Our Trip to Europe: Hasselbacka

It took us nine hours to fly from Chicago to Stockholm, and the first thing we did when we got to Sweden was get in a car and drive another four hours to the other side of the country.

Well, that’s not quite true.  We hung out at the airport for a while after we discovered that our cell phones did not actually work in Europe, leaving Mats with no way of contacting us other than just walking around until he stumbled into us.  Fortunately this didn’t take too long, after which he drove us home.  We power-napped for a couple of hours and had a nice lunch (which Tabitha helped Mats to prepare, because she didn’t crash out until we started driving again).  And then we drove west.  Because you can’t get enough traveling in during a day, I say, not even one that is, when you add in the time zones, 31 hours long.

Pay no mind to that last bit.  That was just the jet lag talking.  But it was worth it.

For one thing, Sweden is a beautiful country.  This photo was actually taken on the way back to Stockholm a couple of days later, but still – you get the idea.

For another, once we stopped moving we had a marvelous time.  Our destination for the drive was Hasselbacka, the cottage in the country that Mats’ family has owned for decades now.

It was built in 1891 and the floor plan is fairly traditional from what I understand – you enter into a small foyer, and there is a room to either side of you.  In front of you is a very steep staircase – almost a ladder, really – that leads to an upstairs that has had two bedrooms recently carved out of it while the remainder is still unfinished.  Downstairs, you have to go through the front rooms to get to the back rooms – the whole floor is set up to go in a circle all the way around that way.  The two front rooms are bedrooms, the back right room is a living room, and the back left is a kitchen.  Sometime in the 20th century a bathroom was added off the kitchen.  It’s way out there in the middle of the forest, by a lake, and the whole place is just stunningly gorgeous.

We spent our first four days in Sweden there, hanging out and enjoying ourselves.  There was a zipline that the kids could ride down toward the lake, and a swing that hung from a branch that was taller than the cottage itself, which meant you could get some good air underneath you if the grown-ups would push you hard enough.

And when you got tired of playing around on the land, you could go into the water.

The lake was clean but very cold, in part because it had been raining for a long time before we came and the water had not had a chance to warm up.  So swimming tended to be a fairly short-term activity, but a popular one.

Hasselbacka also has a sauna, which I have decided is just a wonderful idea.  It’s down by the lake, and the idea is that you steam yourself for a while until you feel good and toasty, and then run down to the lake and jump in.

I never did manage the whole “jump in the lake” part of that – the water was far too cold for me, and I’m not much on swimming in the first place.  I did wander down and slowly ease myself into the water once, and that was plenty.  It was more comfortable just to cool down in the breeze, which was nicely chilly while we were there.  Of course you had to do that quickly, because we were visiting at the height of the black fly and mosquito season – at dusk you could actually look out of the window of the cottage and see the swarms fly by – and if you stood out there too long all that would be left of you would be a desiccated leathery husk.  But for a short while, it was a grand thing.

There were a lot of us there, over the four days we were at Hasselbacka.  The four of us.  Mats and Sara and their three children (Maria, David and Helena).  Mat’s mother, Moa.  Mats’ brother Tomas, his wife Edelia, and their girls (Alexis and Sandra).  And Mats’ other brother Bengt and his girls, Johanna and Caroline, who are adults in their own right.  Not everyone slept at Hasselbacka – Moa had made arrangements with one of the neighbors down the road to handle the overflow – but it was a constant rotating cast of people to hang out with, which made it fun.

One of the joys of being that far out in the hinterland is that it abounds with critters, and not just us.  The kids had a field day with the local frogs and salamanders, hunting them down, stuffing them into jars, and then letting them go.  Of course they let them go.  You can’t keep them.  Can you imagine trying to get a jar full of frogs through Customs?  They’re not even happy when you bring your own shampoo, let alone the idea of foreign amphibians, taking away jobs from domestic amphibians.  So the frogs and salamanders stayed in Sweden, but they got a good workout anyway.

