Summer... vacation?

It's summer in Europe, and you know what that means... vacation with Todd & Brenda! As a reminder, I will refer to Brenda as "Assistant Manager" (or something similar), and Todd will be my esteemed Coworker - for the purposes of this blog, anyway! Also, I will be breaking this blog into 2 different entries, as this vacation was pretty lengthy (and that necessarily makes the blog pretty lengthy!)

You may remember them from such previous blog entries as "I've been working in the salt mines - to the Sound of Music" and "After climbing that sandy fortress in 110 degree weather, there'd better be a REAL dragon up there!"

We shall hereby informally refer to this blog entry as "Fika, Vasa, ABBA, and Sauna: Attempted Heat Stroke in the Baltics and Scandinavia," or alternatively "Planes, Trains, Boats, and Automobiles: Where the Sun Never Sets."

By now, you all should know how much I dearly love hot weather (not at all!), so it should come as no surprise that a trip to Scandinavia was partially my idea when we first started discussing our next joint trip (at the end of our shared vacation last summer). Turns out, summer happens in Scandinavia too, who'd've thunk it?

We flew out on Wednesday afternoon from Terminal 3 at Frankfurt Airport. Terminal 3 opened in the last few months, and this was our first time using it. We took the subway from our town to the airport, then took the little shuttle train to the new terminal. Nice enough, but I'll reserve judgement until I've had to pick someone up from there. Both of the other (original) terminals are a nightmare to pick people up at, with no cell phone lot and about half as many parking spots as they really need.

We flew out on FinnAir, our first experience with that airline. Honestly, just another airline, but with one difference: On low cost airlines over here, they give you water on the flight (usually a small bottle), and if you want something else they'll happily sell you another drink or a few different kinds of snacks. Same deal with FinnAir, but instead of just water, they offered us blueberry juice... and that's not a real thing in the states, so of course we had to partake. Pretty much exactly what you're thinking -  looks like grape juice, tastes like blueberries. Not sure what the significance of blueberries is, but I'd be willing to have more!

We landed in Helsinki at around 11 that night - still quite bright outside.

Still on the plane, 11:00pm.

I've talked before about our "zombie shutters" here in Frankfurt, and how helpful they are when the sky doesn't get dark until after 10 at night. Turns out, the sun stays out even later 700 miles north of here. Evidently, zombie shutters never really caught on in Scandinavia, because none of our hotels (or apartments... more about that later though) were equipped with them. I remember having to deal with extended periods of sunlight when we lived in Alaska, but if I recall correctly, we would put things on the windows to keep the light out. None of the places we stayed had any additional coverings on the windows, so bright rooms in the middle of the night were an ongoing challenge we had to deal with.

Since it was pretty late to be walking in a neighborhood we didn't know we took an Uber to the hotel and got checked in, then remembered that we hadn't had any dinner. I found an all night grocery store nearby (and the neighborhood felt pretty quiet and safe), but we got sidetracked on the way and ended up eating McDonalds instead. Nothing odd to report about the McDonalds, except that only burgers with cheese were on the menu. I like cheese just fine, but for some weird reason I prefer hamburgers to cheeseburgers - I had chicken nuggets. I'm not certain if regular hamburgers are on the menu at normal times - this was our only visit to McDonalds. If you're that eager to know, I'll tell you exactly where this McDonalds was located, and you can check it out for yourself.

The next morning, we met up with Assistant Manager and Coworker for hotel breakfast. The breakfast at this hotel was pretty extensive, but we noticed one thing (that turned out to be a pattern): in most of our travels over here, we've found cappuccino to be standard breakfast fare. In the countries on this trip though, coffee was the regular accompaniment to breakfast. Milk was usually available, but "cream" was nowhere to be found, with milk being the usual add-in. At our first hotel, they offered shots of ginger juice with breakfast, supposedly to boost your immune system. I don't frequently start the day off with a shot (any more, at least), but we all partook - when in Rome (Helsinki) and all.

