This morning I packed up, ate some more raspberries, and got onto the Inlandsbanan for the last time. I get to the final stop (Mora) at 1:30. I will stay there tonight and then catch a regular train to Stockholm tomorrow. And then it's the end of vacation time and the beginning of school time.
Some impromptu singing on the train:
Taking a break at a "station"
This was supposedly the best kanelbulle in Sweden. It was pretty darn good.
I'm now all the way down south in Svealand, which is considered the heartland of Sweden. It's definitely looking very Swedish. We stopped for lunch in a little town called Fågelsjö which was exactly what I picture when I picture a small Swedish town. There is a farm there (I didn't get to see it but it sounds neat) called The American House. And the story is that back in the early 1800's a Swedish family in the town got a postcard from some relatives in America that had a picture of a house on it. They fall in love with the house, and built one exactly like it. And on Christmas eve they locked up their old house and moved into the new one, taking only some silverware and the clothes they were wearing (they were obviously pretty well off). And their old house remained exactly the way they had left it. Now it's a museum, and you can go inside and see the clothes in the closets and the things laying on the tables exactly how it was were they left. It's neat how it's all one family's things and not just a period recreation. Anyway, that was our lunch stop.
I love the traditional clothes with Crocs
Mora (where I'm heading now) is on the edge of Lake Siljan, which is supposed to be one of the top vacation spots for Swedes. It's also the area that the famous Dala Horse (the brightly painted wooden horse figure) is from. Swedish heartland, here we come!
Mora
Mora main street
A Dala horse
Author's note: All the preceding photos, journal entries, and commentaries were written in August 2010, shortly after this trip was taken. Halfway through this blog post I began school in Sweden. I didn't touch my blog again, until now: June 21, 2011. Unfortunately, the reason I hadn't been keeping up with my blog was that I was doing so many amazing things in Sweden that semester. Which means all of my best travels didn't get recorded. Now that I'm done with grad school and have a little time, I'm going to try to catch up. But this will all be from memories almost a year old, so I can't guarantee the accuracy. Here we go.....
Swimming in Lake Siljan
Mora main street. A typical lovely Swedish downtown
Some creative uses of the Dala Horse. Those things are everywhere!
Another thing Mora is famous for is being the finish line for the oldest and largest cross-country ski race (Vasaloppet) in the world. The course and the history of the race comes from a similar route taken in 1520 by the soon to be king of Sweden that helped Sweden gain it's independence from Denmark.
The Paul Revere of Sweden
They keep the finish line set up all year, and a pile of snow with skis that you can play with. And remember, this is in August.
Dala horses everywhere!!!
Midsommardans by Anders Zorn
Yet another of Mora's claim to fame is being the home and birthplace of the artist Anders Zorn (see example of his work to the left). There was a museum with a collection of his paintings and sculptures (which was too expensive for me to visit), and you could tour his home and gardens (which was also too expensive for me).
The Anders Zorn house
My lunch. The first fish paste/hard-boiled egg sandwich I'd had in a long time.
Looks just like Hanna Anderson clothing!
Yeah, America!
The only Maypole I saw in Sweden
An inviting sign to go swimming
I didn't swim (it was too cold) but I did hang out on this pier for a while. Lake Siljan is really brown due to tannins.
Even though every park in Sweden is amazing, this one by the lake was the best I've ever seen.
These things were awesome! You sit in it and, because of the angle, it spins super fast with hardly any effort. I spend a LONG time on them.
Self-portrait from the top of the jungle gym.
For some reason I was the only person there.
While I was wondering aimlessly around the town (which seemed to be an activity I had done quite a good bit of in the last few weeks), I saw this sign for a free "folkmusik" concert at a church later that evening.
I decided to check it out. It turned out to be incredible! The audience consisted entirely of older Swedish couples. The couple I was sitting next to on the pew was really friendly (and didn't really speak English so I got to test out my Swedish). And when they saw I didn't have a program they insisted that we share and made a big deal of setting it up where we all could see it, and making encouraging gestures for me to look at it. It was funny.
The church we were in was beautiful. The concert began with a women up in the choir balcony in the back of the church blowing a horn (like a real animal horn. Like the kind Susan had in Narnia!), and she was answered by a women singing in the front that sounded almost identical to the horn. It was haunting. Then a procession of men and women dressed in traditional clothing came down the aisle:
The rest of the concert was a mixture of folk dances, singing, and music. It was great!
A cool fountain in the town center
The moon setting over Lake Siljan
I decided to really test Sweden's Every Man's Right to camp anywhere you want, and set up my tent in the middle of the park.
This is the view of the town from my little lakeside camp site.
My tent in the morning. And no one seemed to mind at all. I love Sweden!
Drying my tent on the volleyball net in the park.
Breakfast on the water
The restaurant I went to for breakfast was just me and a wonderful group of old men who were such regulars that they each had a mug with their name on it.
My breakfast: roasted vegetable quiche with fresh veggies.
Good-bye Mora!
This marks the end of my summer vacation (plus thesis data collection) in Sweden. Next objective: Beginning my semester at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences!
