SWEDEN

SWEDEN!

Our first adventure....THE LAKE!

I am going to try and tell the story of our (Trish and I) trip to Sweden in words (as few as possible and photos (too many). We were there for three weeks in August, 2005, visiting Trish's sister, Valerie, and her 2 lovely daughters, Katherine and Jessica, and their husbands, Henrik and Nicklas, and their pile of children. The weather was near perfect except for a week of cold rain at the beginning of the trip when we were at a lake (Lilla Tomsjön = 'little Tom's lake') where Valerie has a beautiful 1840's cabin and where we stayed for 5 days or so.

The woods! The cabin! The neighbors place.

We were lavishly entertained by Valerie and her friends who also had cabin down by the lake. Lasse and Suzanne and Malin and Per were very wonderful and gave us the traditional "welcome" to Sweden crayfish dinner! Whoa............which consisted of a gigantic stack of crayfish, shots of Schnapps, and Swedish songs about eating crayfish and we had to wear crayfish hats. Lasse teaches at the University in Uppsala and they let us stay in their turn of the century right in the middle of the city apartment for 4 days!

Our welcome on TV. Eating the crayfish. Nice outhouses.

Valerie had to work on all the windows (below) on her front porch before Winter so we helped. They had to be scraped and puttyed up and painted and then put back in and after we hung the door back on it actually opened! The most exciting part was when Valerie was sanding the front door she observed a vision of a Saintly (Jesus?) looking person on the surface! We thought of putting it on Ebay for sale.

Painting. The door opens! Money in the bank!

Katherine and Henrik. Using the scythe. The Golf ball in the woods!

Sven and Henrik On the lake. Our catch!

We picked mushrooms in the woods. Oops!

Valerie's church.

Interior of the church Valerie got married in 30 years ago in Halisfors. The nearest town to where we were by the lake. It was about a 45 minute drive on back roads and dirt roads to get to the lake. Valerie took us to several other small towns around the area on one day outings. The town of Halisfors is surrounded by some 400 lakes. Sweden has a lot of lakes so it was really fun to get to be out of the city and stay in the country and eat and eat and eat.

UPPSALA!

Typical street. Uppsala cathedral.

Our next destination was the city of Uppsala. A University town of like a campus of 40,000. A Historical city with many beautiful buildings and parks and castles and rivers and all kinds of things. We would venture out of the apartment we were in downtown and shoot out to see what was there and we saw a lot.

Lasse and Suzanne's apartment. Campus building. Castle garden.

Gustavianum Museum. Anatomical Theater. Egyptian pots.

Boat trip to the Castle. The Castle! Gamula Uppsala

STOCKHOLM

We shot into Stockholm, a huge city of 2 million people on the Baltic sea, where Valerie had arranged for us to stay in Jessica and Nicklass's apartment which was in a working neighborhood that was so fantastic and where near by was a corner pizza cafe that we ate in like 3 times ran by some people from Turkey! We managed to eat quite abit no matter where we were.

Cathedrals covered in plastic. Subway tunnel. Subway tiles.

Door sculptures. Floating sculpture.

Just walking. Museum on the main park.

We spent two days in the Moderna Museet which had a great collection of modern art (mostly American 60's and 70's) and wonderful show of a Swedish sculptor, Lar Englund. Another show downstairs was the collages of Jocum Norstrom which were just out standing.

Super installation. Great art collection. Fantastic coffee shop

View from Valerie's apartment. The Kings house. Great street.

Valerie's friend Peter Kylberg.

GOTLAND

We spent our last 5 days on Gotland which is to the Swedish people what Hawaii is to America. An island where you can go jump sit on the beach except in Gotland the water is really cold and it doesn't exactly get hot enough to put on a bathing suit but everyone was decked out in their summer clothes which they wear for several weeks and getting a tan. We toured the historic city of Visby which is built inside of a huge stone walled fort overlooking the harbor. We would drive around looking for historic site markers and then go see what was there..............everything from very early churches to Viking sites. We went to a wedding where we were the baby sitters for Jessica and Nicklas's children. We ate the most delicious fish soup in a little restaurant on a beach. Um

Our car ferry. The Baltic. Inside our ship.