We headed out for our free walking tour at 10:00. During our tour, we walked throughout central Helsinki, and learned entirely too much information to pour into a single blog post. Some highlights:

The national flag is only allowed to be flown on specific days in Finland. This dates back to the Second World War, and those pesky Germans; buildings flying the Finnish flag were easy targets for the Luftwaffe, so flying the flag was outlawed except for special occasions and specific public holidays. The only exception to that: at the harbor, we saw a building flying the Swedish flag, right next to one flying the Finnish flag. There's a special exception granted to that specific building... it's the city hall building, and some leader made that exception, since it's located right on the main harbor... AND because the Swedish Embassy is right next door. The mayor (or whomever, I don't really remember who it was) didn't want a Swedish flag to be the only one that a new arrival to the city saw, so they're allowed to fly a Finnish flag at City Hall.

Our guide mentioned that we should adhere to all laws, including laws for jaywalking, as fines in Finland are based on your income. I had seen posts online mentioning income based fines for moving violations, but hadn't seen things like jaywalking covered, so this was a little bit of new information for me.

Finland (and most of the other countries on our itinerary) has a long and confusing history, with Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark tied together at different points in history... then separated... then tied together again. As such, we saw a lot of similar (or shared) customs across the countries.

Wandering around Helsinki, we noticed that the street signs were a bit weird. Each street had two names, and each block had a picture of an animal on it as well. Turns out, there are historical reasons for all of them; signs are required to be in both Finnish and Swedish, so that you can know where you are regardless of which language you speak (remember the countries being together?)... what about the animals though? Up until 1812, the capital of Finland was Turku, but the Russians decided that it was too close to Sweden, and moved the capital to Helsinki instead. A fire had destroyed much of the city in 1808, so an architect was brought in to design a new city layout. The architect was the same one who'd designed Gamla Stan in Stockholm, and he gave each block a distinct number, rather than using street number addresses. For ease of specifying which block an address was on, they decided to use animals to name each block. Once the streets were named (in both Finnish and Swedish), the animal designations stayed up, even if they're not used (much) any more.

The last stop on our walking tour was the library... only, library isn't a really good name for it. It's more of a community center that happens to have books as well. Pretty much anything you'd like access to, they have it. They have a Maker Space with 3d printers, a sewing area, a massive kitchen you can use, a video gaming area with all the different consoles, pretty much anything you can think of, all free to use if you have a library card. We actually had lunch in the cafe there after our tour. Assistant Manager just retired as an Elementary School Librarian, so you might notice a pattern this year.

Later in the afternoon, we partook in a traditional Finnish sauna, at one of the most well known saunas in Helsinki, Löyly. We all kept our suits on - this isn't that kind of blog entry!

The outside of Löyly

First up, pile into a hot room, 180+ degrees fahrenheit. Stay in there until you can't stand it anymore, then head outside and jump into the Baltic Sea (around 60 degrees fahrenheit). Repeat as desired.

I desired twice. In the interest of full disclosure, the boss was the first one to get into the cold water. All four of us got in over the course of our stay. I got in twice, the ladies got in 3 or 4 times each, and nobody could keep track of how many times coworker got in. He ended up visiting a sauna later in the trip - he just couldn't get enough of that cold water!

That first shock of cold water!

After she was a little more used to it

Afterward, we took scooters back to the hotel for dinner (included with our rooms). The management team and I headed out a little while later, coworker decided to try to catch up on his jet lag. We wandered around, and had a late dessert at Fazer, a famous chocolate store with an attached cafe and bakery.

The next morning, we walked over to the street market to poke around for a little while. The rest of the group headed via ferry to the island of Suomenlinna, a fortress dating back to 1748, constructed by the Swedes as a defensive fortification against the nearby Russians. I wasn't feeling well, so I headed back to the hotel to rest.

I met back up with them at Temppeliaukio Church (the Rock Church), a well known church carved into the ground. Pretty church, but it only dates back to the late 1960s.

Afterward, we took a bus up to the organ monument dedicated to Finnish national icon, Jean Sibelius. He was evidently quite the composer, but I'm not very well versed in classical music. I'm also not that much into modern art - to me, it looked like a jumble of pipes welded together in a weird way. Assistant Manager and I were both expecting it to make some sort of noise when the wind blew over the ends of the pipes, but... nope, just a bunch of pipes.

