
  - Örebro came out through an inflatable replica of Örebro Castle.
  - Not many teams have a literal bouncy castle.
  - Heavy metal/hard rock in the lead up
  - Very chilled music in the breaks
- Result
  - Skellefteå 4 - 2 Örebro
  - Örebro scored first, but Skellefteå equalised, and then >ed, and then >>ed.
  - Skellefteå needed the win more because they have a crappy 1960s town centre without any castles.
    - Just kidding, we went there in 2008 and it seemed nice enough.
  - Interesting to see another culture doing its thing for itself.

Day 9 = Fri 27 Dec

Lunch at Suzanne's
- Drive out with Anders past Ramsberg to see Emma's grandparents' grave
  - Anders pointed out the graves (and stories) of many relatives
  - It turns out that many of his extended Finnish family moved to the area from Finland in the late 1940s from Roveniemi.
    - This could well be a result of the Germans flattening Rovaniemi (and its economy) at the end of WW2 in the Lapland War, mixed with a desire for a better standard of living.
    - Winter War (1939-40) - Soviet Russia tries to steal Finland back from the Finns (after Finnish independence in 1917), captures Karelia.
    - Continuation War (1941-43) - Finland tries to retake Karelia, makes some gains but loses them in the peace. Accidentally ends up on the German side.
    - Lapland War - Finland tried to expel Germans from their territory as part of the peace with Russia in the Continuation War, Germans destroy Rovaniemi as they depart.
- Drive to Suzanne's place in Allmänningbo
  - More memories for Anders
  - Grimsö
    - Wildlife Research Station
    - Work colleague from 20 years ago went on a trip to join his girlfriend who was working at a Swedish research station and wrote a blog. Looked up the blog and realised it was the same Grimsö, small world!
- Arrived at lovely big farmhouse of Emma's cousin Suzanne and her husband Anders B.
  - Erica asked if Swedes have only 3 monikers, because everyone seems to be called Anders, Magnus or Mattias.
  - Suzanne's daughter Lina and her kids were there too
  - As well as Annika, Magnus, Jack and Chris in the other car
- Lovely lunch of roast älg (moose) that Anders B had killed with his hunting club (they have over 5 members)
  - Succulent, a bit like roast beef and not at all tough or gamey like I remember reindeer being (though I'll let you know if I have any reindeer in Finland).
  - You can't buy moose in the shops, you have to know someone who hunts it (and there are strict quotas), so this was quite a treat.
- Good conversation across two tables (kitchen and dining rooms)
  - Ended up with all the Aussies in one room, so at desert we went into the other room to talk to Lina, but she'd had the same idea so we'd just swapped rooms.
  - So I went in and hung with Andersarna and listened to them have a conversation in Swedish.
  - I can speak more Swedish than I can understand (same in English, I'm better at talking than listening)
  - I could understand about 20% of what was being said. It was a bit like swimming just out of my depth at the beach.
  - Then someone asked me if I was understanding and I confessed the above and then talked for a bit (in Swedish) about how I can speak Swedish all day but only understand a little. They said they had the opposite, that they can understand more English than they can speak.
  - Men jag pratade Svenska! And they either understood me or were too polite to tell me that I was talking gibberish.
- Long drive home in the darkness of 4.30pm. Really great day.
  - Suzanne has a big, beautiful house and a big beautiful family.
  - Wonderful to be invited into one of the many beautiful Swedish farmhouses we'd passed on the drives out of Örebro.

Day 10 = Sat 28 Dec

Svampen
First to Anders and Agnetes to look through some sketches of Emma's Dad that Anders rescued (with permission) when he visited Australia in the 80s.
- And to say Hej då to Agnete.
Walk to Svampen past vårt littet lägenhet from 2008.
Up Svampen to see the view
- They're building a new water tower to the south that the locals are already calling the "Piss Pot".
- Lovely view of town, Hjämaren and Kilsbergen, the line of hills to the west.
- Nice buffet lunch at restaurant at the top.
No.7 Bus to town for shopping
- Castle shop
  - Very disappointing, no T-shirts or castle knickknacks.
  - Just weird kids castle stuff like dragons, princesses, knights etc.
  - Kids insisted on buying toy swords that will no doubt be hard to pack and transport (and ignored the slightly smaller wooden swords).
- Shopping for warmer gloves for Rovaniemi
  - Keep getting cold hands
  - I got some lady's jogging gloves to go under my main gloves
  - Everyone else (and me) got Gortex ski gloves
  - Also neck/face warmers
- Clas Ohlsson
  - Food containers and cooler bag for Carl's food
Final visit from Annika
- Big Aunty Energy

Day 11 = Sun 29 Dec

Train to Stockholm
- Said our 'Hej då's to Anders, Anna and Jack
- On the train - usual fight for luggage space
- Seated next to rando Swede so popped mask on
- Lovely scenery of Malardalen and headwaters of Malaren
  - Especially Västerås ("Vesteraws") with its industrial port on the lake
  - Lots of fields - breadbasket of old Svealand

* Malmö (notes)

besoka — Wed, 1 Jan 2025 10:14:00 GMT

I'm finding I only have time to make quick notes at the end of each day, and I doubt I'll have time to write them up nicely until I get back. So I figured I'd throw the raw notes up here for anyone interested knowing what we're up to in something approximating "real time", and I'll replace them with my usual witty prose later. This also acts as a backup in case my notes get accidentally deleted and I forget what we did.

Day 0 = Mon 16 Dec

Travel to Malmö
- Dans Taxi to Central Station
- Oresundtag to Malmö
- Windmills in the sea, not sure why people are complaining about having them 30km away
Scandic City
- Named after an unfortunate incident at an office Xmas party
- Slightly 70s, a bit Sugarshaker, but cheap and well located
- And only one with a kitchenette for Carl
- Fingers crossed the breakfast is up to scratch
Lunches
- Got lovely salads for Emma and Chris
  - Ordered in Swedish but fell at the first hurdle of "understanding what they say back"
- Hungry Jacks (Burger King) for Erica and me
  - Come around the world to be reminder fo Brisbane
  - But Erica was in a strop so the Malmö felaffels will have to wait
Walk
- Gustav Adolfs Torg had construction
- Which side of the street to walk on
  - Crossing roads
- Stortorget was beautiful as always, though the carparmm in the middle (while non doubt very practical and beneficial for the locals) gets in the way of the charm ever-so-slightly
- Littatorget was the nicest.
  - Stopped in for a happy-hour "storstark" which was jättesmaklig.
  - Enjoyed the ambience. Asked if I could sit "outside", but realised that all the couches and tables were technically "outside" - they were simply surrounded by a pillow-fort of unbrellas and perspex wind-guards to keep the heat from the heaters in.
- Walked back through the graveyard park and spotted the OG felaffel place near the canal.
- Discovered that I'd been demoted from having a bed to sharing a fold-out couch with Carl because Erica had chucked a wobbly about the feng-shui or something.
Emma and I went out for supplies at the ICA.
- Discovered "Vintermamma" - apple juice with ginger, cinnamon and cardamom which you drink heated up as an alternative to glögg.
- Scandinavian supermarkets (in city centres) are lovely little warrens of spaces that have to fit into old buildings, a nice change from the Australian warehouses.
- Bought Varmkorv on the way home from hole-in-wall. Lady serving had little English so enjoyed the challenge of communicating in our terrible Swedish. Once again, I can speak it better than I can understand it (but then again, I've always been better at talking than listening).
Back home and watched some Swedish TV (with a Finnish discussion of the Georgian crisis thrown in).

Day 1 = Tue 17 Dec

Scandic breakfast
- They looked after Carl really well, bringing him food from the kitchen so he could avoid the buffet.
Tretorgsgången
- Kids being annoying
Walk to Malmöhuset
- meditation in the sun
- Felafel from OG felafel place
Met Lovisa and Magnus
- Walk to Malmöhuset and museum
  - Learned about how the Swedes nicked Skåne off the Danes
- Lillatorget and Jättestorstark
  - Dinner

Day 2 = Wed 18 Dec

Raining
- Walked to Triangeln
Off to Lovisa and Magnus's place
- Walk in the rainy broadleaf forest
- Visit to 17thC Castle
- Dinner of wild boar and good company

Day 3 = Thu 19 Dec

Last Scandic breakfast
- They were so awesome catering for Carl's allergies
Train to Örebro
- Faced backwards so listened to Star Guitar
- Yet again the backpack showed its value
- Saw the Swedish countryside change from Skånes broadleaf forests to the pine'n'birch of the rest of the country.
- Also saw a moose.
- People hogging 6-seaters
Örebro
- Met by Anders, Agnete and Annika
- Cellar dwelling
  - Jul lights everywhere
- Coop (Coop-a-doop)
  - Ärtsoppa

Copenhagen

besoka — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 18:59:00 GMT

[Still catching up on the journal from our basement apartment in Örebro]

Day 0 = Thu 12 Dec

After we'd found our accommodation, I was sent off to get supplies. There was a Danish supermarket near our place called "Netto", and so I headed there for the first of many visits to foreign supermarkets, since we're mostly self-catering on this trip. The coolest thing about Netto is the "Pølsehorn", which is a Danish smoked-pork sausage baked into a soft bread roll. These were sold loose in the Netto dangerously near the cinnamon scrolls, but you did have to wear a big plastic glove when you grabbed it. They're basically a frankfurter, but with a nicer peppery/smoky flavour. Plus "I'm off to the Netto for a sausage roll" sounds so familiarly Aussie.

After that we pretty much hit the sack, expecting to wake up early with jetlag.

Day 1 = Fri 13 Dec

And we did wake up early, though it's more of a "jet-lead" than a "jet-lag", since at about 3:30am my body clock was telling me it was early afternoon and I'd slept enough (despite having had less than an hour's sleep on the whole trip, which started at the end of a full day of packing). Since the 5 of us were packed into a small apartment, with Granny on the couch, I snuck into one of the two bathrooms to read while I waited for everyone else to stir.

Once we stirred and had breakfast, we opened the curtains and discovered we were across the street from the open-plan offices of Københamns Borgerservice (Copenhagen Council). Looks like I'll have to wait a few more days to get away from "Teh Office".

After that I went out for a solo walk to scope out the local area, since nobody wanted to come with me. I started through the local park (Ørstedsparken), with its nice lake - enjoying the European winter air and testing out my warm clothes (which are basically the same fleece and jacket as last time, since they haven't had much wear in Australia since). At the other end of the park I found a nice Market Hall (Torvehallerne) - basically a big deli with various meats and breads and fruit and veg outside in nature's fridge. Then I headed back to the canal to check out the interesting pavilion we'd seen the day before (Søpavillonen). It was closed, but an interesting wooden drinking establishment from probably the early 1900s. The buildings lining the canal (which is a few hundred metres wide and more of a watter-filled boulevard) were the lovely 5 story townhouses that dominate the cities in tghie part of the world. I'm not sure if the uniform height is through regulation or the simple biomechanical result of relying on stairs, but it makes for a pleasingly tidy sight.

Then it was back to the Netto for more grub and sausage rolls #strewthmatebycrikey.

That evening we headed off to Nyhavn ("new" harbour), the quaint old quayside street with the pretty buildings that you'll see in most shots of Copenhagen. I'd since learned not to wait around for Emma to heroically get everyone ready, since that usually results in frustration and not spending as much time seeing things, so Erica and I headed off early for a stroll down Gothersgade, past Rosenborg Palace to Nyhamn. Except we didn't even notice Rosenborg Palace because it was 4 o'clock in the afternoon and so was fully nighttime by then. But we did stop at a Danish hotdog stand for a couple of hotdogs and a beer. Denmark is fairly liberal when it comes to vices like drinking and smoking. It's like they never quite moved on from the 80s. I haven't smelled so much cigarette smoke in decades and it was nice to be reminded of how far Australia has progressed. And maybe it's my mercifully fading memory of what cigarettes smell like, but I feel like the Danes smoke a rougher tobacco, more like cigar smoke. If Aussie ciggies are treble, the Danse are addicted to bass. In fact, the Danish language sounds a bit like Swedish plus cigarettes and alcohol, with a harshness to the pronunciation - possibly drifting towards Dutch via German.

Erica and I got to Nyhamn and watched kids skating on the outdoor ice rink. We found a spot halfway along Nyhamn to see the Lucia kayak parade. I appear to have neglected to explain what was going on and why we were there. Luciadagen is the feast of St Lucia (see one of the posts from 2008 for an explanation), where they grab a pretty girl and stick candles on her head to commemorate an Italian saint who was matyred in the normal abnormally gruesome way, probably because she didn't want to marry some psychopath and couldn't find any wild bears to protect her. But that aside it's turned into a lovely tradition in the Yuletide season and this particular parade was to be conducted via a flotilla of suitably illuminated kayaks because why not. Erica and I found a spot about 3 rows back from the dockside with a view between a couple of moored boats. And it was quite nice. There was a big boat with a choir singing jazzy Xmas carols, surrounded by the kayaks, all having fun being allowed in the harbour/canal.

After that we met up with Emma, Chris and Carl who arrived just after and kinda missed the main event. But we got some gløgg (mulled wine) and hot chocholate and then headed home via Strøget - the main street which is a pedestrianised mall. By then my hands and feet were quite cold and I resolved to wear my woolen socks from then on.

Day 2 = Sat 14 Dec

The next day I headed out looking for baked beans and berries for Carl, and to reset our Wise card, which had been locked when Emma accidentally put her regular pin in the EFTPOS machine at Netto the night before. We'd reset the card on the internet, but I needed to use it in an ATM to complete the reset. On the way I stopped in at another supermarket and (with the help of the lady working there) found the baked beans, which I hadn't realised are sold in rectangular tetra-pak cartons here (like a poppa but slightly bigger). This is great because it makes them lighter and easier to pack together. Their name in Danish (and Swedish) translates as "white beans in tomato sauce", which makes way more sense since "baked" beans aren't even.

After more trying (and one failed attempt) I found an ATM at the markethall from yesterday and took out the minimum DKK 100. I also grabbed the berries at the outdoor market and, weirdly, they don't sell the punnets with lids on. Not sure if that's so people can inspect them or to deter shoplifters, but it makes it a bit harder to transport (they do pop the lidless punnets in a paper bag when you pay for it, at least).

After I brought all that home we all headed off to Rundetårn (Round Tower), which (as blogged about in 2008) is a tower in the University built in the Enlightenment period as an astronomical observatory, but which you climb via a spiral cobbled road - reportedly because the King wanted to be able to drive his horse and carriage up there. The view from the top is nice though, except by then it was cloudy and starting to rain.

After that Emma took Carl home for lunch and Chris headed off on her own, so Erica and I found some lunch in town. We spotted a chalk sign advertising a Smørrebrød restaurant ("Restaurant 1899") and figured we'd tick another Danish delicacy off our list (after the hotdog the night before). Smørrebrød (buttered bread) is a Danish open sandwich with typically fancy toppings. And they took great care of us. Erica had the roast pork and I got the meatballs, both with red cabbage and pickled cucumbers, washed down with a delicious Xmas beer (Grimbergen Brassin de Noel - malty and very nice) and homemade apple&rosemary snaps that tasted exactly like that, plus a local Danish lemonade that I didn't catch the name of for Erica. And I got to eat Erica's crackling because we didn't want to risk her braces, and it was the best crackling I've had in years. Oh and we had a choice of butter or lard, which had salt and little chunks of apple in it. All in all it was a fantastic father-daughter lunch that we both relished. I even uncharacteristically tipped the waiter 50 of the 100 DKK I'd taken out to show my genuine appreciation (I should have given him the whole 100 since the other 50 is still in my wallet in Sweden where it's of no use to anyone).

That night we went to Tivoli - the fun park and pleasure gardens just outside the city centre of Copenhagen and so much nicer than the eponymous lower-socioeconomic suburb of north Ipswich where I spent a few years in the 80s. The queue was down the block, but it moved fast enough and soon we were in a gorgeous wonderland of (tasteful) fairy lights, markets and rides. Erica and I got ride passes and went on the spinny-hanging-chairs thingy, which gave me a good view of the park while trying not to look down at the rapidly approaching and receding ground below, and then spent about half an hour lined up for the "Dæmonen") roller coaster (The Demon) which was quite fun. After we got off, though, we got Emma's message that Carl wasn't enjoying himself and they were going to take him home. This caused Erica to have a minor meltdown that her plans were ruined (and me to bemoan the wasted entry fee), so we charged off through the crowd to the gate to discuss and remonstrate. In the end, Granny took Carl to the Leggo shop and Emma, Erica and I walked back the way we'd charged past the lake, the bejeweled willows and the "firefly" garden, with its pretty LEDs waving about in the wind.

So in the end we managed to salvage a lovely night, which was a relief.

Day 3 = Sun 15 Dec

Our last day in Copenhagen started with us getting the train out to Den Lille Havfrue (The Little Mermaid) statue. We got on at Vesterport station and went through Nørreport to Østerport. I later found out that those are the old gates to the city (Westgate, Northgate and Eastgate, respectively). We walked past the Swedish church (not sure what that's about) and around Kastellet (more on that later). We walked past the Swedish church (not sure what that's about) and around Kastellet (more on that later) to Den Lille Havfrue. I'd prepared the kids to be underwhelmed, and I succeeded in lowering Erica's expectations enough that she liked it (even more than the awesome Valkyrie statue on the other side of Kastellet, which I apparently talked up too much). But Carl was still underwhelmed and more interested in the (probably) German battleship that was docked in the harbour nearby. Boys eh?

After Den Lille Havfrue, we walked through Kastellet (The Castle), which is the Napoleonic-era fortification that guards the entrance to the harbour, situated where the northern end of the canal/moat defences meets the waterfront. More of a military base (with earthen ramparts and a moat) than a castle, it's even more of a park these days even though it's still technically still a military site, with people jogging and walking their dogs along the ramparts. Anyway, Carl enjoyed this more than just about anything else on this part of our day's sightseeing. Double boys eh?

After seeing the Valkyrie and other statues in Churchill Park on the other side, we headed back towards town. We stopped at a souvenir shop to look for T-shirts (I didn't have a good Denmark shirt from last time, just one from the self-declared anarchist microstate of Cristiania) and Erica bought a knickknack for one of her friends. We then quickly returned to the souvenir shop when it started raining to buy some umbrellas. We passed Frederiks Kirke (Frederick's Church), which has a lovely dome a la the Pantheon in Rome, but it wasn't yet open for visitors and it was still spitting and the kids were tired so we didn't bother to wait and headed over the street to Amalienborg palace to say g'day to Queen Mary.

They happened to be doing a changing of the guards there, which was interesting for a bit - partly because they were blue (their uniforms, it wasn't that cold yet) and partly because of the irony of seeing a bunch of teenage recruits (probably on National Service) faffing about as "guards", while a middle-aged woman in a "Security" uniform made sure the tourists didn't stray past their allotted viewing space with some polite but expert hand waves. It certainly called into question the very concept of "guarding".

Anyway, Mary must have been out Queening, so we continued on to see Nyhavn in the daytime. And it was still nice and pretty, even without the sparkly kayaks (good band name up for grabs there). So we continued on through town and back to Restaurant 1899 so that Erica could take Emma and Granny there for more smørrebrød, while I took Carl home. And apparently the waitress recognised Erica and they all had a lovely lunch (they'd had a decent-sized vegetarian and cheese section in the menu, so I was pretty confident they'd be well looked after).

Emma had been trying to tee up a catchup with her young cousin Victor, who was in Copenhagen for the day at a course - but unfortunately the stars didn't align. So there was was just enough time to head back towards Tivoli for some souvenir shopping in the nighttime of afternoon. I'd seen a really nice maroon T-shirt with "HYGGE" on the front while we'd waited in line for Tivoli, so I managed to buy that, along with some other stuff. "Hygge" is a Danish (and Norwegian) concept for contented convivial comfort - a bit like a warm chill-out, without the tepidity. And this is now my house shirt while I'm travelling because I don't want to be so gauche as to wear a Danish souvenir in Sweden or Finland.

And with that T-shirt, we said "Farvel" to Copenhagen, having enjoyed staying there for the first time - rather than just doing day trips from Malmö. Speaking of Malmö, that's where we head next.

Day 4 = Mon 16 Dec

The last day we took a cab to the central train station ("København H", or "Københavns Hovedbanegård") to avoid a repeat of dragging our suitcases across town (even though København H was probably closer than Forum and with functional lifts).

The train to Malmö is a bit like the train to the Gold Coast - pretty much an extension of the suburban rail network. Since the opening of the Öresund Bridge in 2000, people regularly do the 40min commute between the cities, often living in one country and working in the other. But I'll save that journey for the next post.

Flights (Brisbane to Copenhagen via Doha)

besoka — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 12:20:00 GMT

OK, I'm doing a bit of catching up now on this blog, so hopefully it'll turn into tight stream-of-conciousness rather than the bloat-by-bloat I churn out when I have too much time. [Update: Nope, sorry it's still kinda waffly.]

First leg - Brisbane to Doha, Wed 11 Dec

After a last minute flurry of packing, we got to the airport with plenty of time and luggage on the night of Wed 11 Dec. At this point I was very appreciative that Emma convinced me to take the whole week off for last minute packing and things.

The first challenge was to redistribute the luggage to ensure each bag was close enough to the 23kg limit that they'd wave it through. This involved a few trips to the airport scales, but we finally managed it. [My backpack was, of course, impossible to overpack, maxing out at about 18kg.]

The next hurdle was that our somewhat inattentive travel agent had not submitted the required paperwork for Carl's anaphylaxis. For a brief period it appeared that we wouldn't be allowed on the plane because the return leg in January wasn't fully signed off (though I wasn't involved in the discussion). But Emma and the lady at the Qatar airlines desk (with help from a doctor on a phone hotline) managed to sort it out. Big boo to Flight Centre though, whose agent gave a very strong hint that she'd moved on to other customers once she'd collected her commission on our flights.

After that we got to the priority boarding area to wait to get on first and wipe down the tray and armrests etc. It may seem a bit fussy, but airlines are rather famous for serving peanuts and nobody wants anaphylaxis 10km up over the Indian Ocean.

Once the rest of the passengers boarded, the people in front immediately put their seats back (while still at the gate). This meant I couldn't easily reach my carry-on at my feet and I'm not sure why they don't have a switch to prevent that. Luckily the seat screens tilted so it didn't affect the entertainment options. Speaking of, Emma had bought me an adapter to plug my noise-cancelling headphones into those weird double-jack things they still insist on having on airplanes. So I chucked on a Nature Sounds track to augment the chamomile teabag I already had infusing in my waterbottle, and snuck in some meditation while the plane taxied etc.

The plane took off at about 10:30pm, so we theoretically had time to sleep. But we're not blessed with those abilities, so it was time to crack open the movies for the 14 hour flight to Doha. Here's some quick reviews:

Inside Out 2 - 'Salright. I think I lost track of the plot about 2/3 of the way through when I tried to doze off and didn't really care by the end. But that's not the film's fault.
Dune 2 - A good way to kill a few hours and Harkonnens. Interesting that the baddies had a very Finnish-sounding name. Also good that I got to wateh the second half since we haven't had Disney+ at home for a while (I have a Dad-policy of paying for only one streaming service at a time, and we switch every 6 months or so when we've exhausted the old one. I'm not interested in bleeding money when SBS On Demand has the best selection of movies for free.)
North by Northwest - They had a good selection of old movies on Qatar air, as well as a watchlist, so I could go through the full list and tag a few likelies and this was one. Pretty good film though quite silly, and I somehow managed to miss the end of the famous crop-duster scene. One notable thing I noticed was the casual sexism in an early scene where Cary Grant interrogates the (female) maid at the hotel for quite a few minutes (inconveniencing her and interrupting her work), but then later he only gives a tip to the (male) porter who answers one simple question that would form part of his regular duties.

Some interesting things I saw out the window:
Alice Springs - Or some other well-lit town in the middle of the continent.
Colombo - Shining like a jewel in the wee-small-hours next to the black ocean.
Some weird street-lamps on mangrove islands in the Arabian Sea that eventually turned out to be ships under light clouds - presumably the main shipping lane from Mumbai to the Red Sea.

The food was OK, but I was somewhat distracted by my managing to knock my whole cup of orange juice ony my lap and down my legs into my boots - which I was unable to easily clean up because of the aforementioned people in front having their seats back (though by now at least legitimately) and unable to reach my feet with a napkin.

Overall, the Qatar Air flight was full and cramped and tiring - given that we chased the nighttime across the globe for about 16 hours of night (which I guess will help prepare us for a Nordic winter).

Second leg - Doha to Copenhagen, Thu 12 Dec

We arrived in Doha with pretty much the right amount of time to go through security (again?!?) and find our next gate. This time it had a bus out to the plane. At least we saw the sun for the first time in nearly a day as dawn broke over the Persian Gulf.

Finnair is a better airline than Qatar, based on n=3+1. Like our other Finnair flight in 2008, the plane was about half full. There was also more leg room and the food was better (Erica and I had a delicious Shakshuka, which was actually more of a sausage-flavoured prism of scrambled egg, but it was damn tasty).

The only slight drawback was the slightly narrower range of movies to choose from. But I watched Life of Pi which I'd been meaning to see for a while (I boycotted it on Disney+ when they prevented me from watching it at faster speed, but this time I had hours to kill). It was OK. The story is good and was faithfully rendered by Ang Lee, and the animation of the tiger was impressive. But I was tired and I felt it somehow lacked a certain something (though I may have been more impressed if I hadn't read the book and already been familiar with the story).

After that I partook of the free cocktails (gin/grapefruit and gin/lingon - which I drank out of the can out of abuntant caution after my Qatar experience) and played a few rounds of Angry Birds.

One interesting thing was the flight map which (due to a rather stark geopolitical evolution) took us over Iraq, Turkey, the Black Sea and Romania - avoiding the Levant, Ukraine and the variously-coloured Russias. It's weird that Baghdad is now the safer option in the region, but there you go.

It was cloudy for most of the trip, thought Erica did see the tops of the Carpatians peaking(sic) over the clouds. And eventually, we dipped below the cloud layer (saying goodbye to bright sunshine for a while) into Copenhagen.

There, we grabbed our luggage (which beat us to the carousel and mercifully intact) and a tourist map and headed to the Metro, which we rode the Metro to Forum and hopped off, only to be presented with a long flight of stairs and an out-of-order lift. So I happily walked my backpack to the top and then trudged back down to manhandle 4 suitcases up a long flight of stairs, before we all set off wheeling our suitcases (as I suspected I would end up doing) and carry-on to our accommodation about 800m away. We did at least see the big canals that surround the landward approaches to the centre of Copenhagen - the remnants of the old city defences.

And so we eventually foung our AirBnB accommodation in a flat on Dahlerupsgade in the outer-inner west of the old town.

But Copenhagen can wait for another post.

The whole journey took about 24 hours, and I don't think I got an hour's sleep in that time.

For COVID precautions, we wore disposable N95 masks on both flights (except when eating). This wasn't particularly uncomfortable - in fact on a generally uncomfortable flight, it wasn't at the top of the list of discomforts. We'd bought fancy masks before we left which we brought along, but frankly they were less confortable than the disposable ones and we didn't bother wearing them. But as far as wasted money goes, they barely registered a blip in the bonfire of cash being spent on this trip. And none of us got sick from the flight, so it either worked or was unnecessary. But one of the frustratingly insidious things about betting on COVID is that you don't know if a precaution is a waste of time until half a week after the fact, so we preferred being overcautious than sick.

Preparation

besoka — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 20:49:00 GMT

We haven't been OS since 2008, and haven't been on a plane since 2018 [apart from Emma taking a few domestic work trips because apparently that's still a thing in the modern world of east teleconferencing]. In fact, I worked out that, apart from a single trip to Townsville in 2018, our kids haven't even been outside SEQ.

As usual, Emma did the planning and the stressing and I tried to stay out of the way and offer moral support and hugs. The cost has certainly gone up since then, but probably roughly in line with inflation. I worked out at one point that this trip will be the financial equivalent of buying a laptop each day and setting it on fire, though that would probably be better for the environment than an international flight.

And Air BnB is very much a thing now (though Booking.com was around in 2008), so most things were booked through that platform. This is, in large part, due to Carl's food allergies necessitating a kitchen where we can prepare his food in a slightly more controlled way. Plus we're a bit fussy and spoilt. Though we did manage to find a Scandic with a kitchenette in Malmo, so we'll still get to gorge on its amazing breakfast buffet at least once.

Packing-wise, I'm opting to reuse my giant Kathmandu "Interloper" backpack from 2008 because it worked really well last time and gives way more maneuverability on cobbled streets, and on and off trains than a heavy wheeled suitcase (and I expect I'll be dragging at least one of the kids' cases). It also gives a more natural weight limit - reducing the temptation to pack everything just "in case". Emma is dubious and has opted for hard-case Samsonite luggage for her and the kids, after a bad experience on the work trip to Greece, where they managed to damage her suitcase on both directions.

Speaking of over-packing, we were tearing our hair out trying to keep under the 23kg weight limit ... until Emma finally noticed that our luggage scale was set to "lb". Switching it it back to "kg" doubled the amount we could take. Check your units people! I'm sure glad we noticed that before we weighed them at the airport (-:

Clothes-wise, we spent a lot at Anaconda (and made good use of the membership discount). I'm repeating my trick from last time, getting zip-off Mountain Design pants of two slightly different sizes so I can wear them at the same time if it gets really cold (I'm not going to bother with thermals this time since last time I barely used them and when I did they gave me a rash). I'm taking the undershirts from last time (which have served me well as swing-dance undershirts in the meantime). I also got some Columbia hiking boots that are as comfy as my old Colorado boots, and which will hopefully let me walk all day with (occasionally) a heavy backpack on wet/slippery paths. Plus it will hopefully help keep my plantar faciitis* at bay.
[*Inflammation of the foot arch tendon leading to heel spurs. Emma and I have both been afflicted since about 2019 - yet another minor health worry.]

My two indulgences will be taking my own pillow (Emma is too, but I ummed and ahhed quite a bit), and taking my noise-cancelling headphones. I've got a 128Gb SD card for my phone and downloaded a few 1-2hr "nature sounds" mp3s from the ABC, plus a 1hr track of roaring waves on a sandy Australian beach that will drown out just about anything. I've been practicing by using them as meditation aids. Emma fouind a cool pillow-holder bag that lets me roll it up into a small cylinder.

This is being written in Örebro since I'm already way behind and I wanted to write these in chronological order. So that'll do for now, and I may add things later if I think of anything else.

Going Besök II - The Återvändaning

besoka — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 07:25:00 GMT

♫ Ya live sixteen years, and whaddaya get? ♫
Answer: You get to go back to Sweden!

So, to get you up to speed since the last post, we've got married, had a couple of kids, and planned a return trip to Sweden. Unfortunately, that trip was planned for Xmas 2020 and so got cancelled like everything else. But after keeping our heads down for 4 years we're giving it another go.

We're loading up a couple of t[w]eenagers and Granny and doing a quick five-person, five-week voyage through Copenhagen, Malmo, Orebro, Stockholm, Helsinki and Rovaniemi, including a week and a half in Orebro to spend Jul with Emma's Uncle and Aunt and cousins, and to introduce the kids to their Svensk rellies.

Some added complications since our last trip are, of course, the kids. We certainly love'em (and they're a big reason we're doing the trip), but they do make the logistics that much harder. Throw in a full palette of food allergies on one hand, and some teen anxiety on the other and we're in for an interesting ride.

The pachydemic in the corner is of course COVID. I know we had our Mission Accomplished parade back in 2022-ish where we collectively decided it was all too hard and unlikely to succeed so how about we all just declare victory and act like nothing happened (aside from some never-waste-a-good-crisis profiteering from the big end of town) [see also: Climate Change]. But a risk that's hidden is a risk that's hard to mitigate and, while we don't want to get COVID for lots of reasons including alarmingly non-zero long term risks of serious incapacity (and probably some sort of cancer risk that we'll only find out about in 20 years) from a multi-systemic vascular disease dressed up as a respiritory disease that we've perversely convinced ourselves is also not spread by <checks notes> breathing, we also don't want to waste time being sick while we're spending thousands of dollars a day to enjoy ourselves and experience as much scenery and culture as possible. Anyway, at the risk of upsetting those who think about such things, and spoinking the cognitive dissidents, suffice to say it'll be a tough needle to thread.

I've decided to resurrect the old blog from 2008 because a) some nice continuity, b) it still works, and/but c) it's delightfully old school and I'm not even sure the backend is still maintained. Interestingly, the blog dashboard reckons my old blog from 2008 has been "viewed 27259 times", which just goes to show how much activity the webcrawlers of Google et al do behind the scenes, because the real number of human views would be in the tens at best.

I'm writing this in Copenhagen at 4am because of jet-lead (the opposite of jet-lag), and I really should be writing about the trip here, but I wanted to set the scene first.

Välkomna!

Yule and Home

besoka — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 20:48:00 GMT

Executive Summary

After our Arctic trip (see previous post), we finished off our stay in Sweden with Xmas at Annika and Mattias’ place, seeing how the Swedes do it and catching up with the family. After that we packed up our year and headed home to Brisbane.

Contents

Arn
Yule in Tibro
-Julafton (Xmas Eve)
-Juldagen (Xmas Day)
Packing and leaving Sweden (sniff)
The journey home
-Helsinki – Tokyo
-The Qantas club at Narita Airport
-Tokyo – Brisbane
Reintegration into Society
Wrap up

Arn

With only a couple of days between getting back from Kiruna and heading off to Jul (Yule/Xmas), I don’t remember doing much of note, except that I finally got to watch Arn. Arn is one of the pop culture phenomena in Sweden of the past few years. It is a series of historical novels set in Västergötaland (sort of between Skövde and Göteborg) at the time of the crusades, and features the adventures of the title character “Arn”, a boy raised in a monastery who gets involved in various political machinations of the time (which seems to involve rival kings/warlords bopping each other on the head and taking over), falls in love and becomes a Knight Templar in the crusades when he can’t have her. It’s all very melodramatic, but a rollicking good read (I’m told, they’re in Swedish). The author is a fairly well known journalist who everyone seems to think is a bit of a male chauvinist plonker in his columns, but who writes a bloody good book.

The books are being made into movies and are the Swedish local blockbusters. The second movie “Arn: Riket vid vägens slut” (“Arn: The Kingdom at the Road’s End”) was in cinemas while we were there, but it was the DVD of the first movie “Arn: Tempelriddaren” (“Arn: The Knight Templar”) that I got to watch. Now, being a Swedish phenomenon, it’s all in Swedish. Even the DVD had a choice of a few languages not including English, which is partly why we hadn’t watched it till then. But, armed with the Swedish dialogue and with the Swedish subtitles also on, I dove in to try and find what they’ve been keeping to themselves. And I’m proud to report that I managed to follow it pretty well (mostly from the subtitles – helped by 9 months of Swedish subtitles at the bottom of every other TV show).

The story is set in real locations (ie most of the place names were real and the monastery’s ruins still exist) and with a few real characters. The production values were excellent, as was the acting. It was probably the Swedish equivalent of “Australia” – a local film industry that usually does a good trade in small, local pictures getting together to pull out all the stops for a big budget blockbuster (with a budget of US$30 million, the most expensive film in Scandinavian history). I’m not able to say whether the actors were all as recognisable to the Swedes as the actors in Aussie films are to us, but Stellan Skärsgård (one of the three “Dads” in Mama Mia) made an appearance. Anyway, it was nice to be able to experience some Swedish pop-culture.

Yule in Tibro

On 23 December Anders and Agnete picked us up for the 2hr drive down to Anneke’s place in Tibro for Jul. On the first evening, we chilled out and took it easy making sweets out of marzipan. Basically, you buy different colours and use it like playdough, making various Xmassy things like Santa hats and snowmen. All good fun.

Then it was time for some dinner, some takeaway kebabs or pizza was suggested and everyone seemed in agreement on kebabs, so we happily went along. When the kebabs arrived, it looked like they’d taken a large pizza base and wrapped it around half a lamb’s worth of spicy kebab meat to make a foot long hunk of eatin’. I managed to polish it all off, partly because the other men had, and partly because when I got full I found myself in that unfortunate position where there was not enough left to bother putting in the fridge for later. Unfortunately, this left my poor old tummy feeling a bit full and bloated for the whole next day, which curtailed my enjoyment of the Yule feast a bit (dammit).

Julafton (Xmas Eve)

Next day was Julafton. Now, this is technically Xmas Eve and falls on 24 December, but that is when the Swedes have their big Xmas celebration. I think it has something do with traditionally going to church the next day, so they have the big feast the night before.

Anyway, the result is pretty much the same – presents, big lunch, traditional things on TV (the same old Disney cartoons they play every year). I think there was even a King’s Xmas Message, but I can’t remember.

In addition to Anders, Agnete, Emma, me, Annika and Mattias were Mattias’ parents and their dogs and his younger brother Magnus.

After the feast Anders went out to get a paper, which was very unfortunate for him because while he was out Santa arrived wearing his huge wolf-skin coat (don’t worry, the wolves were finished with them many years ago). Santa gave out some presents and then left just before Anders got back.

Santa is apparently a relatively recent (last couple of centuries) addition to the Swedish Yule folklore. Before that the Julbock (“Xmas Goat”) would fly around butting presents into houses with his horns. The Swedes still make Julbocks out of pine fronds for extra Xmas decorations on the doorsteps (to go with the Yule candles in the windows). The recentness of Santa might be why he’s thought of as the head elf - his name (“Tomten”) just means “The Elf”.

In Sweden they have a real connection to their woodland spirits, which come in a couple of groups. The Tomte are the elves, though more like the “Elves and the Shoemaker” elves than anything you’d find in Middle Earth - helpful little sprites. The Trolls on the other hand are the mischievous/evil little woodland goblins that steal things you know you just put down there a second ago. Once again, they’re not big ogres, but little goblins. There’s also giants, but they’re not really around any more – the main story about giants explains why there are boulders in the middle of so many fields in Sweden (many fields have granite outcrops or boulders in them – the farmers just plough around them). It turns out that the giants don’t like the sound of the church bells ringing, and so they throw boulders at the village churches to try to make them shut up. Fortunately they seem to have very bad aim.

After a relaxing afternoon watching cartoons and drinking julöl (and my own concoction of julmust and vodka – to use up our remaining supplies) we had a supper of “tomtegröt” (“Elf porridge”) – a rice pudding that Santa and his reindeer eat when they visit. Conversation turned to “Arn” vs “Lord of the Rings” books and movies and I was chuffed to be able to follow most of it and contribute a couple of things – since it was done in Swedish. Incidentally, speaking of Arn I may as well make the enchanted phrase (see the Wrap Up section) “Arn elephant” – just to make it unique and unlikely to come up in general conversation.

Eventually everyone went up to bed and left Emma and Annika and me talking about random things including Swedish heavy metal – very popular, possibly something to do with the long dark winters and internalised emotions. After midnight ticked us over to 25 December, the 3 of us Skyped Emma and my parents for a “Merry Xmas” phone call (and use up the rest of our credit). It was great to be ahead of Australia for a change (since we’d cheated and celebrated a day early).

It was a nice Xmas, though it didn’t seem to really be Xmas without my family around. Actually, thinking back it might be the first Xmas I have ever had without them. And in response to the inevitable question, no, unfortunately we didn’t get a white Xmas. It did snow for about 5 minutes during the afternoon, but not enough to cover the ground. The temperature was about +2 during the day.

Juldagen (Xmas Day)

Next morning we awoke to a fairly thick layer of frost on the ground outside. As this was actually Xmas Day (25 December) then I guess you could say we had a white Xmas. Not really the lovely snow covered white Xmas, but still very pretty and possibly even more twinkly than snow.

After a breakfast of leftovers, we said our goodbyes to Annika and Mattias and Anders, Agnete, Emma and I drove back to Örebro over the low but often rugged hills that separate Götaland from Närke. As we got into Örebro, we discovered that it had snowed moderately there and with snow covering the ground we declared our White Xmas wish somewhat fulfilled – though with the different days celebrated, it felt more like Boxing Day.

Packing and leaving Sweden (sniff)

What we call “Boxing Day” the Swedes call “Annandag Jul” (“the other day of Xmas”). We took the English name to heart as this day marked our decent into packing madness as we tried to gather all the stuff we’d brought and all the stuff we’d collected during our trip into our suitcases for the trip home. It had been obvious for a while that we wouldn’t be able to fit it all in under the weight limit, so (with Agnete’s help) we’d got a 20L postpack box to send some stuff ahead. Once this was full we realised that we’d need a couple more, so we headed off to the post office in the local ICA (“EE-ka”) supermarket to post the first and get some more. In the end we sent back 3 boxes.

In calculating the relative costs, we made a poor assumption that is worth pointing out to anyone doing the same in future. The weight limit on the packages was 20kg (for a cost of 500SEK = AUD$100). But it became clear that, short of filling the boxes with water or bricks, the actual weight we could back in was never going to get that high. I think we managed to cram about 14kg in the heaviest box. But it was still the cheapest way of getting our extra stuff home since our remaining luggage was still a few kg over the limit.

One interesting thing happened while we were mailing things home (though I think this was before Xmas). I was in the ICA mailing off some presents and had a rotten cold and was not up to trying my Swedish (which I’d managed the time before). So I asked the lady if she spoke English, she asked me to wait and went and fetched a bloke that worked there. He asked me how he could help me in the thickest Aussie country accent I’d heard in quite a while. I must say it was a nice surprise and we chatted for a bit while he processed my package. He was from Mildura and met a Swedish lass in Thailand and followed her home (they’d since broken up but he met someone else and settled down). He said that there were a couple of other Aussie lads who lived just around the corner, prompting us to extrapolate to the number of Aussies that would be in the whole of Sweden if that density held (note, it probably wouldn’t). Shame we were at the end of our trip, but then again we didn’t come to meet Aussies.

The day before our last night, Anna came to visit and say goodbye and we drove out to the lake for one last look at the wintery expanse. This time there were skaters skating around in the bay near the shore, with adults further out checking the ice thickness and the kids closer in (learning and falling over a lot). It was a nice way to finish our stay.

Next morning Anders and Agnete (very kindly) drove us to the airport. It was a 2hr each way drive so we were very grateful – though Anders does seem to enjoy driving for long periods. Leaving Örebro towards Stockholm, we got to see one final sunrise over the icy farmland. For some reason the sun coming up over the lake reminded me to the Rage closing credits. Anyway, we said our goodbyes in the parking lot and A&A left us to check in and wait for our flight.

The journey home

We checked in and noticed that we had a combined luggage weight of 48kg, which was significantly above the 40kg limit we deserved, but the checkin guy seemed not to notice or care. As the luggage was going right through to Brisbane, the fear of excess baggage was finally lifted. We were bombarding him with questions and trying to get our seats together which he was very helpful about, but couldn’t manage it on the Helsinki-Tokyo leg. Actually, I worked out that with our carry-on and our clothes and boots (and possibly the packages we sent home, I can’t recall) we were together bringing about 100kg of stuff home with us (plus the extra 10kg of Xmas fat we’d accumulated).

