Beyond Timbuktu: Scandanavia

We had a great trip up North! Denmark reminded me a lot of Wisconsin with all of its farms and rolling hills. We spent the night near Copenhagen and got up early the next morning to enjoy the city. The car park was right out of the future - we drove into a box, left the car, swiped the card, and watched our Volvo disappear underground. A lift dropped it quickly a few stories and then it was taken away. When we got back from a lovely and sunny walk around the beautiful city of Copenhagen, we just had to swipe the credit card again, and the car was returned out of the depths to a different box under protest - the car alarm went off. Fun experience.

It took an hour and a half to clear customs at the Swedish border, but the view from the bridge was great. Reminded me a bit of the Mighty Mac. Swedish drivers were slow and kept their distance. What a pleasure! It took about 7 hours to get to our rental near Stockholm. We were surprised to find that the house was a part of an eco-village. We had fun touring their operation and learning a lot about how they did things. Even got to spend an afternoon with the founders. Playing with their dog and the snow outside was the highlight for the girls!

They have some pretty interesting systems, like a septic system on steroids that separates out all the poo for fertilizer, lots of solar power (even though it started getting dark around lunch time) and plenty of heat pumps. He said geothermal heat pumps are standard in Sweden, and a problem they are having in Stockholm is that so many houses use this technology that the ground is developing permafrost.

Our tour of Stockholm was great! It is a city built on 14 islands. We started at the oldest one and enjoyed the medieval streets. Then we took a boat tour which the girls didn't really enjoy, but I liked being able to see the city from the water. After that we went to the Pippi Longstocking museum which was really cool - there was a narrated ride that brought us up, down and through models of all stories the author wrote.

After that we entered the most popular museum in Scandinavia. Back in the 1600s, the Swedes commissioned a powerful warship designed by a Dutch expert. The government wanted lots of guns, but the designer said to chill out a bit with all the weight up top. They didn't listen. A couple hundred meters into its maiden voyage, it tipped over and lots of soldiers in full armor drowned. It stayed at the bottom of the harbor until a few decades ago when they salvaged the entire vessel and reconstructed it, building a structure around it. Very impressive - pictures don't really capture the scale.

On New Year's day we got up very early and had a quiet ride back down south to the Swedish coast. We found a spot where it was possible for 10 weeks out of the year to walk into a seal preserve. After a couple hours of walking along a beautiful beach and skipping stones, we made it to the peninsula where the seals live. We watched them swimming in the water for 10 minutes and then hiked back to the car. A three hour walk in total! The girls did great.

The next morning we got up very early once again to catch the ferry. It was a really cool experience. What a nice way to travel! It was a six hour ride and we got a table right up front. Best setting ever for a game of Monopoly. Traffic in Germany was bad, but we still got to enjoy flying down some nice stretches of the Autobahn. Unfortunately we had to cancel our plans for Berlin due to Germany's new travel restrictions. It is good to be back home though.