When it was rainy, we stayed inside and played games.  We learned how to play Carcassonne, a game where we got to use the term “minions” with free abandon (shouldn’t everyone be able to do that now and then?).  Maria kicked our collective butts at Monopoly.  Lauren and Tabitha played Mastermind.  Sara, Kim and I completed a maliciously difficult jigsaw puzzle and felt suitably triumphant about it.  And the electronics got a good workout as well.

We also held a contest to name the stuffed beaver that sits in one of the upstairs bedrooms.  David’s entry – “Namm-Namm” was the consensus winner, with Lauren’s candidate, “Mr. Frederickson,” coming in a close second.  For some reason, my suggestion (“Justin”) didn’t do so well.

When the sun was out, so were we.  For example, we went for a walk down to a different lake.

No, not that lake, another one.  There are an awful lot of lakes in that part of the world.

That one. 

And sometimes we went out for a walk even when it was rainy, because eventually we would dry off but the odds of us being back in Sweden anytime soon are regrettably low.  The cottage was lovely, but you have to get out now and then.

It was on this walk that Sara taught us how to strip off the needles from new-growth twigs on evergreens and nibble on the stems underneath.  They taste like lemon.

Americans: we’re in your forest, eating your trees.

Our Trip to Europe: "English, Mother-[Fornicator], Do You Speak It?"

I think I will take a break from the historical stuff for a while and move on to other things.  Notably language.

Swedish and English are close enough to be really funny sometimes.

I knew I was in a different country on the first day, when we were driving west from Stockholm and stopped at a highway convenience store for some snacks.  Please understand, at this point I had been awake for 22 of the previous 24 hours, and I was seriously jet-lagged – the clocks all said noon but my body still said 5am.  So when I got to the counter and saw a little box full of fresh pastries for sale, I was pleased – a sugar rush might do me good.  But right there front and center of the pastry box was a long chocolate-covered cylinder of a cake, neatly labeled “Skumracket.”

This did not make me want to buy it.

It was only later that I learned that “skum” is Swedish for “foam,” so that must have been one of those crunchy meringue things or something similar.

This particular linguistic oddity also explains the following:

We saw this at the Hotel Linne in Goteborg (pronounced “YOU-te-BOR-yeh,” with the “ou” in the first syllable rhyming with the “ou” in “should” – in English it’s usually spelled Gothenburg for some reason), a youth hostel where we stayed overnight.  This would be called a dry chemical fire extinguisher in the US, but I rather liked the idea of a big red Skum sprayer.

Back at the convenience store on that first day in Sweden I skipped the Skumracket and instead bought a roll of butter cookies.  They were excellent butter cookies, it must be said – I ended up buying several rolls of them while we were there, and even brought one home on the plane – but their motto left me a bit puzzled.

“For a good smack in the skull?” I asked.  Eventually Mats stopped laughing at me long enough to explain that the phrase translated more or less as “For the sake of good taste.”  I’m willing to take his word for it, but we now have a new family phrase.  “Would you like a good smack in the skull?”  “Why yes!  I’ll take two!  Do you have anything with chocolate?”

“Indeed we do.”

I had a lot of time to look at the butter cookie wrapper on that drive, and eventually I noticed the other motto, underneath the picture of the butter cookie.  One may not simply walk to Mordor, but apparently one can have butter cookies there.  Just because the place is evil doesn’t mean it can’t have amenities.

Food items were constantly amusing while we were in Sweden.  These candies were actually quite tasty, though I’m not convinced they will sell in an English-speaking market.

And I’d be surprised to find this brand on shelves in Wisconsin any time soon.

Further, I’ve hung around enough people who are really into leather to know that this store would appeal to them even in English, but I still found it amusing. 

I’m not sure whether that counts as a Swedish word that just looks odd in English, a Swedish attempt to use an English word that just didn’t quite work, or someone clever enough to play on the whole thing, but I found it funny.

But really, for prime entertainment when it comes to linguistic confusion, you just couldn’t beat the road signs.

For example, these are the Swedish signs for “Entrance” and “Exit.”