We took a bus back to the hotel after puzzling over the modern art monument for a few minutes. Dinner was in the hotel, then we walked to a nearby bar for some drinks to celebrate our last night in Helsinki.

Bright and early the next morning, we checked out of the hotel and headed for our next conveyance: the ferry. We were booked on a Viking "Cruise Ship" from Helsinki to Tallinn, Estonia. I put it in quotes, because... while it may technically have been a "cruise ship," I evidently don't get credit with the boss for "taking a cruise." We had this discussion a little later in the vacation as well. This is probably not the same Viking Cruise line you're familiar with, but... who knows. Most of the Viking Cruises we're familiar with are river cruises, and I can't imagine this beast cruising on the Rhine River.

Our trip was a 3 hour ferry from Helsinki across the Baltic Sea to Tallinn. We loaded all of our luggage on board, locked it into an empty room, then took off to explore. We ended up spending most of our time in a nightclub area playing a weird version of bingo. We each got cards for €5 a piece, with 3 cards per sheet. Everybody knows how to play bingo, right? Not on this cruise line, you don't! Only horizontal lines counted, and they played 4 games on each sheet, playing 3 cards at a time; single line, two lines, and where you had to cover the whole card.

Nobody (in our party) won, so we just counted it as the price of entertainment, and checked out the sights for the rest of the (relatively short) trip.

When we docked in Tallinn, it was too early to check into our apartments, so we walked down the street to a nearby mall to have a bite to eat while we waited.

Once we were able to check in, we dropped our luggage off in our rooms and headed out to explore the town.

Tallinn, sweet Tallinn. Probably my favorite city we visited. Occupation of the city dates back around 5,000 years, with the history since the 13th century being the best documented. The original name for Tallinn was Reval, probably after a nearby county... but, there's a story (because of course there is) about the naming of the town... supposedly, one of the kings named the town based on a royal hunt. According to the legend, a deer that the king was hunting fell off of a cliff at this location, and he gave the town its name based on the German word for "deer fall," "reh-fall." I'll leave it to you to believe whichever story you'd like. In 1918, the name of the city was changed to Tallinn, which, in Estonian, means "Danish Castle," since this is part of the world where the Danes were one of the predominant forces - we saw their influence across all of the cities (and countries) we visited.

Tallinn is very well known for being one of the best preserved medieval towns, and it definitely lived up to the billing it's received. Our first evening, we explored Old Town, eventually finding our way to one of the places on the Assistant Manager's "must see" list: The DM Baar. I edited together 4 clips that the Assistant Manager took of the bar, but Youtube wouldn't let me show them to you if I included the audio, so they helpfully removed it. If you'd like to have the full experience, play the song "Stories of Old" from the 1984 album "Some Great Reward" while watching the video:

In 1999, this random guy opened a bar in old town Tallinn, but couldn't come up with a good name. He was (still is) a big fan of the band Depeche Mode, so he would only play Depeche Mode albums, on repeat, all day and night. His friends started calling the bar the DM Bar, and the name stuck. The bar still plays (only) Depeche Mode, and it's known worldwide. It's well known enough that the members of the band hang out there when they're nearby. All of the drinks are named after Depeche Mode songs. All of the photos on the walls are of either the guys in the band, or other celebrities who have visited. One notable one I saw was an autographed picture of Tony Hawk, with a signature that mentioned having a "Black Celebration" (the name of a classic Depeche Mode song).

I grew up listening to Depeche Mode, and I enjoyed it. Assistant Manager was gaga over the whole thing. Boss seemed to enjoy it. Coworker made it known that he wasn't a big fan of the band, and was only there for the inventive drinks.... but he only drank beer. Spoilsport.

The next day was our walking tour, this one was given by a fellow in period dress. He gave us a really good overview of the history of the city, including introducing us to "Lübeck Rights." This law was enacted (for the town of Reval) in 1248 by the King of Denmark, based on a set of laws originally enacted in the town of Lübeck, Germany. These laws effectively created a "merchant" class of citizens, and established self-governance within the town. Quite fascinating, even if I'm glossing over quite a bit of it.