While we waited we found a souvenir shop with another Sweden “3 yellow crowns on a blue shirt” shirt, which I was quite happy about, but has since started to flake off after only a couple of wears.

Our first flight was a short 1hr jump to Helsinki. Nothing much to report – the view of Finland as we landed was nice, with all the lakes and stuff. We had an hour to wait in Helsinki for the connection, so we hit a souvenir shop. Emma found an interesting shirt with a Finnish cartoon hippo on it, but accidentally got the men’s size when she grabbed the packet, which was a disappointment when we got home [note, the hippo shirt has turned into a fantastic lounge around at home shirt for Emma, it’s soft and baggy and the hippo’s repose perfectly reflects the new goal of the shirt]. I finally found a cool Finland shirt with brown reindeer, but they didn’t bloody well have my size (I know, I busted open a packet to try one on – after the random sizing I’d encountered recently I wasn’t taking chances). Oh well, the proud nation of Finland will have to go unrepresented on my torso.

Helsinki – Tokyo

The next flight was the 9hr overnight to Tokyo. This was actually a pretty good flight. Firstly, the guy that Emma sat next to kindly offered to switch seats with me (Emma’s strange innate ability to get other men to leave such a cutie alone and go away even works on airplanes it seems) so we had the 2 seats between the aisle and window to ourselves. The entertainment was pretty good too, with video on demand and a pretty good selection. The only annoyance was that every announcement was made in Finnish, Swedish and English, which interrupted movie viewing quite a few times and for long periods – then, after the movie finally resumed, the Japanese attendant would be fetched and 2 minutes later the movie would be interrupted again with the Japanese version (I’ve got no problem with the multilinguality, I just wish they didn’t feel obliged to stop my movie to tell me things I didn’t really care to know). Even though we were landing in Tokyo at 9am, that was only about 3am Sweden time so there was not great urge to go to sleep (which was good because I suck at sleeping sitting up). So we watched a few movies while flying through the Siberian night sky - no views this time due to darkness and the attendants closing all the blinds (I did sneak a gorgeous peek at the sun rising somewhere over Khabarovsk though).

I watched Tropic Thunder (A-) but had a little trouble hearing it over the plane noise, so for my next film I watched a foreign film (so I could at least read the subtitles). This was a B+ Swedish film called “Solström” I think – and gave me one last chance to enjoy the wonderful Swedish language. Emma watched a Finnish film about Santa Claus for the same reason, and Wall-E. After that I had time for about one more movie and had to choose between Indiana Jones, Dark Knight and Wall-E. At Emma’s recommendation I watched Wall-E and it was great – good film and not much dialogue to have to try to hear (A).

The Qantas club at Narita Airport

We landed in Tokyo just as we were getting a bit sleepy – and were greeted with a fairly bright and sunny view of Japan from the air. We had about 11 hours to wait until our flight to Brisbane, but luckily Emma had Qantas club membership (due to expire in 2 days) and our next flight was with Qantas (though codeshared on JAL), so we were able to get into the Qantas club in Narita airport. After passing through customs, we thought we’d have a quick look to see where it was before looking around the airport. Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for our desire to see any more of the airport or Japan, the Qantas club was about the first room we found and, after looking inside and feeling very tired (we’d been awake for about 20hrs by then), we decided we’d have a bit of a rest. We found a nice quiet corner with a few comfy chairs to ourselves and made our nest. We very rapidly decided that we could not be arsed leaving our nest and stayed in the club all day. And why bother: they had free internet (Emma had her laptop and we’d even kept the Japan extension on the multi-country power plug we’d bought to use our Swedish hard drive in Australia); they had free food (Japanese nibblies and soup and deserts; they had drinks (including free beer); they had comfy chairs (I put 2 together for a couple of naps); later on I even discovered they had free showers. And we were tired and just wanted free pampering, so it was win-win all around.

Although I wasn’t planning on drinking any alcohol, I did make 2 exceptions. Firstly, they had VB, which I figured I’d have to acclimatise and because it’s actually a nice beer (go figure). Secondly, they had an Asahi beer pouring machine. You put in your glass and press the button, and not only does it know how much beer to put in, it actually tilts the glass for the first part of the pour. Gotta love the Japanese.

Emma spent most of the time playing with photos. I spent it in a sort of 4hr cycle – I’d get tired and curl up on my 2-chair-bed for a nap, but I’d only go for about an hour before waking up (despite taking a sedative that I thought would put me down for 4hrs). Then I’d be awake and active and look around, surf the net, eat some food, read a paper, before getting tired again after a couple of hours and repeating the cycle. Despite being a bit of an ordeal, it was a pretty damn nice kind of ordeal – I shudder to think how the day might have passed in the general airport.

Tokyo – Brisbane

The final leg of the trip home was on a Qantas flight, though codeshared onto a JAL plane. This was probably the least pleasant of all the long haul flights on the trip, but mostly because we were just so tired by then and it was another overnighter (about 9pm to 7am). I’ve never been good at sleeping while sitting up, something that used to make the 15hr drive from Charters Towers to Brisbane every Xmas hols a real drain (and fuelling my general appreciation for air travel), and despite not having slept properly for about 30hours I still couldn’t manage it. The entertainment was the looped video variety – great by 2004 standards but on the lower side of what we’d had more recently on Finnair. We watched that Ricky Gervais movie “Dead Ringers” – not a bad flick, a B+ effort from all involved based on a C script (I guess Ricky Gervais still has to prove himself to Hollywood before he gets the A material). After that my decision to watch Wall-E on the previous flight came back to bite me – Wall-E was the only other movie that I had any interest in watching (the rest were either repellent or Japanese). Luckily it’s good enough to watch twice in 24hrs and killed another couple of laps around the dial. After that I tried to sleep but pretty much failed and, being way too tired to read, ended up playing a few hours of solitaire before breakfast. Actually, on reflection, I did watch “Vicki Christina Barcelona”, Woody Allen’s latest effort, but was way too tired to care. Emma fared a little better – not because she’s any better at sleeping, on the contrary she’s so used to lying there awake in the early hours that she’s almost used to it.

We landed in Brisbane at about 7am, bought our limit of duty free booze (though we discovered when we unpacked our flat that we’d barely dented the last lot from a few years before) and (after a bit of stuffing around that in hindsight we might have shortened) joined the very end of the customs line. Once we got to the front we discovered that cloves are not allowed into the country and had to give up our glögg spice mixes (I was frankly surprised that it was only the cloves that were the problem) – lucky for the country (but unluckily for our mulled wine needs) that I translated the Swedish ingredients for the customs guy, plus we voluntarily pointed out a clove in another bag of spices just labelled “spices” so that we could ditch it and get moving again (rather than wait for the supervisor to eventually come and have a look). It was all very friendly though and as we’d declared everything there were no rules broken or anything like that.

So it was about 9am when we finally emerged to be greeted by our families. Emma’s Mum was crying, though we’d been away from her only half the time we’d been away from everyone else. After a quick catch up we faced the Brisbane summer heat outside the airport (it was so freaking green) and got in our separate cars to head to my parent’s place in Morayfield (so that Emma and her Mum could get some alone time).

Reintegration into Society

Actually, the heat never really took any reacclimatisation, which surprised me. After a couple of months of temps around zero, we walked back into 30+ without any “gawd it’s hot”, it just felt like normal 30+ warmth. The brightness of the sun took a little more getting used to, but the combination of sun and warmth was actually a relief and I can sort of see how Europeans would crave it (in Queensland we fear and avoid it).

The next couple of days were spent catching up on sleep and family. I made the mistake of having a brief nap at about 2pm (based on my experience in Tokyo) that zonked me for the rest of the afternoon (I couldn’t shake the drowsy feeling despite only being out for 30min or so). We went for a couple of walks in the little bit of bush near their place and were rewarded by seeing koalas, kangaroos and rainbow lorikeets, all less than 48hours after getting off the plane – it’s like even the native wildlife was welcoming us home.

For New Year’s Eve (the day after we got back) we stayed in (and went to bed at about 10pm) and on New Years Day we had a bit of a family gathering to catch up with the wider family (including seeing my nephew for the first time).

After that we loaded up all the cars at our disposal and took the stuff we’d stored at Mum and Dad’s back to our flat, where a lot of it stayed piled in the corner until Easter. Then we started work again on the 7th of January. I’d forgotten how mentally draining it is to be stuck at a desk for 7 hours a day. Luckily we had a wedding to plan to keep us busy but that is, as they say, a different story.

Wrap up

OK, so that’s it. It was a great trip, we’re very glad we did it and did it in a fair degree of comfort. We’ve scratched the surface of a foreign country, though only barely and it’s brought home how hard it must be for outsiders to scratch deeper into ours. The Swedes are, I think, a naturally private nation and quite happy to be on the relatively anonymous edge of the world.

Thanks once again to all the people that helped us out along the way: Anders and Agnete; Anna, Annika, Magnus and Mattias; Maria, Lovisa and Kerstin; Kalle and Siri; Bob Brown (no, another one); Ylve and Rolf; Tonia; Duncan and Louise; Fiona; Michelle; and Anders and Agnete one last time.

Thanks to those who bore with these blogs after about Switzerland. They did get a bit long, but since they’re our lasting record I didn’t want to extinguish a memory just so you could get back to work a bit quicker (and in fact I’m a little insulted that you’d ask such a thing). For those of you that did manage to trawl this far looking for the gold that became rarer as the blogs went on I have planted a magic word in the blogs somewhere, if you find it then tell me and you’ll win the prize of a hug or a free drink (whichever is more preferable, or just my gratitude and the title of “one of my bestest friends in the whole world” if you’re standoffishly teetotal or hundreds of kilometres away).

Since we’ve been back, the knowledge I’ve gleaned about the land, language, people and culture of Sweden has, to even a greater degree than I expected, been of almost no practical use. Apart from our dear friend Claire who knows what it’s like, my “why would you want to travel outside of a great country like Australia” father has actually shown the most interest in probing some of that knowledge. Come on people, let me show off a little bit!

But we don’t only travel to show off (that’s just most of it). I’d been thinking philosophically at various points about the joy of travel and discovery which I’ll clumsily try to leave off with. There’s a whole lot that one doesn’t know much about: the “Other”. Anything we’ve never experienced (countries, people, even pop songs) we only have a vague notion of, unaccompanied by mental pictures or sensations. When we encounter it for the first time it is someone else’s. Then a funny thing happens: it suddenly becomes our own. It becomes part of our experience, or our mind’s collection, of us. It makes our sum total a little bit bigger and we grow slightly to accommodate it. And since growth is, after all, the ultimate purpose of life maybe we feel a little more accomplished at that.

Arctic Winter

besoka — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 20:40:00 GMT

Time to finish off the paperwork for these blogs. Unfortunately this is having to be written after I have returned to Australia, and so a lot of other things are happening, and have happened, to distract me from this blog. So we’ll see how we go.

Executive Summary

On this trip we flew up to the mining town of Kiruna in the Swedish Arctic. We first stopped in at the nearby village of Jukkasjärvi to stay a night at the famous Ice Hotel – a hotel made entirely of ice, which melts every summer and is rebuilt anew every winter (though we stayed in the non-ice part surrounding the main ice structure). Next we had a night in Kiruna before heading out for a dogsled tour and then on for 2 nights at the (predominantly Sami) village of Nikkaluokta nestled at the foot of the Swedish mountains. At Nikkaluokta we did some snowshoeing around the frozen landscape, caught a glimpse of the northern lights, ate some yummy local food, learned a bit more about modern Sami people, experienced minus 21 degrees Celsius and met Boris the Welcome Dog. Then after another night in Kiruna and a look around (including their cool church), we flew back to the sunnier climes of Örebro (ie, the sun still actually rises there in winter) to prepare for Xmas.

Contents

Flight to Kiruna and on to Jukkasjärvi
Ice Hotel
Kiruna
Dogsledding
Nikkaluokta
Day 2 at Nikkaluokta: snowshoeing around the creeks; a sauna; northern lights and Boris
Day 3 at Nikkaluokta: snowshoeing towards the mountains in -21 degrees
Kiruna and home
Wrap-up

Flight to Kiruna and on to Jukkasjärvi

Our train left Örebro in the pre-dawn of 7am to take us to Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport (about 40min north of Stockholm) for our flight to Kiruna. The flight left at about midday for the 2hr flight. Despite the checkin person giving us a seat over the wing, despite assuring us it wasn’t (note: anything between about row 12 and 19 on a standard domestic plane will have the view blocked by the wing), we still enjoyed an airborne sunset (above the clouds the sunsets are pretty cool and worth looking out for) as we farewelled the sun for the next week.

We landed at about 2:30 in Kiruna and walked from the plane to the terminal – though the pilot did helpfully remind us to put our coats on since it was a bit chilly out. From there we hopped on the bus provided by the Ice Hotel towards Jukkasjärvi, enjoying the sight of dark leafless dwarf birches in the Arctic twilight.

Just a quick rundown on the area before we go on. Kiruna (“KEY-roon-a”) is a mining town about 120km north of the Arctic Circle. It was built, and exists, to mine iron ore, sitting as it does on the biggest iron ore deposit in western Europe. It has existed for about 100 years and, being a mining town in the middle of an otherwise sparsely populated region in a fairly harsh climate, is rather like Mt Isa in the Queensland desert. It is the main centre in the region, with a population of about 20,000. Its name derives from the Sámi word “Giron”, meaning ptarmigan, a white, fluffy grouse-like bird native to the area. Jukkasjärvi (“YOOK-as-YER-vi”), on the other hand is a much older settlement, being a market town since the 1600s. It is about 10km east of Kiruna and is much smaller with only about 500 residents. Despite this (and because of the relative ages), Kiruna is in the diocese of Jukkasjärvi rather than the other way around. The name of the town is of Sámi and Finnish origin (reflecting the historical demographics of the region), originally meaning something like “Market lake” or “Gathering lake”, though the name has shifted from the original language slightly. Jukkasjärvi is also home to the Ice Hotel, the main reason for our visit there.

Ice Hotel

The Ice Hotel is, oddly enough, a hotel constructed almost entirely out of ice. It was the brainchild of local entrepreneur Yngve Bergkvist, who took an interest in the possibilities of building with ice. It started as a temporary art gallery as part of an ice-carving festival in the late 80s, and morphed into a hotel in about 1989 when some unexpected visitors couldn’t find accommodation in town. Since then it has grown into one of Sweden’s premier attractions. The various books about it (one of which was in the room we had in Kiruna later on) keep raving on about how many foreigners more readily associate Sweden with the Ice Hotel than with Stockholm, though I sincerely hope that they’re talking about the Americans. The Ice Hotel was a vague notion we’d heard of and looked into as part of our Arctic trip, not a driving force – mind you, when we told various Swedes about our plans to go to Kiruna in winter, many did ask if we were going to the Ice Hotel, so it does have a fairly big profile.

The Ice Hotel is built in two main ways. The main structure is made by plonking a multi-section frame on the ground and spraying a mixture of snow and ice (called “snice”) over it with something like the snowmaking machines they use on ski slopes. This is left to harden for a few days and the frame is slid out from under it, leaving a tunnel/corridor in the ice. The two types of frame used are a low arched one, to create the rooms (which are then partitioned off inside), and a more “kids drawing of a house” profiled one, to make the corridors running between the rows of rooms. These main structures look a bit like military bunkers once completed. The other main construction material is pure ice cut out of the nearby Torne River. Since this ice forms slowly under still conditions from fairly pure Arctic mountain water, it is very clear with no air bubbles or sediment and few impurities. This clear ice is used for the ice sculptures and bricks needed, as well as being combined with the opaque snice for artistic effect.

The lighting is all pumped in through optic fibres since the light sources would generate heat which would affect the ice around. Generally coloured lights are not used, as the feeling is that the natural colours of the ice are more impressive. The sun also shines through the walls in the daytime giving a glorious lighting effect of its own, but we were there in midwinter when there was no direct sunlight. The interior is about -5 degrees C – this is usually warmer than the outside, but while we were there they were having a warm few days with about -1 outside. Oh, and I should mention the (possibly obvious) point that the Ice Hotel melts every spring (around about March I think is when they close it to visitors) and has to be rebuilt every winter (Novemberish).

The Ice Hotel offers 3 levels of accommodation. Ice Rooms (also called Art Suites) are specially prepared by individual artists. They each have their own theme and abound with ice sculptures and lighting, ranging from a treehouse to an Adam and Eve room to a modern day room. These are massively expensive. The Snow Rooms are unadorned ice rooms, with a smaller, but still pretty huge price tag. All the cold rooms have beds covered with reindeer hides and curtains for doors. Outside the Ice Hotel itself, but part of the same complex, are the Warm Rooms – standard hotel rooms (made of standard building materials) with TVs and bathrooms and showers and running water. These are a more normal hotel room price. We stayed in one of the Warm Rooms, partly due to cost and partly because all of the cold rooms were booked out anyway. Another reason that didn’t occur to us until we were there was that the cold rooms have no running water. The showers and toilets are in a separate, permanent wing of the hotel, along with lockers for your luggage (it’d freeze if you left it in the room). It seems obvious once you’re there, but you can’t just hang out in a -5 degree room – you only go in there to sleep. So, while you have the experience of sleeping in a -5 room made of ice, you can’t really relax after your trip and have to go through a fairly big ordeal for that midnight toilet trip. Even the Ice Hotel itself recommends people staying for more than one night to stay one night in the cold room and then move to a warm room for the rest of the stay. Ultimately it’s kind of like the most interesting backpackers hostel in the world, but with a much higher price tag. An Irish honeymooning couple we met in the bar stayed in the ice room and said they were glad they’d done it, but weren’t rushing back to repeat the experience. So we were kind of glad we’d got to see the amazing place without the discomfort and expense – which is not to say that it’s not worth visiting (it really is), just that we were relieved that our choices had worked out for the best for this comfort loving couple.

As for more of what happened during our stay there, here’s a rundown. We arrived at about 3:30 – and night had already fallen. After getting into our room, we went to see about some warm clothes that they lend out. In the end I don’t think I needed any since it was so warm – Emma got some boots. We did a tour of the hotel - one of the benefits of people only sleeping there at night means that the rest of us can have a good stickybeak around without disturbing anyone (or paying for the night in them). After that we had quick walk around town before dinner – an odd experience since it was night-time and snow covered pretty much everything to a depth of about half a metre or more, so we walked up the main street to the old Sámi church (built in 1608 and oldest building in town). Sámi churches tend to have an interestingly designed belltower/gate arrangement out the front – probably modelled on the raised storage huts used to store food and equipment out of season. The church was, unfortunately closed, but it was a nice walk anyway. As mentioned before, it was warm (about -1C) and cloudy, and predicted to be so for much of our stay in the Arctic. Emma was clearly (and literally) looking on the bright side when she looked at the glow from the industrial mining town of Kiruna against the clouds on the horizon and commented “We may not see the Northern Lights on this trip, but at least the glow from Kiruna is nice.” Gotta love that positive thinking (and I do).

After our walk, we went to the restaurant for dinner. There were two options – go to the Manor House up near the church for a Julbord (huge Yule buffet – bit of a Swedish tradition) for about $100, or head to the restaurant across the road from the Ice Hotel (owned by them, but a normal building) for $60 mains (captive clientele). After a quick verification that the Julbord was mostly fish, meat and potatoes, we opted for the more Emma-friendly restaurant. I must admit, the food was expensive and served on ridiculously big plates designed to make the portions look as small as possible, but it was a pretty nice meal in the end. With a friendly waiter (it was his 3rd day, but he was chatty and not at all stuckup) and a cool fake aurora curtain and lights arrangement on the ceiling (it looked especially good reflected in the windows) a yummy cocktail and fairly tasty food (reindeer featured of course), we really didn’t mind the $100 each bill at the end – at least it felt like it was worth that much.

After that we went to the Ice Bar in the Hotel for some drinks. The Ice Bar is, of course made of ice and serves cocktails made of Absolut flavoured vodkas in glasses made of ice. We’ve been to at least one other such place in NZ, and there’s probably a few around the traps, but this one was pretty sweet. The theme this year was Art Deco – so they had a bit of a 30s thing going, including some nice swing music when we arrived (we had a couple of swingouts, but didn’t want to break any furniture or ankles). Unfortunately this gradually morphed into some slower music, then Celine Dion’s Titanic theme, at which point I complained (we were the only ones there) and was punished with a terrible reggae/bossa-nova version of Stairway to Heaven. It really was the worst cover since Old Bob Dylan started singing Young Bob Dylan’s songs. At one point, the CD started skipping, and I thought we were saved, until I realised that that was part of the song, and they continued on for about 5 more verses of that crap. Luckily, the drinks were fan............tastic. We got about 3 each, partly because the refills were a bit cheaper than the first drink, partly because they were so yummy. The ice glass makes them nice and cold and also melts pure Arctic water into the drink to dilute it nicely. The other cool thing about ice glasses was that one’s lips melted ergonomic shapes into the rims. The only downside was that we were the only people there for most of the hour or so – it was only about 8pm, but it’s not like they get the after work crowd or anything. This was partly good in that we had our run of the place, but just a few more people would have made the atmosphere just right – though we did get to talk to the aforementioned Irish honeymooners towards the end. After a nice night out of dinner and drinks, we retired to our warm room for some sleep (we’d been up since 5am to get the train to the airport for the flight north).

Next day we awoke late (not much to do that day except get to Kiruna) and wandered over to the restaurant for a nice breakfast. After breakfast we started to notice how light it was getting. Since this was the week leading up to the shortest day of the year, a time when the sun doesn’t rise at all in the Arctic (for about 4 weeks around the winter solstice in Kiruna), I expected it to be quite dark – sort of like when you can see a glow in the sky before dawn, but still needing streetlights to see. But in reality it is definitely daylight during the hours of about 9:30am to 2:30pm. Emma insists on explaining that it is like the pre-dawn light, but I don’t like that description – mostly because that could be interpreted as anything from night to day, and that description would not have made me change my preconceived assumptions above. I prefer to describe it as the sort of light levels you’d get on an overcast day – not exactly bright and no sunshine, but you certainly don’t need any extra lights to find your way around outside.

Anyway, after packing up and having a final wander around the complex in the daytime, we got a cab to our hotel in Kiruna. This was the ever-reliable Scandic chain – not the cheapest accom around, but great quality, pretty good value and about half the price of even the warm rooms in the Ice Hotel.

Kiruna

Kiruna, as I’ve said before, is the main city in the Lappland region of Sweden. It’s a mining town that for the past 100 years has existed to dig up the huge iron ore deposit it sits on. In fact, they are even starting the process of moving the town since the silly twits that first settled the place did so on top of part of the ore body (though in the early miners defence, it is between the main two mines and you don’t want a long commute in the Arctic). Substitute remote tropical desert for remote arctic tundra and MIM for the government owned mining company LKAB and you’d have Mt Isa (actually, I’m not sure the definition of “tundra” – there are still forests up there, though mostly dwarf birch).

We arrived at about midday during the short day and went for a walk while we waited for the checkin time at the hotel. It’s a nice enough place. The streets are a bit random and a bit interesting to navigate, though I understand that’s deliberate to prevent icy winds whooshing through long, straight streets. The whole place was covered in about a metre of snow (except where it had been moved to create paths) so it’s hard to say what it looks like underneath. We had been through there in summer on our way to Narvik, but only got a brief glimpse from the train station on the 20min stop. The city centre is on top of a hill, looking down over what I assume in summer is a lake to the mine on the next hill (the road from the mine does a big curve into town around something).

We checked in to the Scandic at dusk (2:30pm) and I went to use the sauna facilities on the top floor. It was a nice enough time, very relaxing and with a view of the mine over the lake. I got back to the room and we just relaxed for the rest of the afternoon/night. We went out to get some dinner at the local pizza place across the main square/carpark and that was about it - just what we needed after such an early start the day before.

Dogsledding

Next day we were picked up by the dogsled guy to take us out to the little village of Holmajärvi, about halfway to Nikkaluokta. The guy who drove us and the other guests (two German guys and a Japanese couple) dressed a bit Sámi, but he kind of talked like Magnus, who is from the south, so maybe not. Anyway, it was a nice drive out through the long country roads – a bit like driving in the bush in Australia. As an aside, that is one of the charms of Scandinavia, it’s one of the few places in Europe (apart from probably Russia) where you get that sense of remoteness and wilderness.

We got to the dog sled place and met the guy that runs it, Nikolas. We changed into the outdoor gear provided (partly against the cold and partly against the dogs jumping up and damaging our clothes) and went out to help hitch up the dogs. For this trip, we would be in pairs on our own sleds, with one person standing on the back driving and one sitting. Nikolas said that he was the only operator that let you drive your own sled, and while this possibly was partly to cut down on labour costs, it was great fun.

Driving a dog sled is pretty simple. There is no steering – the dogs just followed the sled in front (Nikolas was leading us all and he probably steered his team somehow). To slow down, there is a brake that you stand on, which digs into the snow to provide resistance to the dogs. To accelerate, you just release the brake and the dogs run as hard as they can (they do this when the brake is on to, but obviously, “as fast as they can” is a bit slower then). About halfway along, we switched driver and passenger. This was good because it made Emma have a go, and it also demonstrated how much more fun it is to be standing up, looking around and actively participating in the experience than sitting and looking around (that’s pretty fun too, but driving is way better).

We started out from the kennels and went through the forest towards the lake. On the way we saw a couple of elk with their calves. Then on the lake we had a long flat run, with just the sound of the dogs and the whoosh of the sled runners to frame the peace and quiet. It’s a pretty nice way to travel and we were glad we’d shied away from the many snowmobile trips that are offered up here.

There is one interesting result of using dog power, however. Pulling the sled is the dog’s daily exercise, and they attack it like any other working dog – ie trying to go fast, and having their daily crap. I noticed the odd brown spots on the snow form the sleds in front and then realised it was the dog poo that had gone under the runners. Since the dogs were in teams of 5 (2 at the front, 1 in the middle and 2 at the back), there was no “hey guys, wait up” and they had to do it on the run. Most dogs did a little dance (running with their legs more spread than usual), but the middle one insisted on squatting and just got dragged along. Sounds gross, but it was actually pretty funny and better than snowmobile fumes. Plus it all hit the ground before our sled occupied the space under it, so it wasn’t like it hit us. Bit of a smell though. Each dog seemed to go a couple of times during the trip. Anyway, moving on.

After an hour and a half and a bit of a lap of a few lakes (it’s pretty lakey up there) and the low terrain in between, we went back for lunch of salmon soup. Nikolas tried to tell a few Norwegian joke, but they were pretty terrible, despite his Sámi-posing henchman laughing heartily, but twas all mostly in good fun. The Norwegian jokes are just like Irish jokes or Kiwi jokes, but there was a bit of jealousy there, I think, since the formerly poorer cousins to the Swedes now have a better standard of living thanks to the North Sea oil revenue.

Nikkaluokta

After the dogsledding, it was time to move on to our couple of days in Nikkaluokta (NIK-a-LOK-ta) – hopefully seeing the northern lights at night and snowshoeing during the day. Sofie, who runs the little family company we were going through, picked us up from the dogsled place on her way home from Kiruna for the half hour or so drive to Nikkaluokta.

Nikkaluokta is a very small town at the end of the road west from Kiruna at the foot of the mountains along the Norwegian border. It’s main claim to fame is as the starting point for trekking the 20km or so up to Kebnekaise – Sweden’s tallest mountain (about the height of Kosciousko in Australia and about as difficult to pronounce while reading). While not on the Kungsleden (“King’s trail”) hiking path that runs along much of the mountains up here, it is a good point to enter or leave the trail for those that don’t want to do the full 440km route.

Being at the base of the mountains, at the junction of two valleys funnelling cold air down from the peaks, Nikkaluokta regularly records the lowest temperatures in Sweden. It had been down to -35 the week before we were there, but when we got there it was only a balmy -2. Now, recall that we’d been in Sweden up till then so -2 was nothing new to us – we wanted extremes baby.

Nikkaluokta is predominantly a Sámi settlement, in that most of the residents are of Sámi origin – and all pretty much related. It seems to have been founded as a site where reindeer brought down from the summer mountain pastures could be rounded up and tagged, slaughtered or herded/transported to the lowland winter pastures. The name is Sámi and means something like “Nil’s creek” after the first guy who decided to settle there about a hundred years ago.

The tour company we were with comprises pretty much Sofie and her fiancé Daniel, both in their early 30s. Sofie is a formidably organised and extremely hard working Nordic woman (ie regular Swede, not Sámi) from the coast (near Luleå) and Daniel is a laid back Sámi (100%) from Nikkaluokta. It was really nice to get to see modern Sámi doing their thing without getting all dressed up for tourists in their colourful clothes and sitting in a tee-pee or something. Daniel looks more like Aussie Joe Bugner (an Afrikaans boxer who moved to Australia in the 70s) than anything else and you wouldn’t pick any ethnic difference between Sofie and Daniel by looking at them. Though there does seem to be a laid back, she’ll-be-right kind of attitude that you seem to see with a lot of cultures that are closer to nature. They have a baby son called Patrick.

Sofie took us to our cabin, which we had to ourself since we were the only guests at that time. She let us get settled and then came back a few hours later to cook us our dinner. I had elk rissoles and Emma got some nice veggie food. Sofie had been a vegetarian for a few years until she moved to Nikkaluokta, and so was able to cater for Emma spectacularly well. She said vegetarianism didn’t really fit the Sámi lifestyle (she joked that they practically consider reindeer a vegetable) and so now she eats local meats as well - reindeer, elk and fish.

After dinner we took a walk around the village (an extremely spread out affair since space is not a premium here – and bizarre building restrictions from the 70s prevent any more permanent structures being built) with Sofie, but it was still cloudy and so there was no Northern Lights action. Emma and I took a quick look outside before bed and saw some dim light in the sky to the north, sort of like a dim blur. We weren’t sure if it was the northern lights or not and concluded that it was the moonlight reflecting off the edge of the clouds and went to bed.

Day 2 at Nikkaluokta: snowshoeing around the creeks; a sauna; northern lights and Boris

Next day Daniel picked us up at dawn (ie about 9ish) to take us to their house to get into our snowshoes. We rode in a sled-trailer hitched to the back of the snowmobile (the main means of transport as the main road in is the only one that is ploughed regularly). They’d provided us with warm clothing and boots, but in the end I just used the pants and hat. My jacket and fleece were pretty good and I knew how to use them (plus it felt a bit hot for the really warm jacket they’d provided), plus my boots were comfy and I figured that my feet would not thank me for changing boots (my feet are like small children – if they get something new they start to cry after a while), and my boots had got me around Europe and were starting to wear out anyway. They gave me some gaiters to keep the snow out.

The snowshoes were plastic thingies that fit over one’s shoes with a rubber strap around the heel and the toe in a rubber toe-space – not unlike a snorkelling flipper, but over a boot. Snowshoes are surprisingly easy to walk in. They are only really attached at the toe and so hinge freely at that point, so that when you walk you can push off normally with your ankle. Then your foot kind of drags the shoe along to get it under you for the next step. They have gaps in the surface to let snow out again – a fair bit gets on top, especially when you sink. You sink down still fairly often, but with the snowshoe it makes a wide hole around your foot so the snow on the sides doesn’t make your leg wet and cold. Most people know that snowshoes look a bit like tennis racquets with a handle at the back, and I tried to work out what the handle at the back does. My conclusion is that it firstly weights the back down to keep the front edge of the shoe clear of the snow when stepping, and secondly it stops the shoe from flicking up the other way and having you step on the back edge (since the handle will hit the snow before it tilts too far). Once walking, one looks and feels a bit like a bird of some sort (possibly a seagull).

Anyway, we walked with Daniel around the frozen waterways up one of the valleys for about 3 hours. This day was already a bit clearer, so we got to see some lovely dawn colours. Since the sun doesn’t really come up, you get lovely dawn colours for about 2 hours, which then turn into sunset colours for the next 2 hours – complete with purple tints and all. We also saw some clouds with a rainbow effect a bit like mother-of-pearl. Daniel called then something that translates as “Pearl clouds” and said they meant more warm weather was on the way.

The countryside was nice to see too, with rolling snow covered mountains and the frozen creeks, all with dwarf birches on then that looked a bit like tea trees or wattles from home. While Sophie spoke prefect English, Daniel was a bit less fluent - Sofie says he speaks 4 languages (Swedish, English, Sámi and Finnish), but none of them well - so we got to use our Swedish a bit as well, which was always fun.

After exploring the creeks, we walked up a hillside that was a bit less covered in trees (it would be a bog in summer) to get a better view. Daniel said that cloudberries (Hjörtron – a Swedish delicacy a bit like a yellow raspberry but with a really interesting sweet and bitter taste) grow there in summer. We eventually came to a couple of parallel fences (about 2m high) that created a corridor that the reindeer were herded down from the high pastures into the yards near town. Here the calves were identified while still with their mothers – so that the owners knew which were theirs and they were tagged. Also, they might be slaughtered or transported to summer pastures.

After about 3 hours walking, we came back to Sofie and Daniel’s house for lunch and a rest. It was nice to be welcomed into an average home in the area, and they were really nice hosts. They mentioned that there might be (alas) cloud again that night, and would we like a sauna in their woodfired saunYa tack! I replied (the absence of a space there is deliberate to demonstrate how quickly I replied). So we went back to our cabin for a snooze in the dark afternoon and then back to the sauna for the real sauna in the snow experience I’d been waiting for the whole trip since Finland. And it was lovely, with buckets of water at various temperatures and a brush to scrub down with. It was right next to their house, so I didn’t get to roll naked in the snow, but I did go out a few times to rub some snow on me, and did have a quick roll with a modestly placed towel, though the snow was hard because of the high temps – it was a bit like pumice on the face though, quite nice.

When we were finished and all relaxed, Daniel and Patrick took over in the sauna while we went back to the cabin and Sophie made us dinner – a lovely salmon fillet fried in butter for me and something nice for Emma too. The salmon was really nice (more meaty than fishy), I shall have to look into that in future. Sofie mentioned that she’d seen the northern lights the night before – that soft glow we’d seen actually was the lights. After dinner, Emma and I walked out along the main road away from the (few) lights of town to try and get a better look, since that night was about the first clear night we’d had and our last chance to see anything before going back to the constant glow of Kiruna.

On our way out a playful border collie (the black and white sort, not the Lassie sort) came trotting by and decided to join us – simple as that. He followed us out along the road, claiming pats with his head in that adorable way working dogs can, and running off to investigate things before always returning (and occasionally becoming amorous with my leg – though Emma’s “fvck off” vibes apparently work just as well on dogs as they do on other men). We’d learned the day before from Sofie that the Sámi word for hello is (something like) “booris booris”, so we named our new friend “Boris the Welcome Dog”. He seemed to be still a bit of a puppy (full grown, but not yet mature) and was just a local youth out looking for some excitement.

On the way out, Emma suddenly grabbed my arm and said “Look!” We saw light cascading vertically from the sky and were momentarily awestruck ... until we realised it was just a telephone pole reflecting the headlights of a snowmobile. As our eyes became more adjusted to the dark, we started to notice a glow in the north. It was mostly the shape of a low, flat rainbow, but it shifted within this shape a bit, though so slowly that you could really only see the effects of the movement rather than the movement itself – it evolved rather than moved, a bit like the stars or shadows do as they change position over time. There was no colour as such, the light was too dim to register the colour (our eyes have two sorts of receptors – cones that work in bright light and detect colour, and rods that work in low light and don’t distinguish colour). There was also no real shape, it was just a series of fuzzy blobs of glow that grew and shrank in different parts of the northern sky, to a height of about 30 degrees or so. It’s also a little bit like the first light of dawn starting to com eup (but in the wrong direction). After an hour and a half, we finally decided that that was the show and walked back to our cabin with Boris.

Once back, we decided to build a snölyckta (snow lantern) on the 1m high snow drift just off our entrance. This idea soon evaporated as Boris tried to eat any snowballs we tried to make, so we spent a few minutes throwing snowballs to Boris to catch – he never seemed to tire of it. As he and I were grabbing for the same bit of snow, he managed to scratch my wrist me slightly with his paw. I only mention this because I still have a faint red mark, which makes me smile whenever I see it thinking “I may be back at work in the office in Brisbane, but at least I still have a scratch I got from a reindeer herding dog in the Arctic.” It’s just something tangible to remind me that it wasn’t all a dream.

After a while we retired inside. We had some dessert and I had a shower ready for bed. Emma wanted to have a final look outside at the northern lights and I said to let me know if anything interesting was happening – I didn’t want to get all dressed up again. After a couple of minutes, Emma came back in and said “It looks a little brighter, you might want to come out.” So I started getting dressed and Emma came back inside and said “Actually, hurry up it’s getting quite bright”. So I threw on my clothes and boots quickly and rushed out to a spot we’d found in the shadow of another cabin away from some lights. The northern lights were indeed brighter and were getting higher in the sky. There was also some definition and colour (just green) appearing with some sort of vertical lines appearing and growing. All this time I was still trying to sort out my clothes to settle in for a good viewing. Unfortunately, after a bit of promise, it settled back into its old pattern of dim, fuzzy, evolving glow. Emma said that while I was inside, she’d seen it suddenly ripple across the sky, but unfortunately I missed it. After another couple of hours of watching and hoping it would reintensify (it kept looking like it was about to but never really did) we finally called it a night and went to bed. I’m glad Boris was there to keep us entertained as the light show can be a slow affair.

All in all, I’m glad we saw the northern lights. I think what we saw was a sort of 10% show. I’m sure it gets much brighter than that, but at least we saw something. On the other hand, if I was offered the same chance again with the assurance that the show would not be any brighter, I’m not sure I’d go too far to see it – it’s more the possibility of seeing the big show that brings you there. Mind you, we have seen what a lot of Swedes say they never have. The full show would be, or course, amazing, and I believe the reports I’ve heard about it dancing and crackling in green and (more rarely) pink.

Day 3 at Nikkaluokta: snowshoeing towards the mountains in -21 degrees

After ticking off one of our hopes the night before (northern lights) and even realising my dream of a woodfired sauna in the snow, the next morning we were granted our other dream when we awoke to find that the outside temperature was -21 degrees Celsius. In fact, Emma managed to get a photo of the thermometer showing an outside temp of -21.9 and the inside temp of +21.9. I also had a lovely view of the moon going down behind the distant snow-covered mountain. We rugged up and waited for Sofie to come past and pick us up for another day of snowshoeing.

This day we went up the other valley to the north towards Kebnekaise. It was easier going that day since the snow was a little harder and we were going along a snowmobile track with more packed down snow. The colours from the sun under the horizon were fabulous, with a mauve glow over half of the horizon to the south – unfortunately it doesn’t really come out in photos. We also walked past some rushing streams and over some frozen ones. In a few small places the water moves so quickly that it doesn’t freeze over until it reaches -30. The scenery was just gorgeous.

We walked along in the freezing (literally) air, with Sofie stopping occasionally to check our faces for any white patches that would reveal any early frostbite (none occurred, she was just being careful). It was also so cold that our breath was freezing and forming ice crystals on our jackets and hoods – especially on Emma’s. I was glad I’d chosen to wear my jacket (rather than the one provided), since I knew how to snuggle my face down under the collar up to my nose and warm it up with my breath.

After an hour or so, Sofie gave us the option of climbing a small hill for a view, or walking along the flat to a more open area. We went with her suggestion of the hill since we were feeling fit and hadn’t seen any views from high up yet. The climb was a bit harder than we (or Sofie) thought – snowshoes are tough things to climb in and the snow was deep and the hillside was steep, even if it wasn’t super high, but Sofie made a track up and we followed her to the top. At the top we were rewarded with a stunning view up the valley to the mountains at the end (the one from the Xmas card we sent around). Sofie pointed out Kebnekaise, a fairly modest looking mountain surrounded by the others, but despite appearances, the highest point in Sweden. She explained that Kebnekaise has a double peak. The south peak is a few metres higher than the north peak, but the south peak is made of ice. With global warming, this peak is shrinking gradually and soon the north peak (made of rock) will be higher. This is a bit of a shame for Nikkaluokta because a big part of its tourist trade is as a base for hikers hiking up to the top, which you can do without a lot of climbing experience (you’d want a guide for safety, but it’s just a hike rather than a climb). The north peak is reached by getting to the south peak and then climbing along a narrow ridge – a feat that requires considerably more climbing experience. So they’re a bit worried that fewer people might want to try if the easy peak is no longer the highest point in the country. The effects of climate change are many and varied.

The other main cool thing about that cold day was the ice crystals on the trees. Because it had been windy the week before, the coating of snow had been blown off the trees. Now, with the cold snap, ice crystals had formed on all of the branches. And not little frost type crystals either, these mothers were about half a centimetre or more long. This meant that all of the trees had an icy canopy of crystals that looked really cool.

After our view we walked back to Sofie and Daniel’s place for lunch. We ate outside around the fire they’d built. This was an interesting experience. First, it was freaking cold. Second, the fire gave out very little warmth (or at least, what was given out was swallowed by the cold). At one point I held my bare hand about 5cm over the top of the flames and felt nothing – I had to get to about 2cm to feel the heat of the fire. The ice and snow was still frozen inside the fire place right next to the fire. The seats were covered with reindeer hides, once again showing how useful they are for keeping out the cold – they were providing more protection from the cold than the fire was. It was a nice lunch of reindeer pies (though the fire was having trouble heating them), but we were happy to get inside – great experience, but bloody cold.

After that, we went back to the cabin and packed up and then Sofie came and picked us up for the drive back to Kiruna. Along the way, I asked lots of questions about the Sámi since I was very interested in the views of someone more acquainted with their lives (southern Swedes seem to know fairly little). Without meaning to, the discussion got a bit bogged down in the negatives. There is a bit of a problem with alcohol (Sofie said that there are a few single old men around, when she asked she found that their families had left), and, I guess the usual problems with growing up in remote communities. On the other hand I don’t think that there is the huge imbalance in health that we have in Australia (though I can’t confirm this). Only about 10% of Sámi work in reindeer herding, the rest work in “regular” jobs – including a few in tourism and probably a lot in the mine and Kiruna generally. The extended family seems important in the same way as for many traditional societies (including Aboriginals) with cousins working for other cousins and generally economic activity linked to relations a bit (though given that everyone in an area are probably “cousins” then that would be the case even if there was no “family loyalty” component). The Sámi villages tend to be run as a bit of a cooperative. The various “villages” herd their reindeer as a company, but “village” has a broader meaning than a single settlement, more of a large area including a number of settlements. The economy seems fairly insular too, with the reindeer meat produced mostly being consumed by the people in the area – there doesn’t seem to be too much demand for it even in southern Sweden (though the Chernobyl meltdown might have something to do with that – it contaminated the lichens the reindeer eat and made the reindeer unfit for consumption for quite a while until relatively recently). There was a bit of government assistance given out over the past few years due to poor conditions (so the herders could buy feed for their herds), which probably caused the same grumbling that similar indigenous welfare does in Australia among a certain type of person.