“Fart” is the Swedish word for “speed,” so what those signs actually translate to, more or less, is “go in” and “go out” (in-speed and out-speed).  But that’s clearly not what they say in English.  Apparently it is considered traditional for American tourists to take photos of these signs to show their friends back home, and who was I to fail in my duties?

This was especially true when I saw a sign for an exit that led to the elevator.

The mental images were compelling, shall we say, and I giggled all the way home.  Because I’m just juvenile that way, that’s why.

Based on the actual meaning of the word, the next sign means “speed hindrance” – a narrowing of the road designed to slow people down.  We don’t have such narrowings in the US, but we do have “speed bumps,” which are designed for the same purpose.  Nevertheless, the sign did conjure up all sorts of odd mental images, both with the graphic and the label.

As did this one, which we passed on the highway.

I’m not sure what sorts of experiments are being run here, but I’d sure like to find out.

This one I liked mostly because of the graphic.  If you’re a Swede, this collection of signs means “No parking on the shoulder, and expect hilly roads for the next kilometer.”  To me, it just says, “No boobs for a while,” which I found sort of disheartening but I suppose one does not wish to distract people unduly while they are driving.

Now, you’d think that once I’d gotten to England, this sort of thing would stop.  They speak English there, don’t they?  England, English, isn’t that how it works?

Maybe.

Maybe not.  I’d be very reluctant to eat anything labeled “Shmoo,” myself, since in our household that word is almost invariably preceded by the phrase “kitty butt” and followed by things being tossed in the laundry or scrubbed with a wet paper towel and soap.  We can’t be alone in this.  How this one got past marketing I will never know.

Of course, sometimes it must be said that the English know how to use their language very, very effectively.

It gets the point across.

Our Trip to Europe: Historical Sites in England (Part 4 - Really Old Stuff)

It’s one thing to look at medieval sites and think, “wow, that’s old.”  It’s a whole different kind of old when you find yourself looking at Iron Age or Bronze Age sites.

That’s old.

We visited several of these while we were in England, and quite possibly saw many more, though it’s hard to tell with most of them because all you’re looking at is patterns in the hillsides.  Few sites that old have survived as anything other than mounds or ditches, and unless you know what you’re looking for (i.e. you’re better informed than I am) you will probably miss them.  Fortunately Julie and Richard know about these things, and so we learned.

Of course, Stonehenge is fairly obvious.

Stonehenge was one of the things that was on the girls’ short list of things they wanted to see while they were in England, so we took a ride out there one day.

The first thing you notice about Stonehenge is that it is right by the road.  Seriously – from the center line of the A344 (a two-lane highway) to the first stone that is considered to be part of Stonehenge is about twenty feet or so, and to the main circle of stones it is maybe three times that. 

The second thing you notice is that it is crowded.  Stonehenge is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the UK, and unlike the US – where it would be surrounded by multi-story parking garages, fast food joints, and shopping malls – it is pretty much out in the middle of nowhere, with one fairly small parking area and an English Heritage gift shop on the other side of the highway.  When we initially drove by we couldn’t get in, so we continued on and spent the first part of the day visiting Salisbury Cathedral, not too far away.

We scored on the return trip, though, and found parking.  We paid our admission and headed off through the tunnel underneath the A344 to get up close.

You can’t actually go up to Stonehenge anymore.  There are simply too many idiots even for the British to cope with – and they cope with idiots far more effectively than most cultures, from what I can tell – so there are ropes and such too keep you back.  Nothing too obtrusive, mind you – just polite reminders that really, you should stay back a bit.  Thank you.

The other thing you notice about Stonehenge is that it is surprisingly small.  The whole circle is only about 25 or 30 yards in diameter, and you can walk around it at tourist speed, taking photographs the whole way, in about 45 minutes.  If you just wanted to circumnavigate it at normal speed it would probably take less than 5. 

That said, the stones themselves are huge and very impressive.  And it’s nice to have them there, out on the Salisbury Plain, by the highway, where you can see them.

The ironmongery that you see in the photo above is from an Artist, whose crew was setting up for some kind of fire-intensive midnight show a couple of days later.  We thought about going back to see it, just briefly, but decided that would be too silly even if we didn't already have other plans.