During our tour, he took "volunteers" to act out parts of the town's history. Assistant Manager and coworker were selected to act out the naming of the town (from the legend I shared earlier):

Coworker was selected to be the king. Quite regal looking, if you ask me!

Assistant Manager was given the role of "innocent deer," pursued to her death by the king. Yes, she was required to do the ears.

He also taught us the proper way for a gentleman to escort a lady down the street in medieval Tallinn. Please take a look at the different squares in the picture below - let's label the quadrants alphabetically, starting with A in the upper left hand corner, and proceeding clockwise:

Any guesses on which of the four is correct? I'll give you a hint which will give you a 50% chance: You see how the center of the road is higher than the sides? The woman should be walking in the center, keeping her out of the literal sewage running down the sides of the roads. In medieval times, there was no indoor plumbing. Rather than pressing a lever and flushing, they'd take their full buckets to the window overlooking the street and... first checking the street below, would yell "CACAH" loudly three times (to warn passers-by of the impending... yuck...) then would empty their buckets into the streets below. The man would walk in the sewage to keep the women clean. Beyond that... look closely at how the happy couples are holding hands. You'll notice that in A and C, the person walking on the center is resting the palm of their hand flat down on the palm of the other person. This was the correct way to hold hands in medieval Tallinn. If their fingers were interlocked (as in B and D), this was considered too "spicy," and indicated that perhaps a little more was going on between the couples than just holding hands. This led to some generally harmless name calling for the rest of the vacation; for the remainder of our trip, if anyone caught the other couple with their fingers intertwined, we'd accuse them of being "shameless hussies," and suggest that they needed to get a room.

After our tour, we had lunch on the town square. The ladies ordered some sort of cheeseburger and were served some sort of vegetarian burgers instead. They didn't complain. I probably would have.

We headed back to the hotel after lunch, stopping briefly at the grocery store, and the boss and I stopped in a store for her to look for (and buy) a new purse. She's become quite attached to a specific brand of bag while we've lived over here, Fjallraven, and this was her first opportunity to shop in a store dedicated to that brand.

Once we got back to the hotel, we rested and waited for some thunderstorms to pass, then walked back into Old Town for dinner. We had reservations at a place called Olde Hansa (there's a pic of the outside of the building above)...

It was similar to Medieval Times, but without the jousting. We'd reserved a table ahead of time, but for some reason they thought we'd enjoy being stuck up in the third floor; no electric lights, no air conditioner, no fans. Dark and hot, with the only light coming from candles on the tables. All of the dishes on the menu were prepared with period recipes from the 14th century. The food was pretty good - I tried parsnips and rutabaga for the first time, and was quite impressed! I have no idea how to cook them, but I might start looking for some recipes - I see them in the local stores occasionally.

We didn't get any pictures of the inside, but here's a pic of the men's bathroom...

The "sink" on the right is a hanging basin of water that fills automatically (using medieval era "magic," evidently). The small bowl is full of liquid soap. Yeah, you dip your fingers into the bowl of soap to get some, lather up, and manually tilt the basin toward yourself to pour a stream of water on your hands.

We wandered around old town for a little while after dinner, and ended up in an Authentic German Bierhall™ for a round of drinks. Afterward, we walked back to the hotel, stopping at a cherry liqueur bar on the way - we'd discovered it earlier in the day, and they served the same (general) kind of liqueur that I'd fallen in love with in Poland.

The beer hall is on the right side of this street, with the town square at the end of the street.

Next day started off with a visit to a museum set in a detention facility that the KGB used during the days of Estonia being behind the Iron Curtain. Quite sobering to read the stories of the prisoners who were detained there (way) back in the 1970s and 1980s; most of the other history that we've been exposed to over here dates further back, and it was jarring to be face to face with these abhorrent practices from during our lifetimes - when we were going about our business without a care in the world.

Interestingly enough, right down the road from the KGB Prison Museum was the Russian Embassy. This was the only place in Estonia that we saw police officers stationed, standing guard. Evidently, the Estonians aren't big fans of the Russians.

