My "Fulbrighter Friends" Leanne, Jennifer, Alli, and I decided to celebrate the Polish Independence Day in a rather unpatriotic way: leaving the country. We found cheap flights to Stockholm (the wonders of WizzAir); that was all the incentive we needed. Even though Stockholm wasn't high on anyone's "Places I Want to Go" list, we were ready for an escape. Jennifer and Leanne are both English Teaching Assistants, like myself. Jenn teaches in Gdańsk and Leanne lives in "the armpit of Poland" (her words, not mine), teaching eight classes at the University in Keilce. Alli is doing her Ph.D. research in Katowice, which basically means she lives in the University of Silesia archives.
During my time in Stockholm, I have one goal: to climb something. Day One: Mission Accomplished.
Jennifer took the train to Poznań, and we flew to Stockholm together. Alli and Leanne left from Krakow. Our hostel was located right on the edge of Gamla Stan--Stockholm's Old Town square. It's a beautiful city with many narrow streets, which I am a sucker for.
Shoes hanging between buildings. One was a pair of Chuck Taylors. Meaning: Maggie was meant to go to Stockholm. This was God's way of welcoming her.
More streets, buildings, and trees on Gamla Stan. Just like in Poland, the blue sky is a rarity.
The changing of the guard in front of the Royal Palace (where the royal family doesn't actually live). So essentially, these are Swedes carrying around knives and big guns for no good reason. Actually, when you think about it, when was the last time someone attacked Sweden? All the have are meatballs...and lots of Thai restaurants. See my point?
Dr. Inger Bull, a Nebraska Wesleyan professor, is currently spending her sabbatical semester in Stockholm. So, she and I met up for lunch...and coffee. Everything is Sweden revolves around coffee, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Dr. Bull was on the Fulbright committee last year, and she helped with my application essays. It was great to catch up with her and hear about her adventures. We spend part of our rendezvous exchanging "when I fell down in Europe" stories. Of course she had an NWU pennant with her, so we took some photos. And no mom, I didn't ask if she was wearing her money belt.
After leaving Dr. Bull, I walked along the water to meet Leanne, Jennifer, and Alli at the Vasa museum. Stockholm is basically a series of islands; there are boats and water everywhere you go.
The Vasa Museum was entertaining...and much warmer than being outside. The Vasa was supposedly the the biggest and most ambitions war ship Sweden had ever built (this was in 1623). The idea was to attack Poland and re-enforce the strength of the Swedish navy. The irony: the ship never made it out of Stockholm's harbor. It was badly engineered for balance and it capsized and sank 20 minutes into it's maiden voyage. (As Alli said, "My inner Polish Nationalist is like 'Serves you right, bitches.'") This ship sat at the bottom of the Stockholm Harbor until the 1960s when a researcher specializing in underwater shipwrecks (Leanne and I debated a long time on how one actually gets that job) found it and decided to make the Vasa his project. The worm that would normally eat the wood of a wreck doesn't live in the Baltic, so the ship is completely intact. The detail of the wood carving is still vibrant--the only thing missing is the paint. All and all, it took seven years to get the ship off the bottom of the ocean and another 20ish years to salvage and categorize everything on board. The museum was actually built around the ship once it was on dry land.It's rather impressive.
This is a really well-done museum. We were there for over three hours. Though, at about hour two, Leanne and I began a running joke that Sweden's greatest failure had become one man's greatest accomplishment.There was a beautiful boat that sank...it was rather embarrassing since the city had literally stopped to watch the Vasa sail away. But 350 years later, this rather large "oops" became someone's great achievement. The moral: someone will make a success of your failure...eventually.
Anyway, it's a cool museum.They even have a fake crow's nest that rocks back and forth like a real one. Alli did not enjoy the unbalancedness.
Stockholm's smallest public statue.
Leanne, Jennifer, and their cameras.
Susan Surrandon and the Stockholm Film Festival. There's also an advertisement for the ABBA museum in the background. And no, there was no ABBA for us--that wasn't included with the museum/transportation pass we bought.
