I have been crazy busy since my last update. I went to Gotland, spent a few days in Stockholm, spent a week with my mom and became tour guide to show her around Stockholm before heading off to Copenhagen and then Gothenburg! It has been a whirlwind adventure and now I only have a few weeks left in Stockholm! I suggest you find a comfy spot, grab your favorite drink, and enjoy this nice long blog about what I have been up to!
Gotland was delightful! It was full of world heritage sites from the Vikings time. Visby, the capitol of Gotland, was home to countless (well about 16) different churches from different countries. We got to get a glimpse of the different churches from the ruins that still stand today. We even went to the top of one church and had a great view of the city! We also saw the Gotland museum where there was a nice collection of Viking silver! In fact, the largest collection of Viking age silver was found in northern Gotland and part of it was at this museum. Later on our trip, we went to a Viking village and learned the tools of the trade. We learned to make yarn, throw axes, and eat with our hands. Oh, and we learned that Vikings traded and did not pillage!
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| Gotland houses! So awesome!! |
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| Viking Silver. It is pretty nice stuff. |
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| Ruins get a thumbs up from me! |
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| Marie (left), Anita (right) and me on the top of the church with the view of Visby. yes, it was raining and windy but still pretty awesome! |
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| Sea Stacks. this one is a big one with a history dealing with royalty I believe. I can't remember the story now though... |
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| Me and the Baltic Sea |
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| The most beautiful church in Gotland |
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| To be a viking, one must make their own yarn. I have a lot of respect for my knit sweaters now! |
We also spent some time taking a tour of northern Gotland. The weather was perfect for this! We saw more churches and these cool natural phenomenon called sea stacks which are strange shaped limestone rocks. They were pretty magnificent against the blue skies and the Baltic Sea! Our tour guide for the weekend told a lot of random stories. Most of which made no sense but instead provided for some laughs. He talked about the Estonians and how there are ghosts on the island too. Really, that’s about all I remember. I think most of what we learned from the tour guide was that Gotland might very well be a haunted island!
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| Northern Gotland from the bus |
Once I got back, I had a few days to prepare for the arrival of none other than my mom!!! I cleaned the house, made dinner a couple times (American pancakes and bacon), and finalized our itinerary! It was a busy 4 days and I was so excited to see my mom. She arrived early on Friday morning and after a breakfast of eggs and toast, we toured the town! We went on our first (of many) boat tours and saw the greener side of Stockholm. The tour was around the Djurgården canal which is around one of the biggest islands in Stockholm. It just to the east of the city and used to be the royal hunting grounds. It is a great place to walk and now has a museum and a park that is quickly filling up with people when the sun is shining! After a yummy lunch in the old town, we got a tour of the city hall where they have the Nobel Prize banquet every year. It was actually a pretty small room for the size of the banquet. Each person (unless you are a really important person like the royal family) gets 60 cm of space to eat. That’s not a lot of elbow room!
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| Where Stockholm city hall meetings happen. Each person has assigned seating based on political party. |
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| The Golden room. It's all mosaics and was done in less than a year by multiple people of course but not without a few mistakes! |
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| The weird lady in the Golden room. She symbolizes Sweden...odd! |
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| The blue hall where the Nobel banquet is held. Yea, it's as small as you think it is! However, those stairs are really easy to walk! |
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| Nobel Prize banquet settings |
The weather was beautiful so we walked across town and saw all the Swedes soaking up the sun to the Vasa Museum and mom got to see the boat for herself and not just in pictures on my blog! It was cool even though we only had a short amount of time. After that, we met up with a friend of mine and her mom for dinner at Bakfickan for some authentic Swedish food. It was so delicious but our mom’s were exhausted so it was time for bed. Mom got to meet my host family before going to bed which was nice!
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| My jet-lagged mom and her delicious, authentic Swedish meatballs! |
The next day in Stockholm was spent with my host family. We went to Drottningholm Palace where the royal family lives and ate our lunch outside before going to the University. We tried to go to the Kaknäs Tower to get a view of the city but someone was having a private party or something. Lame! We ended the night with Swedish meatballs made by Annica to make up for it! Yum! Mom really enjoyed spending time with my family and I’m glad she got to meet them!
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| Mom, me, Emelie, and Annica at Drottningholm Palace |
Our next adventure was another Scandinavian country: Denmark. We flew in and were picked up by Mary’s host family from a couple years ago. I was so excited to meet Vibeke and Marianne since I had heard so much about them from Mary! They were excellent! They showed us all the Danish foods and told us what sights would be good to see. It was really nice. I had some pickled herring, horseradish and beef, and shrimp all with the Danish brown bread. Yum! Of course, I ate some fish and had a sampling of delicious beers and wine in the Danish style. Vibeke even had me try snaps which is a 45% alcohol “shot” that people have with a long lunch. I only had a sip but that was enough for me! Only the tough people will drink it all at once and obviously that wasn’t me. That’s ok by me!