Something that a lot of people don't know... there's a Russian exclave to the west of Estonia (past Latvia and Lithuania, on the coast between Lithuania and Poland), and Estonia borders Russia to the east. Pretty frequently over here, we see news stories about different NATO interceptions of Russian planes flying off the coast of the Baltic nations... I share this only to say that the Estonians are entirely too familiar with the Russians, and evidently aren't big fans.

We found a local place for brunch, and it turned out to be one of the best restaurants that we visited on our trip. If you're ever in Tallinn, "5 Senses" is the name of the place, and we'd all highly recommend it!

Tallinn is divided into two different areas, the area at the bottom of the hill where the merchants were located (Old Town, where we'd been wandering), and the area on top of the hill, where the governmental buildings are located. So, we wandered up there. There were a couple of churches and a park that overlooked the lower city. Quite picturesque.

We were all hot and tired by that point, so we decided to head back to the apartments to cool off, but agreed that a visit to a bar would be a welcome diversion on the way back. That singular bar visit turned into an impromptu pub crawl, and we didn't make it back to the apartments until after dinner. We ended up visiting 6 different pubs throughout the city... I'll give you the names of all of them, but I've only got notes on 3 of them:

• We started out at a place called Cru. This was one of the first places we encountered on the way, which sparked the whole "Let's get a drink on the way back!"
• Next up was some place Assistant Manager had heard of: The Headless Chicken - medieval themed, no electric lighting. We'd visited this place the day before looking for food, and were disappointed at the time that they only served drinks. We later figured out that it was located on a famous tourist site, St. Catherine's Passage. When looking for places of interest (to make sure we'd seen all of the famous parts of Tallinn), we were amused to find that we'd already wandered down the alley, without even knowing it.
• Third was a restaurant we'd passed a few times, Pepper Sack. We'd learned on our tour that merchants would indicate how well off they were by tying a sack filled with spices to their belt. This sack came to be known as a "Pepper Sack," hence the name of the restaurant.
• Next up was a random place we encountered called Senseless Speakeasy.
• I don't remember what drew us to our fifth place, Sigmund Freud, except possibly the promise of more drinks.
• We rounded out our pub crawl at our old standby, The DM Baar. Yes, they were still playing Depeche Mode. No, coworker still didn't sing along.

Who wouldn't wanna check this place out?!?

The Headless Chicken

You can see part of St. Catherine's Passage in this pic

By that time, we were all a little (let's call it) "spicy" and hungry. Somehow, the topic of Georgian food came up, and it turns out that our apartments were right next door to a little shopping area (that we'd missed previously) that had a few restaurants in it, including a Georgian restaurant called "Gobi." Yes, we all know that "Gobi" refers to a desert in Asia, wholly within the borders of Mongolia and China (where neither the country nor state of Georgia most emphatically aren't), and no, we don't know why a Georgian restaurant would be named after a desert 4,000 kilometers / 2,500 miles (or 11,500 kilometers / 7,150 miles, if you're going to insist on thinking I'm talking about the 'great State of Georgia') away from that country and/or state. What we do know though: khachapuri is delicious. Picture a flat bottomed boat made of the most tender, delicious bread you've ever had. Now, fill that boat right up to the brim with melted cheese. Now, before you serve it, crack an egg on top of the cheese. Tableside, use a fork to mix that egg into the melted cheese, with the heat from the molten cheese cooking the egg into the filling. Tear off chunks of bread and use those delectable chunks to shovel the cheesy, eggy filling into your mouth. Now, picture all of that after completing a six-stop bar crawl, and you might be able to understand just how scrumptious that bread was.

The next morning, we took our time checking out of the apartments and moseyed back over to the port. We boarded another Viking "Cruise Ship," on an overnight voyage this time. Since this was a pretty lengthy vacation, with a lot of hotel/apartment stays, we opted to get cheaper cabins (since it would only be a single overnight stay). As a result (of choosing the cheapest least expensive cabins), we were on a lower deck, with no portholes in our rooms. Turns out, we were on the lowest deck.

