Splitting up

Styrsö Island (a little windy!)

 Göteborg - sabbatical 2, week 5

Now at the end of two weeks in Europe, it's time for Yolanda, Andrew and David to head back to Thunder Bay.  Craig is carrying on to Gothenburg, better known to the Swedes by its real name of Göteborg, to visit his cousin Scott.  So he boarded the train in Uppsala after seeing the car off with the other three.  (they made it home safe and sound.... 20+ hours later)

Craig stayed the first night in a hotel but then moved in with Scott, his partner Monika, and their 11-year-old chihuahua Maya (sp?).  The next couple days were spent with Scott (and sometimes Monika) playing tour guide on various walking tours around town.  Craig doesn't remember half of what he was told, but it was a good way to be introduced to the city.  Some highlights of mention:

Skansen Kronan (Crown Redoubt)

- Monika's real honest-to-goodness homemade Swedish meatballs (with lingonberry jam!)

- a ferry ride out into the archipelago and a walk around one of the islands (Styrsö) with a picnic lunch

- up a hill to an old defensive tower, defending a corset factory at the bottom of the hill (and, incidentally, the river and the town....)

- the old town of cobbled streets and the largest cinnamon buns known to humankind

- and the various gardens and green spaces along the river and elsewhere 

- a free Princess Cake from the grocery store where they have a loyalty card..... because it was Scott's birthday

After celebrating Scott's birthday with BBQ steaks and the aforementioned cake, they went above and beyond, getting up at 3 am to take Craig to the airport in time for his flight back to England.

Yet another pagan burial site

The Bishop-controller battery

 Uppsala - sabbatical 2, week 5

We primarily rented a car in order to be able to go see Yolanda's Aunt Saara, who still lives on her farm outside Uppsala.  One day was mostly taken up with this visit; Yolanda's cousin Kristine and her daughter Josephine were also able to attend.

The rest of the time was spent touring some of the sites of this old Swedish city.  Its fortunes have ebbed and flowed, sometimes in conjunction with the religious upheavals of the country as Uppsala (both versions - see below) was an important ecclesiastical town.  Its university, for example, is the oldest in Sweden, but the city suffered decline during the Swedish Reformation when the crown confiscated Roman Catholic lands and funds (and naturally sent the wealth to Stockholm).  Thus, we have the curious site of a bastion in the city castle's fortifications built to command the cathedral - the Bastion Styrbiskop - literally the "Bishop-Controller".

Moving back in time are the iron-age burial mounds (the "Royal Mounds") in Gamla Uppsala ("Old" Uppsala).  Once the largest town in the region and a pagan religious centre before it was a Christian religious centre, its people (and bishop) largely migrated to Östra Aros when the river became unnavigable.  The Pope, perhaps finding it too inconvenient to change his address book, ordered that the town of Östra Aros be renamed Uppsala, and thus we have "Gamla Uppsala" a few kilometres down the road from plain "Uppsala".  Interestingly, the church in Gamla Uppsala contains a runestone incorporated into the wall commemorating the locals' conversion to Christianity.  Another interesting tidbit: the church is literally half a cathedral - half was torn down when the bishop moved to Östra Aros; the part that wasn't torn down was re-enclosed to become the parish church.

One of the Royal Mounds

And of course, being scientists, we had to pay homage to Carl Linnaeus, popularizer and formalizer of the binomial Latin names for organisms still used today.  This excellent specimen of H. sapiens is interred in Uppsala Cathedral (near the entrance, on the left side facing the alter). His "estate" is also preserved as a park/tourist attraction, about half-way between Aunt Saara's and Uppsala.

 

On to Sweden

 Stockholm - sabbatical 2, week 5

And so we parted ways with Great Britain (for now!) and hopped across the North Sea to Sweden.  Since the Swedes (a) drive on the right and (b) charge a reasonable price for a car rental, we picked up our Volvo XC90 at Arlanda.  We didn't book so large a vehicle, but no one else wanted it either so it was a free upgrade (and we also got GPS with it, a nice bonus!).  We tootled into Stockholm for a quick look around, eventually stopping on Djurgården Island where we were serenaded by an ABBA tribute band across the water from the ABBA museum.  We made our way around the grounds of the Waldermarsudde and took in the sites over the water, including a cruise ship departing the city.  We returned to a parking ticket (because we couldn't figure out how to pay in the parking lot) and made our way up to Uppsala to our hotel.