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| Me and Marianne in front of their house |
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| Best Danish snack? A hot dog with ketchup, mustard, onions, fried onions and pickles! yum! |
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| Us and Vibeke at Tivoli Gardens! |
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| me and Robert...one of the 5 kitties (sorry it's blurry but i wanted you to see the kitties!) |
We did our boat tour of Copenhagen after our first Danish lunch which was nice. The sun was behind some clouds so it was kind of chilly but we still learned a lot about Copenhagen. There are new buildings like the Opera house built in 2008 and older buildings like the largest dome in Scandinavia all in the same town. It was pretty weird to see them all next to each other. Of course, we got to see the Little Mermaid statue that Copenhagen is famous for. She was pretty small but still nice. We found out that she has been decapitated 3 times! I don’t know who thinks that’s a good idea. Now, she has concrete in her neck to prevent that from happening again. A funny thing happened while we were there. We were watching the other tourists take pictures with the statue and one guy (probably my age) was taking a picture of himself with the statue. He snapped the photo, turned the camera around and then made this whole body motion of disappointment. It’s hard from me to describe but he rolled his eyes and his whole body at the same time. Both mom and I saw this and lost it! Even the guy sitting at the next bench saw it and that made us laugh even more!
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| Mom and the little mermaid |
Other tourist sites we saw that were great were the Round Tower and Rosenborg Castle where the crown jewels are kept. They were pretty impressive! I really enjoyed Copenhagen to see what another Scandinavian country (well city really) was like. In case you are wondering, Danish is quite close to Swedish on paper but it sounds totally different!
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| The Rosenborg Castle! |
Our next adventure was a train ride across the Øresund bridge (the longest one in Europe) to Malmö and then up the western coast of Sweden to Göteborg (Gothenburg). It was a nice train ride and the scenery was beautiful. Sweden really reminds me of Glacier National Park sometimes! J Upon our arrival in Gothenburg, we discovered that our hotel room did in fact have a view of the harbor and had about 12 windows to view it since it was a suite complete with a kitchen in the closet! We were surprised to say the least. It was really nice to come back to at the end of our 2 days there. We took another boat ride (had to keep it up) which was really nice. We made it under the cheese slicer and the hairdresser (2 really low bridges on the canal) without any problems. We at the biggest kanelbulle ever which literally was the size of the plate and walked up to the fortress look out to get a sweet view of the town. We went to a kid’s science museum where I couldn’t figure out a wooden puzzle thing and we sweated in the rainforest. We even took a trip to the archipelago which was a nice place to picnic even though it was a bit cloudy! We also went to the city museum where they had the oldest Viking ship ever! There were just parts of it but it was way cool. Overall, Gothenburg was like Stockholm but had a lot more space and felt like a small town even though it’s the 2nd largest in Sweden I believe.
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| On the train on the bridge back to Sweden! |
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| Our view of the Gothenburg harbor at night from our room! |
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| The archipelago! |
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| Gardens of all kinds including roses and even tropical plants! |
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| We took a million pictures of the flowers! haha! |
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| The old viking ship at the city museum. It was still cool even though it was in pieces. |
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| Look mom, I'm an astronaut! (at the science museum) |
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| The kanelbulle as big as the plate. We demolished it at the expense of our dinner! :) |
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| Oh, now I'm the queen of Sweden! This was on our climb up to the top of the fortress. |
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| Me and my mom in our hotel room! :) We enjoyed our time together. |
We took a train back to Stockholm and got to see a lot of the big lakes in the middle of Sweden. They are huge and beautiful. Upon our return, I took mom to Slussen to get a nice view of Stockholm from the south and to see the feat of road engineering which is able to easily direct traffic from 6 different directions. Pretty cool! Oh, of course we made tacos for dinner since it was Friday and Swedes love their taco Friday! Sending mom off was sad but I’m so glad she was able to come and I was able to share this experience with someone else from home! I wish you all could be here to experience this with me but you can’t so I hope this blog helps you know what I’m up to.
After dropping mom off, I had a few days left of my break. Good thing the weather knew it was break because it was sunny and warm for those 3 days. I went to Ytterby which is the place where 4 elements were discovered in a mine. Ytterby is 1 hour from where I live by bus and is an island in the archipelago. It was really nice and I felt pretty cool having been to a place where a lot of elements exist. I had a picnic lunch there and then went to Vaxholm, another island in the archipelago, and ate ice cream and sat on the dock with the other tourists. I then sat in the park and read my book. That is pretty much what I did for the next 2 days as well. I went for walks and picnic lunched and then sat and read my book under the blossoming Japanese Cherry Trees. I don’t think life could get much better than that!
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| I stood by the official sign commemorating the discovery of the 4 elements: Ytterbium, Yttrium, Terbium, and Erbium. Of course, I had to climb up a cliff about 100 m to get to it! I survived! |
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| Quartz from the mine |
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| The Vaxholm Fortress which defended Stockholm. |
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| Danielle (a friend from church) and I enjoyed ice cream in the sun with the blossoming trees! |
Now I have just over 2 weeks left and I am going to soak it all up. I’m excited to see everyone at home but I will miss the everyday life I have here in Stockholm and spending time with my host family. Well, now I need to go to bed but I’ll report back soon what I am doing for these last couple weeks!
Thanks for reading!
Hej då!