As an aside... I kid, but I'm the one who arranged these particular rooms, so I've got no one to blame but myself.

You know, in the movie Titanic, where they show you all of the classes of rooms, and you get to see the difference in the conditions between where the first and second class passengers stayed, and where Jack and the other ruffians were? About halfway through our journey down into the bowels of the ship, we passed through a rough looking gang of Irish gentlemen drinking, carousing, and throwing dice against a wall. We asked for directions to our berths and they simply laughed at us, and wished us "Good luck!"

Just for the sake of honesty, that last paragraph was just me being a bit facetious and using a tiny bit of hyperbole for effect.

We were on deck "two" of the ship. That's a bit of a misnomer, there just wasn't a deck one. Our deck was literally called the "Anchor Deck." We saw on a map of the ship that berthing spaces only took up half of the ship that far down (the middle half) - the engines and anchor chain stowage took up the fore and aft quarters. The ship was a car ferry as well, and we had two full decks of cars above us before we'd encounter other people. During the journey, access to the car areas was locked, so to get out of our berthing area, we'd have a 3 story long climb back up to civilization, past the locked doors leading to the garages. Luckily, there was an elevator, but it was usually so busy transporting first and second class passengers between the upper floors (floors 9-12, where the restaurants and lounges were) that we'd have to wait ten minutes or so for it to come down to the basement levels.

One of the added bonuses about having rooms so deep in the bowels of the ship was that the rooms would be pitch black. This was quite welcome, after trying to sleep through the bright, sunshiny evenings for the last few nights. One of the negatives: back in the 1970s (when our boat was designed and constructed), air conditioning units didn't exist that could pipe cold air that far down into the depths of the sea. As a result, the temperature down there, while not quite "stifling," was definitely "stifling-adjacent." But for my travel fan, I'm not sure we could have slept at all.

Once we dropped our luggage off, we trekked back upstairs to the land of the living, and found that bingo was about to start in the nightclub area... so we played bingo again. No winners this time either.

Turns out, our ferry wasn't non-stop, we had a quick stopover back in Helsinki... we didn't get off, and we were soon on our way again.

Next up... more bingo! Still didn't win. You'd think we'd learn our lesson by now, but evidently we're slow learners.

Our trusty steed for this portion of the journey... you can see the cars driving off - our staterooms were the next level down from there.

Departing Tallinn

Departing Tallinn

Midnight on the high seas. Luckily, our staterooms didn't have portholes!

We hung out on the ship all night (no other options, really!) - nothing groundbreaking to report, except.... Evidently karaoke is HUGE in the Baltics; there was an excruciating length of time where people were lining up so assault our eardrums with enthusiastically out of tune renditions of songs in Finnish, Swedish, and Estonian. Throw in some ABBA and some Eagles, and I was in quite a rush to find somewhere else to be, but could only get so far away while trapped on a boat. The performers and audience were having the time of their lives though, bless their hearts.

The next morning, we loaded up our luggage, eventually disembarked, and took a shuttle bus into downtown Stockholm. The shuttle bus was packed to capacity, and I was the last person on, so the driver had me sit in the front seat (where the tour guide normally sits). I pantomimed pointing out sites on the way downtown, he didn't speak a lot of English, but he laughed along with me.

It was too early to check into our hotel, so we dropped off our luggage in the bag drop at the apartments, and headed back into town for some touristy exploration, starting at an old ship called the Vasa.

Here, dear readers, I have a confession to make. When I think of "Old Scandinavian Boats," this is what comes to mind:

Turns out, that's not the Vasa. That's the Gokstad, a 1,200 year old Viking longship. Let's put that on the list for Oslo, shall we?

This, dear friends, is the Vasa:

The Vasa is a Swedish ship from the 1600s. Another fun contrast between the ship I thought we'd be checking out and the ship we really checked out: The Gokstad sailed for about 10 years, and was ceremoniously buried in a tomb for a Viking chieftain (for his classy journey to Valhalla, perhaps?) around the year 900. The Vasa sank before its maiden voyage, and lay at the bottom of the Baltic for 333 years, until 1961.