Along the way we finally saw an elk. Daniel had been quite disappointed not to have found one to show us on our walk, but luckily one wandered out in front of the car on the drive. This also demonstrated how dangerous the buggers are to drivers. Given how dark it is for a lot of the time, you’ve got to be on your toes to spot their eyes in the headlights on the side of the road – Sofie said that older drivers might have hit the one we saw (not deliberately, though if they missed it they might stop the car and get out and hunt it). We have a similar problem in country Australia with kangaroos, but although they come out of the bush onto the road a fair bit faster, if you hit one he’ll regret it more than you and you’ll still be able to drive home with just a bit of panelbeating to look forward to. An elk is about the size of a horse and weighs 500-1000kg – so even if you escape serious injury, it’s going to mess your car up. We also saw some reindeer – they’re a bit more common to encounter and tend to run directly away from your car along the road rather than getting out of the way, they’re probably more like roos to smack into.

Anyhoo, after an hour or so we got back to Kiruna, Sofie dropped us off at the Scandic and picked up a local teenager (actually the owner of Boris) who’s father had left him in town because he was too late getting his arse in gear than for even “Sámi time” to allow for, and they were off. We had a great time with them and would recommend them to anyone (www.lappland-inspiration.se).

We then had dinner at the same pizza place, grabbed a final sauna and went to bed. We ended up getting the exact same room we’d had 3 nights previously – which was nice because it had a great view across to the mine and the hills beyond.

Kiruna and home

Next morning we enjoyed our last hotel breakfast (I piled up the meatballs and lingonberry jam...nice) and then went for a quick walk to see some sights while it was light and before we had to head to the airport.

First stop was the church. This is a huge affair, built in the style of a Sámi church (and bearing a strong similarity to a Norwegian stave church – I wonder if there’s a link, or if the architect just borrowed from each), with a high peaked roof and a separate bell tower to match. It was built fairly recently I think, about 2000 or so. It was a Sunday morning and people were starting to arrive for the service, but we managed a quick peek inside before the crowd rolled in. After that we went for a walk through the church grounds - not a cemetery, but just a park with birch trees and paths through the metre high snow. The light by now was looking fantastic, with all sorts of purple dawn colours to the south through the trees.

After an hour spent there, we rushed over to the council chambers – voted Sweden’s best public building (they have pageants for everything), although it possibly looks better on the inside. On the outside it is a bit of a box (a nice box but a box) with an interesting clock tower made of a big square wrought iron obelisk. It’s pretty cool and reflects the purpose of the town, but I’m sure they’ve got at least one better public building in Sweden. After this, it was time to rush back to the hotel, check out and cab it to the airport.

We said goodbye to the Arctic after waiting around for our plane (Emma insists on getting everywhere super early) and flew back to the south, where there was less snow. We got the earlier bus and train back to Örebro (though the connection was a bit tight) and hit the sack. It actually took us about 7 hours from when we left the hotel until we got to the flat – you could drive about halfway in that time (if the roads weren’t covered in snow).

Wrap-up

We’re really glad we got to see the Arctic in both winter and summer. The midnight sun and middays without sun are certainly the most memorable parts for us and something you can’t experience unless you’re there (ie you can’t really take a photo of a short day). The metre-high snowdrifts and frozen everything are also pretty cool. The cold is not so bad – everything is designed so that you’re not outside to feel it much (they’re not stupid). I did discover that my two pairs of cargo pants fit one over the other (one pair is a size smaller) to form a nice double layer that was plenty warm enough for heading out in -8C or so. It was great to see the northern lights (aurora borealis for those still unsure) as well. Of course if would have been even better with a full on show but we felt lucky just to see anything.

Finally, the other big draw up there is the sense of space and wilderness. We are used to that sort of thing in Australia (especially those of us brought up outside of cities like Emma and me), but it is a very rare commodity in Europe. Northern Scandinavia is probably one of the few (if not only) wilderness areas in Western Europe – with few people and land not totally taken up for farming, and almost certainly the only wilderness area that is not mountains. You’d probably have to go to remoter parts of Russia to find the next closest. Now having seen Sweden from south to north, it’s interesting to view it as the disintegration of European mastery of the land. The farms on the Skåne plains are just an extension of mainland European agriculture. Then as you go north past Örebro you get into the taiga forests of pine and fir – though there are still lots of farms in between, the main industry is logging and the farms have a small settler feel (even though people have lived and farmed there for ever). Then you get up to the north where there is still logging but fewer farms and even fewer people – the real wilderness. Eventually you probably get to the Arctic tundra, but we didn’t go that far north and that’s possibly in Norway by then, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean.

Örebro 2

besoka — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:11:00 GMT

Executive Summary

This blog covers the 4 weeks or so between our last trip to the UK and our trip up to the Arctic. It covers the second half of November and the first half of December. During this time Emma worked on her second mini-sabbatical, writing up papers from her work back in Australia but being based in Örebro University to meet other researchers in the same field.

This was our last big chunk of time just living in Sweden and absorbing as much Swedish culture as we could in the short time. November saw the days grow shorter and colder and darker as the country moved into winter. It also saw the first real snow in Örebro, though it is known in Sweden ad a dark, fairly miserable month. December saw the beginning of the Yule season as the country brightened with snow and lights and Yule cheer, traditions and food.

On the weekends we travelled to Tibro to visit Emma’s cousin Anneke; to Stockholm to catch up with Nigel, a dancing friend from Brisbane; and to Finnafallet, Anders’ cottage in the forest for a snowy winter wonderland.

Contents

Örebro - an overview
Weekend in Tibro with Anneke and Mattias (and Milton)
Snow in Örebro
Last Weekend in Stockholm with Nigel and Jonas
Dance in Örebro
Weekend at Finnafallet
Yule
Many Dinners with Swedes

Örebro - an overview

Ok, time for a recap on the Swedish city of Örebro. Örebro is a city of about 100,000 people, making it roughly the size of Toowoomba. I haven't been to Toowoomba since I was a child so I can't say for sure, but I also assume that the vibe of the place is probably roughly similar (as similar as any other town in Australia anyway) - a largish regional centre that's not too remote, is surrounded by smaller towns, and is inland (and a bit cold (-: ). Örebro is the 6th largest city in Sweden - Sweden's population is not as concentrated as Australia (sounds odd since they fit half the population into an area the size of the Queensland east coast, but Australia's population is mostly concentrated in the capital cities, whereas Sweden has smaller cities and more biggish small towns).

Örebro is situated at the western end of Hjälmaren, Sweden's 4th largest lake, roughly in the middle of the central/north part of Sweden (from a population point of view) - almost halfway between Stockholm and Oslo. The location is nicely in the middle of all the big lakes and would once have lain on the main land route around the lakes Mälaran and Hjälmaren from the fertile areas of Svealand (the land of the Svea - from Stockholm to Mora, centred around Uppsala) and Götaland (“YERT-a-land” - the land of the Geats/Goths) - original chunks of territory that eventually coalesced into Sweden. From Örebro, you can travel southwest between the two biggest lakes, Vänern and Vättern to Västergötaland (the western land of the Geats - around Skövde down to Göteborg) or south-southeast to Östergotaland (the Eastern land of the Geats - the Köpings: Jönköping to Jinköping to Norrköping). It occupies the first easy crossing point of the river Svartån ("The Black River") and its name is related to this crossing point.

Örebro is 59-and-a-bit degrees north. This is further north than the continental USA (and all the main cities of Canada, Scotland, Denmark, Mongolia, China and Japan. It’s roughly the same latitude as the southern tip of Greenland, Hudson Bay, Anchorage and Magadan (on the Sea of Okhotsk – as well as Okhotsk itself). It is also further north than all of the continents in the southern hemisphere extend to the south (except Antarctica of course). This is a testament to the warming power of the Gulf Stream that Scandinavia is so relatively warm and habitable compared to other regions so far north.

"Örebro" literally means "Gravel banks bridge" or maybe "Fordbridge" if you want to be more poetic, though a common alternate story is that it means "Pennybridge" since the bridge across the river there was a toll bridge that cost 1 öre to cross (the öre is one hundredth of the Swedish krona, though today only the 50 öre coin is still used - 1 krona=20c). The name is pronounced a bit like "ER-e-BROO", though if you can't roll your "r"s like we can't, then it is difficult to say in a way that is quickly understood by Swedes.

To protect the river crossing point, a castle was built on an island in the river just downstream of the crossing point in the 1200s. This castle was greatly expanded in the 1500s when the local duke (and future king Karl IX) lived there. After Örebro lost its strategic importance as Sweden became a more strongly centralised nation (rather than a more loose collection of regions) the castle was used as a prison and generally left to decay a bit. A restoration in about 1900 brought it back to its current state - Lonely Planet describes it as "the most photogenic castle in Sweden", and we agree. It has roofs, rather than battlements over the circular towers on each of its corners, but otherwise it looks perfect. With its slightly stooped appearance it's a little bit like a gorilla (or Mt Tibrogargan which also looks like a gorilla) crouching on the island in the dark waters.

The castle and river make a great open space in the middle of town. On each side of the old bridge stretch two cobblestoned streets – Storgatan (“Main Street”) to the north and Drottninggatan (“Queen Street”) to the south. Both are very pretty, with quaint old buildings along them – except at the end of Storgatan, where a couple of horrid 1970s long office blocks stand guard like a gate in a city wall (appropriate since they house the Police and Tax Office). Drottninggatan is the cuter of the two (only just) and is the main shopping street. Along it is Stortorget (“Main Square”) with St Nicholai Church at one end. Downstream (east) along the river lied Stadsparken, a nice park with a collection of old historical wooden buildings at one end called Wadköping (“VOD-SHER-ping”) that have been moved there from around the area to make a cute little open air museum.

Örebro’s other main landmark is Svampen (“The mushroom”) – a water tower built in the 1960s, looking like a flying saucer on a Roman column and having a great view of town. Another landmark is Olaus Petri Kyrkan, a church dedicated to Olaus Petri, an Örebro local and one of the main driving forces in bringing the Reformation to Sweden (the other being the King, Gustav Vasa, who installed Olaus’ brother as Archbishop when the Pope wouldn’t play ball and insisted the old Archbishop who had acted as chancellor for the Danish overlords be reinstalled – fool).

The area around the river mouth at the lake is mostly wetland. It was reclaimed in the 1860s to give more industrial land, but over the past couple of decades has been slowly returned to a wetland and is an important stopover point for migratory birds. This is fantastic for the birds and nature in general (and birdwatchers), but it means that any ideas you might have about beautiful lake frontage might be a bit misleading. The lake is not visible from the town, it’s a bit of a hike out there, no buildings are on the lake front and the shores of the lake are very low lying, offering few views. It’s nice and all, but Örebro is a town near a lake, not on a lake, and the lake plays very little roll in the town’s character.

One notable thing about Örebro in modern Sweden is that it’s the location of one of the biggest schools for the deaf in the countries. As a result it has quite a sizable deaf community (especially teenagers and young adults), often noticeable having animated (though mercifully silent) discussions on the busses. Given that deafness (as opposed to other disabilities) requires a different language, it makes sense that deaf people should congregate in one location where they can interact with others who share their language.

OK, enough background now. I thought it important to give some, since Örebro has been a bit like our home base for a lot of the trip, so we feel a certain fondness towards it. Also, being a small regional town it’s not exactly on the radar of travellers or guidebooks and there won’t be a lot of info on it on the web.

Weekend in Tibro with Anneke and Mattias (and Milton)

After getting back from the UK for the last time we had a couple of days to rest and wash our clothes before heading off for a weekend with Emma’s cousin Anneke (Anders’ other daughter). Anneke is newly married to Mattias and they have just bought a house in Tibro (“TEE-broo”), where Mattias is from - near Skövde (“WHURV-de”), about 90min from Örebro. They also have a gorgeous little poocchie called Milton, who is a pure breed (I forget the name), but looks a bit like a cross between a poodle and a dachshund. He has little legs and a very jaunty running style and is sooo cute.

We arrived on a Friday night and caught up over a few drinks that turned into snaps and turned into a late night. Next morning they drove a seedy couple of visitors (or a seedy visitor and his fiancée, I can’t vouch for how Emma was feeling) around the area, atking us to Karlsborg, a military town on lake Vättern (the thinner of the two biggest lakes in Sweden). Unfortunately the museum was closed but we had a good walk around the 18th century base and a quick look at where the Göta canal meets the lake. The Göta canal was built in the 1800s to link a few of the many lakes and rivers in Sweden to join Göteborg and Stockholm. It’s not as wide as this sounds, but is apparently a very nice route to spend a few days traversing Sweden on a boat on (nice for the scenery, it’s obviously nice for the boat since there aren’t many alternatives). Unfortunately we never managed to fit it into our schedule and so just having a quick glimpse was a bonus.

After Karlsborg, we travelled south to the town of Hjo (pronounced “Yoo” as in the cute sign as you enter the town “I love Hjo”) – a small lakeside town with even better views of Vättern. I’m really glad we got to see one of these mothers since we’d travelled past and between them on trains without getting a glimpse, and they’re huge when you see them on a map. And the view across was nice, with the other shore a long way away. Hjo is apparently a very pretty town in summer, with its lakeside setting and lovely park. It was still nice to see it in winter, but it was clearly not at its bestest.

After Hjo we headed into Skövde for a quick look at the main centre before having dinner. That night we went bowling in Tibro and had a fun night. I topped the points list (just) at the end of the night by using my secret strategy of “rolling that heavy ball really hard at the middle skittle at the other end”. This strategy worked so often that I’m left unsure what the real skill is in bowling, but there probably is one or people wouldn’t bother straining their wrists doing it. Emma fared rather less well with her “roll the ball down the gutter on the side” strategy, but got kudos for sticking with it like Bush in Iraq. A good time was had by all (except my left wrist) and the beer was pretty cheap by Swedish standards. When we got home we broke out Guitar Hero, which is a surprisingly fun game, and it felt good to have a guitar (albeit a pretend one) in my hands after so long.

Next day we mostly watched TV until it was time to go home. One of the comedy shows, a pretend travel journalism show called “Lilla Landet Lagom” was making fun of Skövde that week, which was good fun - number two of the “Top 5 things to do in Skövde for teenagers” list was “Take the train to Borås” (ie another town). It was fun just hanging out with Anneke and Mattias and we’ll be back there for Xmas. Their new house, BTW, is rather large and impressive. They mostly live on the ground floor (Milton can’t get down the stairs with his cote but stumpy little legs), but have a top floor with HEAPS of storage space in the sloping roof space and even a lower basement level. This couple planning to buy a house and start a family was very jealous.

Snow in Örebro

The next week progressed in fairly standard fashion. Emma worked at the Uni from before dawn (8am) until after sunset (5pm). I walked in to the city library and continued blogging. Even though I left home at 10am and got back around 2pm, I still felt like I was putting in a full day’s work - mostly because in a very real sense I had. In
December in Örebro the sun rises at about 9am and sets at about 3pm. After about 2pm, that sense of late afternoon/dusk starts to set in, the sun goes down at about 3pm and by 4pm it is a night indistinguishable from midnight. It is as though the Brisbane sun rose to the height it is at about 8am and then skipped over the middle of the day to about 4pm and went down again. In midwinter, the sun hardly gets above the height of nearby buildings. Having spent most of our combined lives in the tropics, and most of the rest in the subtropics, we are unused to this huge difference in day lengths and low sun during the middle of the day. In Brisbane, the sun sets at 7pm in midsummer and at 5pm in midwinter. Therefore all throughout the year the sun is setting at about teatime, so it’s weird to have sunlight after dinner for a Queenslander, and it’s even weirder to have no sun at all before dinner.

As a result of this lack of sunlight, it gets cold (“duh” I hear you say). The funny thing is, also, that the temperature variation goes right down too. You might have a maximum of 2 and a minimum of -1. I guess it’s the sun warming the Earth that makes the temps rise, rather than the lack of sun at night that makes them fall (OK, that was odd, but I know what I mean). Also odd, is how the temperatures seem to hover so often between 1 and -1. I’m not sure if this has something to do with phase change (one of the more interesting things I learned in high school Chemistry – if you heat ice, the temperature will rise until it starts to melt, at which point the temp will stay at 0 while the extra heat energy is used to change the ice to water, before rising again once the ice has melted – ditto at 100 for water to steam), but it was a pain for those of us after some extreme temps to write home about (and see the effect of).

My usual tactic of walking around sightseeing was curtailed a bit by the early sunsets. One day I walked out to the lake, but at 2pm was forced to walk back before I was stranded out there by the dark. It was also starting to get cold at that time of year and we were a bit nervous how out clothes would suffice. Emma eventually caved (sensibly) and bought a nice warm Swedish coat, while I’m still hoping my over coat and lots of layers underneath will suffice. It has to-date. The Swedes have a saying “Det finns ingen dålig väder, bara dåliga kläder.” which translates directly as “There is no bad weather, only bad clothing.” – we have pretty much the exact same saying in English, but their version rhymes. This makes me a little nervous since my clothes are as yet untested against sub -10 temperatures, but they should be fine - hålla tummarna (“hold your thumbs”: Swedes hold their thumbs in their fists, rather than crossing their fingers, when hoping for something, which makes more sense if you’re really wishing hard – try it and see).

On the Wednesday it snowed while I was on my way home from the library (I had stopped in at the museum for a quick look and emerged into a glorious snowfall). This snow didn’t last long, however, being mostly melted by evening.

On the Saturday morning of the next weekend we awoke to find that it had snowed overnight, and this time it stuck around – for about 4 days. Like a couple of kids we went out and had a walk in the snow, going up Svampen for a look at a winter wonderland. We saw kids playing in the snow in the park at the bottom and walked into town with out cameras. The next few days were glorious. Snow really brightens a place up, turning a dark evening much less dark with a blanket of white on the ground.

The snow does odd things to a view. It’s a bit like meeting a friend who’s suddenly grown a beard overnight, the old view is suddenly covered by fluff. Also, the snow hides some things – like kerbs, paths and road markings, while highlighting other things – like buildings and trees. It also reverses the usual contrasts, so that now the ground is the lightest thing – a bit like having everything suddenly thrown into negative. The snow piles up on any horizontal surface, no matter how narrow – even fences. The already gorgeous little Swedish houses get an extra frosting, and (perhaps most pretty of all) even the trees get a new white canopy as the snow coats every twig and branch. The effect is so beautiful you feel it in your stomach.

Fresh snow is just amazing – and all the (what I thought were) clichés are true – it is really white, snowflakes are really fluffy and swirl around drifting slowly to ground (this one is only sometimes though), and rolling snowballs on the ground (eg to make a snowman) does make them bigger with a “snowball effect” (if the temperature is vaguely right). If it’s really cold (significantly different from 0 (-;) the snow has no liquid moisture to bind it and it’s quite powdery and difficult to make good snowballs and snowmen. Usually, though, the temperature has been close to 0 and the snow is a bit more malleable (throwing snowballs at trees and walls is great fun). The kids really do go sledding down hills too – and I’ve noticed that many schools and daycare centres have small mounds in their yards (if they don’t have a hill) – I thought that odd in summer, but when snow falls their use becomes more obvious.

When the snow is fresh or untrodden, it’s quite easy to walk on (though good boots are advisable). On more high-use footpaths, though, the snow gets compacted into a slushy ice which is quite slippery. Many people break wrists every year from slipping over, though not us yet (hålla tummarna). Generally within a day of the snowfall, the authorities have ploughed the roads and major paths and sprinkled some grit (in between a coarse sand and a fine gravel) on the footpaths that works really well to give you grip (not surprisingly, if it didn’t they probably wouldn’t bother). Actually, the result of the grit is to make the snow look like chocolate chip icecream. The cars all have winter tyres fitted each year, which have tiny spikes in the rubber for more grip. I haven’t driven in snow (or at all in Sweden), but it doesn’t look like much fun, what with the slippery roads and the reduction in the visibility of road markings and such.

The snow doesn’t hang around permanently though. That first snowfall left snow on the ground for about 4 days, but then it pretty much melted overnight, leaving the world much as it was before the snow (just a little soggier) – even the grass was still green. It’s snowed a couple of times since though, and it’s always great – even the Swedes still feel cheered up by some lovely snow on the ground.

Apparently we were lucky with the snow this year, in previous years it hasn’t snowed so much in December. People often talk about how much more it used to snow when they were kids. Now, this could be memories seen through the lens of childhood, but it seemed to be fairly universal. In Malmö they said it used to snow and now it hardly ever does, while in Örebro they say that slow used to cover the ground continuously for most of the winter months, while now the snow melts away every few days or weeks until the next snowfall. While talking to Siri (Agnete’s mother) she said that she doesn’t think global warming is real but just a cycle of hot and cold weather that we’re in the hot phase of couldn’t think of any time in her lifetime that it’s been less snow (anthough apparently the 1940s were pretty cold). Anyway, all this anecdotal evidence is not scientific evidence of global warming, but it certainly doesn’t contradict the idea.

Last Weekend in Stockholm with Nigel and Jonas

The snow didn’t stick around for the next weekend, though, melting on the Thursday. This was unfortunate, since we were going to Stockholm one last time. Partly we wanted to see it in winter with Gamla Stan under a blanket of snow, but mostly it was to catch up with our friend Nigel. Nigel is a fellow swing dancer from Brisbane who has been on the road for even longer than us – and to much more hard core places: Mongolia; Trans Siberian railway; Turkey, Syria, Iran; and finally Ghana where he volunteered as a schoolteacher for 6 months. This would make us horribly jealous and not want to spend a weekend with him were it not for the fact that he’s also one of the nicest guys you could meet (OK, I was just kidding, we would meet him anyway, we’re not that shallow). Nigel is now in Stockholm doing some study/sciency stuff at the Karolinska Institute for at least a year.

So we went in on the train on Friday evening (using our vouchers from the refund from our train delay to Malmö) and stayed at Nigel’s place (his flatmate was nice enough to offer his bed since he was out of town). We caught up over a nice home cooked risotto: swapping travel stories; news from home (though Nige kept asking questions about what was going on now, which we didn’t really know since we’d been on the road a while too, just not as long); and giving Nigel the inside outsiders tips on living in Sweden (he arrived in September but has mostly been working).

Next day we went in for a look around Gamla Stan. I acted the tour guide pointing out the main sights and where to go in the summer and showed him the good viewpoints for when the weather was a bit nicer (it was cloudy and rainy most of the weekend). That night we went out dancing again at “Chicago”, the dance venue Emma and I had been to a couple of times before. We hadn’t enjoyed outselves overly the other times (the people tended to be a bit standoffish, the dancefloor was too crowded and they liked their music on the fast side) but this time we at least had someone else to dance with. It turns out that Wednesday night is the big night at Chicago, when all the people (including the posers) go and overfill the dancefloor, whereas Saturday night is much more fun. It was less crowded (just perfectly full), the people were much more friendly and the music was awesome. They had a jazz quartet playing´, made up of musos from other bands, and (I don’t say this often but) those cats were swingin! They obviously knew how to play for dancers, they varied the tempos nicely and they his the perfect swing groove for most of the night. Nigel knew a few people from classes and we danced with a few people and we were just loving it. Lessons are great, but you eventually reach a level where you have to stop thinking of moves and put it all together and just dance, which is what we’ve been doing all year. I even had a fun man dance with Nigel (he’s a very gentle but clear lead). I got to chat to a few people in Swedish (my Swedish has progressed far enough for small talk) and they even invited us out to the pub afterwards for a beer, which was fantastic. All in all it was exactly what we’d been hoping for from the other visits, turns out we just got the day wrong. We went to bed late and sore and very happy.

Next day we went back into Gamla Stan to meet up with Emma’s cousin Jonas. We had arranged to meet at Hermitage (the veggie restaurant we like so much), but it turned out to be unaccountably closed that day. So after Jonas arrived we went looking for somewhere else to eat, ending up at an Indian place with very misleading fliers (suggesting a lunch special that didn’t exist). That piece of dodginess aside, we had a pretty good meal and I got to replenish my meat nutrient stocks. Early on some spectacle was provided by the people in the next table who managed to get a paper napkin too close to the candle – the big lesson from which is not to try and put said napkin out by shaking it vigorously. This merely gives it more oxygen and scatters bits of flaming paper over a wide area - placing a menu firmly over the flame is probably the better bet. The poor toddler in their party was quite understandably upset (though unhurt) by this and had to be comforted outside.

After lunch, we wandered down Väastelånggatan (“West Long Street”), the main tourist street in Gamla Stan. Usually we try and avoid it since it’s packed with people and a bit gaudy, preferring the other streets that are usually far less busy and much prettier. This time though, we were souvenir hunting. We needed presents to bring home and Tshirts for ourselves from Sweden (something we hadn’t bothered to get yet since the standard range is fairly lacklustre). I managed to find a couple of shirts that were OK, but the stupid store owner screwed me by offering me a Large size when the Small didn’t quite fit (the other shirt required a small size), leaving me with a slightly baggy shirt rather than the nicely fitting Medium I was really after. What is it with souvenir shirt sellers trying to stuff people into oversized shirts? Are they used to catering to the obese American crowd? Do they not understand that people might want to wear their shirts in normal circumstances? Yargh! [Update: Actually, the shirt turned out to be about right. Damn them.]

After we/Emma found all the souvenirs we/I could carry we had a quick look around the Xmas markets in Stortorget (“Main Square”) as the 3pm dusk settled. We then wandered over to the big Xmas tree we’d seen on the harbour front during the day. This tree looked like an oddly perfectly shaped natural tree (the branches looked real), but we read a plaque explaining that this tree was actually made of branches from other trees (a sort of “Frankenbaum” if you will – and if you excuse the German for tree which seemed appropriate to the pun). This tree has apparently won the Sweden’s prettiest tree award for a few years running until it was excluded from entering (and rightly so, or all sorts of Frankenstein-Moreau efforts might start up in the Miss Sweden comp). It wasn’t lit yet but we found out that it was due to light up at 4:30 (long after sunset), so we went for a walk around the harbour to Skeppsholmen to kill some time, but the cold wind off the harbour hindered our resolve slightly - it was only (ie not too extreme) +4 degrees but it felt a lot colder with the moist air. When the allotted hour arrived, we watched the tree light up, and about 3 dim red lights appeared on the tree. Jonas commented “That was modest” in wonderfully understated Swedish fashion, but luckily a minute later the main lights came on and the harbour front of Gamla Stan had its cone of lights. This was Sunday 30 December and was the first day of Advent – the traditional Yule season for Sweden, leading to Xmas and ending on January 13.

After that we headed for the subway station at Kungsträdgård (“Kings Garden” - the main Federation Square style gathering point in Stockholm), only to find one entrance blocked and police tape around one of the statues. Jonas realised the significance of the date and explained that 30 December is the date of the death of Karl XII, shot in mysterious circumstances while besieging a town in Norway. Karl XII was Sweden’s last great warrior king, though his efforts succeeded mostly in losing Sweden its empire due to his inability to make peace treaties while he was ahead (he was described in one book as “a brilliant general but a useless diplomat”). Karl XII’s death is (for some odd reason) celebrated by Swedish nationalists and neo-Nazis with demonstrations and by non-neo-Nazis with counter demonstrations (this year was quiet in Stockholm but they had some street battles in Lund).

Anyway, we got on our train with no further fuss, said “Hej då” to Jonas when he got off, got our stuff from Nigel’s and hopped on the train back to Örebro. It was great to see both Nigel and Jonas and say goodbye to Stockholm with a fun weekend that wasn’t too dampened by the weather.

Dance in Örebro

Our time in Örebro during the weekends either side of the Stockholm trip also provided the chance to dance in Örebro. Ingrid (from Lund) had given us the contact details of the dance studio in Örebro, Midtown Lindyhop – a newish school starting a newish scene. On the first Saturday they were having their end of year party and we went along. They had a live band playing who delivered nice short, danceable tunes, even though they’d never played to dancers before (it’s always fun to see the reactions of such bands, they usually have lots of fun themselves seeing people interpreting their music so clearly).

And the people were super nice too. In this scene, Emma and I were quite good dancers (the scene is only 3 years old) and I think we impressed and (hopefully) gave the newbies new ideas or at least some inspiration. I got to dance with lots of the girls and also got the opportunity to use my Swedish for whole conversations. That’s one of the tricks to practicing a language in a country where most people speak English: start a conversation in the language you want to continue it in, if you start in Swedish and speak it for a while, then when you have to switch to English for a hard bit you can go back to Swedish, if you start in English it’s hard to switch. Like I said earlier, my Swedish has progressed to the small talk stage, and usually the conversations are variants on the same themes as people ask where we’re from and where we’ve been. We ended the night quite elated.

The next night was after the Stockholm weekend and we had a fun night then too, but we were tired by then and it’s fairly common to follow one or two great nights with a quieter night of lowered enthusiasm as you come down off the high of the other nights. So we just enjoyed having a few dances and had a quite one, and went home not too late since we had to be ready to head back to Finnafallet in the morning.

Weekend at Finnafallet

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Finnafallet is the summer cottage owned by Anders and Agnete. They go up there for weekends all the time and we’d gone with them a couple of times before, including a night around midsommar, but we hadn’t had a chance to get back there since with all our travel and living in other cities. This weekend, though we got our chance to head back up there for one last look and to see it in winter.

Finnafallet is about an hour from Örebro and Rockhammar and is a small 2 up 2 down cottage on a mountain top in the forest. It was more in the forest when we visited in summer, but since then the area around had been logged. This was a bit of a shame, but the area wasn’t as big as we’d thought (just a hectare each on a couple of sides), and had left them with a nice view of the surrounding hills, rather than the closup trees that they’d had previously.

The cottage is nice and rustic with no electricity and no running water. As a result you rely on candlelight and the fire and enjoy the peace and quiet even more. Time, and the job you work at during the week, don’t really exist in Finnafallet and you live in the private little world like a farmer of old (I’d say peasant, but it’s a bit more comfy than that and Sweden didn’t really have bonded serfs back in the day, but rather free farmers). It’s very relaxing.

It was also snowing, so we got to make a snögubben (“snowman”) and ride on a sled. We also made a snölykta (“snow lantern”) consisting of snowballs arranged in a hollow pile with a candle in the middle – it gives a gorgeous light effect. We also got to see the snow’s natural luminosity when we had a walk outside at night. Despite it being a cloudy night (kind of necessary for it to be snowing) with only a half moon or so hidden behind the overcast skies, and of course having no other ambient light up a hilltop in the forest, we see well enough to walk comfortably around. The snow almost looks like it glows with its own inner light, but I guess it’s just very effectively reflecting the small amount of light from the sky, plus the snow makes the contrasts clearer. It’s a bit like having a full moon on a clear night out in the country, away from the city lights – an effect that is supposedly quite amazing on snow, but we didn’t get to see that yet.

It seems wrong to treat this weekend in purely chronological terms. Aside from the above activities, we took a walk to the lake to see it iced over (no swimming this time). The ice wasn’t strong enough to walk on, but it seemed a bit slushy on top with harder ice underneath. In the evening we sat in the kitchen with Anders and the wood burning stove, eating pyttipanna (a fryup, like a fresh bubble and squeak) and drinking julmust (Xmas softdrink, a bit like sarsaparilla) and julöl (Xmas beer – a dark beer that is quite sweet, a bit like alcoholic julmust) and some snaps (though in moderation). That night we slept in the bedroom in front of a crackling fire.

Yule

All that month of December was the lead up to Christmas. Not being particularly religious (and a bit lazy), I tend to call it “Xmas” to highlight that it’s become a non-religious festival over the years. In fact, it started out as a non-Christian midwinter festival anyway. The Swedes call it “Jul”, pronounced just like the equivalent in English “Yule”. Since this word has the connotations of the midwinter celebrations, I’ve decided to try using that word for Christmas and see how it goes.

Anyhoo, Yule in Sweden is a lovely time of year. The lead up to the day is Advent, beginning on the 4th Sunday before the 25th. It is the first day of Advent (this year on 30 November) when the Yule lights are lit and decorations start getting put up. The Swedes do a really nice line of Yule lights. Usually they simply put candles in the window – most often this consists of 7 electric candles arranged in a chevron pattern (like a Jewish menorah but sloping down on both sides). Some houses also put up a paper star with a light in it. Since the great majority of households do this, it makes the cities take on a cheery look, with little lights in all the windows. Some very few houses do some twinkly lights and Santa-type arrangements, but they are not the norm and many thing it a bit garish. We sent some links of Brisbane lights from ourbrisbane.com to Agnete and she thought them way too over the top. The lights also make more sense in Sweden since darkness is the rule here at this time of year. It’s as though the community is banding together to resist the growing winter darkness – which I think was the point of the old pagan Yule celebration in the first place, and you can understand why when you experience it. November is the month of shortening days and growing cold (almost everyone agrees November is the worst month in Sweden), while in December it all burst forth again with Yule lights and often some snow on the ground.

Another related tradition is the Advent candles. This is 4 long candles arranged in a row. On the first Sunday of Advent (and during that first week) you light the first candle (eg at dinner or whenever you feel like it, if you left it burning it’d be gone in a few hours). During the second week you light the first two candles. On the third week you light the first 3 candles and so on to the fourth week. This makes the candles have a nice ascending pattern as you lead up to the big day.

The day we got back from Finnafallet we went to Åh Helga Natt (Oh Holy Night) – a public carols concert in the main square a bit like Carols in the Domain etc in Oz. This was a fun night, especially to hear the Swedish carols, though we did get pretty cold standing around in the snow. The highlight was an opera singer from the UK, and the Swedish comedienne who was making jokes to him at one point (in English, yay). Less great was the other main singer, normally a famous backing singer, who was enjoying the limelight a bit much and Mariah Careying the songs to death (if the Little Drummer Boy played his drum for the King that far off the beat I’m not sure it would have ended so well). One extra, unexpected thing we heard was the sound of hundreds of people applauding with gloves on. It’s a much deeper, more resonant sound than naked hand applause. It’s fully to be expected, but it was something that we found interesting nonetheless (it’s sometimes the small differences that are the most noticeable).

Swedes also have Advent calendars for the kiddies, the same as they do/used to do in Australia. Örebro goes one step further with this and turns the windows of the Rådhus (City hall) into a giant Advent calendar. The windows are all numbered and each day (at the odd time of 17:02) another one is opened, revealing a different painting by a local artist. It’s quite cute, even if the quality is a bit variable (some are good, some are “Huh?”).

The other big Yule tradition (apart from Yule itself, which hasn’t happened yet at time of writing) is Lucia (“loo-SEE-a”). This tradition is part beauty pageant and part carol singing. On 13 December, each school or city or whatever chooses the prettiest girl to be Lucia (usually a blonde, but increasingly multiculturally selected). This girl dresses in a white robe with a red sash and wears a crown of 7 candles on her head (6 in a circle and 1 in the middle). She is attended by one or more girls in the same outfit (minus the crown) holding candles and one or more boys dressed in black pants and white shirt carrying a star. They all then sing lovely Swedish Lucia songs. All this takes place in the early morning (apparently when school kids do it they get to go and wake their teachers up – kids usually use electric candles). The original Lucia was an Italian saint who, having rejected the proposal of a powerful man, was set on fire. Her prayers saved her from harm – though not for long since he then stabbed her to death. An odd sort of thing for Swedes to celebrate (though I guess it explains the crown of candles and red belt), but I guess it was one of those pagan ceremonies that managed to survive Christianity by blending with a Christian story (and vice versa). It seems to be peculiarly Swedish too since I don’t know if even the other Scandinavian countries celebrate this tradition. We saw the Lucia at the Uni where Emma was working – appropriate since Emma works at the Uni in Brisbane in the suburb of Saint Lucia. The choir was beautiful and the songs were lovely too (and wonderfully unfamiliar to us – of the 7 songs they sang we only knew one). This was enjoyed with some Glögg (mulled wine) and Luciabullar (saffron buns). All this happened in the pre-dawn of 7:30, indoors, but with snow outside the windows of the cafeteria it was held in. On the way back to town I got to see more lovely houses covered in snow in the early morning light.

Many Dinners with Swedes

The people we’ve met in Örebro have been some of the friendliest of the trip. What with Emma working at the Uni and her family being around here, we’ve been invited to a few different people’s places for dinner.

The weeks of December saw us first having lovely dinners with Ylva and her husband Bertil. Ylva works at the Uni and was one of the people in Emma’s department. She is a lovely women with one of the kindest faces you could imagine. Later that week we were invited to dinner with the Department after their end of year planning meeting. Our meal was paid for from the departmental budget, but they explained that overseas guests meant that the allowance for the meal increased (though that’s not why they invited us (-:). At that dinner I got to talk to Rolf, Emma’s main contact at the Uni, who we had dinner with the next week. Rolf is an enthusiastic talker and very friendly man. At all these dinners we were able to talk about Swedish politics and get more of an idea of what interests Swedes in general.

Later that last week we also had dinner with Kalle and Siri, Agnete’s parents. They don’t speak English, so it was a fantastic opportunity to be forced to use our Swedish. Anna (Emma’s cousin and their granddaughter) and Magnus were there as well to help with any necessary translation. That was a wonderful night too. Siri (in particular) was very considerate with her Swedish, speaking slowly and clearly for us, but without sounding too childish – perfect.

During the last weekend of this time we also visited Micke, another of Emma’s cousins via a different uncle. Micke (the Swedish short form of Mikael) lives just north of Örebro with his wife Anna-Karin and their 5 year old son Viktor. Micke is an unusually talkative Swede, he says that he’s a bit of an oddity, and we had a great afternoon talking as Micke and I talked over our respective (less verbal) spouses (-: We also enjoyed a wonderful lunch. Viktor is very cute. Like many kids he was shy to start with - he even hid under his hood (Kenny style) when we spoke to him – but after a few hours he was talking and wanting us to play with his cars. The fact that we were mostly talking English was a little frustrating for him though I think.

That morning we’d been out to Wadköping to see it and the park covered in snow and to have fika with Anna-Lisa, a PhD student from Emma’s department. And that night we had dinner with Anna and Magnus again (we wouldn’t be seeing them at Yule) and their dog, Curtis. I’m not sure I’d recommend getting a schnauzer – they seem to be a lot of hard work. Emma whipped up a lazy 3 course Indian meal and we caught up with them for perhaps the last time on this trip.

It’s been great meeting more Swedes. During the time we were travelling so much, we were beginning to feel like we were always out of the country and never really connecting with Sweden. These last few months have allowed us to settle and meet people and actually learn a bit about the country we’ve called our second home for 9 months. The fact that it’s moved into Yule has also helped since at this time of year the traditions really come out (in any country). Our Swedish got better and better – still not fluent, but always improving. This was helped by the realisation that the teletext that many Swedes use to get news and so on could be used to get subtitles (in Swedish for the hearing impaired) to help us watch more Swedish TV, since we can read Swedish better than we can hear it.

UK 2 - East Anglia

besoka — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:07:00 GMT

This trip to the UK was primarily to attend the wedding of Sarah (Emma's coworker) and Simon. Both of them are from England but livving in Australia. The wedding was just outside of Norwich in East Anglia (that round bump on England's east coast above London). We'd originally planed to have just a few days, but after looking up the Ryanair flights on the web, we realised that the super cheap flights (No Tax) were about 8 days apart on the Tuesday before and Wednesday after the Friday wedding. Moving the departure date back, or the return date forward resulted in an increase in the cost of the flights by about the equivalent of a hotel room. Therefore, we decided to have the week's holiday and spend more time looking about the region. On our big previous trip around the UK we had deliberately missed East Anglia, knowing that we'd be back for this wedding.

Executive Summary

Not much of an executive summary this time. We enjoyed the trip. Colchester was surprisingly enjoyable and we got to go to a real Guy Fawkes night. The wedding was fun and we got to walk through some real English farmland. The Norfolk coast was interesting, as were the Broads, but not the best time of year. Norfolk and Cambridge were both fantastic to see with less of a rush. As always, the pubs, the food and the familiarity were the highlights. Check out the contents for more of an overview (best to open google maps or something similar).

Contents

Day 1 - Örebro to Stanstead
Day 2 - Stanstead to Colchester
Day 3 – Colchester to Swanton Morley via Bury-St-Edmunds
Day 4 – Swanton Morley feat. the wedding of Sarah Park and Simon Atwood
Day 5 – Swanton Morley to Norwich via north Norfolk coast and Great Yarmouth
Day 6 – Norwich
Day 7 – Norwich to Cambridge via the Norfolk Broads and Caistor-St-Edmund
Day 8 – Cambridge Day 9 – Cambridge to Örebro via Ely and Stanstead

Day 1 - Örebro to Stanstead

We left Örebro by train to Västerås to fly to Stanstead. Our luggage consisted of one check-in (15kg limit) and two carry-on bags (10kg limit each) since they charge you about as much for bags as they do for the flight. They were pushing the limit, but the checkin person didn't seem to care. After lots of sitting around we eventually got to Stanstead at about 11pm and got the shuttle to out hotel. After watching some of the preliminary results of the US election (it was called at 4am local time) we went to sleep at about 1am.

Day 2 - Stanstead to Colchester

Next morning we awoke to the great news of the result, and lots of (becoming almost insulting) commentary about how it was great since he was the first black president. One lone column in the Times compared it to Louis Hamilton (the black British Formula 1 driver that had just won the world championship) pointing out that they didn't win because they were black, but because they were the best. Anyway, we tried to enjoy our “breakfast” consisting of a choice of cornflakes or rice bubbles and toast with no spreads on offer. Pretty piss poor in out opinion. I mean, the lack of jams was an oversight for that morning, but buy some frigging muesli, people, for those of us who want some actual nutrition in the morning!

We got the shuttle back to the airport and then another shuttle out to Thrifty to pick up our hire car. We’d decided to go with thrifty after Hertz had stuffed us around so much, and Thrifty were the cheapest and even had the courtesy to let you search for an automatic, rather than having to scroll through all the useless manual cars to find one we can both drive. In the end it turned out that the price quoted by Thrifty was excluding the 20% VAT, making the final price quite a bit more (more than Hertz who quote their price including VAT) - something to watch out for when you’re in the UK. But at least they were friendly and helpful and we had a good chuckle when they brought around the car – it was a Nissan Note, the exact same model we’d rented from Hertz for our last trip (right down to the colour)! At least we were familiar with the car and used to looking for it in carparks, and it’s not a bad little car (even if it does look like they just have the one in the UK and lend it around the different companies).

We drove our little friend to Colchester, about an hour away, fairly easily found a park in a shopping centre carpark and went for a look around. Colchester is the oldest recorded town in England. It was founded by the Romans (who were much better at recording things than the Celts before them), replacing the older Celtic town of Camolodunum (which may or may not be the inspiration for “Camelot”) and was the capital of Britannia for a few years, before a dispute with the local Iceni tribe (and very poor diplomacy by the local governor) resulted in it being flattened by Boudica’s army (along with London and St Albans) in AD61. A second, fortified, town was built soon after, but the capitalship was moved somewhere else more strategic. During the Norman period (and by Norman they seem to mean pre-Plantagenet, even though they were Normans too – so just late 1000s and early 1100s) a castle was built here (like just about everywhere else) and the keep survives today, though was long neglected in the intervening time.