The baker at the open air museum we visited (sort of like the Swedish version of Pioneer Village, except this was the first open air museum).
I climbed the farm house wall in the Norther Sweden section...mostly because I could.
Swedish children on a field trip. All children must wear hats (this goes double in Poland) and hold hands. You can see that some are wearing reflective vests; this is really common.
It's a moose (just for you daddy)!
A view of the city from the top of the hill.
And then we took a boat tour through the city... though Leanne didn't bring her flippy-floppies. She's from California--I thought that was a given.
Cranes that look like giraffes in the old ship yards.
Off to the Ice Bar for Alli's 27th birthday! And no birthday in Sweden is complete without a Viking hat...and a fuzzy blue cape.
At the Ice Bar, everything is made of ice, even the glasses.
They give everyone a blue furry cape, mostly because they are stylish. I hear mitten clips are in this year.
I tried to lick my square glass into a more rounded shape. It was a bigger task than I anticipated.
Seriously? Let's give the tourists vodka and then tempt them with things they're not supposed to do.
Four of America's finest. Who wouldn't want to learn English from us?
Alli's a rather picky eater...but she really like pistachios...on the metro...while wearing her Viking attire.
The one thing Poland is truly lacking: cinnamon rolls.
After leaving Stockholm and it's icy climate, I flew back to Gdańsk and stayed a few days with Jennifer. Her dorm is literally a five-minute walk from the beach. You walk out the front door and 200 meters later, there's the Baltic.
We arrived just in time to drop our stuff in Jennifer's flat and stroll on the beach during the sunset (it gets dark around 4:00pm there--about 4:20ish in Poznań). Because of the low salt content, there's swans on the beaches.
A marvel of communist engineering: an apartment complex that runs for approximately a half-mile.
It just keeps going, and going, and going....
The Royal Walk in the Gdańsk Old Town.
Neptune's fountain.
And the old ship yards, which have been rebuilt since the war. On the far side, there are a few building that have been left in a "post-bombing" state. Since joining the EU, Poland has stopped building ships. Even when riding the trams around this city, one can sort of pick out the men that used to work in the ship yards. Some of them have a very lost look...it's rather sad.
Jennifer is currently finishing her MA thesis on the kindertransport (If you give her a beer and get her going on the subject, you have about two hours of quality entertainment and solid historical information in front of you. We did this over fish and chips--I learned a lot. I'm a history geek myself, so I didn't mind. It was a subject I knew nothing about; I no feel very well informed). Since she's a historian by trade, walking through Gdańsk with her is an entirely different experience than the first time I was here. And no historical trip to this city would be completely without a trip to the solidarity museum.This year is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. That event was the "big moment" for freedom in Eastern Europe, but it should be noted that a communist resistance movement began in Poland. The Gdańsk ship yards were the sights of strikes in 1980 that created a domino effect leading to events in Berlin. Polish solidarity leader Lech Walesa actually pushed over "symbolic dominoes" in Berlin last week. It's on YouTube.
Jennifer and I with a chunk of the Berlin wall.
The original list of 21 demands made by the ship yard strikers in 1980.
And the gates to the Gdańsk ship yards.
Jennifer and I decided that the ornaments on this gate are "Poland in a nutshell." There's a Polish flag, a solidarity flag, flowers, a Vatican flag, a picture of the Black Madonna, a large picture of John Paul II, and a significantly smaller photo of the current pope. Basically, it says "We're free; we're Catholic; and JP II was awesome."
Off to Sopot, the more modern city right next to Gdańsk (Sopot, Gdańska, and Gdynia are often called the "Tri-Cities.").
The "Crazy House"--it makes me think of Dr. Suess. Does anyone else hear a Who?
The Sopot beach where a few weeks ago 60 mile an hour winds tore up the pier.
There used to be a restaurant here. Not anymore.
There is my Baltic adventure. It was quite wonderful, especially since there is no ocean in Nebraska. Now, I am back in Poznań, returning to my routine. A little time away was what we all needed in order to recharge and make it through to Christmas.Bring on the snow!
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