stockholm harbor panorama
FREE-FLOWING EVIDENCE:
the problem with a travel journal is FALLING BEHIND. because now, of course, i am already somewhere else and eager to talk THAT place. but i WILL catch up with myself. somehow.
we landed Saturday and spent three days in Stockholm. it rained for much of the time but we are hardy types with raincoats in our luggage and a will to slog - highly motivated, especially in a place i've never been. like Stockholm.
amazingly enough, my sneakers did not get very wet.
we stayed in GAMLA STAN which is the Old Town (not a Swedish take-off on Turkistan or Uzbekistan). our friend Lennart hosted us in a beautiful, cozy and well-appointed apartment contained within walls built in the 1600s (his partner LiseLotte was in Arizona, poor thing - warm and dry).
THE 1600s! such antiquity drives me wild in a splendid way.
and i know, i know - for Europe, 1600 is really sort of just a teenager. but being American, everything we see and have is NEW. so things that are old tend to be resonant and appealing and mystifying and awesome.
(click on any photo to get a large slideshow)
gamla stan, stockholm
buildings, red and pumpkin
corner, from above
lennart's glasses
various white things (olika vita saker)
i guess the most amazing thing we saw in Stockholm was the remains of the old ship Vasa.
they
finished building the boat in 1628 and there was a big launch party in
the harbor after which it was to sail off to win a war with Poland. it
had 64 canons on-board - 2 decks full of guns.
the
ship went less than one nautical mile when a gust of wind tipped it
perilously. the gun flaps (see below) were still open from firing
ceremonial celebratory rounds and water poured in but the Vasa righted
itself. moments later, another huge gust capsized the boat and she SUNK
TO THE BOTTOM OF THE HARBOR.
323
years later, the ship was raised and reconstructed. it is 98% original
timbers because there are no "ship worms" in the Baltic Sea - the water
has just the right amount of salinity to have preserved the black oak
from which it was built. magnificent carvings, reconstructed rigging,
skeletons of 30+ people who perished on-board. exquisite, evocative, and
very stimulating to the imagination!
the good ship VASA
10 pm, late night light
are you saying 30 skeletons on board remain to stimulate the imagination??!!
ReplyDeleteno. the imagination is stimulated but the skeletons are no longer on-board. they have been measured to generate algorithms i cannot conceive of then subjected to every scientific test that might be capable of rendering information about what these people looked like.
Deleteand VERY lifelike models, almost scary, ala Madame Toussand, were made to represent how the dead people might have looked and what they might have been wearing (fabric evidence was preserved as well)!
please bring me a large tray of those muffiny-cinnamonny-puffy things, please please. i want 3 now. and then can i please curl up in that white quilty thing? a nap will surely follow a triple consumption of those brownish puffs..........sorry to hear about the rain, but i'm wondering if it's related to the never-ending rain right here in connecticut, at least one ocean away. if you're keeping your sneakers dry, congratulations hugely to you! your travels and reports do me such good. thank you, thank you, and ahoy!
ReplyDeletei contemplated making a post about all the things i am NOT eating, among them the puffy cinnamony things. not because of any moral virtue or disattraction, of course, but simply because me and gluten don't get along. otherwise? 3, 6, 9, i bet those puppies would slip down REAL EASY! suck and run!
ReplyDeletecertainly, we share the rain across the vast ocean. and though it can cause grumbling for a traveler, how lucky that we have WATER: to drink, to bathe, to nourish growing things on the earth.
a food post may be in order.
happy to have you stopping by to chat, stan. xo
I too would like to try the muffins. I do so like the color of the buildings. Why, I wonder, do we not have buildings that color. And I like the building shapes and the little doodads on them, whatever they are for or are they decorative? And I love the mirror image architectural white detail.
ReplyDelete