Colchester is a nice little town. The main city centre is a bit of a warren of alleys and squares that have been turned into nice modern pedestrianised malls and squares for a nice little shopping district mixing old and new themes. The main street runs past a lot of nice buildings, from near the old Roman gate and Victorian water tower nicknamed Jumbo, past the town hall and the castle and on to who-knows-where (we didn’t go that far). We had a look around the outside of the castle, walking along the earthworks and admiring the autumn leaves and cute (though red squirrel displacing) gray squirrels. We saw something being set up down in the park and asked a passing security guard what was happening. He very helpfully informed us that it was the bonfire night fireworks that were on that night, and that we could get tickets at the tourist office across the road. Bonfire Night is another name for Guy Fawkes night or Cracker Night, a night that celebrates the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. It used to be celebrated in Australia in my parent’s time, until it was stopped due to the fires and fireworks burning down too many houses in the hot, dry November weather. So we thought we’d go along to experience it for ourselves. More on that later.

After getting our tickets, we went over and had a look inside the Castle, which is now the local museum (and it was pretty good museum weather). It was a nice little space with exhibits going back to the stoneage, through the Celts, Romans, and Saxons to the Normans. There was a fair bit on Boudica as you may imagine. We took a tour of the castle with a lovely guide – we were the only ones on that tour. The castle is built on the foundation of the old Temple of Claudius, a platform built over some arched vaults filled with sand (stone being rare in the area). After the Normans were done with it, a local builder bought the ruins and discovered the sand filled foundations. Being a businessman, and not an historian, he set to work digging the sand out of the vault to sell as building materials. The vaults are therefore still empty, and were even used as air raid shelters during WWII.

After leaving the castle we had a quick walk around to the other sights – Jumbo and the Roman wall and back through the Dutch Quarter (where Flemish weavers set up shop after fleeing one religious persecution or another). We found a pub called the Wig and Pen (recall my comments on the Wig and Quill in Salisbury) and decided to eat dinner there as a further homage to the Wig and Pen in Canberra – plus we were waiting around for bonfire night to start. I had a nice roast beef wrapped in Yorkshire pudding, Emma had something veggie, and we both enjoyed a Greene King beer.

Bonfire night started at about 7pm. We entered and listened to a local celeb/radio person warming up the crowd by crapping on in an entertaining way for an hour or so, playing a few crowd favourites to the crowd of glowstick waving locals. Then it was time for effigy of Guy Fawkes to be carried through the crowd and thrown on the bonfire and sent back to Hades. Boy those Brits sure hold a grudge – lets see the Iraqis burning Bush in effigy in the 25th Century. After the (slightly creepy to my mind but the locals probably didn’t think about it that way) ritual burning in effigy of political dissidents they set off the fireworks display, an impressive affair, though slightly diminished by the smoke from the fireworks drifting into the way of the sight of them. All in all it was a really fun affair, with families and teenagers really getting into the fun of it and singing along and waving their glowsticks, torches and light sabres (though luckily there were no glowing pitchforks).

Afterwards we followed the crowd out, hopped in the car and drove the 10km or so to our hotel out in the country near a golf course, chosen because it was pretty damn cheap and looked pretty nice.

Day 3 – Colchester to Swanton Morley via Bury-St-Edmunds

And it was pretty nice: nice big room, nice breakfast and reasonably nice golf course to have a quick walk on before leaving; and nice price. Plus I got a free newspaper to read up on all the Obamamania in the Obamanation (these are all no doubt old jokes by the time I finish this - as well as Barry O’Bama being Irish, which I was proud of when I came up with it myself...until I discovered everyone else in the world had discovered that pun too). We decided we’d seen enough of Colchester (and the weather wasn’t any sunnier this day to make it worth seeing it again), so we headed north towards the wedding location in Swanton Morley.

We stopped for a breather when we came to Bury-St-Edmunds (not to Praisehim). Bury-St-Edmunds is so named because that’s what they did there (and to whom). Edmund was the king of East Anglia when the Vikings invaded in 869, captured him, failed to get a treaty out of him and so tied him to a tree and shot him full of arrows (Boromir style). Not big on diplomatic negotiations, your average Viking. He was canonised in true “turn your defeats into victories by changing the playing field” style and a monastery was later built there which flourished for centuries, up until the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. Nowadays the site is an impressive ruin, set in a nice big park in the middle of town. And it’s quite a bit ruin, there’s the cathedral (where the nobles agreed to force the Magna Carter on King John) and lots of outbuildings and cloisters – now low rubble walls and a few columns in a green park. The other thing BSE is noted for is that it’s the location of the Greene King brewery and probably the reason that their main bee is called Abbot Ale.

Continuing on from (and before) BSE we passed lots of fields planted with some sort of vegetable crop. We wondered what it might be for a while – it was a bit late in the year for leafy vegetables. Emma finally proposed that it might be sugar beet. We eventually passed a sugar mill which added credence to her theory that we were in a sugar growing area, and final confirmation occurred when we passed through Ingham.

We eventually got to Swanton Morley in the late afternoon (about 3pm – the days were short in England by this time too). The wedding was held on an organic farm-stay type hotel out of town (appropriate since both of the happy couple are agricultural-scientists interested in sustainability) called Hunters Hall. After checking into our room, we had a rest before heading into town to the local “freehouse” (pub) for dinner. Finding the local not yet open (it wasn’t yet 6pm, though it was nighttime) we walked to the other pub at the other end of the village for a pint and to read the paper. We came back to the main pub (where they did food) and enjoyed some burgers (it was hamburger night, and the gourmet burgers were yummy – I think I had lamb with mint) and a few more pints while we continued to read the paper. And reading the paper over a pint in a nice cosy English pub really is one of the great pleasures of the world. Emma didn’t get to quite enjoy it as much since we’d driven in and she drove us home to bed afterwards.

Day 4 – Swanton Morley feat. the wedding of Sarah Park and Simon Atwood

We awoke after a reasonable rest - no thanks to the skylight in the room. It’s a personal peeve of mine, but I think any room offered for hire to people to sleep in should have the facilities to block out light to let the paying occupants sleep as late as they choose. Good sound insulation is important too – though in the colder European countries this is usually provided through the heat insulation (including double glazing). It doesn’t ruin a stay, but it shows a certain lack of forethought by the management. This place was otherwise pretty good, and certainly not the only offender in this category, but I feel the time is right for a rant on the subject.

Anyway, thanks to my sleeping mask, the beanie pulled over my eyes and the cloudy morning, we had a good night’s sleep and awoke to a nice breakfast. Emma finally got the chance to enjoy a Full English breakfast, albeit with some vegetarian sausages that were made of something like stuffing (which worked very well even if they looked a little copric.

After breakfast we decided to walk into town since the day had become quite nice. We walked in along the country road, looking a bit more closely at the hedgerows and fields. We went the other way when we got to the village and looked at the main centre, with a nice little village green (we’d walked through the burbs the night before). After buying lunch we walked out to the church on the edge of town and had a look around the graveyard at the old gravestones and the molehills that were everywhere in the area at that time (but we didn’t make too much of them). There was a public walk through farmland from the church back towards the wedding venue, which we followed. It wasn’t a walking track or path or anything like that, just a few signs at turning points with the rest normal fields and such. We walked down from the church to the brook, up the hill on the other side and across a ploughed field (after the sign assured us it was OK). It was nice to get out right into the countryside. One thing we noticed was the small lumps of quartz/glass-type rock lying all over the field. They were ovoid and rock-like, but the ones that had broken looked like they were made of black glass. We’d also noticed that many of the old buildings in East Anglia had walls made of these nodules. It was only later that we realised that this was flint. It was interesting to see the first precision-tool-making material of man (and woman), shame I didn’t realise it in the field or I might have had a go at banging one against the other (though that’s probably for the best).

We made it back to the wedding venue, ate lunch and showered and changed. I had my usual wedding uniform on and Emma had bought a nice purple dress in Örebro. The wedding was nice – held in a hall with old farm tools hanging on the walls. Afterwards we mingled with the other guests while a guitar duo played some great jazz versions of rock anthems (including Sweet Child o’ Mine). We were itching to dance but prevented by our personal rule to let the bridal couple lead off with the first dance. This was a bit of a shame since that took place after dinner, when the guitar boys had long since left. Anyway, I did get to drink lots of champagne while talking to Christof, a lecturer in modern art specialising in surrealism. It’s not often I get to talk about the works of my all-time favourite Czech surrealist stop-motion animator Jan Svankmajer in a social setting, and Christof had not only heard of him, but was friends with the guy from when he lived in Prague. Nice (and well played in the obscurathon my good man)!

Dinner was a roast pig-on-a-spit – makes a nice change from the usual alternate drop, and being an organic farm the pig probably lived a happy life before receiving its special wedding invitation. We were on the young(ish) friends from uni table and enjoyed some very nice conversation with some young English couples. After stuffing ourselves and enjoying the wine on the table (no sense letting it go to waste, but I still hadn’t had a chance to get to the bar to try the local brew, and the XXXX that was on tap for some bizarre reason) we enjoyed some great speeches - trust academics to know how to but some well chosen words together.

After dinner the DJ started up and the happy couple got their chance for a bridal waltz, opening the floodgates for the rest of us. Emma and I like going to weddings since it gives us a chance to get dressed up and have a good dance (and people are usually impressed and say nice things (-: ). One of the girls from our table, ?????, asked us if that was Lindyhop and we said it was, and she said she was learning it in Germany. So I got to have a dance with her. The night then became a bit of a blur of dancing and conversations as I finally got to try some of the beers at the bar. It was good to have our accommodation only 20 metres from the venue, though we did have a bit of a wander out beyond the lights of the farmstead to finally see the northern hemispheres stars on the clear night. We saw the big dipper and the north star (we think), as well as seeing Orion in the unusual position in the southern sky. It’s a pity that almost all of Europe (except for small areas in Lappland) has at least some light pollution, so we didn’t get to see the Milky Way. After that we toddled off to bed.

Day 5 – Swanton Morley to Norwich via north Norfolk coast and Great Yarmouth

Next day I was a bit tender. We had a good breakfast again and headed off to drive the 35km east to Norwich the long way, via the coast. We started to the north (Emma driving) to the town of Wells-next-the-sea, passing a lovely beech forest in golden autumn splendour (so nice we had to stop and take some photos). Wells-next-the-sea is oddly named – we got there to find the tide out in the harbour and the sea nowhere to be found (I did see a hydrocephalic Chinese brother looking suspicious though). The name is possibly short for “First Wells, next the sea” since you have to walk (or drive) about 1km out to the beach. It seemed like a nice town, but it was too early for lunch and the weather was a bit on the cold and windy side (and I was hung over).

We continued along the coast enjoying the view. It was a while before we saw the actual ocean due to the fact that most of the land in the area seems to have been reclaimed from the sea and protected by bug earthwork sea walls. Eventually we drove the 1km or so from the main road to the sea wall, climbed over the mound of pebbles and looked at the sea across a pebbly beach. Continuing along we passed Cromer, which looked like a really nice place, except it still wasn’t time for lunch (my poor old tummy wasn’t calling out for food). We continued along, passing the turnoff to the tiny village of Eccles, but we didn’t stop in to say “Aaaaahhhhllo”. After passing the village of Horsey we started to think about fish and chips. Emma was all for turning back to a little place overlooking the sea (and the highway), but I thought we could find something closer to Great Yarmouth. Unfortunately there were fich and chip shops and there was coastline, but nobody seems to have put the two together. There are some creepy permanent carnivals of the epileptic flashing lights variety, but no fish and chips by the seaside (and extremely overpriced public carparks that deter one from stopping to look for one).

Eventually we reached Great Yarmouth. All the Norfolk locals from the wedding had said not to bother going there, and we were planning to listen to them, except for the lack of seaside fish and chip shops that my vegetarian fiancée unaccountably insisted we visit. But we finally ended up there, parked in a reasonably priced carpark near the beach and found a nice cosy plaice (boom boom). Great Yarmouth didn’t seem that bad, pretty much like Brighton, except with sand instead of pebbles. Frankly any cold, windswept English beach in late autumn isn’t going to impress someone who’s gone to sunny Queensland beaches almost every summer since birth, but this one’s failure to impress was probably on the low end of the scale which puts it up there amongst the competition. Plus it had some nice old shop buildings along the esplanade. And it had sand on its beaches which is more than you can say for most of Europe.

At about this time (c. 4pm) it was getting dark so we drove the hour or so to Norwich through the Norfolk Broads along one of the flattest, straightest stretches of road seen in Britain since the Romans left (it almost made us homesick). We made it to our accommodation in fairly central Norwich with little fuss, checked in and had a light meal of all the soups and nibblies we had in our luggage (we’d just eaten greasy fish and chips at 4pm) before going to bed.

Sightseeing in Europe in late autumn and winter is not advisable if you’re in a hurry. When we’d been there in September (during daylight saving) we’d had sunlight until about 7pm, now, just over a month later it was dark by about 4:30 – plus many of the touristy things (and almost all in Scandinavia) will be shut out of the summer season. Luckily we had planned a relaxed trip and didn’t mind so much, but it’s definitely something to consider if you’re planning a trip.

Day 6 – Norwich (NORR-ich)

The next day was a Sunday, and it was Remembrance Day (well, the Sunday before when all the church services were). We walked past the Roman catholic cathedral on out way to town from our hotel spread through 3 old houses. We wandered through town, past the town square (with its cute permanent stalls) and up to the castle, past a group of teenagers practising parkour – that newish activity where people run past, climb and jump over obstacles in urban environments (nice to see teens doing something constructive). The castle wasn’t open yet, so we walked down towards the cathedral. This was engaged in a Remembrance Day service, so we walked down to the river and along. [Sorry if this day gets a bit boring, but I’m writing with a cold and running out of time to catch up the blog].

After a nice walk along the river with long views of Norwich cathedral, we made it back to have a looksy in the longest cathedral in England. It’s pretty cool, but I am beginning to resent the way that cathedrals are split into the public part at the front and the “secret church men’s business” in the back. If nothing else, the choir screen does tend to divide a wonderfully massive space into two smaller, less impressive spaces.

After this we wandered up through the shopping areas before getting some of the lovely cheese and chutney sandwiches that England doea so well for lunch in a less than super-impressive park (though it was nearly winter). After that we went back to the castle for a look in the museum. The Castle is one of the Norman Keeps built to impress and subdue the Saxon locals and generally cement the post invasion new order, and I guess it worked pretty well. The museum was OK, though we probably should have taken the £1-if-you-come-in-less-than-1hr-before-closing offer. The Keep was interesting enough, but only for about 15min – the heyday seems to have been Xmas 1119 when the king actually stayed there. Later, the centre of the complex became a prison and the outer walls were torn down and built over. Slightly more interesting was the display on the “local girl made good...then bad” story of Boudica – possibly the most interesting thing to happen to East Anglia for a few centuries. But it was nice to continue the story back from the Colchester part (the Iceni came from Norfolk, but plundered southwards). This display lead into the Saxon and then Viking eras and gave a nice overview of the history of England in miniature, up to the point where we mostly know from school (if we paid attention). We also got to see, in a room full of faded stuffed animals, an example of the red squirrel and how it looks compared to the grey squirrel.

After this time, the sun was going down again so we wandered homewards and stopped at a local pub, the Horse and Plough. The barmaid asked if we were there for the roast, since they’d just run out. We weren’t too fussed and planned to stop for a pint and read the paper anyway and casually asked if there was a good Indian place nearby for later. She said there was a place a bit of a hike away, but said we could get it delivered to the pub if we wanted. We thought that sounded like a nice plan and did so, sitting back sipping our Greene King ales and reading some papers while we waited wait. When it arrived, the ever helpful barmaid said we could eat it there and gave us some plate and cutlery. It was a nice meal and a fantastic piece of English pub friendliness, and saved us lots of looking around and then having to work out how to eat our dinner back in the hotel room, and was a real highlight of a fairly pleasant day. Yay for English pubs!!! After that we went home, watched some TV and went to bed.

Norwich, despite the lack of enthusiastic details here was a nice city and we enjoyed our day there. We also had quite a nice sunny day for it too, which didn’t hurt. It is also rather well churched, with one on just about every corner and frankly the Adelaide tourist board might like to take a fact-finding trip there to see what a real “City of Churches” looks like.

Day 7 – Norwich to Cambridge via the Norfolk Broads and Caistor-St-Edmund

Next morning we had a quick look at the nice gardens built in an old flint quarry behind the hotel. It was actually forgotten and left to become an overgrown wasteland until it was rediscovered in the 1960s and restored. Unfortunately the fine weather of the day before had turned back into rain, but we chatted to a gardener about it while sheltering at the far end, which was nice. Oh, and I tried a smoked kipper for breakfast to see what this English breakfast regular tasted like. Unfortunately it tasted like smoked fish and stayed with me all day. Oh well, gotta try things you don’t like to find the things you do.

That morning we decided to drive through the Norfolk Broads (in the daytime this time) to see what the fuss was about. The Norfolk Broads are wetlands created by the rivers in the area meeting the low country near the coast and broadening out into large estuaries. It’s also partly formed by a lot of the land being reclaimed over the centuries. It’s full of quaint little villages and the odd glimpse of river, but a rainy day is a rainy day and it’s one of those places that’d be better by boat anyway.

After driving around the wetlands for a while we came back past Norwich and decided to find Caistor-St-Edmund, the local Roman town for the area. It was re-discovered when a pilot flew over the area in a hot, dry spell and noticed that the grass in a sheep paddock was brown in an odd gridlike pattern. It turned out that this was because of the shallower soil above the old roads and excavation began, filling the museum in Norwich (which is how we found out about it). We got there and decided to brave the rain and walk around the sheep paddock (for that is what it is and what it looks like) to follow the signs around the muddy field. In hindsight (and if you ever go there), we should have walked along the top part (past the Saxon church) to the big section of remaining wall, rather than following the marked route the long way down past the “river” (more of a small creek) that provided the freight (somehow, you’d barely be able to paddle a canoe up it now) for the town. It was nice enough. We got a bit wet, but it was nice to see the different examples of habitation for real – from the Roman walls to the Saxon church built from the stones.

After that we decided to just head to Cambridge along the freeway, rather than stuff about any more. Despite a bit of concern finding a late lunch along the way, we eventually made it to out B&B in the dark in a small village south of Cambridge called Little Shelford. The landlady was a bit on the odd side and the room really was small (the bathroom was in a cupboard). Being told to take off our shoes in the narrow corridor before we’d even had a chance to dump our bags in the room was pretty annoying, frankly, and I made a point of not doing so for the rest of the stay out of spite. The landlady was nice enough but wouldn’t shut up when what we really wanted to do was get settled and have a rest. That night we had a nice Thai meal in the local pub and went to bed to prepare for the day in Cambridge next day.

Day 8 – Cambridge

Next day we hopped up and drove the 10 miles or so into central Cambridge, finding a carpark in an aquatic complex just to the south of the centre. The £10 or so parking was less than the difference between the cost of accommodation in Cambridge and out of Cambridge. After parking we walked across a nice, though cold and windswept field towards the centre. After a wander through town to the river and then up King’s Parade past the older, more ornate colleges, we stopped into the Tourist Office to see what there was to see.

We discovered that there was a guided tour starting in about half an hour and decided to go on it. After our flying visit to Oxford, we wanted to do Cambridge a bit better and actually learn something about the place. The tour guide was an older, grey-haired, well spoken scholarly gent who turned out to be a psychiatrist. He was a good tour guide too, taking us first past the oldest building in town – an old Saxon church with the distinctive tower style. Next we went past the Eagle pub, where Watson and Crick drank and announced their discovery of the structure of DNA – it was just around the corner from Cavendish Laboratories where they, and many other great scientists, made their discoveries.

Next we went past a few of the older colleges – Kings, Gonville and Caius (“Keys”), Trinity and St Johns telling us some interesting stories along the way. One recurring theme was the Night Climbers – a loose, secret group who would practice their mountain climbing skills on the buildings (in the otherwise flat region), and playing pranks along the way – like leaving a small car on top of one of the old buildings one night. Another anecdote concerned the funding of the tower on St John’s College Chapel – the masters agreed to go without port and some other luxuries and paid for the construction in only 3 years, showing just how much gravy there was in the ivory towers in those days (if you’ll accept such a wildly mixed metaphor).

The highlight of the tour (and one of the highlights of the town) was King’s College Chapel, a huge building enclosing a huge space. The difference between a chapel and a church is that a church is an official church building where a priest is based, while a chapel is just a small room for private prayer. The difference with King’s is that their small room has been built on a massive scale. The fact that it is not a church means that they weren’t constrained by the usual architectural rules, and so there’s no transepts (the cross part) or cloisters (the side halls), resulting in a huge, rectangular room where all the space is visible at once. It’s a bit like an aircraft hanger with stained glass windows, carved everything and a few small buttresses on the outside. It’s also where they hold the “Carols from King’s” every Xmas. Its building, in phases from Henry VI (during the War of the Roses) to Henry VIII (during the Tudor period), was interesting too, but I’ll leave that to an interested reader to look up. Luckily it survived the puritan destruction of idols that took place during and after the Civil War in the 1600s that would have cost it its beautiful stained glass windows, except that it was then being used to garrison troops and their horses and they wouldn’t have appreciated somebody breaking the windows and letting the cold air in.

During the tour we also had the difference between colleges and the university explained to us. It’s essentially the same as in Australia (in UQ at least): the university is where students study – providing lectures, exams and the conferring the degrees; while the colleges are where students live – providing accommodation, meals, prayer (if you’re so inclined), tutors and mentors. Most of the colleges, therefore, have accommodation buildings, dining halls, chapels and libraries, all build in frilly gothic style and all spread around green-lawned quadrangles. And they’re not as fussy about visitors as Oxford, letting people walk around the buildings and quads and have a looksy (though it was out of season so maybe there’s usually an entrance fee). Many colleges allow masters to live there as long as they choose (and walk on the grass), so there are a few old sods floating around, getting their free meals and using their rooms as office space.

After the tour, we went up the tower of St Mary’s church to get a different overview of the city. We got a great view of the colleges again, as well as the market square with its permanent stalls. After that we grabbed a lunch of a hot potato, beans and cheese and went to find a place to eat it near the river. Since Emma refused to eat and wander, we had to walk quickly past a lot of nice scenery of the Backs – the canals built from the river around the back of the colleges and their meadows, but with no public access or benches. We eventually ate on a park bench with a view of not very much (my way’s better). After that we wandered upstream to some more water meadows and enjoyed the peace and quiet in the middle of town.

We didn’t do a punt ride, since it was getting dark by then and we’d seen the sights on the walking tour. We wandered back through the town, did a bit of souvenir shopping in the cobbled streets and then went back to the Eagle for a pint. At the back of the Eagle is a room that was used by Allied Airmen during WWII to relax and have a drink on their nights off. A tradition started where they’d stand on tables and use their lighters to scorch their unit numbers and nicknames onto the ceiling. Those numbers are still there, providing for an atmospheric and poignant pint (it was Remembrance Day too).

After that we wandered down to The Anchor for another pint and a pub meal. The Anchor overlooks the river near one of the main bridges, and where the punts park. It's was also a favourite haunt of Syd Barret, a drummer in a local jazz band, as well as a local teenager called Roger Barret, who took "Syd" as a nickname and went on to form Pink Floyd. I got bangers and mash and, luckily for Emma, they had veggie sausages, which meant she could have bangers and mash too. It was a lovely meal and we enjoyed some more nice beers and some mulled wine. It was a great end to a really nice day.

We really enjoyed Cambridge. As I said in the last blog, it is unfair to compare Oxford and Cambridge since we saw then each in very different circumstances, but we enjoyed Cambridge a lot. It was friendlier and prettier than Oxford, with a city centre with very little traffic (you’d be mad to drive there since you get stuck behind all sorts of bicycles).

Day 9 – Cambridge to Örebro via Ely and Stanstead

The next day was the last for that trip. We had a short distance to go south to the airport, but our flight wasn’t till 5pm, so we first drove north across the flat Cambridgeshire plains to Ely (pronounced “EE-lee”, not “EE-LYE” as I had always assumed), since it was recommended by both out map and the other guests at the wedding.

Ely was built originally on an island in the Fens, a wetland country that has since been drained for farmland (its name means “eel island”). It was the sight of a monastery founded by some Saxon princess (Ethelreda). Ely is mostly famous for its cathedral, where we spent most of the morning. It’s a huge affair with all sort of goings on inside. Ely was also the home of Oliver Cromwell, meaning that the destruction of the statues and windows was undertaken with extra gusto - most of the statues have no heads.

Ironically, the cathedral is now home to one of the only stained glass window museums to be found, and we had a very interested look around at the evolution of the artform. It flourished from the 1200s to the 1500s, and then died out somewhat (possibly due to puritans continually smashing them up), before undergoing a renaissance in the 1800s. There were methods developed that let artists paint a picture directly onto the glass, but the old fashioned mosaics of single coloured pieces is still our favourite, giving a brilliant contrast of pure colour, which would have been pretty impressive in the Middle Ages when such sensory displays would have been far less ubiquitous than today (imagine seeing a stained glass window or hearing a full choir sing after seeing nothing but natural displays and the odd bit o’ singing around the fireplace your whole life to that point).

After a few more photos of the outside of the impressive cathedral we decided to head for the airport, dropping the car off and getting the shuttle to the airport where we waited for our checkin to open. When it did, we were surprised to learn that we had to do it ourselves – Virgin Blue style. Now the act of self checkin was fine by us, but the fact that we’d been charged an extra fee for a compulsory counter checkin (since we were not EU citizens) left us a bit miffed.

We found our departure gate (after having to buy another water bottle since the pricks at security had thrown away Emma’s EMPTY water bottle without even saying anything) and discovered that the line had already formed. Ryanair has a first come first seated policy (or you can pay $20 extra to queue in the priority line – not worth it), and so all it takes is for someone to lose their nerve first and line up for everyone to race to form a queue and stand there for the next 30min waiting like a bunch of idiots. We decided not to play along and see how we went (it was a night flight so a window seat was not at a premium) and sat down on the seats next to the queue. When the flight opened, we discovered that we’d have to push our way past lots of people to get back to the back of the queue and so just stood and merged into the queue where we were. It is a tactic I’d recommend for anyone using Ryanair in the future.

In the end we got a nice seat, but ended up sitting next to a Swedish chap who smelled like he hadn’t washed in a few days (saving on the checkin luggage fee no doubt). And, just like the proverb, he followed us to the train station in Västerås, onto the train and all the way back to Örebro (though not right next to us, thank heavens). The trip back ended at about midnight, but luckily we’d planned ahead and had good books to read to pass the 9 hours required to take a 2 hour flight.

We had a great time in the UK on both our trips, but it was great to have a more relaxed journey around a smaller part of the country this time, with more time to enjoy the local pubs. Back in Sweden for the rest of our trip now, we were looking forward to 4 weeks spent in Örebro while the winter closed in.

Örebro and Skåne 2

besoka — Mon, 3 Nov 2008 22:04:00 GMT

Executive Summary

OK, I think I’ll try and do Executive Summaries for all the Blogs from now on. This blog covers the 5 weeks in (mostly) October between our first big trip to the UK and the second smaller trip to the UK. Emma worked on a final report for a project back in Australia for most of this time. We were based in Örebro in a studio apartment loaned to us by Anders and Agnete, but spent the middle 2.5 weeks in Malmö housesitting for a dancing couple and visiting our friends and Copenhagen and doing a lot of dancing. During this time the weather shifted through gorgeous autumn leaves to the early frosts and snowfalls of winter. It was also the time of year when daylight saving ends and the days suddenly become very short (well, the full day length continues to shrink smoothly, but sunset is suddenly at 4:30 instead of 5:30).

Contents

Autumn Leaves
Örebro

Skåne
Train Troubles
Living and Dancing in Malmö
Sights in Malmö
Copenhagen

Örebro (continued)
Örebro Castle
Icehockey and Snow
Frozen Lakes

Autumn Leaves

We returned to Sweden to a blaze of autumn leaves. England had been starting autumn while we were there, but that mostly consisted of some lovely, subtle, earth tones creeping in amongst the green canopies. As we landed in Västerås, however, we had our first inkling that the autumn change was proceeding in Sweden at a different pace altogether. We saw some splashes of colour amongst the trees from the plane as we landed, but we were more interested in negotiating the 2-3hr homeward journey to Örebro and getting to bed at that point.

Next morning, Sunday, was Emma's birthday, and Sweden arranged for a gloriously blue, sunny day in which to enjoy the autumn spectacle. We walked around the neighbourhood and took photos and marvelled at the colours, before walking into town and doing the same. We ended up getting a picnic lunch from a cafe and heading to Stadsparken (the city park) to enjoy a birthday lunch to remember.

In Australia, when leaves turn brown and fall off, it means there's a drought on and the trees are dying. Most of the trees keep their leaves year round, and even in Canberra (where I lived for a few years), where some of the older suburbs have been planted with oaks and other European trees, I don't recall any great show, just that the leaves turned brown and fell off. In Sweden, on the other hand, the leaves turned bright yellows, oranges and reds. In fact, often we'd see a single tree that started off green on one side, and shifted through the spectrum of yellows and oranges to bright red at the other side - couple that to the blue sky behind and you had a natural display rivalling anything spring offered. Spring has lots of small wildflowers (usually, appropriately, yellow and blue) sprinkled across the green grass, but the big patches of almost pure spectral colours appealed to my big picture brain.

Anders told us later that this was one of the most spectacular autumns they'd had in a few years. You seem to need the right combination of low temperatures, frosts and probably low rainfall at the right time as well as fewer storms that would blow all the leaves off. The most spectacular trees were the maples, with the brightest red leaves, so autumn in Canada would possibly be even more spectacular. I'm not sure, but I think that the red pigment is actually added to the leaves as they die by the tree (red pigment is a powerful antioxidant), rather than being there the whole time and being revealed as the green chlorophyll disappears.

It was an amazing day, and all I can suggest is that you look at the photos to get a better idea of what I can only try to explain.

Örebro

Emma started her second stint of work the next day - 4 weeks working from home on a project she'd started on in Australia. I did my best to stay out of the way, difficult in a 1 room, studio apartment. Anders and Agnete rent a small place for when Anders had to work late in town and they very kindly let us stay there the whole time we were in Örebro. It was small but big enough, across the road from a supermarket and busstop and only about 30min walk to town. It was also very close to Svampen ("The Mushroom") - a huge, spaceage watertower looking like a flying saucer on a pillar and one of the symbols of Örebro.

In order to keep out of Emma's way, and get some blogging done, I spent most mornings walking into the city library and using the computers there. We were a little sneaky in that Emma got a library card too, which meant I could use the computers for 2hrs a day instead of just one (and making the journey in more worthwhile). The walk in and out is pretty good, taking me past the castle in the middle of town, a couple of churches and along the main cobbled street. For the time I was at home, I bought a headphone extension so I could watch TV in bed without distracting Emma.

With Emma's cousin Anna's very kind help, we got a mobile broadband internet connection for the laptop so that Emma could work. Having no personnummer (Swedish ID number – we had a 1 year working visa, but through a quirk of bureaucracy you can’t easily get a personnummer until you’d been there a year), we were unable to sign any contracts ourselves, so Anna very graciously stepped in and took on the official responsibility - the shortest time we could get was 12 months, which was quite annoying since we only needed it for 3, but a prepaid modem cost about 9 months worth of plan just to buy and had slower speeds. So huge thanks to Anna for that. The modem took a bit of the usual stuffing around to get working, which was a bit frustrating, but luckily the lady doing most of the work on the project back in Australia was taking her usual approach to deadlines and didn't have anything for Emma to work on in the first week. Luckily we didn't have any big plans for the week after the 4 week block and so Emma pretty much wrote off that first week and worked the week after (ie shifted the 4 week block back a week). We also spent the Thursday of that first week travelling to Malmö.

Skåne

Since we had so many friends in Skåne (revision – the southernmost region of Sweden, including the cities of Malmö and Lund), we had arranged to go and stay there for a few weeks while Emma was working from home. Maria and Lovisa had been drafted to see if anyone they knew had a flat to rent short term – luckily for us, two of the core dancers/teachers from the dance scene were getting married and offered us their central flat in Malmö for the two weeks they were on their honeymoon. We did pay some rent to them, but it wasn’t extreme and it was really, really nice of them to help us out – in fact it was Emil, the same guy who had helped us out in Herräng by driving us to Hallstavik when the bus system turned out to be useless (our hero).

Train Troubles

The train trip down was a bit of an adventure. We changed trains at Mjölby to get onto the Stockholm-Malmö line. We waited the 30min or so and then about 10min before the train was due, noticed that it was delayed by 30min. Oh well, we waited until 10min before the new time and it was revised up again. There were a few announcements that there had been an accident up the line (our fellow attempted passengers helped us out with translations). Oh well, accidents happen, so we went through the constant revising of the time until they just took the train off the board. We kept waiting for the next announcement telling us when the train would be, but they kept giving the same message that it was delayed; luckily I had my Harry Potter. After 2.5hrs, I noticed that the board had another train to Malmö on it, but assumed it was another phantom train, since the announcements never changed. At the time the new phantom train was said to be arriving, I wandered out to idly check if anything was there. There was a train there. I asked the driver if it was going to Malmö (ie by pointing in the direction it was going and saying “Malmö?”), he nodded yes. I figured I’d rather hop on any train going in the right direction and argue the toss with the conductors about my rights while travelling towards my destination, so I ran back in and told Emma and everyone that there was a train outside going to Malmö, grabbed my bags and went out to get on it. Everyone followed and, despite the conductor blowing his whistle to try to get the train moving, I used all the opaqueness of my mighty arm to block the sensors allowing the doors to close (like those annoying ”helpful” people in lifts), preventing the train from leaving until everyone had got there and hopped on. Once we were on the train, we looked for a vacant seat, before running into the conductor lady that had been waiting with us. She told us that this was, actually, the train we were booked on, the next train (scheduled for 2 hours later and now 30min late) was right behind it. She’d nearly missed it too. So we got our booked seats and spent the rest of the trip wondering as the incompetence of a company that, having a train delayed for 2.5 hours, had tried to sneak it past the station full of people who had been waiting for that train (including one of their staff) without announcing it was finally there. When the bloke that doesn’t speak the local language too well is the one telling the locals their train has finally arrived, there’s something seriously wrong. Luckily we later found out that the delay entitled us to a refund and after fighting the front-desk mentality of “block everyone” eventually got most of our money back (well, we got vouchers to use for future travel, which we did). So I guess Swedish Rail (SJ) beats Train Italia for the “Biggest Delay with least information” award.

One unfortunate side effect of the train delay was that we were too late to meet Emil and Emelie before they left for their honeymoon, but luckily, Emelie arranged for a friend Johan to meet us and let us in, which was super nice of him (it was a work day).

Living and Dancing in Malmö

The flat we were staying in was in another old building with high ceilings in the middle of Malmö – ie so central it was actually on the manmade island in the centre. The island was manmade not by piling up earth to create land, but by digging a canal around some land that already existed to create an island. And “our” flat overlooked that canal, which was nice.

The Malmö library was quite close but I actually spent very little time there – Emil had a playstation. So I spent most of the first week playing and finishing a strategy game called Monsters. I tell you, you could really waste your life on those things. I’m so glad I don’t have a game console or cable TV since you’d never see me (tempting I know, but please don’t all band together and get me one, I’d know why). They should only be given to prisoners since they’re there to waste time anyway (and you wouldn’t have any trouble from them until you had to drag them away to release them). Anyway, after I finished that game I decided to do something more useful and read A Brief History of Everything (by Bill Bryson) that I found on their bookshelf. Given I had about 7 days to read a 800 page book, it was quite a job getting it finished in time and took up much of that last week. All this was done while Emma toiled away in the dining room (hey, I earned my Long Service Leave by toiling away in an office for 10 years rather than swanning about doing a PhD d-:)).

Most of the reason we were in Malmö was to dance. And we had a great time doing so. The Malmö and Lund dance communities are great fun and very welcoming. Even though we were there visiting swing friends, the first dance night we went to in Lund neither of our friends could make it, so we were pretty much strangers (except for a few familiar faces), and still we were in demand for dances. We even got a lift home to Malmö (so friendly). Super friendliness award has to go to Ingrid, an older lady but super keen, loooves to dance and seems to know everyone in Sweden and Denmark who’s ever looked at a dancefloor. We danced in Lund on Monday nights, Malmö on Thursday night and in Copenhagen on the Sunday we were there (more on that later). As I’ve said in the previous blog, Malmö had a friendly scene, with an emphasis on having fun and partying, a bit like the Brisbane scene.

We got to catch up with all of our Skåne friends while there. We had some nice dinners and conversations with Kerstin, including one with her partner Magnus. Kerstin (pronounced “SHER-stin” if you want to try it the Swedish way) is expecting their first baby and is glowing with expectant motherhood, though it wasn’t slowing her down any. We caught up with Maria before dancing in Malmö and stayed with her on the last night before we headed home to Örebro. And we caught up with Lovisa a few times at dancing and for some boozy nights in and out with her umfriend Cornelia. Hopefully we’ll be able to bring some souvenirs back to Australia in the form of Kerstin and Lovisa, who are both planning to spend some more time in Brisbane next year - Kerstin to look after her little barn while Magnus works on his PhD at UQ, and Lovisa to do more study in Brisbane. So, look out for them and be super nice to them in return for them being so friendly to us.

Sights in Malmö

I’ve discussed the sights of Malmö and Lund in a previous blog (the Göteborg and Skåne 1 blog) so I’ll try not to repeat myself and just describe a few of the new tings I saw while there. We were just down the road from Gustav Adolph’s Torg(Square) and the public library was slightly further on to the other side, through the cemetery. Malmö has a cemetery right in the middle of town, and it’s quite an interesting affair. Being on the way to somewhere, it has a well used public walkway through the middle (at one end is one of the main squares and the bus interchange). So, rather than being consigned to a remote corner where nobody goes, the cemetery is more like a public park with well maintained walkways and lawns, nice trees and open spaces, and a whole lot of tombstones arranged in the usual way through it. It’s a nice approach to death (though I’m sure most locals don’t really consciously think of it as a cemetery as they walk through).

On the other side of the canal near the library is one of the many kebab stands in Malmö. According to Lovisa, there was a bit of a falafel price war in Malmö a couple of years ago, for some reason (oversupply in the market I guess). As a result, you can get a falafel kebab (and rolled up in the style we’re used to in Brisbane, not dripping out the sides of a fragile sliced pita) for 20kr (about A$4) which is about the only time I’ve seen a food item cheaper in Sweden (except local exports I guess). And they’re yummy too. At one point, coming home from clubbing in Malmö, we stopped off at another kebab place doing a brisk late night trade near the pub district and got a kebab with <drool> grilled halumi on it. Yummmm!

The library is in the corner of Slottsparken (The Castle Park) which contains, wait for it, a castle. Unfortunately, Malmöhus has not experienced quite the renaissance that Örebro castle has. Being in the disputed territory between Denmark and Sweden, it saw a bit more action than Örebro castle, but I guess it was built a bit later, looking more like a modern flat fortress than a tall imposing castle. After its decline in importance, it was turned into a royal mint before becoming (in the footsteps of just about every other castle) a prison. The main problem I guess we have with Malmöhus is that, being made of red brick (possibly some of it the result of more recent renovations and additions) it looks more like a brewery than a castle. Maybe it’s because Örebro castle fell into disuse that saved it (allowing for a sensible, planned restoration about 100 years ago), whereas the continuous refits and sloppy maintenance of the old structure has wreaked such havoc with Malmöhusets façade. Oh well.

One last place we went to in Malmö was Pildammsparken in the southeast. This was a huge park with a great big lake in one corner. The lake was nice, but the highlights were the trees in the rest of the park. They’d been allowed to grow very large and close together (though they obscure the forest somewhat). It was great to walk under a connected forest canopy along paths covered by autumn leaves. The other cool thing about the tree cover was that where they weren’t, they did so abruptly. Roads and paths were cut through the trees and through the foliage, creating straight, sheer canyons in the canopy. There was also one big circular field cut out in the same way, creating an empty space in the middle like a bai in the Congo (though no new species of pygmy elephant was observed).

Speaking of trees, the gorgeous autumn colours we’d seen in Örebro never quite made it to Malmö. We’d seen some amazing colours as we’d gone south on the train, suggesting that the sweet spot of autumn was slowly moving south across the country, but I guess the combination of moist air (being next to the sea) and not quite so extreme temperatures didn’t quite convince the trees in Malmö to put on the same display. The storm that passed through on the first weekend we were there probably didn’t help, blowing quite a few of the turning leaves off the trees. While there was some colour, mostly the leaves just turned brown. So we only really got one good day of autumn leaf admiration (the autumn display was over by the time we got back to Örebro a couple of weeks later), but it was probably the best day of the year (and Emma’s birthday) so we’re happy.

Copenhagen

On the second weekend we were there (the first weekend having been completely rained out) we took the train over the bridge to Copenhagen so that Emma could have a look. The day started off a bit cloudy, but after an hour or so (it was about noon by the time we got there) it had cleared up to a beautiful fine day. I had a tourist map of Copenhagen which had a suggested walking route on it as a line of red dots. This path seemed to go past most of the sights I’d seen in the centre which I thought Emma would like (Christiania wasn’t really on her to do list and it was in another part of town anyway), so we followed it. And it turned out to be pretty much the best way of seeing everything in central Copenhagen (go figure), so if you’re ever there and wondering what to see – grab the standard tourist map and follow the red dotted path. A couple of things we saw that I hadn’t seen before were the island of Slotsholmen (Castle Island), the centre of government, and Kastellet (the Fortress). Slotsholmen, right in the middle of the city is where the royal palace and parliament are situated. Nice but a bit austere. Kastellet, to the northwest near the Little Mermaid was more interesting. It’s still a working fortress of the 18th century ramparts and bastions variety, but with the old buildings and public access it’s a bit like a park with people walking along the earth ramparts and enjoying the views of the park it’s situated in.

You can wait for Emma's photos for a better description of our walk in detail (with photos, no less), so I'll move on to the dancing. After walking through Rosenborg gardens, and trying to avoid the big Congolese-looking guy shouting random things (though mercifully in English, so at least we knew he was a loony - though a seeming friendly one) we came to Rundtorn (Round Tower) - the old observatory with the spiralled ramp. Next door to that was Studenthuset (The Student House) - the uni bar where the dancing was being held that day. We found a small gathering of dancers - about 20 I guess in the bar with a live band playing. It turned out that the band was a roll up jam session for whoever wanted to join in. The personnel changed a few times during the couple of hours we danced but they were generally quite good (except for one girl who kept insisting on playing a long sequence of very very slow songs that she couldn't sing very well to). Had some great dances - the folks there were very friendly too. One girl, Hannah, I remembered from Herräng where we'd had some great dances (one of the highlights of the social dancing there), and we had a great time dancing in Copenhagen too. Hannah is one of those dancers that has as much fun stuffing up as pulling out fantastic moves (and she is a great dancer), and it is wonderfully contagious. In general, approaching dancing with a sense of fun usually results in better dances for you and your partner than being too serious about it - though of course serious competence probably beats silly, spaghetti armed, thoughtless incompetence, but I'm talking about all else being equal here.