I think we were supposed to appreciate the Vasa for the engineering prowess involved in building such a massive and ostentatious vessel... how much appreciation are we supposed to have for a ship which survived a grand total of 1,400 yards once it was launched?

Also at the Vasa Museum was an exhibit of James Cameron, focusing on his undersea exploration. The boss took a picture of Jack and Rose's outfits:

I mentioned "fika" at the beginning of the post, but haven't touched on it since then. Let me explain...

In researching this post, I learned a bit of weird information that I'll try to put into some semblance of a narrative - you'll have to judge for yourself how successful I've been!

We first learned of "fika" while planning our trip. At our very first lodging (the hotel in Helsinki), meals were included: breakfast, dinner, and "fika." Turns out, fika is a mid-afternoon coffee break. You typically have a cup of coffee and a small pastry. It's a cultural thing there, that (evidently) started in Sweden and migrated across the rest of Scandinavia. Everybody has fika - it's a time when everyone in the office steps back, takes a break together, and just regroups. There's never any agenda, no organized meeting, everyone just pauses for coffee and a cinnamon (or cardamom) bun. Turns out, the name "fika" is just the word for coffee in Swedish (kafee)... with the syllables reversed.

We fika'd a few times on our trip. The reason I bring it up at this junction is because after we (I, really) finished being disappointed by the Vasa, we stopped at a nearby cafe for fika, before parting ways. The management team wanted to check out the ABBA museum, while the manual laborers in the group would rather be doing literally ANYTHING else.

Coworker and I headed back to the apartments to check in, then met back up with the supervisors for our next tour: Gamla Stan at 7:00pm.

As you may or may not know, the city of Stockholm actually spreads across an archipelago comprised of 14 islands. The city should not be confused with the "Stockholm Archipelago," which, with 24,000 islands, is the largest archipelago in Sweden, and the second largest in Scandinavia.

Gamla Stan literally translates to "The Old Town," and that's where our tour was.

The previous capital of Sweden was Sigtuna, a little city that we'll talk about a little later. Sigtuna had problems a thousand years ago with armed gangs attacking the city, and decided that the capitol needed to relocate, but.... to where?!? I can't speak to the veracity of this story (as video evidence is sparse from those days), but legend has it that the city leaders cut down a huge tree, hollowed it out, filled the hollowed out tree with gold, and set it afloat. Gamla Stan is where the log supposedly went aground, therefore marking the proper site for the capitol to move to.

Yeah.

Now, I'm usually not one to cast aspersions on other peoples beliefs... there's a lot of wacky stuff that I myself am willing to believe. Even if I don't believe something - if YOU do, more power to you. I'm not gonna try to change your mind. This particular load of horse squeezin's though... I've gotta tell you: I'm casting some serious aspersions on this story. Take a look at the map below - I had to stitch together 4 different screen caps to get the full journey:

Now... you're trying to tell me - with a straight face, no less - that this mythical log was put into the water at the red star at the top of the map, and didn't hit any land until the red star at the bottom of the map? I've helpfully traced the "route" of the log with a red line, so you can see how many islands it would have to avoid to successfully make that journey. Granted, it's only 23 miles, as the crow flies... but to be honest, I'd be more likely to believe that that crow went to the local Crow Bar and got a posse together, and that those crows straight up murder-carried that log from Sigtuna to Gamla Stan.

Those crazy Swedes though. That's their story, and they're sticking to it.

After wandering around the Old Town area with our guide for a couple of hours, it was time to eat, so we went to a local restaurant that our guide had recommended.

We were seated at a table that a couple of regulars had evidently sat at a few times; there was a plaque next to the table telling us that the table belonged to Bjorn and Peter... leading to coworker and I calling each other Bjorn and Peter all night long. The management team and I all had Swedish Meatballs, and Peter had a reindeer steak. Speaking of Swedish meatballs - you might find this interesting - do you know what they call them in Sweden? Meatballs.

Obligatory apology for the dad joke. You should be happy with that apology - that's more than my travel companions got when I pulled that one out... which I may (or may not) have used several times during our visit to Stockholm.

We rode the metro back to the apartments.