Afterward we retired to the gift shop, as was our usual custom for historical sites on this trip.  We found a few things that we wanted, and then went over to the cafe where we snacked and hung out for a while.  Eventually things got silly.

That’s Lauren doing her “Deaf Pirate” imitation.  For the benefit of those of you who are unfamiliar with American Sign Language, that symbol she’s making with her left hand is an “R.”

Arrrrrrr!

If you really want to get up close to a standing stone circle – a big one – you need to go to Avebury.

Avebury is a large area filled with sheep poop, out of which rise several different standing stone circles.  The largest is maybe half a mile across, more or less, and there are at least two smaller, non-concentric circles (as well as a good-sized chunk of the modern village of Avebury) contained with in it.  Leading off to the side are two different avenues of parallel stones extending quite a ways.  It’s really very impressive. 

The white building in the background of that last photo is the pub where we had lunch.  It advertises itself as the only pub in the UK that is wholly within a standing stone circle, and my guess is that this is correct.

We spent much of our time there debating theories of how the stones could have gotten there, and most of them revolved around sheep.  Most of those, in fact, concerned variations on sheep poop, because that’s the kind of fun we have.  My favorite, though, was suggested either by Richard or Magnus and held that these stones were ancient carvings of sheep, made by sheep, that have been weathered by time into unrecognizability.  They’re the ovine form of the Easter Island statues, really.

The neat thing about Avebury, as opposed to Stonehenge, is that you can go right up to the stones.

We got there on a rainy, blustery day – one of only two days where we didn’t get any real break from the weather and the only one we spent mainly outside, as it was our last tourist day in England and we figured we'd dry off when we got back the US – and we hiked around the stones, going up to them, weaving around them, and generally doing our best to avoid the sheep, as we were specifically instructed to do.  Really, it was the only specific instruction we received from the folks there.  "Mind the sheep!"  You have to open and close a number of paddock gates to see the whole thing and the sheep wander fairly freely throughout.  Apparently they get annoyed at the tourists sometimes (who can blame them?) and can charge.  They’ve got horns.  They know what to do with them.

Part of the trail takes you up onto a small ridgeline of chalky soil.

The chalk makes a mud that is less slippery than normal mud – we were connoisseurs of mud by this point – and therefore the trail was a welcome break.

We then wandered down to see the avenues of standing stones, which were impressive and rather more bovine than the circle area.

Avebury is more than just standing stones, however.  Not far away – a good walk in nicer weather – is Silbury Hill. 

Now, to me, this looks like … a hill.  But it’s not a natural part of the landscape.  It was built sometime between 2400 and 2000 BCE and is surprisingly complex for a hill – there’s a central mound of gravel and clay, covered by a thick layer of turf and soil, covered by another thick layer of chalk and soil, covered by even more layers – the whole thing is now 37 meters (121 feet) high, with a top that is 30 meters (98 feet) wide and a base that is 500 meters (half a kilomoter, or roughly 1600 feet) in circumference, making it the largest prehistoric mound in Europe.  Nobody really knows why it was built or what function it might have served, but one presumes that there was a reason - that's a lot of work to go through just for kicks.

You can’t really climb it, and it was raining too hard for us to hike up closer, but you can get a fair sense of it from where we stood.  It was quite impressive.

Our final stop that day was the West Kennet Long Barrow, an ancient grave site that again would have been a nice walk on a sunnier day.  The Barrow sits about half a mile uphill from the road, and you just get out and walk – no tickets, no guards, no nothing except an informative sign at the top telling you that you’ve just walked to a 5500-year-old gravesite.

By this time the rain was really beginning to hammer down on us.

So we went inside.  You can do that. This never failed to amaze me, how easy it was to go right up to and inside such things.

It was snug and dry in there, and we explored a bit while the rain slowly slacked off.  There are no bones there anymore – they’ve all been moved out – so you could just look around without worrying about disturbing anything.

Eventually the rain stopped, and we went back home.