N 55
E 013

Oslo to Trelleborg: 598 kilometres

A day of nice, early summer driving. We have views of the Oslo Fjord as we head almost due south, but soon lose our view of the sea. From there until south of Göteborg, we could as easily be hundreds of miles inland as within shouting distance of water.

We planned on stopping around Malmo, or maybe crossing into Denmark, and stopping for the night. We drive to Trelleborg to the ferry dock, to see whether we can get space on a ferry to Germany, and find that there is space late tonight, which would get us to Germany at about 3 in the morning, or 1st thing tomorrow morning. We choose tomorrow.

We find a bed for the night, and then walk through town. The smell tells us that there is a pulp mill nearby, but the focus of the town is on the ferries – there are 2 lines, going to towns in Germany and Poland, carrying passengers, cars and trucks, and railway freight cars. The ferries pull in and out with great regularity, and surprise us with great regularity.

All of the restaurants in town appear to be pizza joints, and all seem, from their names, to be run by Turks, who also ran a lot of the restaurants in Norway. We pick one, and sit outside until the sun goes down, when finally we can no longer deny that it is too cold to sit outside, and we move inside with the rest of the customers.

N 64
E 016

Kemi to Dorotea: 631 kilometres

Happy Birthday (July 12) to Anne-Marie Vanier!

The weather is at least with us today as we spend another big day of driving. The sun is out and is a steady beacon as we head south and west. The landscape as we drive south on the Swedish side of the Gulf of Bothnia is just as it was in Finland – flat, green, with the occasional glimpse of the Gulf. The only difference is that we pass through many more villages than we did yesterday in Finland.

We stop for lunch in Skelleftea, one of these little villages, and Olander, the owner of the restaurant we stop in, is clearly a fellow traveler – he makes us stick a pin into the map on the wall to show where we are from – it is the 3rd pin (it is only the 2nd day he has asked his customers to identify where they are from). At a quiet moment, he comes to chat and asks where we are going. We tell him, and he expresses dismay that we are bypassing Trondheim in Norway. He shows us the best way to get there, cutting away from the coast about 100 kilometres further south, and getting some nice vistas in Sweden to boot. We had talked about going to Trondheim, and his seal of approval seals the decision – we are heading that way!

We turn west at Umea, and immediately start rising into gentle mountains, like the Laurentians of Québec. The drive becomes much nicer – beautiful rivers tumbling over rapids, lakes with mountain backdrops. And almost no people – few towns, very few cars on the road. A sign tells us that we are in Lappland - we didn't realize that it came this far south in Sweden - it seemed farther north in Finland. Almost to prove that it is, though, we start seeing reindeer grazing along the edge of the road, sometimes walking on the road, causing us a bit of anxiety when one steps out right in front of us, but they appear completely relaxed around cars.

We stop for the evening thinking it is about 7:30 p.m. – and we have been on the road since about 10:30 this morning. It is actually only 6:30, we forgot about the time change at the Finnish border, but I am tired of driving. The town we stop in looked promising on the map, but turns out to have little in the way of accommodation – 1 hotel (where they tell us that it will be very, very noisy until the bar closes at 2 tomorrow morning, which sounded OK until they told us the price, which was almost as much as a 5 star hotel in Canada) and the campground, where we get a small “bungalow” for 50% more than we paid for the 3 star hotel last night in Kemi. This confirms our impression that Sweden is the most expensive of the 10 European countries we have visited so far this year.

Dinner is pizza and beer in one of the 2 pizza joints – there doesn’t appear to be any alternative. We go back to the cabin and watch TV – the mosquitoes, millions and millions of them, aren’t intimidated by the mosquito repellent we have applied!

It is the Sunday of the long Midsommer weekend and the streets of Stockholm are teeming with mostly tourists enjoying the sunny weather and their first ice cream of the summer. We are told that many of the locals are out of town at their cottages. We have a leisurely morning of free internet access – at one point the night before, John, on a whim, plugs in the wireless connection on our computer and voila – free wireless access thanks to someone else’s network! The morning has started cloudy but around 11 the sun breaks out and brings everyone into the streets.

We grab the Tunnelbana (the metro or “T”) at Hornstull and head to Stockholm’s Centralstationen as our starting point. It is a quick walk across the water to one of the 24,000 islands that make up the archipelago and protect the inner islands from the open seas. We are in Gamla Stan, the oldest part of Stockholm and certainly the most attractive. These small islands include the Riddarholmen, which has some of the oldest buildings in Sweden, the Royal Palaces, and the Royal Cathedral, all within a short walk of each other. We stop at a square and listen to a brass marching band playing some traditional songs, the music echoing from the old buildings, lifting everyone’s winter blues away.


The Gamla Stan on Midsommer Sunday


From left: The German Church, Spires of Government, Three Crowns: The symbol of Stockholm.

We continue our amble, sometimes straying from an unofficial walking tour the city has provided and wander back to the newer part of Stockholm and share a hot dog with some of the street kids, backpackers and budget shoppers huddled in the hurdy-gurdy (and somewhat ugly) square known as Sergels Torg. Everyone is out enjoying the first days of summer.

We grab some western food at a café that is actually open on the holiday weekend and head back to the apartment, walking almost the entire way home through green belts and church back yards. The sun is still blazing in the sky until after 11 pm these days and will be shinning again by 3 a.m. tomorrow.

I have enjoyed Stockholm and would return. John is somewhat less impressed than I am but he is saving himself for Helsinki, I think.

N 59°,
E 018°
Køpenhavn to Stockholm: 656 kilometres

The day starts grey and dreary. We take our leave of Pedro and Bjarne and the cats, and head off for Sweden. The 15 kilometre-long bridge/tunnel to Malmö starts just outside eastern Køpenhavn, and we are in Sweden.

Today is a major national holiday (perhaps the most important holiday of the year) in Sweden, Midsummer, to celebrate the longest-day of the year; but it doesn’t feel much like summer to us. We drive along, almost nobody else on the road. After a few hours, the sun begins to peak out from behind the clouds, and the dashboard thermometer tells us that the temperature outside is rising quickly. Finally, we need our sunglasses, and it gets to 19 degrees outside. It is even warm in the car, the sun shining through the windows.

We entered Sweden without any Swedish kroner, thinking that it would be easy to find a bank machine. But easy it is not – and when we do, we find that they are not on the network that our bank back home uses. Finally, after a number of attempts, we find a machine that will actually give us cash, and back at the highway interchange there is a restaurant that is open and at 3:30 p.m., we have some lunch.

We get into Stockholm without any problem, and easily find the apartment we have rented for 2 nights. We are located on Södermalm, a big island, primarily residential, just to the south of the main city. The apartment building is actually built on top of the subway entrance, very handy.

We park and explore the area just enough to realize that almost nothing except the 7-11 on the corner is open. We buy frozen pizza and breakfast items for tomorrow, and settle in for a night of doing nothing but watching TV.

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