Next morning we took public transit to get to our homemade Archipelago Tour. First up, a ferry ride to the island of Vaxholm. It's only 11 miles of so, but it took quite a while to get there. We wandered around the island for a while, then got a bite to eat at one of the restaurants overlooking the water.

Next up was another island, Grinda, known as a natural preserve. The rest of the team took off to explore the island, but I could see plenty of nature from the area around the ferry dock. I waited patiently for their return - evidently, they fika'd at the tavern located on the island. They told me that we were probably the only Americans on the island, as Grinda is pretty remote, and off the beaten path. They also told me that the setting reminded them of the movie Midsommar. If you know, you know.

We eventually took the ferry back to Stockholm and hit up a grocery store on the way back to the apartments. The apartment had laundry machines, so we had a quiet evening playing card games, eating charcuterie (the way we do it, that's just a fancy name for cheese & crackers) and doing laundry.

We worked on laundry for a little while longer the next morning, then headed back over to Gamla Stan on the metro. According to multiple weather apps, there was a low forecast for rain, so of course it rained on and off all day long.

We wandered around Gamla Stan stimulating the economy and watched the "Changing of the Guard." You may be familiar with ceremonies such as these at Buckingham Palace, or the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (at Arlington National Cemetery). Their version only faintly resembled those ceremonies. Basically, a group of Swedish soldiers in dress uniforms marched around the Parliament building, pausing briefly at each watch station to swap out a watchstander.

We enjoyed a late morning fika afterward at a random cafe we encountered... partly to get out of the rain.

The management team started hunting for watercolors to fill out their collections, while the worker-bees dutifully followed along. Our tickets to the Vasa came with tickets to the Wreck Museum, so we took a bus to there (different island than Gamla Stan, right next to Vasa Museum).

We happened to walk in right as a guided tour (in English) was starting. We hung out with the tour group for about a half hour, then wandered through the rest of the museum on our own. The guide for the group was an archeologist who was currently working on a project that was highlighted on the ground floor, Resande Man (Traveling Man). This ship sank in 1660, and was discovered in 2009. The large room the tour started in had carpeting duplicating the layout of the ship on the sea bed, with 10 or 12 artifacts scattered around the room, in the exact locations on the carpet that they were discovered at. Tour was interesting enough, but after a little while, his enthusiasm for this particular ship wasn't enough to hold our interest, so we continued on to the rest of the museum. Our group naturally split up (along family lines) when we abandoned the guided tour portion.

Afterward, the boss and I wanted a drink snack, we headed to the restaurant at the nearby Spirit Museum and sent a message to the group telling them where we'd gone. By the time our waiter had found us, the rest of the group had caught up with us

Here's a couple of facts y'all may or may not know:

1. Swedish people eat a lot of fish.
2. I don't eat fish.

I ordered something I thought would be safe... some sort of pesto stuff, served with toasted bread, basically "garlic bread with pesto." No fish anywhere near it on the menu. Safe, right?

Yeah, not so much.

My pile of pesto had a "nice" thick layer of some sort of fish on top of it. Think herring or mackerel, something disgusting like that. I damn near lost my lunch, but I luckily hadn't had anything to eat yet. I was almost able to scavenge enough of the pesto stuff that hadn't been contaminated by that nasty, oily fishy mixture to not have to eat dry bread for my entire meal, only half of it. Not my favorite meal of the trip, I felt lied to.

With the rain turning off and on (again and again and again), the temperature had dropped enough that the restaurant had turned on heaters. The date: July 3rd.

We walked in the rain back to the tram stop and rode the tram to the main shopping section of Stockholm and wandered through the stores for a while. When it came time for a real meal (with no nasty herring on top), we headed back to the main street to visit the Stockholm City Food Hall... more properly (their choice of spelling, not mine!) "STHLM CITY FOOD HALL." Evidently, STOCKHOLM takes up too much room on the sign, but 4 letters is too few to get the city name across. I didn't name it, so I guess it doesn't have to make sense to me.

We took the metro back to the hotel, and that's where I'm going to end this blog entry (as it's gotten pretty long, and we're only halfway done!)

Watch this space for Part II!