Sweden Yah!

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  Karlstad, Swedish Lakeland, Sweden
Monday, June 22, 2009

Hej Hej,

Forget your summer plans to Southern Europe. Just let it go. Sweden is the place to visit! This is a gorgeous country with lots of water, rolling farmlands, forests, and wide open spaces. You can enjoy much more than pickled herring if it's not for you. You have to occasionally remember that winter is another animal, but for a summer trip, worth a visit.

We used Ryan Air to make it up here, and then headed to the town of Karlstad; about 3h West of Stockholm. Our friends Lina and Johan, and their new baby Naemi took us to their home in Edeby, North of Karlstad. They found an old house on the river and have been restoring it for the past few years into a beautiful place worthy of a magazine. We were very excited for a week without any schedules or sights to check out. It was really nice to just relax.

Near the house is a bike trail (did I say relax?) that stretches for over 50mi through the Varmland. It puts the Burke Gilman to shame, but we remind ourselves that it’s probably covered in snow for half the year. Johan took us out on some "classic" cycles with brakes in the pedals for a tour of the area. We also visited the town of Karlstad where he works. We visited the local park which has lots of great features including a nature center. Stopher smelled the beaver (according to the sign), while we hunted mushrooms and learned about local fauna. Of course we had to visit the local H&M department store. H&M’s here are massive, dangerous stores. Luckily we have suitcase limits to control shopping.

Stockholm local

In the village of Edeby is a small building that still houses the brick oven used to bake traditional Swedish flatbread. Back in the day, people would bake together rather than in their own kitchens. It is still available for use. Dainty key in hand, the boys headed over early in the morning to crank up the wood fire and get the oven heated. Joined by Johan’s dad Krister and his girlfriend Deborah, we spent the afternoon cranking out lots and lot of warm flat bread…. Good stuff! We were a mess, but loved making it. Krister and Deborah had us over to their beautiful lake side summer house for dinner where we learned about all the local fishies. Johan took Stopher out to fish later in the week and he managed to catch a pike. We’ll eventually track down the photo for that one.

Friday was the annual mid-summer festival in Sweden. I think it is similar to solstice in the US. The towns in the country side have a big festival where people wear traditional dress and erect a large green 'stong’ into the earth and dance around it. They also eat lots of excellent traditional food like pancakes with lignonberries, and drink the firewater that is aquaveet. We visited the barn of some friends of Lina and Johans where we learned the game of kubb. You throw blocks of wood to knock down the opponent’s blocks. Stopher and I cleaned house winning 2 games before trying to explain to the locals what a couple of Americans were doing playing kubb at a barn in N. Sweden.

The bikes

Everyone was a lot of fun and we had a great time. Finishing up our stay in the country, the Swedes took us just south of Karlstad to Kristineham where there is an enormous Picasso statue looking out over the water. We mostly took it easy and wandered around the delta, enjoying the sunshine and water.

Big thanks to Johan, and Lina for putting us up for the week. It was great to see you guys and the house is amazing. Hope you can make it back to Seattle again soon! Thanks also to Naemi and Leon (the cat who knows how to sit, lie down, and come on command) for tolerating the chaos. Good luck with the new feeding schedule and banging on the table.

To wrap up our stay in Sweden, we decided it would be easier to get to the airport from Stockholm which gave us an excuse to visit. We took a bus into town, and had about half a day to see everything. We walked through Gamla Stan, which is the ‘old town.’ It is almost all pedestrian traffic and cute shops. From there, we crossed to Djurgården to visit the Aquarium (www.aquaria.se). It was pretty small, but hosted a great rain forest and a pair of healthy looking black tip reef sharks. From there we continued to the Vasa museum (www.vasamuseet.se) which houses the buccaneer style ship Vasa. She was finished in 1628, and on her maiden voyage, sank before ever making it out of Stockholm harbor. After 333yrs, she was salvaged and reconstructed. The museum is excellent if you are interested in maritime life and salvage operations. It is dark though so apologies for the photos.

So now, I’m writing you from Paris. We are staying with Sarah and Nissim for the night, and then heading to Northern France to wwoof. Wwooffing (www.wwoofing.org) is an international organization where you work for a farm and they house you and feed you some of your meals. The work can be varied as can be the accommodations, but we should make out well. We will be at Chateau Monfreville for the next 10 days helping to take care of the animals, gardens, and who knows what else. Internet will be slow there, but we’ll do our best to keep up.

We look forward to hearing from you and hope you all had a great solstice. Don’t forget to check out the seattlepi.com photos of the cyclists from our solstice parade!

Hej Doh,

-Jamie & Stopher

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

Karlstad Nature Park	Giant Key	Baking Bread	Picasso
Happy Family	Sniffing the Beaver	Giant Mushrooms	Dough Boy
Baking Krister	Young Chefs	Krister and Deborah's House	The bread!
Fishermen	Bringing out the stong	Stong	Giant Stong
Mada, our excellent party host	Celebrating Mid-summer	Kubb	Beach Boys
Green Stockholm	View of Vasamuseet	Stockholm	Aquaria
Nordic Museum Stockholm	Vasa	Exit sign

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