After the dancing Emma and I went to a veggie buffet restaurant for dinner before heading back to the station. The rest of the walking route (we were mostly finished when we got to the dancing) was done in the dark and was therefore pretty uneventful. We did see a Lego display in the main square where kids were invited to add to the white city that was being built. Everyone seemed to be having fun. After that we carefully spent our remaining Danish Kronor to avoid having useless currency floating around and hopped on the train back to Malmö. It was a fun day.

Örebro (continued)

There was more time in Malmö after Copenhagen, but I’ve covered most of the Malmö details above. When Emil and Emelie came back from their trip we finally got to meet them again and thank them for their generosity, but while they were polite, they’d been travelling back from Zanzibar since 2pm the day before and were quite obviously looking forward to a shower and some sleep, so we didn’t hang around. We spent that night (as arranged) at Maria’s in Lund, catching up with her and having dinner with Kerstin and Magnus. Next morning we said goodbye to Maria and Skåne and had a fairly uneventful (thank heavens) train trip back to Örebro.

Back in Örebro, we had just over 2 more weeks to finish planning our final UK trip and see a bit of the town. Emma of course had to finish off her work stint and try to ensure the person working on her final report back in Australia did their job properly and on time.

The first weekend we had Anna and Magnus over for drinks and dinner. Emma made her famous nachos and some sangria - from the local cheapo Aussie red-wine-in-a-screw-top-carton called (wonderfully) “Kangarouge”. This was a fun night and also heralded the night when daylight saving finishes, the clocks were once again turned back an hour and the afternoons, which had been creeping shorter and shorter suddenly leapt from a 5:30pm sunset to a 4:30pm sunset, plunging Sweden into the period of short, dark winter days, a situation that has continued to grow even more extreme as we head towards the winter solstice on 21 December.

Örebro Castle

The weekend after we got back to Örebro from Malmö we also took the guided tour of Örebro Castle. As mentioned before, Örebro Castle is the focus of the town, sitting on an island in Svartån (“The Black River”) with it’s slightly hunched appearance due to the circular towers at each corner that are slightly shorter than the main building (the building had a floor added during its history). It has sat there since the 1200s, guarding the point where one of the more important routes in the area (linking the main population centres of Svealand and Östergötaland) crosses the river. It had its heyday in the 1500s when Duke Karl (son of King Gustav Vasa – Sweden’s greatest monarch – and future king himself) lived there and turned the fortress into a mansion. After that time the relevance declined and became another prison (though holding some colourful characters, including the famous romantic cross-dressing thief Lasse-Maja – when it could, he escaped about 4 times). In the late 1800s/early 1900s it was finally restored and became used as the residence of the local county governor. Nowadays it is a living building with conference rooms and such leased by one of the local hotels. During the renovation, the originally whitewashed walls were stripped back to reveal the bare stones. Although this was done in a fit of mediaeval romanticism, it probably does work better that way and looks great.

Icehockey and Snow

On the next Thursday night a few Jakkus were rounded up to watch Emma's cousin, Susanne's, son, Gustav, play icehockey. Gustav is very good at icehockey. Despite being only 13, he is playing in the league with 17 and 18 year olds and, might I add, more than held his own. Icehockey in Sweden is the standard winter sport (soccer being the summer sport), and is pretty much the same as you'd see from Canada or the USA. In fact we're pretty sure that modern icehockey probably originated in Canada since all of the terms used for penalties and such were in English. Sweden has an older form of icehockey called Bandy, which is played very much like field hockey (including a round ball instead of a puck), except outside on a big rink (or frozen lake). It is still played, but not, seemingly, with the same amount of money floating around as icehockey. I don't think I really need to tell you what icehockey looks like since I've seen plenty of clips of it back in Australia - suffice to say that the skating ability is impressive. To skate as well as control a puck, get hit pretty hard by opponents and either not fall down or get straight back up is pretty impressive to this wobbly, hold-the-rails skater. In the end Gustav's team won by about 5-2.

As we left the rink that night we saw our first snowfall of the winter. Anders and Agnete drove us back to their place for the night since the next day we were continuing up an hour or so north to visit Susanne and her family for fika (a Swedish word meaning to catch up over a coffee and some cakes - can be used as a noun or a verb). We enjoyed the still snow covered scenery and had a lovely fika with Susanne and her husband Anders and their kids Lina (17) and Gustav in their old farmhouse. It was a school holiday so both kids were off school, including Lina who is away at a school near Östersund studying looking after Icelandic ponies.

After Fika, Agnete took us to the cemetery in Ramsberg where Emma's grandparents (Veikko and Sylvi) are buried. Being Halloween that day, it was the traditional time in Sweden to tend to the graves of relatives, including putting down some pine fronds and lighting a candle. They do a half hearted American style Halloween too (much like in Australia), but it's nice to see a more substantial tradition of honouring and remembering the dead and acknowledging death as part of life. It also bookends the growing year that starts with the fertility celebrations of Midsummer (or May Day in more southerly parts of Europe).

We drove back through some more lovely, snowcovered forest landscape, but unfortunately it didn't extend quite to Örebro. That night we took the bus out to Karlslund Herrgård ("Charlesgrove Manor"), and old manor farm on the west of Örebro that was once used to supply the castle. They had a bit of a Halloween night, but it was mostly over by the time we got there.

Frozen Lakes

Next morning we had the first frost of the season (that we were around for). It was a Saturday, clear and bright and we awoke to find a frost on the ground and frozen puddles in the gutters. We decided to take a walk out past the wetlands to the lake near town. Along the way I took some delight in discovering that the small ponds along the way were frozen over, and even more delight in throwing rocks onto the frozen surfaces. Large sheets of ice make really interesting sounds when hit by rocks. For some reason we probably expected it to sound a bit like stone, with a sharp crack as a rock hits it and nothing more. In actual fact it makes quite a resonant sound, a little bit like a large sheet of metal, or the sound you’d get if you hit a long strand of tensioned wire (eg on a farm fence) with a stick – you get the initial “crack”, but then a sort of sharp metallic “thwang” as the shockwave resonates outward along the icesheet. It’s really cool. As a result, I was throwing rocks as high as I could onto just about every frozen pond we passed (and there were a few being a wetland). Usually the rocks would bounce off (and lazily skid along the ice to an eventual stop); sometimes they’d stick fast in the frozen surface; and sometimes they’d go straight through – not shattering the ice, but punching a neat hole and sending a thin vertical splash back up through it.

It was all jolly good fun and we (I) felt delightfully juvenile doing it – glad that we weren’t in the view of the Swedes who’d probably think us silly tourists who’d never seen a frozen lake before (pretty much true on both counts). Then we got to the lake and discovered that the frozen inlet nearest town was covered with rocks, thrown mostly by the local 5 year olds, but some of them by the adults I’m sure. All the kids of the families enjoying a day out were out there throwing rocks onto the lake and the sounds they made. So I continued with a newfound sense of justification. I have now equalled the stone skipping record (infinity skips as the stone slid along the ice). We also discovered the even more cool sound that a slab of ice broken off the edge of the lake makes when thrown onto the rest of the ice – like the single stone, but multiplied as the ice chunk shatters into small pieces that slide almost frictionlessly across the surface.

After these juvenile shenanigans, we walked back up along the Svartån to town. Many of the rivers in Sweden have dark water in them with the appearance of black tea. My theory is that this is due to tannins from the pine forests leaching into the water, though I’ve yet to bother looking into it. We had decided to watch a film in Sweden and had booked tickets for “Mama Mia”, thinking it an appropriate movie to watch here. We’d booked our tickets over the net that morning and had to pick them up (and pay for them) 45 minutes before the start or they’d be resold (not sure this is the best way, but it seems to be the usual way they do it and our only experience so far). So we picked up the tickets, caught the bus home and had a rest and got changed and came back in. The film was good fun, though at 110SEK (about $22) it wasn’t something we’d be doing a lot. The Swedes seemed to enjoy it, Benny and Bjorn got a cheer in their cameos. ABBA seems to be treated in Sweden much as it is in Australia, a slightly guilty, daggy pleasure that is making a bit of a comeback. After the movie we had dinner and a few drinks to complete our night out and went home to bed.

Next day we revisited Karlslund Herrgård during the day and had another look around. It’s quite a nice place, on a hill overlooking a bend of Svartån, surrounded by fields with different purposes, from orchards to veggie gardens to a watermeadow used as a supply of grass for the cattle. They even had the first power station in the region (a hydro generator). It was a nice place, with lots to see, but the short days and the late autumn glumness wasn’t the time to see it at its best. But it was convenient, at the other end of the bus route that runs past our flat. Actually, as an aside, the bus system in Örebro is quite good and really cheap – only 10kr ($2) for 3hrs of travel, compared with 20-30kr for single trips in Göteborg and Stockholm. Though often the busses seem to leave just before we get there, at least the interchange is the main road in front of the castle so there’s something to look at while you wait.

That’s about all for that 5 week block of time spent in Sweden. After that we went back to the UK for a week to attend the wedding of Emma’s co-worker, before coming back to Örebro for a 4 week block wherein Emma worked on some papers while based at Örebro University. See the next couple of blogs for details.

Autumn Leaves

UK and Ireland

besoka — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:32:00 GMT

For these 3 weeks our plan was to rent a car and drive in a clockwise direction around the UK and Ireland, starting and finishing in London. Given the one night stand nature of this trip, I think I'll have a go at a straight diary style.

UPDATE: This may have been a mistake as it’s made me think more about the details of each day and made the whole blog super long. So long, in fact, that I doubt you’ll get through it (even though, on the whole, it’s not too bad). So I’ve decided to put an executive summary at the top and some contents to help you if you’re not quite as devoted to following our trip as us or our Mums. Bear in mind, though, that at just under 3 weeks it was the longest trip we've done so far apart from the Kumuka tour, so there's a lot of content.

Executive Summary

We arrived in London and had a day to look around. We spent most of the day on a sightseeing bus passing all the big sights and generally orienting ourselves. The weather that day was not great – but luckily London is one of those cities that isn’t diminished too much by a bit of rain (it’s almost expected). The following 16 or so days were spent driving around the country (and its neighbours) in a hirecar, following the itinerary outlined in the table of contents below and ending up back in London. The final day was spent in London walking around looking at a few more sights close up, a day that was surprisingly successful in seeing all the sights we wanted to see and having fantastic warm, sunny weather to enjoy them in.

We caught up with quite a few friends during the trip including: Tonia (London), Duncan and Louise (Plymouth), Fiona (Cardiff) and Michelle (Edinburgh), as well as staying at Silja’s place in Glasgow (with permission), though she was out of town at the time.

It was great to see so much of a country we’ve known so much about remotely through history, literature, movies and popular culture. Much of it also held a certain comforting familiarity through shared cultural background, food, beer, placenames and, of course, language.

Geographical highlights included: New Forest; Salisbury (major highlight); Dartmoor (also major); Wales (although we didn’t spend much time there and think it was definitely worthy of more time); Aran Islands; Snowdonia; Scottish Highlands; Edinburgh; York; Peak District; Cottswolds; and, of course, London.

Cultural Highlights included: English and Irish pubs; English and Irish beers; traditional food from all over (especially sausages, roast beef, Irish stew, English breakfasts and even black pudding and haggis); Bill Bryson’s audio commentary in the Roman Baths in Bath; English comedy panel shows; cathedrals and castles.

Anyway, if you’d like to know more have a read of the main blog below, or just scroll to the days that interest you.

Contents

Note that these aren’t links and clicking on them won’t take you to the relevant part of the document. I’m not that clever.

Day 1 - Örebro to London
Day 2 – London
Day 3 - London to Brighton via Canterbury and Hastings
Day 4 - Brighton to Salisbury via New Forest
Day 5 - Salisbury to Plymouth via Old Sarum, Stonehenge and Avebury
Day 6 - Plymouth and Dartmoor
Day 7 - Plymouth to Cardiff via Bath
Day 8 - Cardiff to Wexford via Cardigan
Day 9 - Wexford to Galway via Kilkenny
Day 10 - Galway to the Aran Islands and back to Galway
Day 11 - Galway to Dublin
Day 12 - Dublin to Lancaster via Snowdonia
Day 13 - Lancaster to Glasgow via Lake District and Hadrian's Wall
Day 14 - Glasgow to Inverness via Loch Lomond, Western Highlands, Great Glen and Loch Ness
Day 15 - Inverness to Edinburgh via more Highlands
Day 16 - Edinburgh to York via North Yorkshire Moors
Day 17 - York to the Cotswolds via Sherwood Forest and Peak District
Day 18 - Cotswold Hills to London via Oxford
Day 19 - London
Day 20 - London to Örebro

Day 1 - Örebro to London

We had decided to fly Ryanair, the European international equivalent of JetStar - super low prices for expectedly minimal service. Part of the reason for this (apart from saving money) was because Ryanair fly out their Sweden to UK leg from the remoter airports of Västerås to Stanstead, and Västerås is actually about 1hr closer to Örebro than the main Stockholm airport Arlanda (which itself is about 40min north of Stockholm anyway). The other consideration was, of course, the price. We got two people and their baggage to the UK and back for a total of about $120, and most of that price was checking our baggage. In fact, our train tickets to and from the airports at each end each cost more than the flights, though complaining about that seemed like buying a house for $5000 and than complaining that a new car cost more. The baggage limits on Ryanair are a little weird with a 15kg limit per bag but a 10kg limit on the carryon. Like JetStar they are notoriously strict with limits and times and such (and the choose-your-own-seat when you get on the plane was a bit of a novelty) but we managed to get through it all without incident. The seats were on the cramped side, but then again we paid full price to fly to Madrid on (the recently disgraced) Spanair and they were just as bad. So after starting out at about 9am to get the train from Örebro for our 2hr flight, we ended up getting to our destination in London at about 5pm (thanks to the usual absurdities of air travel where it takes you longer to get to the airport than it does to fly between countries).

Our destination was the flat of my old friend Tonia who has been living in London for a few years now. This was nice and fairly central in Kings Cross just to the north of the city centre. After catching up and grabbing dinner at the restaurant next door, it was off to bed.

Day 2 - London

This was the first of two full days in London (the second coming at the end of the trip). We took the bus to Victoria Station to get on one of the big red tour busses that do the tourist loop around the city. Well, we took the bus part of the way until it got stuck in traffic on Oxford St, when we got off and took the tube the rest of the way (yay for the all day tickets - boo for our first bus being about the only single-decker in London). So we got on the hop-on-hop-off tour bus and decided to stick with it the whole day since it was pretty exy (actually they all are in most cities - about $50 each). The bus went on a big loop past Marble Arch, around the back of Hyde Park (through Kensington and Notting Hill) before finally getting to the meaty landmarks of Central London. The detour was nice enough, except that by the time we got to Trafalgar Square, it was starting to rain on our open-topped little possie. We soldiered on with umbrella up though to get a good orientation of where all these sights were that we'd heard about our whole lives. After Trafalgar we went past Big Ben (and the clock tower it is housed in - Big Ben is just the massive bell that bongs out the hours) and across the Westminster Bridge, past the Eye over another bridge, up Fleet St to St Paul’s, over another bridge to the south side of Tower Bridge and over that to the Tower.

Here we got off to have a look around and hop on the ferry that was also included in our ticket. First we had a look at the Tower of London, both remarking on how we thought it'd be bigger. But I guess fortresses are hard to see properly if they're built to be properly defended and the 4 or so various concentric walls built around the central White Tower (the square one with the minaret-type turrets at each corner) gave the whole complex a dome-like appearance.

We hopped on the ferry back to Westminster at this point (would have been nice to get to Greenwich but ran out of time) and enjoyed a nice commentary put on by the boat crew (for tips) which was jolly good fun with little anecdotes about the various buildings along the river. It brightened up the grey weather a bit (not that we were glum, but it's always nice to feel better than one otherwise might have). At the end of the cruise we hopped on the remainder of the bus loop, past Westminster and Buck House (well, the side anyway), and hopped on the tube back to Tonia's place to get changed for dinner.

As it so happened, Emma's Aunt Margie was in London doing much the same trip around the country as us - except in the opposite direction and on a coach. So Tonia used just a small percentage of her considerable organisational skills and rustled us up a really nice restaurant right near where Margie was staying in South Kensington, and the 4 of us had a lovely meal and all swapped travel stories.

One thing that struck me about London (particularly the outer inner suburbs) was the Rhapsody in Brick that the Victorian engineers had made of it. Rather than dull monochromatic stone that cities like Paris and Rome had far too much of, some parts of London had a lovely palette of browns (ranging from dark chocolate to ... less dark chocolate) with the light mortar pattern giving something to actually focus the eyes on. A bit like the Eiffel Tower, it made the engineering the highlight of the architecture and showed how wonderfully practical those Victorians were - like the Romans before them. In fact I remember reading once a comment in an old history that the Victorians were the first society to re-attain the standard of living that the Romans enjoyed in the 2nd Century AD (ie the 100s) - though I guess we're talking about the upper classes in both cases here - showing what a society of engineers can achieve I guess.

Day 3 - London to Brighton via Canterbury and Hastings

Next morning we took our stuff to the Hertz car rental place where we'd booked a nice little fuel efficient diesel car to take us around the country without draining our funds on the $2.40/L petrol ... or hurting the planet more than we needed to (says the guy who burned up a few years worth of motoring on the plane from Oz). We got there and the sales guy (northern Italian I think) gave us some fast talking spiel about doing us a deal on the Audi or the other sports car out the front (which he helpfully showed us the boot space of - as if that was the main point of interest), and after tapping away announced he could let us have it for just £590...extra. Now, given that we had booked our car for about £570, we were understandably uninterested in paying more than double (plus the extra fuel) for a car we didn't want. So he crapped on for a bit about other cars until we asked him outright why we couldn't just have the car we'd ordered. It was only at this point that he told us he didn't have that car there for us. So he offered us a (manual) Saab. We told him that Emma couldn't drive a manual and I didn't want to, to which he replied "It's no problem". We pointed out it was a problem for us and pointed out that Emma is not licensed to drive a manual, at which point he settled on a little Nissan Note that was really our only option. He took a bit off the price and we got on our way after only wasting about an hour being stuffed around by this (potentially) coked up git.

The car itself was a bit like my LG mobile phone. It did some stuff really well - like telling you your average speed, fuel consumption and exactly how many miles you had left till you had to get more petrol. But it didn't have cruise control or a decent stereo (after stuffing around with the equaliser, we could only get about 2 of our CDs to have decent sound, most had a very prominent high hat and bass drum or something and really faint melody and vocals). It did get over 40 miles per gallon (about 16km per L, I think) so at least we were on the fuel efficient side of the field, though it had a fairly un-aerodynamic shape (with a back like a van) which was an odd choice.

Anyway, armed with Tonia's A-Z we took only another hour to navigate our way out of London to get on the freeway to Canterbury (only slightly longer than Chaucer's mates took I'm sure). We got to Canterbury at about 2pm and had a glimpse of the top of the cathedral over the walls - we didn't go in due to a mix of lack of time and annoyance that you couldn't even get into the Cathedral close to see the outside of the place without stumping up £7 ($17) each. After a quick lunch we decided to skip Dover (which would have added about an hour to the trip - possibly more since we found out later that there'd been a fire in the Chunnel) and head straight to Hastings via some lovely hedgerows and fields full of sheep.

We drove through Hastings and about 10miles inland to the town of Battle, where the Battle of Hastings actually took place. It was again about £15 together to get in to the site, but the people at the shop talked us into getting a years membership in English Heritage for £72 together, which got us free entry into lots of other sites (including Stonehenge) and discounts at others. We weren't sure if we'd get our money's worth but we figured it'd give us that extra incentive to go into a few more places just for a quick look rather than succumb to the stingy bug (update: we would have gotten at least into the high £60s worth of free visits so it worked out pretty well - and we'll be heading back to East Anglia for a week more yet [update on update: no more discounts in East Anglia so we got close to our money’s worth]).

Anyway, it was really nice to have a look around the battlefield of one of the turning points of history and see the considerable slope the Normans fought up and such. The Normans built a monastery on the top of the hill (Battle Abbey) that is now in ruins and part of the site.

After that we headed to Brighton, past some more green fields and little hilltop villages with ruined churches and castles, arriving at about 7pm. The B&B was a nice old house near the pebble "beach" and after a very cheap but suitably bland Indian meal (the raita and other condiments were the best part) we headed down to Brighton Pier for a look.

Brighton Pier is one of those old fashioned Victorian numbers with amusements along it and a fun park at the end. The whole town has been one of the most famous seaside resorts in Britain (albeit a country not renowned for its beaches) since the early 1800s, and is apparently still quite the happening place. We had a nice walk on the pier in the dark with all the twinkly lights and heard the music and waves crashing underneath, before heading up to bed.

Day 4 - Brighton to Salisbury via New Forest

We started the day with a very nice vegetarian breakfast (one of the reasons we chose that B&B), before heading out for a quick look at the Royal Pavilion - a pleasure dome built by Prince George (of Blackadder the Third fame) to host his parties and other orgiastic activities. We didn't look inside (no time and not much of a discount with our card) but the outside seems to be a cross between a sandcastle (the walls are all a sand colour giving a weird adobe look) and a Moorish palace (with carvings and reliefs not unlike the Alhambra). After that we headed on the road towards the New Forest.

New Forest is a patch of woodland roughly between Salisbury, Southampton, Bournemouth and the Isle of Wight. It is called "new" because it was set up relatively recently by William the Conqueror (much like Newcastle) to provide a hunting ground and, more practically, a ready bulk supply of meat (ie deer) and wood for military campaigns. It is not so much a continuous stretch of dense tree cover (as the name might suggest), but is also dotted by many clearings where the residents have farmed and grazed since before the Normans. And it's these clearings that give the New Forest its character, with the ever present New Forest Ponies grazing among the heather. It's also got some lovely little villages like Lyndhurst and Burley. In fact it's this littleness that's the main charm of the place - like a model world. The clearings make for small contained settings for the little ponies and the little villages with little houses surrounded by little farms. Very cute. We bought some sandwiches and headed to Bolderwood to have a walk through the pines and oaks and see some deer and more ponies. The ponies are a special breed and are just everywhere. At one point we passed some standing on the road that were so uninterested in our passing that we had to really manoeuvre the car around them (a few centimetres to the right and one of the ponies lips would have smudged along our windows). After a lovely afternoon in the forest we headed up the highway to Salisbury.

We got into our B&B right across the road from the cathedral and after checking in Steve, our host, pulled out a map and highlighted a nice walking route for us to take in the hour or so before sunset. And he did a bloody good job too (he said it was the route they took for their evening walks themselves). We went past the 12th century cathedral, with its tallest spire in the UK (though only by default that the two taller ones fell down in the middle ages) and through the cathedral close around it that contained all the houses where the officials lived. Then we walked to the Avon river (not the Stratford-upon-Avon-where-Shakespeare-was-born Avon - Avon just means river in the old Briton language and there are a few Avons in England) and across the old St Nicholas Bridge, the old main bridge into town. Then we went along the Avon to an Old Mill pub where we got a drink. It was our first realisation of how cheap the beer is in England - a pint of beer and a pint of cider cost £4.50 (not much more than $10 - a big change from Sweden). Then we walked back towards town across the water meadows - fields on the floodplain with sheep grazing, streams crisscrossing and the cathedral spire in the background. On the way back into town we crossed a few more streams. Salisbury is built on the junction of 5 small rivers that flow off the low plateau of Salisbury Plain to the north, and each "river" is a babbling brook that is a pleasure to cross on little bridges.

We had dinner that night at a pub called the Wig and Quill. Now a few of you may have heard me wax lyrical (no it's true) about a little pub/microbrewery in Canberra called the Wig and Pen, with it's delicious beer and wonderful atmosphere (if you ever go to Canberra check it out), so I wonder if this pub was the inspiration for that or if it's just a coincidence. Anyway, as Steve said, the Wig and Quill is a fairly new pub - until a century or so ago it was just a private house. As you may have guessed, it's an old town. Steve was telling us he'd just been to Sydney and seen an archaeological dig in the rocks where they were excited to find a house from the early 1800s - he politely pointed out that his house in Salisbury was older than that and still standing. Anyway, I had a bangers and mash consisting of 3 different varieties of local sausage (made from 3 different species of local livestock) and they were all delicious. This was washed down with a pint of local beer called 6X - and true to its name it was at least 50% better than the Qld local brew.

On the topic of English beers, we in Australia traditionally give the Poms crap for drinking warm flat beer (well, not me since I found the light at the W&P in Canberra), but I gotta tell you it's not something to criticise. The beer is cellar temperature, so it's probably about 8 degrees Celsius - cool, not warm. Following this tangent, during Midsummer in Sweden (and at Finafallet where there's no electricity) Anders stored the beer in the cellar to keep it cool, rather than filling the fridge). Also, the best beer in my opinion (known confirmationaly as "Best") is not bubbly with CO2 (like a lager) or Nitrogen (like a creamy stout), but is rather the consistency of water. And the resulting cool, non-fizzy, midstrength (about 4%) beer is incredibly quaffable with nothing but the rich flavours to stimulate the palate.

The food was similarly much more enjoyable than England's international reputation gives it credit for. Given that we've grown up in Australia with such an influx of ethnic cuisines to choose from (Italian, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Greek, ...) the old standards of sausages and roasts and so on have been relegated to home cooking, so that going out for a well cooked roast or sausage or whatever is now more of a novelty than a curry or a pasta. So getting the old standards done well by a nice restaurant is both a novelty and a comforting memory of Mum's cooking all at the same time. Good simple food done well is always a pleasure in any culinary tradition and England, Scotland and Ireland more than held their own.

Day 5 - Salisbury to Plymouth via Old Sarum, Stonehenge and Avebury

Next day we left the lovely town of Salisbury and headed up to Old Sarum. Old Sarum was the original site of Salisbury on a hilltop fort up on the plain a couple of km out of the modern city. The site was continuously occupied since the stone age (I think) up until the 1200s when the Bishop decided to move the cathedral down to its modern location as a result of politics with the local heavy (baron, duke, whatever) that ran the Norman castle, as well as the more practical consideration that water was a bit hard to get on top of a hill. The inhabitants gradually drifted down to the more pleasant modern site by the 5 rivers and the castle was abandoned by the 1500s. As an interesting sidenote this made Old Sarum one of the more notorious "rotten boroughs" that plagued the Westminster System until the Great Reform Act of the mid 1800s. Before then there were no electoral redistributions to account for population change and so Old Sarum (or rather the couple of farmers left grazing their sheep on the site, or rather the local heavy who leant on them) still elected a member of parliament while New Sarum was part of a bigger rural electorate.

Anyway, Old Sarum was a great visit. The castle is just ruins (just a bunch of old stones as Steve put it) and the cathedral below it is only the foundations outlining the walls (some of the stones were used for the new cathedral and the rest were sold off by the local landowner in Tudor times), but the site is still up on a flat, green, circular hilltop surrounded by a pretty impressive defensive ditch. And it was on the way to our more obvious destination of Stonehenge.

To get to Stonehenge, you drive along a fairly major road looking for the turnoff until you come over a hill and see the famous pile of bricks right next to the road (with an obvious turnoff into a minor road next to it). It's a pretty big operation with lots of people wanting to see it. And it's worth a look. You could just walk along on the other side of the chainlink fence and see it for free, but our English Heritage card got us in for free and the audio guide was nice to get a bit of background. There was also a great mural of what the site would have looked like back in the day to help make sense of the jumble of stones that remains. Some people have complained that you are kept at a slight distance and can't go inside the circle (unless you arrange a dawn or dusk tour and pay a lot extra), but we felt there was a huge upside to this in that you could see the Henge (and take photos) without having a bunch of tourists ruining the scene - it preserves the sense of remote, windswept desolation as much as possible for one of the most visited sites in England. There are other stone circles and some of them are bigger (see Avebury later on), but Stonehenge has the tall stones and is the only one we know of with the lintel stones across the top, making it more impressive for its size, structure, and the effort and skill that would have been necessary.

After Stonehenge, we headed further north (past Woodhenge - just a circle of modern stumps marking where the remains of ancient wooden uprights have were found) towards the larger stone circle of Avebury. On the way over Salisbury Plain we saw a few cute "Tank Crossing" signs (with a silhouette in the same vein as the Kangaroos and Elk signs in Australia and Sweden) - Salisbury Plain being one of the main military training ranges in the UK. Avebury is a village featuring a couple of stone circles that are so large (in diameter) that they go around half the village. A series of paintings in the museum cafeteria where we had lunch of the area at different times stretching back to the Palaeolithic showed quite a complex of sites around the area, including a barrow burial mound just outside of town that is the biggest in the UK. The circle itself was pretty cool, with the usual ditch and dyke surrounding a flattened bit of ground with many irregular standing stones and a few modern cement markers representing the stones that aren't there anymore. The village also seemed quite quaint but unfortunately we had to move on after an hour and a half in order to get all the way down to Plymouth that night.

One of the reasons for the high concentrations of stone circles in the Salisbury Plain area is to do with ridges. In the Neolithic (New Stone Age), England and most of Europe was naturally heavily forested, forests that have since mostly been cleared for farming (providing a logical, if somewhat less than helpful, riposte for any third world country when asked by the developed world to stop its land clearing in the name of climate change). In those days the ridgelines (with less water and soil depth) were the less densely covered areas, allowing easier movement along them than in the lower lands. As a result they were the highways of the age, carrying information and trade across the country. Now Salisbury Plain is at the junction of about 3 ridgelines coming from the Northern interior, the Southwest (Cornwall - where much of the trade from Europe and Ireland met the UK), and the Southeast (Kent, where the rest of the continental trade came from). This made it the natural centre of its day and the basis of the saying "All ridgelines lead to Salisbury" (or it would have if not for the Romans)...

Anyway, after an afternoon of driving through the West Country and finally hitting the freeway, we made it to Plymouth down in the far southwest of England by about 6pm. We were there to spend a couple of days staying and catching up with with Duncan and Louise, two locals (I'd say Plymothians, but apparently that has certain connotations that certainly don't apply to them) who had been in Brisbane last year for a few months and dazzled the Swing scene with their ability to make Modern Jive look like a fun, rhythmical, musical and not-at-all crap dance. They've since gone home and started their own Swing school (madaboutswing.co.uk for a free plug) and two better, funner and lovelier dancers and people you'd be hard pressed to meet. Duncan has an exceptionally well developed sense of humour and Louise is cute as a button in every way.

That night we went out to a night of dinner, comedy and swing dancing at a local golf club. The comedian was roundly agreed to be quite bad (he seemed to have a big chip on his shoulder about anyone who wasn't as Christian or English) and the Swing band was a couple of guys singing to backing tracks, but they were quite good nonetheless and played some great danceable songs. And dance we did, and have a great time we did also. And the dinner and cheap local beer was nice too.

Day 6 - Plymouth and Dartmoor

Next morning we headed into town to have a look around the seafront - Plymouth being a traditionally major port in the area (both commercial and naval) and grab a Cornish pasty for lunch - Plymouth is not quite in Cornwall (it's in Devon) but it was close enough and the pasty was delicious, though I did manage to tear a hole in the seat of my all purpose travel pants (the green shorts I always wear with the optional zip-on legs) while climbing onto the wall where we say eating our lunch overlooking a park and lake, which was a bit of a bother.

After lunch we drove up to Dartmoor, a large expanse of open hilly treeless country (moor) as well as some quaint little villages and farms. The whole area is a national park but, unlike in Australia, it still has farms and villages in it since they were there before it was a national park and are probably considered part of the landscape. National park status in the UK is as much about restricting development and maintaining traditional farming and villages as it is about maintaining natural ecosystems (since none of the ecosystems are pristine anyway after thousands of years of human settlement). Dartmoor is a gorgeous bit of country with rolling treeless hills covered with grass and heather. There's a great sense of isolation, remoteness and pure space that really appeals to an agoraphile like myself. It's a bit like being above the treeline (which readers of our past travels will know I absolutely love) without going to so much trouble. With no trees you can see the contours of the land stretching out like a continuous Lipschitz function in two variables (by now the mathematicians are nodding sagely, or shaking their heads at some definitional mistake I’ve made, and the adolescents are giggling at the word Lipschitz - I assure you I'm doing both).

We stopped off at the little picturesque village of Widecombe-in-the-Moor (WIDD-e-come) near the eastern side of Dartmoor and had a looksy around the little village church and a very strange old knickknack shop. After that we had a "cream tea" in a little tea shop. What the English call a cream tea is what we'd call a Devonshire tea in Australia, and since we were in Devonshire we thought it'd be fun to see how it's traditionally done. And it is a cut above, I have to report. Instead of thickened cream or whipped cream they use "clotted cream", which is thicker and sweeter and much, much fattier than the cream you'd get in Oz. And they don't just use it for scones - clotted cream featured in about 4 out of the 6 meals we had in Devon, making for a very indulgent stay. The scones were nice too.

After such a caloriffic lunch, we drove to Hay Tor, one of the bigger of the many granite outcrops that dot the higher parts of the Moor. After a bit of a climb (partly on steps cut into the rock, probably by prisoners from the famous prison in Princetown in the middle of the moor), and losing Louise near the bottom and Emma near the top (to unfitness or acrophobia, not to gravity), Duncan and I made it to the top for the marvellous view over the Moor and to the sea.

After a drive back through the Moor and along hedgerows and past fields and over streams we made it back to Duncan and Louise's for dinner – a yummy roast veggie salad and a lemon pie for desert (with clotted cream of course). Afterwards we stayed up playing a couple of games (including a playdough version of Pictionary) before hitting the sack.

Day 7 - Plymouth to Cardiff via Bath

We left Duncan and Louise's and headed along the highway to Bath. After detouring off for some more hedgerow action we finally hit town. A quick word on hedgerows for those wondering (too bad for those keen to hear about Bath): A lot of country roads in England are between fields that are bordered by high hedges and other foliage. This makes the narrow roads appear even narrower as the roads are now lined with walls of foliage. The foliage is smoothly trimmed - either intentionally, or by the action of passing trucks strongly hinting to the plants not to grow leaves and twigs in their space. Often, if taller trees are involved there is a (partial or more complete) ceiling on the tunnel as well, roughly the size of the standard lorry. The effect is like driving through a leafy canyon and one is tempted to look out for a 2m wide hole to drop one's photon torpedoes down.

While I'm sidetracking (and ignoring the growing chorus of "Get to Bath!"), I might as well mention our navigation system that was evolving to its final form by about now. We had opted not to pay £10 per day extra for a SatNav system (which would have ended up costing us about $350 all up, more than the cost of one) and were instead relying on a large map of Britain and Ireland that was one of the ones my workmates gave me as a going away present. And it turned out to be supremely useful, thanks guys! It had the A roads and B roads marked, and it also highlighted (in green) the roads that had nice scenery along them (and it was pretty right most of the time we followed them). This, coupled with following road signs to different cities got us quite nicely between towns (and out of town in the morning). When it came to finding our way to our accommodation each night, we had Google Maps of the area printed out with directions (actually, we had the directions from start to finish each day printed out but it turned out to be easier to just use the map). This was less stress free and it was a shame that this happened at the end of each day, when we were already tired. At the start of the trip, Emma frequently whinged (at different times) about not wanting to drive, navigate or take photos from the car. Once I pointed out that she had to do at least one of those things at any point, she did knuckle down and do a more thorough job of helping with the navigating (and got quite good at it - which is impressive since spatial thinking is really not her forte). The system was for me to drive at the start of the day and for Emma to bring it home - purely so that I could do the navigating on that last difficult stretch. And frankly, it was somewhat empridening (you think of a better word) to have done it the old fashioned way (except for Google maps, but their directions are not that great and often extremely unhelpful), and if our relationship survived that test, it can survive anything (-:

OK, so anyway, we reached Bath ("Finally!" I hear you all cry). Bath is (of course) the site of a hot spring that the Romans built a bath on top of and turned into a resort of sorts. The town was somewhat rediscovered in the 1700s and 1800s and, a lot of Victorian buildings later, turned into one of The Places to Be for the upper crust. We only had a few hours to spend there, so we headed in and got a pasty for lunch (they were becoming somewhat of a cheap staple). We ate this lunch at a lovely garden by the (yet another) Avon river. It cost £1 to get in, but it was quite a well maintained garden with lots of lovely flowers in an elegant Victorian style setting.

After lunch we went to the Roman Baths - the main reason for visiting the town. The baths are interesting enough - they fell into disrepair and finally collapsed onto themselves after the end of Roman rule and were rediscovered a few hundred years ago following an investigation into why a certain cellar kept getting flooded. The water from the hot spring bubbles up into a pool and is then fed into a bigger pool to the south east. It is this second pool that is the main focus of the complex, with a few side rooms as well - and it was this one that was buried for centuries. The first pool was known about the whole time (it's a bit hard to bury a spring that pumps out millions of litres of hot water every day) and used by various people from shepherds to local monks to, eventually, kings - for this reason it was renovated in Victorian times. There was also a temple to Minerva (the equivalent to the local Celtic god Sulis for whom the baths were named), but that was rebuilt as the local cathedral/abbey in the Middle Ages. The baths are very cool, with the mix of mostly Roman, as well as some Mediaeval and Victorian buildings and artefacts, but the best part of the tour was the audioguide. There was the standard audioguide telling you what and when and who, and there was a guide for kids with different characters telling their stories (which was a nice touch) - the real highlight though was Bill Bryson's commentary.

Bill Bryson is an American writer who has lived in the UK for decades and writes entertaining books on travel, language and nearly everything (as per his book "A Short History of Nearly Everything" that I read in Malmö a few weeks ago), and he was asked to provide his comments on different aspects of the site. The result sounds like he wandered around the site with a tape recorder and gave his unscripted thoughts and impressions of what he saw (having obviously visited the site a few times previously). The result is like having a very knowledgeable, but still very human friend tell you enthusiastically about what they genuinely think. For example, Bill really liked one of the carved reliefs of a Celtic-looking male gorgon who he thought looked like someone you could have a pint with, but was less impressed with the gold plated bust of Minerva (that the museum is clearly very proud of), who he said left him a bit cold and that the Romans didn't carve women very well, finishing his thoughts with "I don't like it." It helps that Bill has a very listenable speaking voice - one of the less annoying American accents (possibly because it has been tempered by so many years in Britain). The result is that you get enthusiasm and genuine, well expressed opinions that you can agree with or disagree with but that actually make you engage with the site, rather than just look at it. Often we'd skip the standard audioguide of an object and go straight to Bill's comments, and even found ourselves looking for the green numbers indicating that spots had Bill's comments. It's a bit like a factual guide telling you all that is known about a painting, and listening to sister Wendy (the art loving nun) telling you the "story" of it - or, hopefully though definitely less successfully, looking up the places we've been in Wikipedia for the "facts" vs reading this blog. Needless to say, both Emma and I considered Bills comments the highlight of the day in Bath and feel that more museums and galleries should do likewise to engage their patrons, rather than just trying to inform them (we've not bothered about getting audioguides for many sites, considering that reading a few paragraphs on the plaques usually tells you all the information you want to know - or will remember an hour later at any rate).

Anyway, after leaving Bath we drove around Bristol, across the Severn Bridge (the bridge over that big gulf between southwest England and Wales) and into Cardiff. We stayed that night with Fiona, an English girl from Newcastle that had stayed with us in Brisbane after meeting Emma at a conference in Auckland (oh our shrinking globe). We went out to dinner with Fiona and Fiona's neighbour Annie - a Cardiff local with that lovely Welsh accent. I drove to the restaurant and Annie navigated and did better than any SatNav lady, except that the city is undergoing a bit of a building boom, resulting in exchanges like (picture the Welsh accent - if you don't know what that is, think of "the only gay in the village" but not quite so grotesque: "[very calm Welsh computer SatNav voice] Ok, get in the right lane. Go right at this intersection and get in the left lane. Go straight through and now turn left and [surprise at dead end] OOOH! That wasn't there last time I was here!" Sorry, you had to be there, but I just want to remind myself when I read this in the future.

After a traditional Welsh dinner of Nasi Goreng and Gado Gado (we went to an Indonesian place), Annie took us on a night tour of Cardiff. First stop was a drink at a swanky old theatre that had been transformed into a pub (Emma tried a Pimms) before a walk back past the castle to the car and a night drive around the city. Cardiff has a go-ahead kind of vibe, with lots of building work and bright lights. The south-east corner of Wales (Newport, Cardiff and Swansea) are where most people in the country (of Wales) live and where all the administration gets done - hence a bunch of jobs in the civil service (the Office of National Statistics for the whole UK is based in Newport). The other main earner is as a centre for the people of the Rhonda valleys to the north to do their shopping, which is odd since Annie (a social worker) said that the Rhonda area has some of the most disadvantaged communities in Western Europe since the coal mines were closed down a few decades ago. With Annie's local knowledge and clear quiet enthusiasm about her city, we had a great late night driving tour of Cardiff, which was fortunate since we only had one night there and no other time to see it.

Day 8 - Cardiff to Wexford via Cardigan

We left Cardiff and followed Annie and Fiona's suggestion to take a detour on our way to Fishguard to catch the ferry to Ireland. We followed the main road west to Carmarthen and then turned north to follow a minor road to Cardigan before following the coast down to Fishguard (might be best to grab a map or go to maps.google.com). And we were extremely glad we did take the detour since we got to drive through some of the Welsh valleees along winding rivers, across stone bridges and through green green forests. We didn't get much of a chance to see much of Wales on this trip (pretty much the overnight in Cardiff and two half-day drives, but it's somewhere that I think deserves a bit more attention than it gets (but not so much that it means there'll be lots of people like us ruining it for the rest of the people like us). Cardigan was a nice little town but we had a lamb pasty (for me at least) for lunch and a quick walk and then headed down the coast to catch our ferry. Lamb seems to be the traditional dish in Wales (moreso than Gado Gado) with a Welsh Irish-stew the traditional dish. I had asked Annie if there was anything that Welsh people ate that others might think odd (like our Vegemite) and she said told me about laver bread, a dish made from seaweed that had been boiled for hours to a paste and then mixed with oats to make a salty cake. I didn't get to try any but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

We got to Fishguard and went to the Hertz place (actually part of a furniture shop) to get the paperwork done to make sure our taking the car to Ireland was all above board. It hadn't occurred to us in this modern border-free Europe and the Hertz website we'd used to book the car hadn't mentioned it, nor had the useless, potentially coked-up sales guy in London. But it all went easier than we'd hoped and we had a quick lunch and got our car in line for the ferry. We had to sit there for about 90min since they demand that cars are there at least 1hr before departure, but it was a mizzly day (misty drizzle) and we enjoyed listening to the radio (including a Welsh language channel demonstrating the vocal gymnastics the language demands). It was nice to be in an English speaking country again (the whole UK that is - Celtic nationalism notwithstanding, and good on them) for the simple pleasure of idly listening to talk radio, knowing what rowdy people on the street are yelling and not feeling just that little bit guilty every time we had to speak English to someone.