The following is from my train ride from Östersund to Sveg (which is pronounced "swaa-ya." One of the reasons I chose to stop there was that I thought I knew how to say the name. Tricky Swedish).
The cafe the train stopped at for breafast.
With Swedish fencing
And neat posts
And mystery items for sale
What in the world is that?
Decorated brooms
My breakfast of a "Wilderness cake"
I've crossed the spine of my book!
August 22, 11:00
It looked like it was going to rain when I got to Sveg, so I went to set up my tent right away. I found a spot by the river (lake? I'm not really sure what it was. It looked riverish, but didn't seem to be flowing), kind of near some people's houses, but certainly far enough out of their living areas that I wouldn't be in the way. I was so close to the water's edge that I could see the refection of it on the inside walls of my tent.
View FROM my tent in one direction
View OF my tent
And view FROM my tent in the other direction
If Storumen was the land of blueberries, then Sveg was the land of raspberries. So many raspberries, and all perfectly ripe! In all this berry picking I've been doing, and all my wandering around, I haven't seen one other single person picking berries. Maybe they've already gotten all that they can handle. Or maybe they know something I don't....
Raspberries
Raspberries
Where's the little gnome?
And, of course, blueberries
I still didn't have a map of the town or anything, and the tourist office (if you could call it that) in the train station was closed, but I did learn one thing from a little one sentence write up on Inlandsbanan's time table: Sveg is the home to the world's largest wooden bear. Well, there we go. My mission was to search the town (and since I didn't think it would take that long and I had a LOT of time to kill, I did it in a very systematic, street to street pattern) until I found the bear.
The train station
No bank robbing allowed
The main street
Sand
What most of the town looked like
Curling! It really does exist!
Mailboxes!
Wild snapdragons!
Sorry Iceland, I guess you didn't make the cut.
A nursing home
I just found this enjoyable for some reason
Electric prices!
The school
Every single grave had beautiful flowers planted in front of it
Even the really old ones
Gardening supplies for the graves
I spent a really long time just walking around, reading all of them. It was very peaceful.
Then suddenly, out of the blue, I looked up and saw The World's Largest Wooden Bear. It kind of ruined my moment.
There ya have it. The best use of trees I ever did see.
Detail
In case you wanted to know more
A nice looking house
At 2 o'clock I had already set up my tent, found the world's largest wooden bear and been down every single street in the town. What next? I saw a poster for a soccer game, so I went to check it out.
I captured the slow decline of the Ball Boy's interest. In the beginning: alert and really to go.
Still paying attention.
Total lack of interest. I felt the same way.
That was interesting for a good 5 minutes. I usually use watching sports as a means to hang out with people, but watching a game with no talking to entertain me, was not so fun. After trying to understand what people were saying when they yelled, and watching a little boy who's job it was to get the stray balls (until I felt like I was reaching the "creepster" level again), I set off to find something else to do. There was a trail around the water's edge, so I hiked that. Slowly.
Some creepy "naturalized" statues
Ah! A giant beaver!
Big old pines
Old pine
This looks like it would be a nice place to go swimming...
...if the water didn't look disgusting
Fungi
More fungi
And more...
Someone's been busy!
Lingonberries
The lake/river was really nice and I really, really wished I had some kind of boat to go out on it in. I spent about an hour trying to find something I could build some kind of boat out of (what I was looking for, I'm not sure) or, miraculously, find some kind of perfect condition yet abandoned boat in the woods. Neither of those things worked out. So what's the next best thing to boating on a lake/river? Fishing! I found an old hook and spinner with a little bit of line still attached to it, and made myself a fishing pole. Now I was ready to go fishing. I tried to find some bait, but there were absolutely no rocks to turn over in these woods to find worms. I dug around for a while, but it was just a peat layer and I couldn't get down to the soil. I tried everywhere else I thought creepy-crawlies might live (rotting logs,old mushrooms), but didn't find anything. I even tried to attach a mosquito to the hook. Oh well. At least I didn't take the life of anything unnecessarily, and at least I had a spinner. The lake/river turned out to be really shallow, and anywhere I could get to wasn't more than a foot deep. It was also really full of plants and algae too, so every 2 seconds my hook would get stuck on something and I'd have to reach in (because my line was so short and the water was so shallow it was never out of arm's length) and untangle it. Needless to say, I didn't catch anything.
What now? I went back into town and bought an ice cream. Then I sat on a bench and really wished I had brought a book with me on this trip. With all these train rides and "quiet relaxation" in little towns, I could have finished a dozen books by now.
It was now nearly eight. Nearly time for bed but still a few hours left to kill. I decided to build a fire, since you can draw that out pretty much indefinitely. I had seen a good spot on my walk around the lake/river that already had a fire circle built. So I went there, but there was some teenage Swedish hippie girl there playing her drum to the sunset. So I kept going. I found a spot that was safe (very sandy, free of trees), but not nearly as picturesque (far from the lake/river and under some high-tension power lines. Still, it gave me the opportunity of build my own fire ring (which killed some more time) and I got a nice fire going. When the moon came up it was nearly full and the refection on the lake/river was beautiful.