The ferry was nice enough, though not quite as swish as the duty free express between Finland and Sweden, and only about 3 hours each way - just long enough to have a look around, find a comfy seat, get some lunch and read a newspaper. I bought a copy of the Times and was shocked to read a newspaper with moderate, informative, interesting articles for most of its length. Mind you, the US election campaign was in full swing, the stockmarkets were collapsing and Golden Brown's leadership of UK Labour and the country was under a constant cloud, so the news was particularly interesting - though the level of reporting totally outstripped the Courier Mail back home.

We landed in the port of Rosslare just to the south of Wexford and ran the thorough gauntlet of Irish immigration - they routinely stopped our car on the way out and asked Emma (who was driving) through the window what we planned to do in Ireland and she flusteredly answered "Um, we're going to...um...Wexford [the main centre near Rosslare] and then, um, we're just going to drive around a bit." Luckily that was the right answer and they happily sent us on our way (without looking at any documentation) wondering just how much vaguer the answer would have to be to warrant a bit more questioning (I guess they look for body language that might tell them that someone's hiding something).

We drove through Wexford (no real chance to see anything) and headed for our B&B about 10km to the north. It was a nice enough place, though in a disappointingly new house - as was our other accom in Ireland as well. I guess old houses in England have more inherent comfort to upgrade to a B&B than the old buildings in Ireland - I actually saw a morning show interview with a hotel expert bemoaning the low ratio of renovated B&Bs to new ones. The whole area of southeast Ireland had a lot of new houses suggesting a bit of money flowing about. Anyway, we got to our room and I flicked on the TV and what show do you think might have been the first to greet us in Ireland but "Father Ted"?! We went out for dinner at a nice enough pub-restaurant where I had a stirfry (no Irish stew on the menu, which was a shame as I was developing a sore throat and really could have gone one). They did, however, manage to Irish it up slightly when they served us a complimentary side of spring rolls filled with mashed potato.

Day 9 - Wexford to Galway via Kilkenny

We left our B&B near Wexford and drove northwest towards Kells Priory near Kilkenny, following some green (scenic) roads as marked on our map. We passed a few nice valleys with fairly swollen rivers - Ireland and the UK had had quite a lot of rain in the couple of months till then. First stop was a ruined monastery called Jerpoint Abbey. There are a few of these around Ireland - all founded in the couple of centuries around AD1000 and almost all abandoned when the Reformation that hit England in the form of Henry VIII's roving eye (for fertile women, the extra political power shaking off Rome gave him, and the wealth of the newly nationalised monasteries) spread to relatively recently acquired Ireland in the 1500s. Nowadays there are crumbling towers and walls from abandoned monasteries and castles spread throughout the fields of Ireland giving it a weirdly Ozymandian vibe of forgotten power, glory and relevance.

Next stop was another crumbled monastery called Kells Priory (not to be confused with the town of Kells to the northwest of Dublin where the famous Book comes from). Unlike the previous, relatively compact site, which had a small facilities block, carpark, guided tours and corresponding cover charge, Kells Priory sprawls alone on the side of a hill in a sheep paddock. There was some building work going on to repair or restore one of the towers, but other than that we were free to wander the site with no extra information and no-one but the sheep for company, as God intended (well, if he didn't intend it this way it wouldn't be like this would it - stands to reason).

After leaving Kells Priory we drive the 10km or so north to the regional town of Kilkenny ("You bastards!"). A pleasant enough little place, we found a carpark and headed along the main street to get a sandwich and see the Castle. The main street was lined with yellow and brown streamers wishing the local hurling team well in the All Ireland Grand Final. It was really sweet to see the photos of the participants on posters on shopfronts with messages of support (even the board of selectors got a shrine). I'm not at all sure if this is strictly true, but the hurling in Ireland seems to have retained that sense of amateur sport where a team's players are drawn from and therefore truly represent the local area. BTW, if you don't know what hurling is, it's an Irish sport that's a cross between hockey, Aussie Rules and "a bunch of mad Irishmen hitting each other with axe handles". They used to show the final on SBS, check it out if you ever get the chance.

Unfortunately for us the rain showers (and the need to move the car from its 2hr parking) dampened our spirits a bit as we drove past the castle and had our lunch in the green park behind it. We didn't go in the castle (you can't do a mad dash around the British Isles in under 3 weeks if you keep going into things), but the park was nice and the back of the castle viewed across the green lawns was quite impressive, moreso than the front which was undergoing extensive building work in accordance with the 2008 International European Year of Scaffolding. Everywhere we've gone in Europe, some monument or other will have been covered with scaffolding. It's probably just rolling maintenance that happens all the time, but we have felt as though the whole of Europe's being done up for some big event next year or so and we've just come at a bad time. (You don't see the evidence in the photos because: we try to frame it out; we don't take photos of the scaffolding side; and Emma's not prepared to fill an album of lovely buildings covered in metal exoskeletons - so you'll just have to take out word for it.)

After leaving Kilkenny, we drove across the middle of Ireland towards Galway on the central west coast. I have to say that Ireland was not nearly as green as reports had led us to expect. Friends and books had talked about the almost unnatural emerald green of the grass caused by the moisture coming off the Atlantic. Now, maybe it was because we were there in early Autumn, maybe we didn't go to the right places (the southwest for example), maybe it was the faded grey stone walls providing an odd contrast, but we found the grass to be a fairly dull, faded, unremarkable green. The fields of England and Wales were (at the same time of year) much greener, with the faded green fields of Ireland and its more unkempt, less precisely trimmed hedgerows giving it an oddly Australian appearance - a bit like the acreage around Brisbane in Australia.

Anyway, we got into Galway and, after about an hour stuck in after-work traffic, we found our way to our B&B - a pleasant, but once again disappointingly new house overlooking Galway Bay, that relatively large slice of water protruding into the central west coast of the island. We took a quick walk into town to look around and get some dinner. The centre has a real charm with its narrow, winding main street and old buildings. We had dinner in an old Irish pub called the King's Head - according to a plaque inside it was founded in the 1600s by the Galway man who volunteered as Charles I's executioner (the Parliament didn't want an Englishman to do it) and paid for from the large fee he earned. And I finally got to have a nice big bowl of Irish (lamb) stew to soothe my poor förkyld throat, with a large (though slightly contraindicated) glass of stout to wash it down. Afterwards we went across to another pub promising live Irish music, but we arrived between sets and were too tired to wait around for the next one a fair bit later.

Day 10 - Galway to the Aran Islands and back to Galway

Next day we drove west along the north shore of Galway Bay to catch the ferry to the Aran Islands, located just outside its mouth. This area (both the mainland of Connemara and the islands) is one of the most traditional areas of Ireland, with Gaelic still widely spoken. The countryside was oddly desolate and windswept, with the extremely shallow soils over the rocky limestone ground preventing trees from growing, leaving a dry grass and rock landscape sloping up to the distant mountains to the north.

We hopped on the ferry at Rosaveel for the trip to Inish Moor (the largest of the islands), taking the opportunity to eat our lunch to save a bit of time. The ferry arrived on the island just before 2pm and departed at 5pm, leaving us just over 3hrs on the island (you can stay overnight of course, or get the really early ferry, but we were having none of that). We were planning on renting a "jaunting car" as the ferry company brochure advertised (hoping for a reprise of the fun we had zipping around Magnetic Island in a Mini Moke), but information was as thin on the ground as trees in the region and it turned out that those didn't exist anymore (if ever). Forced to make a quick decision between paying 10euro for a guided tour that essentially took us to the ring fort and back and paying 10euro to rent a bike we probably went the wrong way when we opted for the bike to give ourselves more freedom - not taking into account the distance, surprising hilliness of the island and, of course, Emma's cycling ability. In the end we only had time to ride to the main ring fort and back anyway, but at least we did it at our/Emma's own pace (slow) and got to breath in the Atlantic air and take in the views for real instead of through those TV screens known as "car windows".

Anyway, time for a bit more on the ring fort that I've enigmatically mentioned a couple of times. The Aran Islands are dotted with Stone Age forts - rings of stones built up into walls. Apparently the Aran Islands were one of the first places to settle into farming (probably due to the limestone soils and lack of tree cover). As a result, they built up a handy population to the size required for some berk to decide to lord it over the other poor saps. The forts would have been religious sites as well as defensive, but looking around the desolate island with no trees, limestone rocks everywhere, and small enough that it took Emma under 3hrs to cycle from one end to the middle and back and it makes one wonder - what the hell could have been worth defending? The main ring fort that we went to, Dun Aengus, is best described as a half ring fort since half of it isn't. Halfway through the circle, a sheer cliff drops about 100m into the ocean below - with no walls or even fences between the fort and the cliff, it just drops away. As this was the westernmost point of our whole European trip, it was a somewhat appropriate (and emphatic) full stop. The fort was probably originally built further from the cliff as a full circle, with the cliff gradually moving in under the erosion of the open ocean waves. The islands whole southern coast is these cliffs, giving the effect of the islands being tilted from the low northern side (with a few beaches) to the sudden drop. As well as the forts, there are a few Christian sites, including the smallest church in the world (measuring about 2.5x3.5m), but we didn't have time to see that.

The Aran Islands are one of the most traditional parts of Ireland, with Gaelic being the main language spoken. Prior to the arrival of tourism about a generation ago, one would assume that there would not have been much large scale movement between the islands and the mainland. The current residents may well be the descendants of the people who built the forts. One possible example of this was given on the ferry, where we saw the stereotypical little guy with his big oafish friend (think Of Mice and Men here) going home to the island from the mainland. The little guy was an adult about the size of an 8 year old (I had to look twice) and the big guy seemed incapable of speech, merely grunting in a non-threatening way (I had to get past him on the boat). Now, I'm not saying the people of the Aran Islands are inbred; I'm just putting those two pieces of scant evidence on one side of a small gap and the conclusion on the other and inviting anyone who wants to jump across with me. The islands were cool though - I don't think I've really done them justice here, but then we didn't really do them justice with our 3hr visit so it’s all fair.

After getting back from the ferry we drove back to Galway looking for a nice local pub in one of the towns along the way that might serve us another Irish stew (and have something Emma might want). Failing to find any suitable candidates, we finally ended up at a place on the bay in Galway just around from our B&B where I got that other great Irish contribution to cold-friendly cuisine, a beef and Guinness stew washed down with a glass of extra gravy.

Day 11 - Galway to Dublin

We left Galway and headed pretty much straight down the main road to Dublin. Having only one night in Dublin and having to leave straight away the next morning, we wanted time to look around the city. We arrived in our hotel without too much stress - the directions were pretty simple this time since the main road from the west ends up right in the middle of town, a bit like the Southeast Freeway in Bris. The hotel was on Talbot St, in the inner north and right near one of the main shopping strips. First stop was to ask the hotel staff for a tailor to mend the travel pants I'd ripped in Plymouth (I only had two pairs of pants with me). We found the tailor OK and walked off to find something to do in the 90min it would take.

We wandered across the Liffey River to Trinity College for a look around. Seeing a sign advertising guided tours that finished at the Book of Kells at about the time we wanted to head back to the tailors before it shut, we decided to splurge. The guide was a Politics and Philosophy graduate who was back studying Law and looking a lot like Drew from Brisbane except with about 3 more testicles - not that Drew is lacking anything in the pants department (as far as I know, and there are plenty of witnesses so one of them probably would have mentioned something), this guy just had a ridiculously deep voice. The tour was quite pleasant, and it was nice to sit back and relax a bit and see things a bit more passively for a change. Trinity is in the inner east of the main city to the south of the river and was built in Elizabethan times on the site of yet another recently closed monastery (though at least this one was put to a new and better use). The highlight was definitely the Long Room in the main Library, a splendidly old wood panelled affair lined with tall shelves, themselves lined with dusty ancient books. The guide told us that the students of the College were entitled to request any of the books to read, but as they were sorted by size rather than author or subject you'd be hard pressed to get any useful information unless you knew the dimensions of the book you were after. The book of Kells was impressive, but as it is displayed with only one opening shown (well two since the book was divided into 4 at some point in the past and two quarters are on display), it's a bit hard to get a feel for the book as a whole (not that I expected any more or am disappointed, it's just life). What was on display was very impressive, however and I guess you'd need to get a book of high-re prints to fully appreciate it.

After racing back to get my pants (the silly woman just fixed the rip that was there instead of suring it up all over like I asked her to, meaning that as I write this they are in again being properly fixed - but at least it solved the immediate problem) we headed back across the river to Temple Bar to see more sights. Temple Bar is the centre of old Dublin, but nowadays it's a bit of a clubbing strip and, having seen our fill of cobbled streets and running out of daylight, we walked through to Christ Church Cathedral, the main Anglican cathedral in town (I think). It was nice enough, but the mad dash had to continue without looking inside (they were closed pending Evensong anyway). Next stop was Dublin Castle, which as its name doesn't really suggest, is a bunch of buildings that house the local government. The castle part is reduced to a few low towers and a church, but one cool thing they've done, in renovating it and adding the lost towers and battlements, they've painted the restored bits in bright primary colours (uniform for each structure). This clearly differentiates the original from the added, while giving it a cool, IKEA/Lego-style modern look. After a look around, we headed down past St Patrick’s Cathedral for a quick look at it (it was also closed) and the park surrounding it before packing in the sightseeing and heading for the pub.

Unlike many places in Europe (particularly the south), Ireland knows how to do pubs. England has a pretty good handle on the concept too, but it's the Irish pub that's found its niche to be exported in pre-fab form to countries around the world. So we thought we'd try the original to see how the knock-offs rate. First pub was Whelan’s in the Camden area to the south of Dublin, a bit of an alternative strip. This was a nice, dark place with great 90s music playing. The lights in many of the places we went were of the sodium kind, giving everything a yellow tinged warm feeling (but not quite so much as to give us a jaundiced view of Ireland’s pubs). A quick word on Guinness: Drunk people (at the Guinness time of the night) have often crapped on to me about how the Guinness in Australia is not as good as the Guinness in Ireland, so I'd tried a few in different parts to test it out. Now, I find Guinness the blandest of the stouts - just about any other brand (especially the microbrewed ones) has lovely rich chocolate/coffee flavours from the roasted malts. I didn't find this extra taste in the Irish Guinness, but it did seem to be a bit smoother and quaffable than the exported stuff...but not so much as to crap on incessantly about it (so I'll stop now).

After leaving Whelan’s, we headed through St Stephen's Green back towards town, a lovely little park with flower beds and water features and lawns. Until then I'd actually been thinking that Dublin seemed to lack open space and greenery (the river a narrow affair nestled between quays/embankments that are now main roads), so it was wonderful to see that I was wrong and that the Dubliners weren't denied the greenery the rest of the island (supposedly) enjoyed. After a quick spot of souvenir shopping (and finding a cool green shirt that I'll probably unveil on 17/3/2009) we headed to the Stag's Head - the oldest pub in town and therefore the original Irish pub. We were ready for a feed by then and asked the bar staff if they did food - the guy said no, but helpfully directed us down the street (though past another closer pub we noted - he must have been doing us a favour) to another place called O'Neill’s.

O'Neill’s was a very nice place indeed. With the polished wood panelling and railings and the rooms branching off in chaotic directions (I looove places with lots of rooms and hideyholes more than being above the treeline) it actually reminded me of old-school Aussie pubs like the Victory (RIP) and RE. The dinner was from a canteen style servery (though this just made visible what other places would do behind the scenes) and it was a quick, relatively cheap and large portioned feed of Irish Stew (alas my last plate of the stuff in Ireland). We sat and ate and drank and just relaxed in the bustling friendly atmosphere before heading back to the Stag's Head - feeling that their helpfulness in directing us to a nice feed was worth rewarding by buying a couple of beers.

We sat in a dark back room, revelling in the dusty grandeur of the place - it had a sort of look of a 1920s posh ballroom that hadn't been cleaned since (but in a good way). The dim lights were occasionally rent by someone opening the door with a flouro light behind it, but otherwise it was a wonderful place to relax. A quiet lilting song drifted into my consciousness and I looked around to see a couple of men (possibly father and son) singing quietly to themselves snippets of songs. The older man would start and the younger would join in and then they'd discuss things a bit. Having missed out on traditional Irish music thus far we were quietly overjoyed to get a snippet of the most traditional form of Irish music (unaccompanied song) sung in such a real and uncontrived way. I was going to thank them buy a girl sitting in the same corner did it for us and told them it was her 21st that night and would they sing here something. They obliged and soon after Emma and I went home with big smiles on our faces and a lilting song in our heads.

Day 12 - Dublin to Lancaster via Snowdonia

[Note: I just spent 40min writing this day in full but went to save it and was met with an error and lost the lot, so I'm having to rewrite it from memory. Apologies if the second attempt lacks the enthusiasm and spontaneity of the first, which I can say, without fear of contradiction, was the single best passage of prose travelogue writing in the history of the universe. AAARRRGGGHHH!!!!]

Next day we drove to the ferry point at Dun Laoghaire (pronounced, in typical Irish antiphonetic style as "DUN LEER-y", the "aogha" presumably being silent) in the southeastern suburbs of Dublin. After a bit more effort navigating there than we had on the way in (but with a comfortable time buffer and a well executed petrol fill to use up all our remaining Euro coins) we hopped in line in our car and waited, listening to Irish radio. As anyone knows, an Irish comedian can recite Pi and make it sound hilarious, and we happily whiled away the time listening to two pros from an Irish commercial station (though we had dipped out the previous day on the "Horrible things we've eaten" discussion with the line "And we've got Deidre from Limerick on the line. Deidre, what have you eaten?").

The ferry got us back to Wales (though the north this time) in roughly the same comfort as the trip over (except there was no "sun" deck to look around on and it was a bit more crowded), depositing us at Holyhead on the Isle of Anglesey (actually, the Holy Isle off Anglesey, but you'd never realise they were islands unless you looked closely). The bridge over the Straits of Menai was mildly interesting, with quite a current in a stretch of water supposedly connecting two bits of the same ocean.

After that we headed off the main freeway towards the south and into Snowdonia ("Snowdonia! What makes your big head so hard!"), the wilderness area that covers much of northwest Wales and includes Mt Snowdon, the highest in Wales and England. The drive took us up a wonderfully treeless and desolate (except for the fields of sheep) post-glacial Welsh valleee (sorry, but I love typing that word with a Welsh accent) and down the next to the quaint village of Betws-y-Coed (pronounced however you like, though BET-oos e CAW-ed might be close). The valleee was the usual treeless 2D curve that I know that you know that I love, and the village was a quaint little thing at the junction of 4 valleees with a small river tumbling over some granite boulders in a way reminiscent of Crystal Creek near Paluma in NQ, quaint stone buildings, a quaint village green and a quaint tourist pre-fab shopping strip. This is not to say that the village is fake, merely that it's been a tourist centre for about a century since the railway was built and services the sightseers and hikers while sensibly making a living.

The way back down was a little slow (stuck behind busses), but once on the freeway, we hooned east back in to England, slingshotted around Chester and headed north on the M6 bisecting the main Industrial centres of Manchester and Liverpool. We'd long decided to give those towns a miss since their interest most likely lies in the culture that has developed there and you can't really see that in an hour (and would have fight city traffic and roads to do it). So we sufficed to see a few factories in the distance past green sheep fields while we headed up to Lancaster. We did catch a bit of after-work traffic, but the variable speed limits (designed to keep the traffic flowing smoothly), and the fact that Emma was driving by now really took the edge off the stress.

We finally got off the freeway at Lancaster and drove through it and out to the seaside town of Morecambe (none the Wiser). Our hotel was an old-school elegant affair, but we just had time to drop our stuff and head out for a walk along the former seaside (the sea had probably been there 6hrs previously, and no doubt would again, but while we were walking the sea was barely visible way out in Morecambe Bay at the end of an enormous sand flat. It was a nice relaxing walk nonetheless after a long day of driving and we retired after to watch some English TV (they sure do love their comedy panel shows, which is good because so do I) and hit the sack.

Day 13 - Lancaster to Glasgow via Lake District and Hadrian's Wall

Next morning we enjoyed a nice northern breakfast. The breakfasts had generally been good (the English know how to do it properly, none of this croissant and a glass of wine or whatever) but, being in Eckythump country, I was keen to try some black pudding. And I was pleasantly surprised. Black pudding is a large sausage (large enough to belt someone over the head with anyway) made of pork offcuts, oats and blood. what you actually get served is a thick slice of the sausage (about the size, shape and colour of an ice hockey puck) that's been fried up with the rest of your full English breakfast (sausages, bacon, eggs, beans and toast). The taste is pretty much what you'd expect (if you put aside childish squeamishness at the word "blood") like a sausage with oats in it and a very slight powdery sensation from the blood - so a bit meaty, a bit sweet and a little bit irony and, frankly, a good efficient use of the nutrients in an animal. The black pudding remained a consistent member of my breakfast cast right through the north of England and Scotland, and I enjoyed it every time.

After leaving Morecambe, we had a quick couple of laps of Lancaster in the car before leaving. Lancaster looks like an interesting place. It used to be a main centre (with the surrounding area, Lancashire, named after it), but now it has a small population (Morecambe is bigger). But it still has its cobbled streets and a nice castle on the hill in the middle of town and a cathedral on the other. After a few glimpses though (and the assumption that we'd see similar in York), we headed onwards to the Lake District.

It was a bit of a shame that we had to fit the Lake District into our schedule on a Saturday as, being one of the most popular destinations in England, it was likely to be crawling with that worst sort of tourist - other tourists. And unfortunately our fears were somewhat realised, despite it being so late in the season. First stop was Windermere, the main town on the main lake. It's a bit like Byron Bay and Noosa - a pretty little town in a lovely spot choked with tourists and tourist-supporting businesses. Moving on from there (we had to keep moving on from everywhere since any car space demanded £3 up front to park there) we crawled along the road along the lake up towards Grasmere behind the line of cars. Eventually we broke free and followed a road around the other side of a lake promising to take us to the Castlerigg Stone Circle. In the end it didn't (it was a cycle route that followed the road for a bit before turning off), but it was a lovely drive and we even found a place to park for free and have a bit of a walk down to the lake through the forest, which was nice. After that we drove up to Keswick aand had a quick look at the Castlerigg Stone Circle, a simple circle of stones (most of them being sat upon by unfit tourists after the long 30m walk across the sheep field from the carpark) with a nice view of the surrounding hills. The hills did make the Lake District somewhat - treeless and covered in rust coloured ferns, browning for winter. The lakes were OK too, but not at their best without a blue sky to reflect. After a nice enough lunch at Keswick we drove out of the Lake District via a detour towards another lake hoping for some gobsmacking beauty, but it was just OK again, so we got back on the freeway and headed north to Hadrian's Wall.

Hadrian's Wall runs roughly from Carlisle to Newcastle and, as you should know, was built on the orders of Emperor Hadrian to form a border and regulate the comings and goings of the neighbouring Picts to the north. Quite a lot of the wall remains in its length, but most of the height has been diminished by people carrying off the stones to use for houses and fences and such. We went to the Birdoswald Roman fort near Lanercost. It was the remains of an old fort, built to garrison a large group of soldiers (not sure the group name, but probably about a hundred - enough for a Centurion to look after). One interesting fact that I learned was that all Roman forts around the Empire were built to exactly the same plan - the idea being that a soldier could be transferred to any fort and know exactly where everything was (probably also made them feel at home in every fort and stopped them putting down roots anywhere). After a look around the fort we walked along a stretch of wall to the next Milecastle - a smaller fort constructed every Roman mile along the wall to house a small group (20 or so) of men ready as a base to patrol the wall, react to incidents and pass information along the wall. On the way out we saw the last of the 3 main structures, the Turret, an even smaller tower used by a couple of soldiers at a time as a lookout. The wall stretch we walked along was respectably thick - not the Great Wall of china (the current incarnation of which was built in the 1600s) but still a few metres thick. The museum at the fort had a replica of the wall at its original height of about 3-4m, also pretty impressive for a wall that crosses the whole island of Britain, albeit at one of its narrower points. The current wall is probably only about 1.5m high and used as the fence along one side of a paddock. Interestingly, a late middle aged couple was leaving the fort as we went in behind the local farmer and they struck up a conversation with him (they were farmers from New Zealand) about his field usage and silage growth. It sounded like a fairly interesting conversation to listen in on, but we couldn't loiter without being fairly obvious about it so we left them to their shop talk.

After leaving the Wall, we headed north into Scotland (“Caledonia! Caledonia! What makes your big head so” etc) and across the Lowlands towards Glasgow. It was dark by now, but the shapes of the surrounding mountains gave us hope for some nice scenery next day. We stopped at a service stop next to the freeway and enjoyed a nice dinner with a surprisingly nice view of a duckpond and field. After that we headed on to my friend Silja's place in Renfrew on the western suburbs of Glasgow. Silja actually wasn't there that weekend, which was a great shame since we hadn't caught up since she was in Australia a few years back (and since she's German she's got no great plans, or rights, to come back). However, being incredibly generous, she insisted that we stay at her place even though she wasn't there. Thanks mate!!! After a fairly nerve-wracking drive through a dark city with just some dodgy Google Maps directions, into a scary looking bunch of housing blocks (anywhere unfamiliar is a bit nervy after dark, but this was the burbs of Glasgow on a Saturday night) we made it to Silja's and went to bed after watching a couple of British comedy panel shows.

Day 14 - Glasgow to Inverness via Loch Lomond, Western Highlands, Great Glen and Loch Ness

Next morning we continued north towards Loch Lomond and had breakfast on its shores. We were looking for a place recommended by Silja, but we couldn't find it (we turned off the highway too early) and ended up at a Sunday morning market by the lake that was very nice anyway. We had breakfast and then bought some cheese, bread and relish before a quick walk along the loch and continued north. We drove along the Loch listening to the radio - Just a Minute was on: a radio comedy panel show where the contestants must talk crap about a particular subject without repetition, divergence or hesitation, jolly good fun. Once we passed the northern end of the loch the country changed quite quickly from tree lined loch to gorgeous treeless curves of grass covered hills known as the Western Highlands. Being past summer, but not quite winter, there was no snow around, but what we got was huge vistas of grey-green contours stretching all around. The sense of size was really overpowering - not so much the height of the mountains (which was impressive but not excessive) but rather the way we could see so much of them and the distances between them. After some nagging from me and resistance from Emma, we stopped at a carpark for a sandwich. Emma constantly quests after the unattainably perfect spot for a huge sit down meal and ends up passing some nice ones. I'm more of the quick car bonnet progressive picnic persuasion. We then drove over the pass and down into the Great Glen at Glencoe. It's hard to capture the awe of the Highlands, suffice to say that it was certainly one of the three (if not the first) top highlight of the UK trip.

The Great Glen is that huge scar running southwest to northeast across Scotland from Fort William to Inverness like someone has tried to chop off the Northern Highlands with a giant claymore. It's most likely (since I haven't looked it up) a mini rift valley (graben) created as America and Europe separated as the Atlantic opened (as I'm fond of saying, the Highland mountains are the same geological structure as the Appalachians in the US, as well as the Scandinavian mountains), and contains, among others, the famous Loch Ness, as well as (since the 1800s) the Caledonian Canal linking them all up to cross the country.

We drove up the Great Glen listening to (of all things) the dramatised diary of a member of Scott's tragic South Pole expedition on the radio. Eventually we got to Loch Ness. A not unimpressive lake, though not as big as I'd expected - it's very long but fairly narrow. I found out later that the level of the lake was raised by a couple of metres during the construction of the canal, which I would think would be disastrous for the shoreline ecosystem, but no mention was made (similar raising was done in Lake Baikal in Siberia and no outcry was made there either, oh well). It's also a very straight lake, meaning that the view doesn't really change as you drive along it (ie no new vistas and inlets opening up) which probably doesn't help in the awe inspiring stakes. 'Sbig though.

We stopped at the ruins of Urquhart Castle, about halfway along the loch on the western side. This castle had a rich history protecting the surrounding area from attack by the English, the Lord of the Isles (a Scottish/Norwegian clan based in the remote highlands, a remnant of the Viking age) and the Scots (in the Bonnie Prince Charlie days). It did, however suffer a fairly anticlimactic end when the garrison of British soldiers blew it up to deny it to the enemy during a withdrawal. Nowadays it is an atmospheric ruin on a small promontory overlooking the loch and was fun the have a look around. Oddly enough, it is also the cover picture on the big map of Great Britain and Ireland that my workmates gave me before we left. Now, the castle is pretty cool, but I don't know if it's cool, impressive or even recognisable enough to represent the whole two countries. Oh and no, we saw no monsters.

We the continued up the Glen, past the end of Loch Ness and towards Inverness. Our accommodation was past Inverness towards the next destination of Edinburgh, so we parked up in Inverness and had a bit of a wander around. It's a nice little city, with a nice river running through it (the outflow from Loch Ness), a few churches and a castle on the hill. The castle is now a law court and has a strange new/pre-fab look about it, as though the main bit was a recent addition or it had undergone a recent total renovation. Plus it's an odd pink colour. We had dinner that night at a nice little pub overlooking the river and castle. Being Sunday night it was a bit quiet in town, but the upside was it was the day most pubs in the UK do a Sunday roast (mostly because they'd feel silly doing a Sunday roast any other day). I had an exquisitely nice roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and a delightful horseradish sauce (Emma had some veggie crap). This was accompanied by a delightful Orkney Best (one of the flat, brewed-in-a-bucket-and-strained-into-a-glass beers I love about the UK). I also noticed a little promotional thingy on the table which turned out to be a flavour graph on single malt scotches (light-rich on x-axis and delicate-smoky on y-axis), with scotches grouped in a factor analysis sort of way, reminiscent of the beer graph on my desk at work. This excited me enough to order a scotch, which was nice enough, and suggested that I've been on holiday too long. You can see the malt graph at http://www.malts.com/en-gb/Helpingyouchoose/. You can probably find the beer one on my desk at work (since only people that work with me would be interested in graphing beer flavours).

After dinner we drove the 10km or so away from Inverness to our accommodation near Daviot. We'd read some good guest reviews on our favourite booking website (http://booking.com - great site for booking hotels and B&Bs in Europe, has listings in Oz too but we haven't used it there) and were not disappointed. The luxury was a couple of levels above the low price (including a fresh rose and complimentary sherry and shortbread). When we arrive the owner regretfully informed us that the boiler has just broken and that it'd take about an hour before the backup was hot enough for a shower. She offered to find us somewhere else to stay but we thought that was a bit extreme. After an hour and a half I had a tepid shower (not hot but not cold either) and we went to bed.

Day 15 - Inverness to Edinburgh via more Highlands

Next morning we awoke and had a lovely breakfast with a view down the valley. We had a walk around the farm for a bit before heading off. The owner even took £10 off the bill for the hot water - which was more generous than it probably deserved, but was a really nice touch. It was Daviot Lodge if you're ever up that way (free plug since it was one of the best place we stayed).

We continued south along the road towards Edinburgh, crossing the Grampians and finally, regrettably, leaving the Highlands. We stopped for a quick picnic at the pass out of the region and enjoyed the view. We took a walk along a public track through some sheep paddocks past some suspicious looking sheep (ie they looked like they were suspicious of us, rather than having an untrustworthy appearance). The train goes along this route as well. In fact, if you want an idea of what the highlands look like, the exterior shots of the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter films were of this train.

We continued down, leaving the dusty green rolling mountains and entering a region of lush green rolling hills. Crossing a few nice rivers we eventually hit the freeway past Perth and headed over the huge Firth of Forth bridge into Edinburgh. It was funny to see so many familiar placenames in the UK, since so many towns in Australia are named after places there. We found our hotel and got the bus into the Old Town to have a look around before dark.

First stop was the impressive Edinburgh Castle. Built on an outcrop of granite (I think), it forms the western end of the main street, the "Royal Mile" that slopes down to Holyrood Palace at the eastern end. On interesting thing I noticed early on is that it's not built on Arthur’s Seat, a frigging huge monolith surrounded mostly by cliffs next to Holyrood Palace, and which is now a park. The main reason, I surmised from what was written at the castle is that, although the Castle outcrop is smaller, it has the benefit of having cliffs on all sides, except for a nice slope up which the Royal Mile runs, making it defensible but also allowing access for the building necessary. Plus I guess that being a little less area, you can fill it with castle leaving no approach - Arthur's Seat by contrast could fit a whole town on top.

The Castle itself was interesting enough, though somewhat caught up in the Year of Scaffolding. It is still a working royal castle - being the official seat of the Scottish crown, currently occupied by Elizabeth II (or Elizabeth I of Scotland as a modern Jacobite might insist - though being a Jacobite they'd probably insist she wasn't their queen at any number). Anyhoo, there was a bit of history and nice battlements and such, but frankly the main joy to be had there was the magnificent view of the rest of Edinburgh, particularly the New Town laid out to the south (nearer the Firth) by one or more of the Georges. The Chapel of St Margaret was also cute - dedicated to the Saxon mother of Malcolm III (a refugee from the Norman invasion) and built by him when she died, it's a tiny little church that represents the oldest surviving building on the site.

After looking around the castle, we walked down the Royal Mile to the other end, stopping at a few souvenir shops on the way to try and find a nice Scotland Tshirt. We've done a bit of souvenir Tshirt shopping around Europe. Tshirts are a useful item and we're not really into knickknacks (plus you have to lug them home). One thing we've noticed about souvenir Tshirts though is that once you look in a few shops, you realise that they all have the same designs. The other thing you notice is that these designs usually all suck since they usually proclaim loudly the city or country they were from (certain other themes reappear, like the "[insert city/country here] Drinking Team" and "[city/country] Established [date]" lines). This is clearly the preference of the average Tshirt buyer, but we like to be a bit more subtle, getting a Tshirt we might actually want to wear. The result being that you usually have to find the one shirt that one shop sells that the others don't. Unfortunately this was not to be found in Scotland, despite a bit of looking and listening to the "Modern pop hits played on the bagpipes" in every other shop (though that was kinda cool).

At the other end of the Royal Mile, first passed the new Scottish Parliament Building, a fairly unattractive monstrosity that tried to incorporate all styles of Scottish traditional architecture but succeeded only in going massively over budget. Just beyond that was Holyrood Palace, the Queen's official Scotland Residence (hence the Royal Mile between the two I guess). It was nice enough to look at, but was closed and we were in a hurry anyway. We did get a closer look at Arthur's Seat in Holyrood Park, with people walking along the top of the cliffs like ants. It would be a fantastic walk and an amazing view, but we just had time to snap a few photos of the cliffs soaking up the setting sun before powerwalking to our next appointment. Incidentally, "rood" is an old word for "cross" for the other amateur etymologists out there.

The appointment we were rushing to was dinner with our friend Michelle from the swing dancing scene in Brisbane, who has been working in Edinburgh for about a year and will be there for a few years yet. Michelle lives in a flat in (of all places) Scotland Street in the New Town. Those familiar with Alexander McCall Smith, author of "The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series may know that he has another series of books set in Edinburgh called "44 Scotland Street". Both series are great BTW. But anyway, back to the more important topic of meeting up with a friend from home. Michelle's mum Mary was visiting from Australia, and Michelle cooked us up some haggis for dinner (with a vegetarian version for Emma and Mary).

Haggis, as most will know in theory, is the internal organs of a sheep that have been minced, mixed with onions and spices and oats and cooked in the animal's stomach. Most people go "ewe" at this point and move on, but I have to tell you, it's quite yummy. Firstly, you don't eat the stomach - once it's cooked you cut it out of the sack and serve it like a mince (on top of mashed potatoes). Second, it's got a sort of nutty texture and taste with a savoury flavour with just a hint of sweet. It's very nice and, like the black pudding, an efficient use of an animal's nutrients (which makes up a little bit for killing it in the first place in my opinion - better than killing it and throwing half of it away anyway). The vegetarian version was nice enough (a bit like a peppery, oaty stuffing) but not a patch on the real thing.

We had a great time catching up with Michelle and talking about mutual friends and news from home, as well as swapping a few travel stories. Oh, and her flat was huge, with high Georgian ceilings (maybe not an efficient use of space and heating energy but very relaxing and spacious) and lots of rooms (I love places with lots of rooms - I dream about them sometimes). Anyway, after strategically staying till after the last bus (just kidding we all couldn't stop nattering), we allowed ourselves a cab home to the hotel.

Day 16 - Edinburgh to York via North Yorkshire Moors

We left Edinburgh, a little disappointed that our crazy schedule didn't allow for more time there, and headed on south towards York. We got diverted a bit by some military exercises closing off the road we wanted to take, and by the time we were allowed to turn back towards it it was easier to keep going to the main highway past Newcastle. We didn't go into Newcastle - we had a long way to go and wanted time at the end to see York (plus the same reasons we didn't go into Liverpool or Manchester) - but we did get to see the Angel of the North statue on the outskirts of town, a huge steel structure a bit like a massive Oscars statuette with aeroplane wings. I really like it, but we just got a glimpse from the highway.

We decided (on the advice of the Lonely Planet) to detour through the North Yorkshire Moors, hoping for a bit more moor like we'd explored in Dartmoor before, and because we'd no time to look at the Yorkshire Dales further inland. Unfortunately, the road we took was possibly a bit far inland and away from the windswept moors, with just some nice, but not spectacular, farmland. You'd probably have to go out towards (Captain Cook's birthplace of) Whitby, but we took the B1257 on the other side. It was a bit of a pity since it took up an hour or so we could have used to look around more of York. We hit Your in the mid afternoon, found our hotel and (after a short rest, Emma was feeling the cold I'd had in Ireland) walked into the town centre.

York is a small town with a big history. It was the site of a major Roman city (known as Eboracum) where, as I found out from a statue near the cathedral, Constantine the Great was proclaimed Emperor in 306. In fact, a quick bit of research has just revealed that it was the capital of Britannia Inferior and the entire Roman Empire was ruled from there for a couple of years under Septimus Severus from 208 to 211). Later it was an Anglo-Saxon town known as Eoferwic, before being captured by the Vikings, who called it Yorvik. During the Middle Ages (when its name eventually resolved to York) it was the location of one of only two Archbishops in England (the other being in Canterbury). So right up until the Industrial Revolution (and the boom of towns like Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds, Sheffield) it was the defacto capital of Northern England (a place traditionally a bit more independent from the crown - think of the troublesome northern Barons).

York today is a less important town, but it retains a lot of its history in its buildings. It is the only city in England with its original city wall still intact. You can still walk around the top, which we did on our way to the cathedral (York Minster). One drawback with city walls though (which I noted in Xian in China, another city with fantastic walls) is that it's not great for traffic, limiting (as well it might) access in and out of the city - this is one major reason most cities around the world have gotten rid of their walls. But a city wall does give great character to a city and really helps define its centre (what better way to do that than draw a great 2D line around it).

After following the wall around one side of the CBD, we came to York Minster, a huge and impressive cathedral. Luckily, since it was about 30min from closing time we got in for free and had a quick look around. Very big and impressive. Sorry, but it's early and there's only so much you can say about cathedrals. They're impressive and all, and we enjoyed looking around it, but I can't think of anything that really stood out with this one worth reporting. It did seem to have a higher ceiling than most and generally more space inside. It is apparently the second largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe, which might explain its size. Outside was that statue of Constantine I mentioned earlier.

We had a bit of a look around town at that point, the usual gorgeous cobblestoned streets and exposed timber houses. Lots of old houses in England (that are mostly now businesses of some kind - shops or B&Bs) have a similar design, with exposed dark wooden beams on the outside in a horizontal, vertical and diagonal pattern, with the walls in between whitewashed. They're very cute. It's kind of funny how each country or region seems to have its own architectural template. England has its exposed beam houses and churches with towers that look like castle turrets, Sweden has its red and white gingerbread houses and churches with tall graceful spires (and colourful uniform townhouses with regularly spaced white window frames), the Mediterranean does the rough stone cottage and churches with flat pyramid roofs on their towers (and boring cement looking city buildings). I guess even Brisbane has its Queenslander houses. I guess it’s a combination of fashion and practical responses to the climate that have developed over centuries. It really helps give any region a sense of place and harmony.

Anyway, we found one of these houses advertising that it was a cafe with fairly reasonable internet connections. With Emma tired from her cold, we decided to go in and check our emails and take a rest. After that we went looking for dinner. After looking around for the perfect meal for Emma and being disappointed, I again suggested we eat at the cafe where we'd checked our email. It only did Asian food, but it was reasonably priced and had a pretty good indie atmosphere. We got some lahksa-style soups (which frankly were perfect for a girl with a cold if I do say so myself and had been saying all along). As I said, the place had an indie/student vibe and I noticed that about York in general. It felt a bit like a University town. Now, there is a University there but I'd hardly think it was that important to the town's vibe, but that's the vibe we got anyway. After dinner it was dark and we headed home, but firstly went past Clifford's Tower, the old Norman keep. Nice, but it was dark by then.

Overall, we really liked York. It looks great with its old city centre largely intact. Plus it had a great vibe. Along with Salisbury and Edinburgh it's one of the top places we wished we'd spent more time (and would definitely go back to if we ever come back this way).

Day 17 - York to the Cotswolds via Sherwood Forest and Peak District

We left York and headed south along the M1 towards Mansfield and Nottingham in an attempt to find Sherwood Forest. There hadn't been much information I could find about it (which I found odd), but what I could find suggested it was near Mansfield. As we were driving we saw a helpful maroon and white tourist info sign pointing us towards the Sherwood Forest visitor centre, reaffirming our faith in our navigation techniques. The signs got us off the freeway and to our destination with a minimum of fuss and we got out for a looksy around Sherwood Forest country. We were drawn there partly because of the Robin Hood stories (and we'd be lying if we tried to convince you otherwise), but also partly to see more of England’s woodlands. Sherwood Forest has been continuously wooded since the last Ice Age and kept its trees while all about it was losing theirs and blaming it on it. We took walk along the path to the Major Oak, sometimes called Robin Hood's Oak. On the way we passed a group of teenage schoolkids on a field trip. One of their tasks was to conduct a survey of visitors to the forest and so I dutifully answered a few questionnaires from a few cluster of kids to fulfil my duty to the Statistical community and we moved on to the Oak. The Major Oak is fairly impressive - over 1000 years old and propped up by a network of struts and cables. The rest of the forest was a little disappointing. We found out during our visit that, like New Forest (but moreso), Sherwood has been farmed and logged since for ever (there aren't really any "virgin" forests in Europe - even Sweden's pine forests are logged regularly, albeit fairly sustainably, in a rolling patchwork). In the old days, the land was grazed leaving only a few solitary oaks to grow unimpeded (to produce better wood). In more recent times, the dying out of this practice resulted in lots of birch trees growing up. So, rather than being an atmospheric cover of oak trees, you get a few oaks dotted around a birch forest with a ferny undergrowth (at least in the small patch we saw). Now, birch trees have their charm (white bark and pale round leaves) but most of Sweden north of Skåne (that isn't farmland or lakes) is covered with few exceptions by pine, fir and birch trees, so we've seen our share. So it was nice to see Sherwood Forest, but we also discovered why it's not screamed from the rooftops as a place to visit.

We left Sherwood Forest and hacked our way west through midlands suburbia towards the Peak District. We wanted to have a quick look at the area, supposed to be one of the prettier in England, as well as try to find Lyme Park - the house that had been used as the location for Mr D'Arcy's home in the BBC's Pride and Prejudice (Emma's a bit of an Austin fan, ever since she named a book after her). We eventually left the urban sprawl around Mansfield and Chesterfield and emerged into some lovely farmlands. We headed through Baslow and Bakewell and headed west to wards Buxton, which Emma's friend Elaine thought the house was near. The road between Bakewell and Buxton was very pretty, with a Welsh-style valleee and stream arrangement interchanging with English fields and gardens, rolling hills and, eventually, a Victorian Railway. I'm not quite sure why it's called the Peak District since we didn't see any mountains, but the rolling hills were slightly higher than the rolling hills in other parts of the country so I guess it's all relative (and maybe they're more peaky further north in the district).

We reached Buxton and had a walk to get some lunch (we were starting to get cranky) and find the tourist info place to work out where this sodding house was. Buxton is a nice little town, not unlike Bath. In fact it was a spa town with its own hot spring, built by the Romans and redeveloped by the Georgians and Victorians, with some nice buildings and pavilions and a really nice garden. It's got more of a sense of space than Bath and a much nicer surrounding area, but no well-preserved Roman Bath ruins to look at. Still, it'd be worth a visit - except we were tired and a bit cranky and just wanted to get to this country house since we had a long way to go after that and hadn't planned on going this far west. We found out that Lyme Park was even further west towards Macclesfield so we headed off (anything for my Emma) and finally found it.

We drove in the gate and got the entry to the grounds free on our English Heritage card (though later found out that the gate guy might have made a mistake). The gate keeper gave us a free CD to play with info about the house and grounds as we drove the mile or so to the carpark near the house, which was a fantastic idea. The house itself was nice (we couldn't look inside at that time), but the gardens were very nice. We walked around the lake Colin Firth had emerged from in the miniseries and through the trees starting to get their autumn colours. We had a look at the nicely arranged garden beds and the rose garden and hothouse, Emma snapping away like I do while leaning out a train window. After that we had a quick walk towards the Cage, a tower on a windswept hill looking not unlike the White Tower in the Tower of London, but which was used to spot deer. We had a look at the view of the hills around and took a few snaps of the front of the house and then left to drive the 3hrs or so to our accommodation.

Since we'd gone so far west, it was actually easier to keep heading that way and link up with the M6 running between Manchester and Birmingham and follow that south, which is what we did, eventually, after hacking our way through regional peak hour traffic. After hooking around Birmingham and passing Coventry and Warwick we left the highway towards Stratford-upon-(yet another)Avon. Although this was the birthplace of Shakespeare and a major destination in its own right, we were actually on our way to Chipping Campden in the northern Cotswold Hills. The only impression we got of Stratford was that it looked very difficult to write in, but only because it was very dark by then.

We found our small, quaint Cotswold town and the small, quaint pub we were staying the night in and went down for a fantastic dinner of sausages (Emma had some veggie crap) and wonderfully flat beer. Greene King was the brand, and you may see it in theme pubs in Australia where they might serve Old Speckled Hen (not brewed by Greene King but by a subsidiary they own). The best beer they make is the IPA. The pub we were staying in was called the Red Lion. We'd seen many of these about the country (apparently it is the second most common pub name after The Crown) and, while they're not a chain (just a bunch of pubs that happen to have chosen the same name), they usually seem to be pretty good establishments. After our English pub dinner and English pub beers, we retired to bed in our so-many-centuries-old-it's-a-bit-wonky English pub bedroom for a night's sleep.

Day 18 - Cotswold Hills to London via Oxford

We left our quaint little Cotswold town of Chipping Campden (but not before a quick walk and the purchase of the last Harry Potter book) and headed for another quaint little Cotswold town of Stow-on-the-Wold. After a quick look around there we headed to yet another quaint little Cotswold town of Bourton-on-the-Water. Quaint little Cotswold towns seem to have names with quaint little descriptions in them (we did go to Upper and Lower Slaughter after that but let's put that to one side shall we). In case I haven't explained yet, the Cotswold Hills are an area of rolling farmland and quaint little villages, lying roughly between Gloucester, Warwick and Oxford. It's probably considered by the English as a heartland for central southern England. It's also the source of the Thames, which runs from there through Oxford and London to the sea.

One thing we did notice about the quaint little Cotswold towns is that they could do with quaint little traffic plans to keep the less than quaint little cars out of the quaint little town centres. In all places I've mentioned, the centres of the towns were picturesque little oldy-worldy places with modern cars parked all through them. Now, I can understand how having a great big square in the middle of town (as Stow-o-t-W did) would make the decision about where to let cars park seem like a no-brainer, but I would suggest they find a spot a few tens of metres away to preserve the character of the town centre...Which is not to say that their parking wasn't convenient and very reasonably priced (free) and welcome. Bourton-o-t-W had actually made the provision for parking about 70m outside of the centre (although they charged a bit more heavily for it), but had failed in the final simple task of stopping traffic from driving through their even-prettier-than-Stow-on-the-Wold centre, with its little stream flowing down one side of the little main street.

Anyway, the reason we'd gone to Bourton-on-the-water was to see the model village that my Mum had recommended. And it was cute. It’s out the back of one of the pubs and is a fairly good replica of the town centre, with all the shops represented. It also contains a little model of the model village behind the model of the pub, which contains its own pub with its own model model model. This model has a pub too, but it's just got a blank space behind it, which was a little disappointing to my infinite reductionist side. It was very cute, even down to little recordings of choirs singing at the two churches. Those who remember the end of "Hot Fuzz" ("Ow. That really hurts. I'm going to need some ice-cream.") will have some idea of what it might look like. The rest can just look at Emma's photos.

After leaving the Cotswolds, we continued downhill towards Oxford. Now, we only had about 2hrs to see Oxford before we had to be going in order to get back to London before peakhour to drop off the hire car. As a result, we were never going to do it justice and this should be remembered when we talk about it and compare it to Cambridge later on.

That said though Oxford was nice enough, but a bit crowded and busy and had lots of roadworks going on. We found our way to Christchurch College (past a footpath being dug up), and payed the entrance fee to have a look around (understandable since people actually live there). Once inside the college it was finally a bit peaceful. The architecture inside was of the frilly gothic variety. The dining room had some great long dark wooden tables, with portraits on the walls of old fellows, or just friends, of the college (Henry VIII and Rolf Harris to name two). The dining room was apparently the inspiration for the Great Hall in Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies (it may even have been filmed there, sources are a little vague). After that we had a quick look at the quadrangle with its space and green grass (and big clock tower at the front), before a quick looksy around the Cathedral (apparently the smallest in England).

After leaving Christ Church we wandered past Merton to the main street, where we grabbed some sandwiches and walked down to Merton field behind the colleges. This was another highlight of our brief visit, seeing the towers of the colleges doing what they do behind a rugby field and a river on the other side. Luckily I (and the shortage of time) convinced Emma to walk and eat so that we could enjoy it at a leisurely pace, rather than franticly trying to find a "nice spot", wolfing down our lunch and then rushing through the rest of the walk to make up for lost time.

After that we returned to the car (past a nice looking small castle) and headed onwards, back to London. We only had time to look around one small corner of Oxford, were in a rush, and had not much information to go on so we were never going to have too much fun. And we didn't really. There was a bustle and crowded feeling to the town that I didn't expect (though maybe we didn't find the pedestrianised streets that might have been nicer). The roadworks and jackhammering everywhere didn't really help either, or the fact that we were coming to the end of a looong trip. There was some nice red ivy which was nice - well we assumed it was ivy turning red for autumn, and saw it all over England and Sweden (especially Lund), but were never able to verify if it was ivy or something else (the Swedes we asked had a different name for it that didn't sound like "ivy").

Anyway, after braving some traffic congestion caused by yet more roadworks, we left Oxford and drove down the main freeway back to London. After taking about as long to drive into London as it took to reach the edge, we dropped off the car and walked back to Tonia's. Tonia was on a well deserved holiday to a Greek island at that time, but had very generously let us stay at her place while she was away (saving us massive amounts of money - thanks T!) - though given that the economy was collapsing at about this time and two separate travel companies had folded in the past weeks leaving tourists stranded (including some on the very island Tonia was visiting), we weren't 100% sure she wouldn't be there waiting for us. Luckily she had no problems.

We got some Indian takeaway and checked our email at a nearby internet cafe and then retired to Tonia's place for a night of comedy panel shows and top Gear reruns on the strangely aptly named channel "Dave".

Day 19 - London

The next day dawned bright and clear, and we popped around the corner to the local greasy spoon caff for a cheap but filling breakfast. Then we walked into the City of London along Farringdon Rd (only about 30min). First stop was St Paul's Cathedral.

St Paul's is very impressive inside. It's not so much the size, but the light. It's quite well lit and the gold-leaf on the ceiling mosaics is quite impressive. After a quick look around, we went for the main draw for me - the climb up to the top of the dome for the view over London. First stop was the whispering gallery - a fairly uninteresting affair with dubious acoustics, but a nice place to get one's breath back for the next stage. Once at the top the view was awesome. I like to get up high to have a look at a city - it really helps me to cement my bearings in my mental map, and links the paper map to the real place. With the Gherkin in the City to the east, the Tate Modern across the river to the south, Fleet St running into The Strand to the west and the Eye, Palace, Westminster and everything else to the southwest it was a really great all in one view of a great city (that I'd read so much about). Back down in the church we saw some modern art installations (one showing a staged crowd of people hit by high pressure hose in super slow motion) that were made enjoyable by the two builders having a break from renovations to have a look and comment on it in their matter-of-fact, less-than-awed London way ("Wait for it...there she goes. Look at that fat bird! Oh well, you've gotta laugh don't you.").

We left St Paul's and walked down Fleet St out of the City of London. The actual City of London is the square mile on the north bank of the Thames with St Paul's at its west end and the Tower at the east end. This covers the site of the Roman and Medieval city. Nowadays, though it is mostly the financial district with not much more to see. After the Great Fire of 1666, when most of it was flattened, a lot of new development started to the west, in and around the City of Westminster, creating the Monopoly Board of sights that most of us associate with London, and the modern true centre of the city (sort of around modern Oxford St). London today is governed at a local level by the Greater London Council, with areas like the City of London, City of Westminster and the various Burroughs being similar to council wards in Australia.

We continued down Fleet St to the dragon (or griffin, depending who you ask) at Temple Bar that marks the boundary of the City of London. At this point we noticed a few more rubbish bins made available. London has a problem with litter. Their response to this problem is a bit reminiscent to the "Madrid needs more water" stickers we saw on the shower in Spain - ie wishful thinking. There were various news stories about it while we were in the UK, but not only did we notice a distinct lack of an awareness campaign (a la Keep Australia Beautiful) to try and change habits, but also a distinct lack of bins. This includes litter bins so people don't have to choose between littering and carrying their litter home with them, but it also includes wheelie bins which means that household and business rubbish is left on the curbs in piles of plastic bags, to be broken open by accident of wildlife and recycle the rubbish directly into litter. We had to walk about 3 blocks down Fleet St to find a litter bin to dump some food wrappers in, and only then did they appear once we'd crossed the boundary into Westminster (and even then they weren't exactly plentiful). So, in short, London has a litter problem because they're too stupid not to have a litter problem.

Anyhoo, we continued down Fleet St and The Strand, passing Australia House, till we came to Somerset House. At this point, we turned into the courtyard to have a look around and see if we could make it through to the Embankment along the river. We did this after stopping to look at the cool fountain in the middle, consisting of a grid of vertical water streams coming out of the courtyard itself. Walking along the Victoria Embankment, we passed the Obelisk - the oldest structure in London (since it's from ancient Egypt) and then crossed the railway bridge (well, the pedestrian parts that run alongside the old Victorian railway bridge - BTW, when I keep saying "Victorian" I usually do so in a loose assumption sort of way, not necessarily with any authority) towards the London Eye, past a lot of people having lunch breaks and a lot of buskers (yay) and human statues (boo) entertaining them.

The London Eye (that big ferris wheel looking thing on the bank of the Thames that looks like a huge white bicycle wheel with pods around the rim) was built as a temporary structure to celebrate the Millennium, but it turned out to be so popular that they kept it on. And a good thing too because it's very cool. It looks great - giving a modern touch to the area (and not that ugly brutalist modernism that was popular in the 1970s and ruined many areas or many cities), sort of complementing the Canary Wharf and Gherkin to the east and adding one more sight of interest. It's also very fun to go on - especially (as indicated earlier) for someone who likes being able to see long distances and from high up. The organisation was good but oddly naive. Upon approaching we saw one of those ribboned off queuing lanes zigzagging towards the Eye. Since nobody was filling most of the lane, I was about to duck under the tape to join the end of the queue without having to walk all the way around to the entrance. It was only then that I noticed the guards checking tickets at the front of the queue, and we realised that you didn't buy your tickets in this queue and then get on but had to go somewhere else to get the tickets. If we hadn't realised that, we could have quite innocently hopped on without a ticket since the tickets were only checked once (or quite unfairly been arrested without realising we'd done anything wrong). Anyway, we went into the nearby building and lined up for tickets (about £15 each I think). Although the line was long it moved fairly quickly (with quite a few counters open) and we were soon (legitimately) in the line to hop on the wheel. This took a short time too and before we knew it (almost literally) we were herded into our pod with about 20 others for the 30min "flight" (the Eye is sponsored by British Airways). And the view was spectacular. You really can see just about everything in central London. Being further west than St Paul's it is also more central to modern London also. There was a bit of internal reflection from the curvy perspex pod that got in the way of the few photos but that was unavoidable (you can't have windows that open at that height) and otherwise it was close to perfect.

Next we wandered over the Westminster Bridge towards Big Ben. As I've mentioned before, "Big Ben" refers to the biggest bell in the clock tower (more officially known as "The Great Bell of Westminster"), with the clock and tower known as "The Great Clock of Westminster" and "The Clock Tower" respectively, but since everyone thinks of the tower and clock when you say Big Ben, let's just go with that. The tower and the whole palace have a wonderfully melting look, dripping with elegance, and we took a few classic photos of the tower with red busses in the foreground, as well as a few more of the "arms length couple shot" that I'm getting quite good at.

After that we wandered down to Westminster Abbey, the nearby Cathedral that gives the whole area its name (the original was the first church in the area west of London - the west minster). We didn't go in since we'd spent about $20 each going into St Paul's and felt that was enough church money for the day. Plus from the outside it's nice, but no more spectacular than many other cathedrals we'd seen, and I had a quick peek in a book of photos in the gift shop and the inside was similarly averagely impressive looking.

Next we raced back towards the clock tower to hear Big Ben and the Famous Chimes ring out 3 o'clock. The familiar tune played, followed by a dramatic pause before Big Ben bonged with its surprisingly and slightly discordantly deep voice, the voice of authority and empire. Very impressive and nice to be able to hear a sight for a change.

After 3pm (we were very aware of the time at this point) we walked through St James Park towards Buckingham Palace. Emma took some great photos of the cute squirrels running everywhere. It was a little saddening to remember, though, that almost all of the squirrels you see in England are the Grey Squirrel introduced from America some decades ago, which for some reason (a bit of research suggests disease carried by the Greys and affecting the Reds) really started outcompeting the native Red Squirrel in the 1970s, almost driving the smaller, even cuter natives to extinction. There were also lots of pretty water features and leaves taking on autumn hues, as well as some of the landmarks of the area (the Eye, the Clock) poking up over the trees in the distance. London, particularly the west end, really does public parks well, with lots of big green peaceful spaces in the middle of the bustling city.

Buckingham Palace was interesting enough. The actual building itself is a fairly bland looking box with a few columns and a fairly rectangular facade. But the statues, fences and, especially, gates in the area in front of it are quite cute. The gates are shiny gold-looking with some nice carvings above - including some Australian animals above one of them, which was a nice touch. But apart from lots of tourists and the traffic flowing through the roundabout that all the cool stuff was on, there wasn't much happening and we walked back down The Mall towards Trafalgar Square.

Trafalgar Square is really nice. With white marble(y looking stuff), blue fountains and black lion statues, it's a bit of a splash of "colour". The lions are particularly impressive. During our trips around Europe we've seen many lion statues, and we've discovered that they're really hard to do well (well, we assume that since many aren't). I'm assuming here that the sculptors (and their patrons) were generally trying to make the lions look fierce, proud and regal. However, more often that I would think, they end up looking scared, cranky or constipated (or too fat or too scrawny). The lions in Trafalgar Square, however, are perfectly proportioned, calm and confident. And really really big. Of course everyone wants their picture riding one of them, which is pretty annoying when you're trying to take a photo of a lion without some moronic slavic homie on top, but it's pretty traditional and I doubt the statues are that fragile. Given the demand, there was a bit of minor lion rage appearing as people try to hurry people in front to get their turn (and then fend off the people behind to enjoy it). Tourists eh? Humph (-: Nelson's column is impressive enough in that it's really really tall, but somewhat less interesting since that makes the statue on top really really far away and viewed from an odd angle - so unless you're interested in Nelson's package (Hardy har har) you don't get a great view. Nice big fountains too, they remind me of the Trevie Fountain, although they look nothing like it - it was probably more the festive feel of all the tourists hanging out and trying to enjoy it if not for each other.

At about this time we'd started looking for dinner. Emma, despite being a vegetarian, was keen to have some fish and chips (although she only planned on eating the fish) since we hadn't managed to have that English traditional dish yet during our trip (I was all in favour, but my recollection is that Emma was the driving force). We looked around Trafalgar Square for a chippie, but finding only expensive regular food we wandered past Piccadilly Circus (and a few souvenir shops) into Soho, the trendy gay nightclub district. As it was about 5pm nothing much was happening there, and there weren't any chippies there either, just lots of little alleys. We eventually came out onto Oxford St and wandered in the direction of home and eventually found a chippie at Oxford Circus. They call those places Circus because they used to be roundabouts, nowadays they're mostly crossroads (it's a fairly pedestrianised part of town and only busses and taxis are silly enough to risk it) - but the buildings are still in a circular arrangement around it. Anyway, we enjoyed our F'n'C (Emma substituted a cheese and onion pasty for her fish and was very happy with the result) and continued back towards Tonia's place.

One last stop on our way home was at the British Museum, partly because it was on the way and partly out of respect for the institution, and partly because I'd read that admission was free. Being about 6pm on a Friday by then, we didn't really expect it to be open, planning to finish our F'n'C outside and take a few exterior shots. However to our delight we discovered that it was open until 11pm. Sweet! So we finished our dinner outside and went in. The interior courtyard is nicely done - the building is of the rectangular box-palace variety, but the courtyard has been roofed over with a perspex geodesic dome type structure (well, more of a geodesic torus with a new building in the middle). It gives a nice view of the sky, as well as a really cool blend of the old and the new, sort of like the Reichstag in Berlin. We walked into the first exhibit and at the doorway I saw a big black slab of basalt with writing on it in a glass case. "That looks just like the Rosetta Stone," I thought. Then I thought, "That is the Rosetta Stone. That's the goddamn Rosetta Stone!" So it was a pretty impressive opening, having the famous stone bearing the same inscription in 3 languages - Greek (known), Demotic (late Egyptian, also known) and Hieroglyphic (classical Egyptian, until then undecrypted) - which they used to decrypt hieroglyphics as the first thing you see. After that we saw some more Egyptian artefacts, some Hittite bearded bulls, and a few Greek statues, including the famous Elgin Marbles taken from the Parthenon (with full permission of the Ottomans who controlled Athens at the time) in the 19th Century by Elgin (the British ambassador at the time) for their protection and study - the controversy is that the Greeks now want them back. Fair enough, but we’ll let them fight that one out (the Museum's side of the argument was presented quite reasonably in a pamphlet I read, which also directed the interested reader to where to find the Greek side of the argument, which I thought was a jolly good show). We then went to look at the Tutankhamen exhibit, but unfortunately that was closed for the night. Oh well, we'd just seen the freaking Rosetta Stone at 7pm for free, so we weren't too disappointed, so we hit the souvenir shop and headed home. I was really impressed with the (for want of a better word) business model of the Museums in London. Having free admission means that more people might actually go in and learn something, or be inspired to learn more. It's a bit of a shame so many museums are pretty much targeted at people who already understand and appreciate their contents. As it was, we ended up spending more at the gift shop (partly in appreciation of the visit) than we would have with a standard entrance fee - which we wouldn't have paid since we wouldn't have gone in if there'd been one - so their business model worked pretty well with us. London is partly the opposite of most other European cities - in Europe the cathedrals are free and the museums are expensive, in London it's the opposite (not just the British Museum, but the Natural History Museum and a few of the other biggies), and frankly I applaud their priorities.

After leaving the British Museum we finally headed back to Tonia's. We'd had a bloody good day - we'd seen what we'd planned to see, and we had fantastic weather for it. So we packed, watched a few final comedy panel shows and went to bed happy.

Day 20 - London to Örebro

Next day we packed up our things and headed to the airport. Our tube train stopped the stop before Liverpool St, where the train to Stanstead left from. Luckily we spoke the language so we asked someone and were told there was a blockage on the line and gave us directions to walk to Liverpool St. Luckily it wasn't too far, but I was a bit miffed at paying $10 for the privilege of walking for a quarter of my journey.

We got to Stanstead and checked in (no problem with the 15kg baggage limit that we were probably exceeding by then), but after grabbing some lunch we discovered that we were a 15min walk from our gate and the plane was boarding in 15min (and you have to line up to get a good seat on Ryanair - no allocated seating). Honestly, why to all airlines give you an irrelevant departure time (ie when the plane is taking off) rather than the more relevant time of when you have to get into it. You'd think that in these days of "Get here 2hrs early to make things easier for us" they'd give you an earlier time rather than a later one.

We got on the plane (with a good seat) and had a fairly pleasant flight home. Upon landing we saw some amazing autumn colours around Västerås Airport, as well as a stone circle and a couple of burial mounds at one end of the runway (I assume they're originals, why would someone build that sort of thing there?).

We had a really really good time in the UK and Ireland. Coming from Australia, with its culture descended so much from the Old Dart and having watched a lot of UK TV in my days, it had a very familiar feel. In fact, given that Australia has become quite multicultural in the past 50 years, thereby diverging more from the English culture that it was based on (which itself has also diverged but in different ways), visiting the UK was a bit like visiting the Australia of our grandparents (well some of them, some of my grandparents came from Italy and more of Emma's from Finland). The food was one great example - some of my favourite memories of that trip were good pub meals and great beers. As well as everything else, it was just great to be able to speak the local language without feeling self conscious. We could relax into the familiar for a while after so much that's been different (though not as different as Africa or Asia or South America, I grant you). Just to listen to local radio and TV, casually read a newspaper and even eavesdrop on people in the street or on the bus. It was a bit like taking a holiday from our holiday, despite the hectic schedule (which produced its fair share of stress and frustration).

But part of the point of this trip is to experience the difference of a new culture, which is fantastic in itself. We specifically didn't plan to base ourselves in the UK since there'd be no great adventure in experiencing something that was almost, but not quite, exactly like Australia. So we were more than happy to get back to Sweden and back to being different.

[P.S. Sorry if that last bit got a bit wanky, the cafe in the Örebro library where I typed this just had the soundtrack from Titanic playing and the soaring, melodramatic theme might have crept into the blog there a little.]

Göteborg and Skåne 1

besoka — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:57:00 GMT

Once we were safely back in Rockhammar after the Switzerland trip, we got to have a go at the age old Swedish late summer delight of walking in the forest and picking mushrooms and berries, and we didn't let a bit of damp weather stop us. Since many of the mushrooms and berries are poisonous (kidney failure anyone?) it's advisable to only go with someone who knows what they're doing. Luckily Anders has been walking in the forests of the area for most of his life (stopping only to...not walk in the forest) and knows what he's doing and took us to one of his favourite patches on the forest (people seem to treat their berry and mushroom spots like their fishing or surfing spots). The mushrooms we were looking for are called Kantarel (possibly known as Chantrelle in “English”) and if I were given a range of mushrooms and told to choose which ones were edible I'd probably not pick those since they are very yellow and have a fairly munted cap that sticks upwards rather than forming the traditional mushroom umbrella shape. But edible (and, moreover, delicious) they are. Their distinctive appearance also makes it easier to tell them apart from other mushrooms, including the ones the Smurfs live in (red with white dots) that you really don't want to have anything to do with unless you're a Viking preparing to get silly (and even then it's best not to). Unfortunately they also look a bit like fallen birch leaves which makes for a few false alarms, but once you find a few patches it's fairly productive picking.

There were also blueberries and lingonberries (a bit like a cranberry) out at the time so we picked lots of blueberries (lingonberries, as I found out later, are only good eating if you bury them in sugar). It was great to see the forest understorey bear fruit since the ground under the fir trees is covered with berry bushes when it's not a lovely spongy moss floor. In about 2 hours of walking around we gathered about 3kg of mushrooms and about 2L of blueberries. The blueberries are everywhere in some places but they're a bit harder to pick since they don't grow in bunches but are spread around the bush, and the wild blueberries are smaller (but tastier) than the ones you buy in Australia. We feasted well on mushrooms on toast and blueberry crumble and blueberries in milk (the traditional way to eat them) for the next couple of days. The rest of the mushrooms were frozen for other times of the year (and they are still nice when thawed).

Göteborg

Our next major movement was to take most of our stuff and head to Sweden's second largest city of Göteborg - pronounced "YUR-te-bory" due to various rules of Swedish pronunciation that I won't go into, and known as "Gothenburg" to English speakers (though I’ll probably call it Göteborg in the blog – please don’t think me pretentious). Emma had 4 weeks of sabbatical work arranged where she would base herself at Göteborg University (and meet others working in her field) while writing up some papers offline for CSIRO back in Australia. As a result we could finally settle somewhere for a while. We met Emma's contact Göran at the station and he took us to the unit that we had arranged to rent, which the Uni provided for visiting researchers. And a very nice unit it was too, in a very central location just off one of the main boulevards, and in one of the rows of lovely 19th Century buildings that we'd kept seeing throughout Swedish cities. It had 2 rooms (1 bedroom and a lounge room and kitchen - the Swedes count the lounge which helps to distinguish a 1brm from a studio apartment) and lovely high ceilings and a general air of old fashioned civilised city life (as opposed to the less attractive apartment buildings we usually have to endure in Oz). Less civilised was the pub across the street that offered cheap drinks by Swedish standards - a "stor stark" ("big strong" - a large glass of full strength generic beer - a very useful term for ordering whatever's cheapest on tap ... a bit like ordering the “house beer”) costing 25SEK ($5). There were lots of bars in the general area, the result of which was a bit of rowdy behaviour outside our windows on weekend nights, especially the first night which was after the Way Out West music festival featuring Sonic Youth and Neil Young headlining. But I have earplugs and we decided it was worth $30 to buy a desk fan for the 4 weeks, and some blankets over the (all too common) thin curtains made for a comfy nest to sover in.

While Emma worked, I got a library card and used the free internet access in the public libraries to get the blog up to date (the Herräng, Switzerland and much of this blog were written there). You only get 1hr per day per library, but I discovered that we had 2 libraries about 10min walk away in opposite directions, so I'd head to one in the morning, come back for lunch and head to the other in the afternoon. Going a different way each time meant I ended up exploring quite a bit of the area, which is also one of the more central areas of the City (outside the CBD).

Göteborg has lots of great open places. South of the canal (where most of the city is) there are a few granite outcrops sort of lined up that make for great lookouts. They are topped with old fortresses and the odd church, or just left wild with shrubs and trees poking around the stone. The city centre, in contrast, is a little bleak, with too few trees and uninteresting buildings and churches. One part of the canal in the middle looks more like a drain since it's lined with streets and bare grey walls. The churches outside the CBD are mostly lovely. The old sailors’ cathedral on the western end of town is on a hill and can be seen from all around. Inside it's like an upturned boat with a lovely wooden ceiling. According to our canal guide, the tower used to be rigged with explosives so it could be demolished if enemies attacked to deny them a useful landmark. Other churches of note include the one in Linne, with its birthday cake of copper rooflets; Hagakyrkan, in a nice park just at the end of our street - another with a lovely wooden ceiling; and the main church near Avenyn, whose huge thick sandstone tower looks more like a castle than a church.

In between walking and blogging, I watched a lot of the Beijing Olympics (for the first week and a half), and I have to say that the Swedish coverage here was excellent (except that my language skills weren't fully up to following the commentary). 2 (of the 4) state channels were devoted to it with nice coordination between them, no ads, both were almost 24hrs a day. SVT1 had a great wrap up show at prime time (long after the events had finished in China our time), including demonstrations of different topical sports in the studio (handball, wrestling, weight lifting, fencing, ...) and discussions with experts from biomechanics, psychology and philosophy (though that might be better translated as ethics). They did concentrate on handball a little more than I'd like, but it made up for the complete lack of coverage by Ch7 in 2000. They also had a comedy-style wrap-up late at night, but I was not really able to follow that - a bit like the Panel maybe, probably (though I can't be sure) not as good as Roy and HG though. Being forced to watch the Swedish language TV for the Olympic coverage was actually a 2 edged sword since I did need to practice my Swedish and with the Olympics I couldn't just cop out and watch an English language show (Swedish TV has a lot of shows from the US and UK and, unlike the Germans or Italians, they don't dub them but rather they subtitle in Swedish). And with about 12 free to air channels there's usually some American crap to watch (or McLeods Daughters, Flying Doctors or Border Patrol if I want a familiar accent). But while it was really good to have it in Swedish from many viewpoints, it did mean I missed a lot of information (like that Swedish wrestler who threw away his bronze medal - my brother in Australia told me about that). To sidetrack just a little more, the commercial channels treat their ads a little differently – they’ll skip a few ad breaks in a show and then pile all the ads into a few 10min blocks instead. Makes watching non-Swedish shows funny when they go have their “going to a break” sequence and then come straight back on again.

Göteborg is a lovely city. It's got a more laid back atmosphere than Stockholm with lots of cafes, bars and restaurants out the front of the many 19th century buildings lining its many wide boulevards. All of this, plus the trams rumbling around the streets give it a real Melbourne-like feel. Its city centre is next to the Göta river (though the decaying industrial waterfront of port and shipbuilding facilities is largely ignored with the focus being away from the water) and is enclosed by a canal that probably served as a moat in the old days in the 1600s when the city was founded, its location very strategic as the main ocean facing port and just on the edge of the southern region that had been fought over by Denmark and Sweden for centuries. This was finally resolved about the time of Göteborgs founding but the city was still conceived as a fortress against the Danes. The canal now has a park that goes along the south bank (on the other side from the CBD) and we were living in the area south of that, where the real cultural centre of the city seems to be. One of my libraries is on the other side of Haga, the old working class district that has survived intact and is now a gentrified neighbourhood of buildings made of stone on the bottom floor and wood above that. The other library is at the end of Avenyn ("The Avenue") which runs out of the CBD and is the city's de facto main street. Avenyn ends at a big statue of Posiedon that is a bit of a symbol of Göteborg – even though it kind of looks like a giant naked statue of Gerard Joye (one of the previous generations of Brisbane swing dancers).

While the trams have a certain charm, they also have all the convenience, noise and mortal danger of having TRAINS running down the middle of the STREETS. They seem to be exempt from the usual rules of pedestrian crossings and merely ding their bell lazily as they bear down on you (I'm sure the last sound many Göteborgerna and probably many more tourists have heard). I even saw a tram run a light red light that had been red long enough for the pedestrian light it was going across to have turned green - though on our last day, inexplicably, a tram driver stopped to wave us across a zebra crossing in front of him (we were understandably suspicious but crossed without injury). They are also fairly unpredictable and hard to understand where they're going at the moment since they've just started some work on the tracks and rerouted the routes, making the network schematics that most maps contain incorrect. Furthermore they have a weird pricing structure where you press "2" for one person and "2" twice for two people (or "4" according to some people but not others). This is because the concession ticket is worth "1" but is still confusing. When you validate our ticket (which you can't buy on the tram) you get 1.5hrs of travel on the tram, bus and ferry system, meaning that we got to travel to the islands off the coast for the same price of a one stop journey. And that price is surprisingly high for a country with supposedly heavily subsidised public services (15.80SEK or about $3 with the discount card, about $5 without). Some locals have admitted that they don't bother paying if they only take short trips. And the final annoyance is that they sell 100SEK discount travel cards, which the arithmeticians among you would have noticed is NOT AN EVEN NUMBER OF TRIPS (it's about 6.3 trips). What the hell!? So in summary, we don't like trams. I know Brisbane is thinking of light rail, I'd say don't. Did I mention the noise? We were kept awake in Oslo by trams rumbling along 15 floors below us. I'm sure that trams are somehow more energy efficient (though only through decreased friction from the rails, deriving their power from Australia's coal fired electricity is no better than diesel powered internal combustion), but surely the cost of building all the infrastructure would offset any gains for many years. Ding!Splat!

In other, non-tram-related news, we did finally get to meet some new people. We had dinner with a friend of a work friend of Emma's, Robert, a man of English and Chinese ancestry and Canadian, American, New Zealand and Australian upbringing who eventually settled in Sweden (presumably having exhausted the English speaking countries (-:). And it was, surprisingly, relaxing to spend an evening talking to a fellow motor-mouth, in contrast to most of the Swedes we have met who don't prattle on quite as much as me (and who does?). He also had an interesting perspective on Sweden from a very experienced outsider's point of view. We also had dinner with Emma's colleague Göran and his wife, a fun affair in a very nice apartment with a lovely view of the city. They were both interesting people and we were able to discuss things from the Swedish point of view.

We did go out dancing once in Göteborg, to the casual Monday night regular do which, once we found it, was a fun evening with some fun dances – and a few invitations to dance (yay Göteborg!). We didn’t get the chance to head back since I was out of town the next week and it was raining the week after and we wussed out.

Skåne

In the middle of our 4 week stint in Göteborg, I took the opportunity to travel down to Skåne ("SKORN-e"), the southernmost region in Sweden. Skåne is rendered as "Scania" in English and the Scandinavian peninsular (as well as the company that makes most of Brisbane's busses) are named after it (presumably since it is the closest part to the continent). We have met 3 Swedish swing dancers (Maria, Kerstin and Lovisa) that travelled to Brisbane over the past few years and they all came from this region (and I think Lovisa and Kerstin are planning return trips to Brisbane next year so the swing dancers might get to meet them). We also met a few more in Herräng, partly introduced by Lovisa and partly because we shared a house with some. So we wanted to visit them and we also wanted to see some of the region at its prettiest in summer.

Skåne is a bit different from the rest of Sweden. Rather than an old granite bedrock, it is situated on a limestone base, the remnants of an ancient coral reef off the coast of the Baltica craton. As a result of this, and the warmer climate, the countryside looks very different from much of the rest of Sweden. Instead of pine forests and lakes, the country is mostly flat or gently rolling farmland with a few broadleaf forests. As a result it has a much more open, continental European feel with some absolutely gorgeous landscapes. Skåne grows most of Sweden's food, with the rest of the country only having a small proportion of land in agriculture.

The history of Skåne is also different from the rest of Sweden. The area was originally occupied by the Danes, in fact the Danish tribe seems to have originated in Skåne and Zealand (the neighbouring island that Copenhagen is on), and only occupied Jutland around the time the Jutes moved to England. Skåne was part of Denmark (though fought over) right up until the 1600s or so, when the Swedes were at the height of their powers. The people, therefore, have many links to Denmark. One aspect of this is the local dialect/accent, which many other Swedes find difficult to understand. It's probably a bit like talking to someone with a thick regional English accent (Geordie for example). They tend to swallow their "r"s a bit like the Danes do (rolling them at the back of the throat rather than with the tip of the tongue) - though they claim that the Danes swallow most of their language. I should point out that, despite their medieval history, the Skåne people seem to think of themselves definitely as Swedes - they speak Swedish and can't understand Danish unless they have learned it. Another resemblance to the north of England is that, despite some (mostly, but not always completely, good natured sardonic) prejudice from the rest of the country, Skåne is one of the economic powerhouses of the country, with its agriculture and proximity to the continent.

This proximity has been made even greater in the past decade with the opening of the Öresund bridge in 2000. This 16km long bridge and tunnel route provides a road and rail link between Copenhagen and Malmö, the largest city in Skåne and Sweden's third largest. This means that Copenhagen is now only a 40min commute from Malmö. The bridge is a very impressive engineering feat, though with nowhere close to stand and admire it from (and with the train going on the lower deck) it's hard to realise its truly awesome size except seeing it loom in the far distance.

I went down from Tuesday to Tuesday, with Emma joining us for the weekend since she was still working in Göteborg. First stop was with Maria in the university town of Lund, 15min north of Malmö by train. Lund, along with Uppsala near Stockholm, form the Oxford and Cambridge of Sweden. They were centres of pagan worship that were taken over by the Christian church in the usual "incorporate the sites and customs of the old religion to make it more palatable and to overwrite the old meaning" kind of way. Cathedrals were built there and a lot of church admin was set up. The presence of so many clergy eventually led to the founding of universities. Lund has a great student vibe since the uni is the main industry in town, as well as lovely cobble stoned streets, university buildings scattered around the town and the huge cathedral. Lund Cathedral is a huge Romanesque affair - thick walls, small windows and lots of arches that are just on the facade (ie there's no gaps under lots of them, just more wall - a bit like the tower of Pisa). It's therefore not as graceful as the later Gothic cathedrals (once the architects had learned how to support the roof without relying only directly on the walls) with slender walls, graceful spires and big windows, but it is impressive nonetheless. Its colour scheme is strangely monochrome on the outside, with light sandstone covered in black stains and they've managed to put little rooves on the twin towers out the front - something the Notre Dame and Nidaros (Trondheim) people might have considered. Inside is huge also and includes quite a large and interesting crypt. And it's a bit more monumental for its lack of frills like flying buttresses and the like, more like a fortress of god (which it was also in the early days). One more downside, though, is that (like the Öresund Bridge) it has nowhere nearby to stand to fully appreciate it. Most sides have buildings too near and the one good angle in the park next door has trees in the way. Not the end of the world, but a pity nonetheless.

After catching up with Maria (who stayed with us in Brisbane in early 2006) I headed down to Copenhagen for the day (storing my big backpack in the train station lockers) before heading back to Malmö to catch up with Lovisa (who was in Brisbane for a while late last year) and check out some of the Malmö festival which was on at the time. Next day we both went to Copenhagen for the day before heading out dancing in Malmö that night. Next day was spent resting and heading back to Lund to meet Emma.

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is a nice enough city. I have a friend who rated Copenhagen and Stockholm neck and neck for their favourite European city (before giving it to Copenhagen for the cheaper beer), but I don't really see Copenhagen as rivalling Stockholm on the beauty stakes - Stockholm's harbour (like Sydney's and, probably, New York's) is just too gorgeous. But it is a nice city nonetheless, and the vibe is a bit more laid back - I've heard people talk of the stuffiness of Stockholm and the friendliness of Copenhagen. The main shopping street goes through the old town with a string of squares along it, which is nice (though with a surprisingly large number of "3 card monty" scams being run - I don't know why people still get sucked into them but they were doing a better trade than a shearing shed). There's also a few nice churches. The harbour is quite ugly and the island where the castle and government buildings are on is imposing but didn't make me want to investigate further. The area of Nyhavn was a standout - a street of lovely different coloured houses with an Amsterdamesque canal running down the middle (apart from that, Copenhagen could do with a bit more paint like Stockholm has). First day I had a looksy around and then headed out to Christiania.

Christiania is a self declared, semi independent anarchic microstate occupying the site of the old military barracks on the other side of the harbour from the city centre. In 1971, shortly after the base was closed, squatters moved into the empty buildings. Autonomy was declared and government interference resisted until the present day with an anarchy system of government in place (decisions made collectively by consensus). Ordinary people in Copenhagen seem to have had a mixed view of Chistiania throughout its history. The Danes seem to be fairly tolerant and uninhibited people, and this sort of thing would appeal to a large number of them on principle of standing up to "The Man". The residents have also had some notable successes with some innovative responses to social problems (look up their methods for getting heroin out of their community in 1979) and have housed the homeless over Xmas when the city council refused to. But then again, it's easy to be charitable when you don't pay for land or taxes (ask Pat Rafter) - so there is a certain similarity to the Republican Party in the US (the RNC was on TV at the time I wrote this with lots of “we shouldn’t be unfairly forced to pay taxes, we have charities that do great work” rhetoric). The current right wing Danish government is open in its opposition to Christiania and is taking steps to "normalise" the community there including introducing "mixed ownership models" (ie trying to get yuppies to be able to move in and own property in there to try to dilute the whole enterprise (and with interesting echoes of the Howard Government's Indigenous Affairs policies). They also moved in to crack down on the open hash market that is a permanent fixture of the main street of Christiania ("Pusher Street"). It was a bit of a failure, though, as it meant that the pot market that had been contained in Christiania spread into Copenhagen proper and allowed more suppliers access to the market with an associated increase in gang issues. They have also put a cap on new building work. OK, well that's the official history that you could have got from Wikipedia (and pretty much did, via me), so what were my experiences?

The place has an interesting mix of run-down buildings, grafitti/murals and usable junk lying around on one hand, with some really interesting "private" houses built with in interesting styles (the "building without architecture" thing is big there) on the other. The best area for me was walking along the tops of the ramparts (the earth walls of the military base, near the canal) and enjoying the peace and seeing some of the cool houses (the crescent shaped one was my favourite). The area around Pusher St is just sad with skinhead pot dealers standing around looking fairly unfriendly (best not to loiter too long "they don't like people just looking around" - and the "No Photo" signs back that up). I'd say I counted upwards of 30 stands selling pot with probably 50-100 dudes standing around. Clearly the government crackdown hasn't really worked, except to further reduce the merchants' customer relations skills. There are a few nice cafes and bars around. I saw one with a runestone out the front carved in the traditional language of these things ("The Moon erected this stone and Eric the Red Carved it in the year 1996..."). At one end of Pusher St, is an open area (surrounded by a few bars) full of tables where the tourists smoke their souvenirs and, frankly, you can avoid the pushers themselves and soak up the atmosphere here for free over a few relatively cheap beers. It's fun enough, but probably a place that's better with a few friends. The people that weren't in the pot industry seemed friendly enough, on the way out I bought a shirt from a very friendly and helpful girl.

In all I have mixed thoughts about the place. As much as it tried to pretend to be this high and mighty community showing the world a better way, it's still just another tourist destination, relying on visitors for their economy (and they do have an economy, as much as they like to pretend they don't, everyone does - economics is just the study of how people distribute limited resources). The consensus style of government is OK, but isn't really shining light for the world, it probably only works in a small community. And that's one of the things I noticed, the whole place's attitude is like a small backwoods town (I guess the conflict with the current government doesn't help - a sense of persecution probably produces the same effect), and a bunch of redneck hippies is not really a great model to follow. But they are at least doing a few things differently and, above all, it's just an interesting place and idea. I spent most of the afternoon there and I'm not sorry I did. Every city has its churches and palaces and cobblestoned streets, but not all have their own semi-autonomous self-declared anarchic microstate.

Next day I went back to Copenhagen, this time with Lovisa for company. It was nice just hanging out with a friend and looking at a few sights. We went north to the Little Mermaid statue (notable only for the crowd of tourists crowded around it, probably all wondering why there's a crowd of people hanging around such a non-descript statue). There was a better statue on the way back that we saw of a Valkyrie charging on a tired looking horse: all the statue was focused on the point of the charge - cloak, spear, horse's head, even its mane. On the way up there we passed a bunch of fairly dull palaces (probably where Princess Mary hangs out now) with a nice church up the road. Frederick's Church is a nice marble affair that takes its cue from the Parthenon in Rome. No long naves or transepts, just a whopping great dome and lots of space under it. We also went up the Round Tower, an old observatory with a spiral cobbled ramp going up inside it. Nice view from the top too (could see Sweden and the Öresund Bridge in the distance). Apart from that it was just a day to wander with a friend. Lovisa is like a female version of one of my best and oldest friends, Kai, and so we could just crap on about all sorts of eclectic topics. My best memory from that day was just walking along the main drag, eating a big slice of watermelon I'd bought and shooting the breeze.

Skåne (continued)

In between days in Copenhagen, I went out with Lovisa and some of her friends to see a band play as part of the Malmö Festival. The Göteborg Festival had been in town the previous week, but with not much interest except from a bit of random nighttime rave dancing in a park near us. The Malmö festival had a bit more of interest (and someone to take me to the good things). The band we saw was called Kaizers’ Orchestra, an industrial gypsy band with stadium rock potential. They had a great Kurt Weil style organist (who was wearing a gas mask for some reason) fronting a rhythm section of drums and standup bass. There were two 44 gallon oil barrels on the stage that the two guitarists would often attack with pick handles for a great percussion effect (at one point the organist as playing along with a car wheel and tyre iron for a terrific multipart percussion). The singer had a great stage presence, with the crowd eating out of his hand - getting them to sing whole sections of the "daa daa dee" style choruses. All under a Big Day Out style tent. I followed Lovisa into the 4th row by walking around the side (it was surprisingly easy). Really great event. Afterwards we went out for some drinks to a cool place called Debaser, with some great Pixies references in the cocktail list.

The next night we went out swing dancing to an event with a live band. I had some great dances with a few different girls. The Skåne people are very friendly and sociable, I was hardly able to rest and cool down for people asking me to dance. Unfortunately the band were of the fast rock variety with too many fast songs all together, which I often found myself dancing with a beginnerish girl to. Afterwards, Lovisa and I and another dancer went out to a salsa club and then on to a reggae dance club, where I was about the only white guy in the room. I must say that dance reggae sure beats hiphop for those wanting to compensate for a perceived lack of melanin - and the clientele sure suggested it was popular with the more melanin assured. It was full of Gambians "disco dancing and cheating on their wives" as a Cameroonian had told Lovisa once, indicating a certain lack of solidarity in the Malmö African contingent (though according to a book I just finished, there's more genetic diversity in a small region of Africa than the rest of the world put together, so maybe they're entitled). It did all start to sound the same after a while, but then so does techno or hiphop or any style of music you dance to.

So after a sleep in the next morning, it was back to Lund to welcome Emma. We had dinner at Maria's and Kerstin came over to catch up as well. After a great night we went to bed to get ready to go for a drive in the Skåne countryside the next day. Maria had borrowed a car from a dance friend Håkan. Next day dawned cold and rainy, and after waiting for Lovisa to show up, the four of us (Maria, Lovisa, Emma and me) went for a drive. The countryside was amazing as we drove to the east coast of Skåne. We stopped at the seaside town of Kivik for some lunch before heading on to see a Viking burial mound consisting of a shallow pile of stones about 50m in diameter. Moving on we went for a walk in the rainy forest near Stenhuvud, admiring the broadleaf forest of the area. We ended with a visit to Ales Stenar ("Ale's Stones"), a stone circle on the southern Skåne coast. By this time it was pissing down rain, but we soldiered on (though we might have navied on if the rain had been much harder) up the steep hillside from the sea to the wind(and rain)swept, rolling, cow-filled meadow that the stones are on. The stones are about 1m tall each and arranged in a 30m (or so) boat shape with taller stones at each end. The whole arrangement overlooks the ocean. Apart from the fully clothed shower we were taking (umbrellas were useless against the wind) it was quite a spectacular setting. We got back to the car, borrowed some binbags from a shop to sit on, stripped off non-essential clothing and drove home like 4 drowned rats (that had been resuscitated, anthropomorphised and provided with transport).

That night we went to our first Kräftskiva ("Crayfish Plate"), a party held every August where Swedes get together and eat crayfish and drink lots of snaps. I'm not sure how this became a tradition, probably something to do with this being crayfish season or something. It's a slightly regional thing too, in the north, apparently they prefer to eat this ferment herring that is so foul smelling you have to open the can underwater. The crayfish are nowadays mostly not from Sweden (the ones we brought were from China) because I think I recall that the Swedish population was almost wiped out by an introduced disease a few decades ago. And since they weren’t really Swedish, I can report that you don't really get a lot of meat off a crayfish (at least not the way I was opening them). After ripping off the thorax (and essentially throwing it away), and then peeling the tail, you're left with about as much meat as you'd get from a large Aussie prawn, with about the same taste. But crayfish eating is not really the point, in the words of Håkan, "it's another excuse to get shitfaced." And get shitfaced we did, with lots of drinking songs and snaps toasts. The Swedes really get into their drinking songs too, when asked to provide an Australian one all I could meekly come up with was the old "Here's to _______, she's true blue..." one, followed by a few verses of Khe Sahn. I'm not sure it really rated with the Swedish ones though (as homework, any Aussies out there are welcome to provide some other Australian drinking songs that I may have missed). The people there were lovely (except for the guy "hosting" the thing who was a bit of a princess – if you were there you’ll know). We were engaged in friendly conversation all night by different people and no-one seemed to be stuck talking to us. Håkan (the guy who lent us his car and, it turned out, was one of the founders of the Swing scene in Lund) was plying us with his delicious lemon snaps all night in the vain attempt to get the Aussies rolling drunk and it was great to meet some more dancers and non-dancers.

Håkan was a really interesting guy and we got to talking about how the Swing scene in Lund started about 10 years ago (partly) with a regular nightclub event of neo-swing music and dressing up. Apparently some of the punk crowd (possibly rebelling further) really got into it, no doubt through the similarity between ska and neo-swing. One ballroom school taught Lindyhop at the time but a swing devoted school was started by popular demand of the social dancers. As a result, the Skåne scene is very much a social scene, with a really friendly, inclusive, partying vibe - not unlike the Brisbane scene I joined (interestingly, introduced by a punk-loving friend), which might be another reason the more performance oriented scene in Stockholm was so hard click with (though of course knowing people always helps).

Next day, after a long sleep-in and a walk around Lund, Emma hopped back on the train to Göteborg. The day after that, I headed back to Malmö to spend the day looking around that city (in the daytime this time) with Lovisa. Malmö is a great town - the third biggest city in Sweden, but also in a way an outer suburb of Copenhagen. The centre of town (once again enclosed by a canal/moat) has 3 main squares connected by pedestrian cobbled streets with lovely (painted) buildings around them and trees in them. It's nice contrast to Göteborg's fairly drab, unfoliated CBD (though they make up for it outside of the CBD). The castle, Malmöhus, is set in a wonderfully large park which we walked through towards the new Östhamn development out near the harbour. This is in complete contrast to the main town, with very modern buildings, though still with a small community feel, clustered around the Turning Torso Tower. The TTT is a residential skyscraper that does a really cool 90 degree twist from bottom to top, and is now a landmark of Malmö. And the whole development really works, partly because it is naturally separated from the old town, so that it forms two contrasting centres, rather than looking like one city that doesn't know who it is anymore.

That night it was back to Lund for the social dancing, and it was another great night of dancing (probably the best since I left Australia) with lots of fun girls in a hot theatre with very little ventilation, but that didn't matter. I also saw Pernilla and Peter, who we met from the cottage near Herräng, and who are really fun to dance with (or watch). There are a few of people in the Skåne scene who don't even take regular classes - another testament to their social dancing roots (and as one girl in Brisbane once told me "the girls in the 1930s didn't go to dance lessons" - though lessons are still great and keep going those that do (-:). One guy, Robert (another who made us very welcome at the Kräftskiva), had that great not-afraid-to-be-a-bit-silly style that our own Joel does so well. After the dancing, it was off to the pub for a few beers (luckily I was finally able to buy Håkan and Lovisa a few drinks for all that they'd done for me) at the Lund chapter of The Bishop's Arms, a chain of English style pubs I'd seen all over Sweden, that are very nice too.

On my final day in Skåne, I decided to make use of the Öresundrunt ticket, which allowed me to go across the bridge, along the Danish coast to Helsingor, across onto the ferry to Helsingborg in Sweden and back to Lund. This was in part to make up for not following my original plan to head into Denmark, up Jutland and get the ferry straight back to Göteborg which I didn't organise in time and Emma wasn't helping with. Shows what a great team we make I guess - I provide slightly more enthusiasm and willingness to get out of our comfort zone, she provides the organisational ability to make it happen. Although this was outside of the Skånetraffiken public transport system, I'd just like to say how well organised and integrated the transport is in the area - all my other travels between Lund, Malmö and Copenhagen was made on the system with one discount card that I could load money on as needed.

Given how late I set out from Maria's place, I decided to give intermediate stops a miss and head straight to Helsingor. The trip was OK, but the train line in Denmark was mostly behind fences and such, so no great views of the countryside. Helsingor, better known to English speakers as the Elsinor that Hamlet moped about in, is on the Danish side of the narrowest part of the strait between Denmark and Sweden (and between the North Sea and the Baltic). As a result, it has long been the site of a castle used to regulate trade and collect the Sound Toll that Denmark levied on all shipping from the 1400s to the 1800s (when they were finally convinced to give it up in return for a whopping great lump sum in the billions). The toll was originally a flat rate per ship, but later modified to be relative to the value of the cargo - the ships captain had to report the value BUT the Danes reserved the right to buy the cargo off him for that price (great way to prevent underestimates). The town is another nice little cobblestreeted number, but the Kronborg castle is the main highlight - out on a spit of land away from town, surrounded by walls and moats and ramparts and more moats and more walls and more ramparts. It's also within east sight of Sweden - about the distance across the wider parts of Pumicestone Passage near Brisbane. After that it was on the ferry for the 20min ride over to Helsinborg (the similarity in name can't be coincidence and both probably mean something like "Greeting fortress"). Helsingborg is a slightly bigger town, but with only 30min or so to look around before I had to head back I only saw the birthday cake of a town hall and the old castle keep on the hill overlooking the town. Both very nice. Then it was back to Lund, grab my stuff, say "hej då och tack för allt" to Maria and take the train back to Göteborg.

Göteborg (continued)

Back in Göteborg it was time to sleep a bit and recharge after a full week. On Friday (after watching the Democratic National Convention during the day whilst washing) we went out for a few drinks with Tim, our neighbour. Tim is an American physicist from the US working between Brisbane and Göteborg (small world) and another fun motormouth (in the best possible way). We went out to a bar down the street called Skål where VB stubbies were for sale and then headed off to another bar where an old bandmate of his was playing with his new band. And they were a great act too - "The Cat Killers": sort of upbeat indie punk not unlike the Grates (though with less PG lyrics). Fronted by a Swedish chick with attitude and a minor talent playing the saw, and a Scottish guitarist with great energy, stage presence and facial expressions and backed by a drummer and a British bass player that reclined on the floor the whole set (great counterpoint to the guitarist), they rocked the house pretty convincingly. Tim explained that the musos in Göteborg include a high proportion of expats who have Swedish girlfriends and no work permits. Anyway, Tim is back in Brissie now, so if an American with lots of curly hair turns up at swing dancing (and being a physicist he's genetically predisposed to have a go), be nice to him he seems like a top bloke.

Apart from a boat tour of the canals and river around the city, it was back to work after that planning our great UK and Ireland trip. Back to walking to the different libraries and exploring the town. I did have to go into Nordstan more than I'd have liked. It's the main shopping centre in town that looks like someone just threw a roof over some narrow shopping streets (and appropriately refurbished the interior). It's full title should be "Nordstan - Where shopping is a baffling ordeal" (to borrow a line from the Simpsons). It has like 2 maps of the place, but it doesn't tell you where the shops are, it just gives you the block they're in (and no indication of level). There are 8 blocks. It'd be like dividing Indooroopilly shopping Centre into 3 blocks (each end and the middle) and letting you work out the precise location for yourself - not much fun when you don't even know what shop you're looking for. That's one bit of culture shock we've noticed lately - in Australia you kind of know the main chains of bookshops, CD shops etc and can roughly guess where to find things. Here it's like learning that again from scratch (that's not anyone's fault or even a big problem, just something we noticed that we hadn't considered before).

So, after meeting up with Robert again for a final drink on our last Friday and buying a new pair of sunnies (long story – I lost my sunnies and bought a new pair ... hmmm, not as long as I thought), it was with heavy luggage that we left for the train station to get the train back to Örebro with 2 days to finish prepare for our 3 week trip to the UK and Ireland.

It was great to settle in one place for a few weeks and really get to explore it. We didn’t interact with as many locals as we’d have liked (blame that on shyness and our natural insularity I guess), but we did meet a few really nice people. Hopefully our next couple of work stints will be just as great.

Switzerland and northern Italy

besoka — Thu, 7 Aug 2008 23:43:00 GMT

After getting back from Herräng on Saturday 19 July (no thanks to Swedish public transport), we had just a couple of days to wash and get ready for our trip to Switzerland. On the following Tuesday we hopped on the train for our detour to Karlskrona. Emma's cousin Anna's sambo Magnus comes from a small island off Karlskrona (in Blekinge in south-east Sweden) called Aspö (literally Ash [tree] Island, despite there being no ash trees there). OK, first, "sambo" (sum-boo) is a great Swedish word for a couple that live together (literally "same live/dwelling"), which I reckon is way better than "partner" (which to me still implies same sex or business relationships) or "de facto" (which implies criminal proceedings). Karlskrona was built in the 1600s shortly after southern Sweden was taken off the Danes, and was a warm(ish) water port for the Swedish navy to use as a base to protect Swedish lands in northern Germany at the time (they were doing quite well at this period in their second golden age under Gustav II Adolph and Karl XI). In fact the place was only really decommissioned in the 1970s or so. It is protected by 4 islands in the harbour through which there is only one real deep water approach (and this is guarded by fortresses on Aspö and the other island). Aspö is the only island of the 4 with no bridge to the mainland, served instead by a publicly funded ferry, so the island is still fairly quiet with locals and a few holidayers. The vibe is not unlike Magnetic Island and it's got these cool stone-wall-lined country lanes all over it that are just lovely. Magnus' parents Benny and Gun were lovely hosts, even though they had the whole family living in their house and granny flats in the back yard at the time. We also got to finally have a bit of a night out in Karlskrona with Anna and (eventually) Magnus and his old friend Kubbe (nights out in Sweden are an interesting affair given the cheapest beer costs about $10 a pint - but it costs what it costs I guess and you get on with it). After our 3 days on Aspö, Anna and Magnus drove us through the wheat fields of Skåne to Malmö to catch the train to Copenhagen to get our flight to Zurich. This was way (about 300km) out of their way home to Örebro, so big thanks guys! Interestingly, since we were leaving the EU at this point, we finally got our passports stamped for about the first time in Europe, in a country we were in for 2 hours! After our 3 country day, we had an early night in a hotel near the airport in Zurich.

Next day we got our 6 day Switzerland rail pass activated (giving us unlimited travel on trains, ferries and public transport - all except for a few tourist lines where we got discounts) and hopped on the train south across the Alps to Como. This was a nice way to ease into the Alpine landscape. While we were around about the Goddard tunnel, the conductor clipped our ticket and started telling us a few facts about the train. He was clearly enthusiastic about trains so we happily let him give us the free tour guide treatment, including pointing out the bits where the line spirals and figure-8s it's way around the valleys on each side of the tunnel to gain height without having to go up too steep a gradient - something you'd be hard pressed to notice yourself, with most of it being in U-shaped tunnels (though you may notice a few other tracks up or down the valley wall - that's where you've been or are going). Traffic was backed up through the car tunnel with about a 3hr delay - our guide told us that on busy days like that it can be quicker to go over the top of the pass and that they're building a new tunnel lower down to ease the congestion through one of the main routes across the Alps.

We left the German part of Switzerland on the north of the tunnel and came out into the Italian part (Ticino), and the architecture immediately changed to Mediterranean. We hopped off the train in Lugano, a on a very sloping part of a lake shore (we took a funicular from the station to the town centre after dumping our bags in a locker). Lugano is like Italy that's been given a bit of a wash - the Italian enthusiasm was there, but the buildings were clean (and, unusually for romance peoples, they'd discovered paint) and things worked (because we were still in Switzerland). It was a lovely place where we walked through town, had some spaghetti at a spaghetti restaurant (very nice too) and had a stroll along the lake shore. Another thing that's great about Switzerland was that the exchange rate with the Aussie dollar is about 1.01 - so we were temporarily free of mental calculations!

We hopped back on the next train 2 hours later to continue on to Como, just over the border in Italy. We'd paid for tickets from Ciasso (the border where our Swiss passes stopped working) to Como, a 4 minute journey that we could have saved $18 on if we'd bought them on the train since no one looked at them and we could have ridden for free. We didn't yet know the complete lack of organisation on Italian railways and assumed they worked like the Swiss ones (i.e. well).

So we hopped off the train at what we assumed was Como, despite the complete lack of signage (at least our Tomas Cook European Rail Timetable told us we should be there at that time - and it didn't let us down once). Como is a city at the end of Lake Como (named for the town) - a lambda-shaped lake formed by crisscrossing folds in the earth's crust filling with water (the part that goes down to Lecchio looks like it's probably the same fold that Lugano's lake is in). It was festival time in Como, which consisted of a very loud rock trio doing a very loud sound check (including playing the first half of the same song over and over) on a stage in the main square for most of the afternoon we were walking around there. The lake is lovely though and the gelati we got from this small shop in a side street was to die for (Jill, I'm sure it wasn't the one you recommended but the dark chocolate was even better than the pistachio - we went back for more the next day). I should say that the weather the whole trip so far had been hot, humid and hazy and this was to continue until we were back in Switzerland. This made for some sweaty weather (30+ and humid is hot by any Brisbane standards) and unfortunately made the views of the lake less than perfect - instead of reflecting the blue sky it was left a bit grey looking.

Next day we headed up the funicular we saw on the east side of the lakefront, which went way up to a nice little village on the top of the mountains overlooking the lake (they come down pretty much to the lake shore all the way along, being a fold in the earth and al - Como is on the bit of the fold at the end that extends past where the water is). The views were nice (apart from the hazy conditions), but were hard to find and most of the views were hogged by houses - unfortunately a common occurrence in Italy where the best bits are walled up by the rich and there is no sense of "public good" in this country where "every man for himself" seems to be the vibe (they'll screech to a halt when you're legally crossing a pedestrian crossing and glare at you for rudely slowing them down). OK, that's possibly a bit harsh and some of the Italians were lovely (and those who know me well will recognise my Italian heritage), but it does at least make you appreciate the commitment to public space that you see in Australia and many other countries.

Anyhoo, back in Como we hopped on the ferry along the lake to Bellagio, the last town right up in the crotch of the lake. The ferry ride was pleasant enough and it disgorged us at a gorgeous tiny little town of terraces of old stone buildings sloping down to the lake shore. We spotted our hotel's name (Hotel Suisse I think) on one of the hotels on the pretty little main square on the lakefront right in front of the ferry terminal. Given we weren't paying a fortune we assumed it must be a billboard or something pointing us to the remote outskirts of town or something, but closer (gradually less dubious) investigation indicated that this was in fact our hotel. Our room was out the back overlooking a side alley/steps but the whole place was a real old-school hotel with quaintness written all over it and no water pressure (which we forgave it). Bellagio is a small town consisting of 2 parallel "drivable" (to a European) streets - one along the lake front (despite a few obstacles that made it more of a cul-de-sac car-park) and one further up the hill. These are joined by about 10 alleys that are actually cobblestone stairs up the hill (it was fun to watch the wheeled suitcase brigade trying to drag their luggage around) and another alley between the two main streets.

Since it was a hot day, and still fairly early since the only travel that day had been the 1hr ferry ride, we set off to look around, find some lunch and find a spot to swim in the lake. The first swimming spot right on the tip of the fork in the lake had no-one actually swimming - a general turn off when you need swimmers to indicate where swimming is advisable, so we headed (very sweatily) back through town past the usual overpriced restaurants until we found a god sent takeaway place to buy some slices of pizza from. Then we continued along the lakeshore back in the direction of Como to find the other swimming place. As we were passing the car ferry we noticed more and more motorbikes drowning out the peace of the village. "Where's the motorbike convention?" I dryly quipped to Emma. Then we realised that we'd walked into the middle of the annual motorbike convention (It was a Sunday BTW), with enthusiasts showing off their vintage motorbikes in some sort of judging parade. The vintage nature of the bikes at least made these guys eccentric enthusiasts rather than wanker revheads, but the continual roar of engines was starting to jangle our little piggy nerves and we continued towards the "beach". Unfortunately this took us (and the rest of the stream of pedestrians) along a narrow (albeit 2 lane) country lane with high walls on each side (built by another Italian with no sense of public space) and no footpaths. This would have been lovely if it wasn't also the main road into town and full of cars and motorbikes whizzing past. We eventually turned off where we could, down through a couple more villages (they pack 'em close in them thar parts) and down along a stream/drain to the beach". This was another stony affair, but at least there were people swimming. So we changed and limped into the water for a bit of a dip. It was nice enough but certainly not worth the journey.

That night we had a lovely dinner with a table overlooking the lake gradually growing darker and a particularly nice house red before hitting the sack. Next day we arose early(ish) and walked over to the other side of the promontory to the little village of Pescallo, on the the branch of the lake that goes towards Lecco (known as Lake Lecco despite it being part of the same lake). This was a nice little, slightly more traditional, village of fishing boats and market gardens (if my family is anything to go by, if southern Italians will concrete over any lawn they own, the Alpine variety will dig it up for a vegie garden). We wandered back to the hotel, checked out, found a shady bench on the lakefront and waited there for about 2hrs for the ferry, eating our takeaway pasta from the takeaway shop. It was lovely.

The very pleasant ferry ride took us the 2hrs or so to Collico at the north end of the lake where we had about 10min to find the train station and catch the train to Tirano. We lugged our gear to the train station and got our tickets with about 3min to spare and waited. And waited. Eventually we asked a guard that spoke English and he told us that the train was delayed by 50min! We then realised what the extra column on the departures screen meant - they had columns for "Departure time", "Destination", "Platform" and "How late the train is expected to be". We were back on Trainitalia. When the original time plus the delay amount approached (they make you work it out yourself), I looked back inside at the screen (there was no screen or even signage on the platforms or the trains) and noticed that the Delayed column was now saying 1:20. So we waited some more till I saw that the figure was now 1:40. An announcement said (I think, it was in Italian) that the Tirano train would arrive in 20min ("venti"?). 10min later a train arrived and people got excited, we pointed to the train and asked the guard hopefully "Tirano?" - the only way we could find to overcome the complete lack of signage and our lack of Italian, the guard nodded so we madly grabbed our stuff and hopped on, double checking with another passenger when we sat down.

About 30min into the trip the train stopped at Sondrio and people got off and others were getting on. The old man across the aisle (and not, I might add, the guy we'd asked when we got on) asked us if we were going to Tirano. We said yes and he told us we had to change trains, as he was doing. We madly grabbed our stuff again and ran after him down the walkway to another platform and hopped on the train. We got talking to him and he told us he'd been to Australia a few years before and driven a campervan from Cairns to Perth around the southern coast for about 3 months (despite his English being only marginally better than our Swedish). When we got off at Tirano we thanked him profusely for saving our butts back there as he headed off to catch his bus to Bormio. We saw him later after we'd checked in, when we looked for the bus stop to Mazzo for the next day and he helped us AGAIN by grabbing a bus timetable for us. He was such a nice man and we sent lots of good karma his way. We found our hotel (once again right on the square overlooking the train station) and were checked in by a lovely young lady who spoke perfect English (which was just a relief more than anything for our tired little brains) and checked in.

We asked her if there was a place to get shoes repaired, since my walking boots were starting to split on the sole, a problem I'd noticed a few days earlier but hadn't been able to do anything about with Sundays and small towns and such. She said there was a place right behind the hotel (no sign, you just have to know - though the shoe-repairing equipment in the window helps the identification). I went there next morning thinking I'd have to get some glue or something since they were my only pair of shoes and I couldn't leave them there all day. The lovely lady working there didn't speak English but some pointing at the problem did the job, she said (and motioned) "5 minutes" and motioned me to sit and take them off. So after some quick gluing and clamping and me noticing another (more serious) split and her fixing that and then me getting her to patch up a couple of scuff marks with some sort of resin, she polished them up and said "3 euros". I was so happy I gave her 3.50.

Later that morning we got on the bus to Mazzo di Valtellina, a village about 10km north up the valley towards Bormio where my grandfather (Giacomo Lazzarini) was born and raised. It's a lovely little stone village rising in a narrow strip up the valley side from the grey Valtellina river, with cobbled streets and a couple of little churches. The old town is only about 3 streets wide and about 3 times that distance up the valley wall, with newer houses built around it. Oddly enough it reminded me most of the Pioneer Valley (the sugar growing area immediately west of Mackay) which, coincidentally enough, is where Giacomo settled and raised his family. So we wandered around, took photos, breathed in the atmosphere, had lunch outside the only corner shop in town, sitting in the shade of the church tower, walked up the valley side, saw a castle tower that someone lives in now, saw some more farmhouses (including one gorgeous old one that looked like it had been re-re-repaired over centuries) and Alpine meadows and generally enjoyed being in a typical little village in the area (I think only about 200 people live there). Dad: I'll give you the in depth tour when we get back, everyone else: I'll move on. We spent about 5 hours there before we decided it was enough and it was time to go home - though it was only back in Tirano that we realised that there was a cemetery there, potentially full of my ancestors. Oh well. For the record, the main agriculture in the region seemed to be apple orchards, with some corn on the valley floor. Many of the fields and meadows were not under cultivation at the peak of the growing season, suggesting they were for fodder or that farming has since become uneconomical.

Back in Tirano we had a bit of a walk around, including a really nice Basilica on the edge of town, before dinner and a wind down watching the best TV of the trip (about 5 music channels including a "best of the 90s" show - the best decade for music for anyone as young (or old) as us).

Next morning we hopped on the train back into Switzerland over the Bernina pass. We were relieved that this was on a completely separate line (with a separate station, though next door) to the Italian one, so that it wouldn't be contaminated with Italian train gremlins. I recommend Trainitalia to anyone who enjoys the full gamut of human emotions, from boredom to confusion, back to boredom, followed by mad panic, more confusion, more mad panic and, finally, relief at getting to the destination at all. For everyone else, take the Swissrail experience - clean trains that work and run on time with signage.

The train went through town (along a main street at one point near the basilica) and up a narrow valley into Switzerland (the border is near the bottom of the valley, only a few km from Tirano). It does a couple of spirals to gain height (but this time one of them was not in a tunnel so we got to see the rollercoaster as it unfolded), before snaking its way up, past a lake into a more Swiss-looking valley. Then it takes an unexpected turn away from the main valley up the wall into a smaller valley, with more switchbacks, before going over the tree line (I looove being above the tree line) to the Bernina pass. Down the other side we glimpsed about 3 glaciers before winding back into a wide valley and turning up another towards St Moritz. We got off one stop before at Cellerina, where our hotel was. One other great thing about Swissrail is that (most of) the trains have big windows that you can open and lean out of (safely) to get a great view, smell the mountain air and take lots of photos. I looove hanging out of a big train window above the tree line.

This trip only took about 4 hours, so we had to wait for our room to be ready while we tried to find some lunch from somewhere that was a) open and b) not ridiculously overpriced. We opted for a supermarket lunch of potato salad and (yum) bircher museli. Once we could check in we headed in to St Moritz to see what all the fuss was about.

St Moritz is a nice enough town, but my god is it touristy. And even though the buildings are probably pretty old, there's an odd pre-fab look to the place, like it's Switzerlandland or something. We thought about going up one of the mountains on the chairlift, but they wouldn't even give us a discount for our Swiss Pass and $80 each to get to the top looked about as steep as the mountain, so we declined. Lucky too since the weather turned from sunny to rainy about 15min later and we would have wasted our money and time. One good thing we found in St Moritz was a jewellers shop (like Prouds but more expensive - including a bafflingly high priced mobile phone costing about $4000) that for some reason also had models of traditional houses from different parts of Switzerland in them. And they were large dollhouse big, detailed, presumably accurate type models too, so we got a museum type experience in a jewellers window for free in St Moritz. Nice. The other thing St Moritz has is a big blue valley lake, but unfortunately with the cloudy weather it wasn't looking its best and we headed back to Cellerina for dinner and rest. We had dinner in the hotel, which was a bit of a cafeteria type all-you-could-eat dealy but it was not too dear and lively enough and we had some cheap local beer that was delicious (Calanda) with an amazingly clean finish. Also nice.

Next day we hopped on the "Glacier Express" to Zermatt. There are at least 2 things wrong with this train's name. In addition to this, it was the only train where a seat reservation was compulsory, adding $30 each to the cost and giving us a seat in a coach with "panorama" windows. These go high up the sides and partly over the roof. The downside is that they don't open and so you get a view that is marred by internal reflections galore, ruining any photos. I was grumpy. Then we saw that the food on board was all in the $30 plus range. That didn't improve our mood. They did have a nice audio guide with interesting info on the sights, the train and Swiss geography and history, which was some consolation. Then that stopped working, along with the air-conditioning. It was at this point the real downside to the panorama windows revealed itself, this being the first really sunny day of the trip. They eventually fixed the problems and gave us a $10 sausage platter and $10 cheese platter that I had to look on a different menu to find (though it took them about 3hrs to collect our money). The whole day's trip took about 8hrs, which is probably about 3hrs too long for real enjoyment (and, unlike about 3 other trains we took in Switzerland, we didn't see any glaciers - for those of you still confused about the second sentence of this paragraph).

On the positive side though, the train went through some great scenery, starting in the Engadin region (the headwaters of the Inn river that runs through Innesbruk in Austria and (presumably) into the Danube where they still speak raetoromanish (romansh), a collection of local dialects derived from Latin, in the same way French, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Provencal and Romanian are - with most similarities to French as far as I could see and a heavily German influenced vocabulary. We then went over into the headwaters of the Rhine and through perhaps the most beautiful part of the route, with lush high mountain valleys and more spirally track (including the semi-famous bit where the track curves over a viaduct and straight into a tunnel in a cliff-face). Then down into Chur along an ancient trading route over the Alps (and reason for the high concentration of castles in the area), before heading up another branch of the Rhine headwaters towards the pass at Andermatt (the same pass we'd gone under in the Goddard Tunnel, except this time going east-west rather than north-south). Along the way we passed the Rhine Gorge, known (badly) as Europe's Grand Canyon, caused by the Rhine eventually bursting through the pulverised debris left by a huge ancient landslide. It was spectacular enough, but to this boy from Charters Towers, it had an unfortunate resemblance to mine tailings. Over the pass we went (above the tree line, mmmmmm tree line) and down into the headwaters of the Rhone to Brigg, before heading up the side valley to Zermatt.

Zermatt is cool. It's a ski resort like St Moritz, but instead of looking like it thinks it's too good for you, it has a lovely rustic feel, with all the buildings made of that larchwood that's been blackened by the sun (as the audio commentary had explained). There may be too many of them for all of them to be original (i.e. most are probably pre-fab), and the place may be full of tourists but that doesn't seem to matter (and bear in mind we were at the end of a long day and looking for a reason to be grumpy). And at least these tourist were hardcore - with few wheely suitcases in sight and groups walking through town with ice-picks strapped to their backpacks! Adding to the wonderful vibe is the lack of cars, which are not allowed in the town – visitors have to park them in the next town down the valley and take the train up. We paid $10 extra for a room with a view of the Matterhorn and it was worth it, standing there like an icy Coonowrin with the setting sun illuminating it in contrast to the dark valley. Ahh.

That night after a supermarket dinner (including a 90c can of beer) I consulted my Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable (best $30 we spent for this trip) and worked out another 8hr journey to get us to Interlaken via Montreaux (with a 2hr stop for lunch) and we went to bed. Next morning I woke up and the first thing I said to Emma was "Why don't we take the more direct train to Interlaken and go up to Gonergrat instead?" So we took the narrow gauge tourist line (complete with rack and pinion to climb the steep track) to Gonergrat, the station at the end of the line at 3052m, overlooking the Matterhorn and 5 glaciers. And it was f'ing worth it! I was in heaven hanging out of an open train window above the tree line looking at snow covered mountains and the grasses and mosses you see up there (and we saw 3 marmots on the way down). While up there we walked down the rocky track a bit to get a better view of the glaciers and marvelled at just how thin the air is up there as we huffed our way back up to the train station. If I were to go there again I would spend more time up there - the ticket wasn't included in the Swiss Pass, but we got a 50% discount making it only $38 each, and for that you can ride the trains up and down all day between the 5 or so stations. Lots of people were hiking, and a few were mountain biking (kitted up with body armour) down the paths. Even going to the top and hiking to the next station down would be worth it, but unfortunately we only had an hour to spend at the top and marvel in the great view of the Matterhorn and a glacier with 4 tributaries (I know I said that before but it was so cool!).

So then we got the train back to Zermatt, grabbed our stuff and headed off to Interlaken. We took the more direct train from Brigg to Speiz via the Lötchberg pass (though it still went through a tunnel, not the base tunnel though, that would be silly). We entered the tunnel in hazy, only slightly cloudy weather and emerged 10min later on the north side of the Alps into constant heavy rain - just goes to show the influence the Alps have on weather systems. So rather than looking around rainy Speiz or rushing to get the ferry to Interlaken (for the more scenic route), we just got the first train to Interlaken, found our hotel and checked in, safe in the knowledge that we'd done the best we could that day given the weather, and that Montreaux would most likely have had shitty weather too so we probably didn't miss much.

Interlaken is a nice enough town. As its name suggests, it is built on a flat area between two lakes. I theorise it may be on the site of an ancient landslide that filled in the middle of a valley lake, but I don't know for sure. The lakes have a strange light powder-blue colour (possibly from limestone in the water), like an over-chlorinated pool, and the river that runs from one lake to the other through town (with quite a current and a few distributaries) is kind of freaky for that reason, giving the place a slight tropical 5star resort feel. Interlaken is also a bit overpriced and has quite a few wanker cars driving around. It was also the Swiss national day and so fireworks were going off pretty much all night in every direction (we took a sleeping pill to sleep through it). It is also the nearest town to the Jungfrau region.

The next day we went to this region, paying for the trip ourselves rather than use the Pass since we only had a 6 day pass for 7 days travel in Switzerland and, with a 50% discount available for having the Pass and much of the route to Jungfrau not included, it was only $11 dearer each. The trains to Jungfrau (literally translated as "young woman" but meaning "virgin") go by two different routes (one via Lauterbrunen and the other up a different valley to Grindlewald) that converge at Kleine Scheidegg. From there the train tunnels almost the whole way up to Jungfrau, at 3500m the highest train station in Europe. We went via Lauterbrunen on the way up, a nice little village in an alpine valley with meadows and waterfalls and that kind of thing. The train from Kleine Scheidegg to Jungfrau is fairly packed and there are only 2 places where it stops for 5min at windows in the tunnel to get off and look at the view (so don't feel the need to rush on for a seat with a good view). They did have a film on the building of the track and so on (about 1900) with captions in English, despite there being room for more languages.

Anyway, Jungfraujoch itself is way above the snowline, on a saddle between Jungfrau and Mönch peaks. From it you can see north towards Interlaken (though this was mostly cloud on the day we were there) and south down the Aletch Glacier, the longest in Europe, as it snakes away down the valley into the distance. It really is very spectacular. You can also go out onto the snow (at the very top of the glacier's catchment) with activities like snowboarding (about 50m along a slushy track) and hiking (you can see ant-trails of hikers on guided tours of the glacier). There was also an Ice Palace - made of tunnels and statues cut into ice - and I'm pretty sure it was the ice of the glacier since there were sediment strata in the ice. That was pretty damn cool too. After about 2.5 hours and lunch up there we decided to head home. We did have a great time talking to a Kiwi couple on the train down - it was great to relax into the familiar again, as well as swap travel stories with people who had about as many as us (including a funny incident with Spanish immigration when trying to come back from Morocco after previously overstaying in Spain - the guards accidentally took them back to Moroccan soil while trying to find a park and had to let them go). We stopped off at Grindlewald for an hour or so, but by then we were too tired to enjoy it and saw no more than the touristy main street before jumping back on the (full) train for an ordinary ride back down. Overall it was a wonderful experience, but we both have a soft spot for Gonergrat (near Zermatt). Jungfrau is a slick operation, run much like a ski resort (Perisher Blue for example) with 4 restaurants and a lot of the action is in tunnels in the mountain and indoors (for the simple reason that it's cold and snowy outside, makes it hard to walk around), whereas Gonergrat was a bit more raw and outside on the rocky mountain and we felt like it was punching above its weight. Both are fantastic though, and maybe if the cloud had lifted on the north side of Jungfrau we might have changed our ranking.

Next day was fine weather (the day before was fine with a bit of cloud) and so we took the ferry along the Breinzer See to Brienz, a nice hour or so of looking at mountains and blue lake. At Brienz we decided to stop for a while, put our bags in a locker and hang out in the hot weather near the cool lake. I had a swim in the cool blue waters, but poor old Emma was too shy to get changed into her togs in public (despite all of my helpful suggestions and encouragement) and missed out. We hopped on the train in the mid afternoon and headed to Luzern (aka Lucern, but not to be confused with Lausanne) near Geneva (also, Tirano is not to be confused with Turino). It was a hot, slightly grumpy train ride, though the trip down the valley in the canton of Obwalden was quite nice, and the people sitting opposite were interesting to listen to - she was an older German speaking local, he was a young Indian she was hosting (for some reason) and so she was telling him about the area in English in a calm, methodical, relaxing, Zen way.

We really liked Luzern. It sits at the outlet to the Vierwaldstätter See (Lake of the Four Cantons) on a crystal clear river with a lovely old town of cobbled streets, nice churches and old wooden covered bridges. One of these, the Chapel Bridge, is the main attraction in town. It's a wooden footbridge from the 1400s or so with a singled roof, paintings in the rafters and flowers growing down each side. And they were really blooming when we were there with geraniums, petunias and begonias adding a stripe of colour along the old brown structure zigzagging its way across the river. The middle bit was damaged by a fire in the 1990s, losing many of the paintings of grisly counter-reformation scenes, but luckily they had a bunch in storage from when the bridge had been shortened over the centuries to build quays along the riverbanks, so they put then in instead, leaving a gap of some singed areas as a reminder. Halfway along there is a stone tower in the middle of the river reminding all that the bridge used to be part of the city wall (other parts of which are still there too).

The whole town has a Prague-like feel to it and is really lovely. The afternoon we arrived we lugged our stuff the long way to our hotel and set off in search of somewhere to swim (so Emma could have a dip this time). We walked through the old town along the river and out to the lake shore and along to the swimming spot, a beach with a grassy park behind where many locals were enjoying a Sunday evening. The water was perfect - not cold, and lovely and clear and we swam for a while before getting some takeaway food and beers from a kiosk and enjoying a lovely dinner by the lake. We walked back to the hotel and I enjoyed another nice beer from the soft-drink vending machine in the hallway as I leaned on our rooftop windowsill looking at the other rooftops along the cross-streets we were on. And when I say rooftop I mean the lovely old 18th and 19th century 5 storey European buildings with turrets and spires and generally ornate rooves, not concrete blocks. It was magical.

The swans in Luzern deserve a mention for their strange local custom of swimming around with one foot tucked behind their backs. We couldn’t figure out whether it was just what the cool swans were doing in Luzern this summer (“If you don’t tuck, you’re a duck”) or if some weirdo was going around crippling swans, since it looked fairly awkward. Maybe they were just showing how easy it was for them to swim in such clear water. The only vaguely sensible reason we could come up with was that a lot of them seemed to be preening a lot, so maybe it was moulting season and they were just swimming around in between scratching. Nevertheless it was odd and we didn’t notice any swans in other cities exhibiting this behaviour, including in nearby Zurich the next day.

Next day, after a few hours having another good look around the old town, we caught the train to Zurich, via Zug. We were becoming a little travel weary by then so we didn't stop off anywhere on the short 1hr trip. We were pleasantly surprised to find our hotel close to the train station and river and not far from the old town. We dumped our stuff and caught a flatboat on the river and out to the lake (partly to see it, partly to squeeze the last bit of value from our Railpass). The lake was nice - a bit like Lake Como in that it was long and fairly developed along the sides, but the weather was turning again and it wasn't shown off to its best. We wandered back from the lakefront through the old town and were almost as impressed as we were with Luzern. Zurich had a slight Paris feel, but clean (the river and the buildings) and with a lovely lake out the front. We found the place where you can swim in the river, but by then it was about 8:30 so we wandered back to the hotel for a supermarket dinner.

Next day was mostly spent travelling (after another brief look around) - train to airport at midday, flight to Stockholm, long wait for bus to train and home at midnight.

We both really enjoyed Switzerland, with the mountains, glaciers, meadows, lakes and exchange rate. One downside was that smoking laws are a bit behind the rest of the first world, but at least they don’t do the whole tipping thing, which really irritates me when it’s forced on you in Spain, France and Italy. For gods sake just tell us how much things cost up front. If you let me work out how much your labour is worth, then why not let me work out what the food is worth too – “I’ll give you $20 for the great service but the food was a bit crap so I’ll only pay the chef $2”. Italy was also nice, except for the train system and the individualistic attitude. I think Italy is definitely better the further north you go though. And it was lovely to connect (however loosely) with my roots. Highlights were Tirano (and Mazzo), Zermatt (and Gonergrat) and Luzern for places and Tirano-St Moritz, Gonergrat and Junfrau for railways.

But above all it was the mountains that were the highlight, and Switzerland has a whole range to choose from (three mountain puns [of a sort] in one sentences, not bad). Thinking about them back in Narvik I pondered why they are so awe inspiring to me. We live as small patches of civilisation amongst a thin layer of life sandwiched between almost infinite rock below us and infinite space above us, which we spend most of our time ignoring, looking sideways around us as we do. So when some of the rock sticks up into that space, bypassing our layer completely and occupying our line of sight, we are reminded of how small our layer is and how great the forces and timespans are that not only raised that big hunk of rock up there but also much more of it, only to weather most of it away leaving a relatively small, huge reminder of the whole shebang.