August 7th - 9th - Oslo, Norway

We left Stockholm, Sweden on the morning of Sunday August 7th. The train ride from Stockholm to Oslo was almost 7 hours. Actually, I should say the journey from Stockholm to Oslo was almost 7 hours. The reason being is when they work on the railroad tracks they use a replacement bus for segments to detour on the train route. So we had to take a bus part of the way. It's not much fun to have to move your luggage from the train to the bus and back to the train again but that's the way it is and there's not a lot you can do about it. This picture is us waiting in the Stockholm train depot.

Even though there was a threat of rain we went ahead and went to a very popular garden filled with sculptures designed by the famous sculptor Gustav Vigeland. In the picture just below, the granite tower was not one Gustav sculpted himself but rather was designed by him and actually sculpted by three sculptors that worked for 14 years to carve 121 human figures in the granite tower. Do not zoom in too closely because the figures are anatomically correct of men, women and children all tangled up and are unclothed.

The bronze statues all around the fountain are also designs of Gustav and are also all anatomically correct and naked. Actually, every sculpture in the park is of naked men, women and children of all ages.

We left Vigeland Park and took a trolley to the harbor to catch a bus over to Viking Ship Museum. This sailing vessel was sitting in the harbour and is still used. I found it very interesting because of its age.

Although it's hard to see because of how dark it is this Viking ship was from about 820 A.D. People of power where buried in the ships along with food, their horses, their clothing, and much of their belongings. They were found and excavated in the late eighteen hundreds. This is one seriously old ship!

After leaving the Viking Ship Museum we went to the town hall. This doesn't look all that grand and it really wasn't on the outside because it was built in the mid-1950's.

However, this picture and the one below it, are hand-carved displays along with probably a dozen more as you approach the entrance of the town hall with each one telling a story. 

Once inside, many of the rooms are hand-painted murals in grand scale. This building is for when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by Norway to the recipient. It is common in the Scandinavian countries for a town hall to be the focal point of the city.

Later in the day we walk down the main pedestrian street in Oslo. As you can see we were joined by 100,000 of our closest Asian friends. Yes, you do see people wearing long-sleeve coats and long pants because it is chilly and windy here.

The yellowish colored building with the rounded front and the Norwegian flag on top is the Parliament building. Out front is a peaceful demonstration which happens quite often apparently. You can see there are many umbrellas up because it is raining and we are sitting on the second floor of a deli having dinner overlooking this park in front of the Parliament building.

This picture is of the Oslo Cathedral which is a Lutheran Church and it is where Norway commemorates its Royal marriages and deaths.

On Tuesday Morning August 9th, we took a tram up to the top of Oslo where a ski jump was built.  We just happened upon this ski jump where students that appeared to be junior high and high school age were practicing ski jumping. They did this by saturating the green carpeting at the bottom and also putting a mist of water on the white part of the track of the ski jump itself. Notice the pond at the end of the green at the bottom of the ski jump, which I suspect is for practicing ice skating in the winter time. Beyond that is a view of Oslo.

So here I am on my first attempt at ski jumping. That's me in the white ski suit just leaving the ski jump. Okay, I know none of you believe that's me ski jumping so I will confess it's not, however, there was a guy about my age that was also ski jumping. I often wonder who was the first person to look at a long hill like this and think "huh, I think I'll try to ski down this hill as fast as I can then jump off at the end."

This is the ski jump we were searching for when we ran across the other one. This one is an old ski jump that was built for the Olympics and is now kept for zip lining for tourists and locals.

On our hike back down, we came across this restaurant with a sod roof and we noticed there were many buildings up at this higher elevation with sod roofs.

This struck me as rather funny, the stone carving of the troll and the little troll in the woods. We ate our picnic lunch near the trolls.

When we got back down into Oslo, we walked down a narrow neighborhood street. The small houses were on one side of the street and they had gardens on the other side of the street. It appeared as though they would go out into their gardens to gather their fresh vegetables and would grill their evening dinner there because several of the places had a grill sitting out by small picnic tables in the garden. 

This church is the oldest building in Oslo.

This is just another picture of one of the many fountains around. Just beyond that you can see a building with interesting architecture.

Here is the Royal Palace and when the flag is flying the royalty is in the country.

OBSERVATIONS:

• we were told by some of the locals that this is Oslo in August so it's very rainy. We have done everything we wanted to do outside, but it has rained two, three and four times a day.

• food is expensive, we just saw one place today that a can of Coke was $5.  A bottle of water is commonly seen for about $4 a bottle. A medium pizza is about $30.

• most hotels include breakfast and the breakfast they provide is a wide variety of breads, meats, cheeses, cereal, eggs, yogurt and fruit.

• for those of you who have an interest in electric cars, I am really surprised at the number of Tesla cars I have seen. No wonder Tesla is having a hard time keeping up with production because it appears like most of their vehicles are being shipped over here.

August 6th - Estonia

We left Helsinki and took the ferry over to Tallinn, Estonia. Estonia is about 50 miles away from Helsinki Finland so it took about 2 hours on the ferry.  Don't think of Estonia as being a third world country.  Estonia is a global trendsetter in technology and by 1998 every school in Estonia was already online.  Estonians vote and file their taxes electronically. The product Skype that many of you have used  was developed in Estonia. 

Here is a view of Old Town Tallinn. Now we are going to climb the 245 steps up to the top of the highest tower you see in the center of the picture. So follow along with us and we'll take you up there.

The first thing we're going to do is enter the town through the best walled medieval city in all the Nordic countries. The tower on the left of the arch as we enter the town is called Fat Margaret because it is not very tall but it's very big around.

Once we get inside the gate notice the 3 houses that are connected on the right hand side. They refer to these as the Three Sisters. Notice the beam perpendicular to the face of the buildings where the merchants would attach their hoist to lift goods up to the 2nd and 3rd floors.

Just follow Bonnie through this short door and on up the stairway.

This is the only straight part on the stairways as we go up to the top of the tower. It was a constant spiral with narrow steps as we ascended. By the way this is inside a Baptist Church.

Now that were up at the top we will walk around the edge of the roof and take some pictures the city. The towers with the pointed orange roofs mark the preserved city wall.

You can see the grey city wall in the picture below underneath the row of buildings in the center of the picture. The wall also separated this city of Tallinn into two separate cities.  The higher part of the city on top of the wall was for the upper class people and the ones that lived outside of that wall was for the lower class people.

That is Fat Margaret over there on the left with the blue and white umbrellas on top of the roof.

Your some open-air shops on the outside of the wall.

More city wall.

Now we are going to walk past some buildings that I think have interesting architecture.

The two-tone green building with the yellow medallions on the front of it used to be the local headquarters of the KGB

The Russian Orthodox Church in Estonia in the upper town

That is the town hall with the high tower on the building. The criminals we're chained out in the courtyard for public humiliation. Not while we were here, I was referring to back in the fourteen-hundreds.

This just made me laugh to see the description stating that this was authentic Texas food.

OBSERVATIONS and other useless information:

• on our ferry ride from Estonia back to Stockholm we were not surprised to hear a live performance  singing some ABBA music since ABBA is from Sweden. But we were surprised and it was an interesting accent and twist on the music that the person chose to sing some Johnny Cash, John Denver, Willie Nelson Olivia Newton John, Gordon Lightfoot and Elvis.

• after we boarded this ship and before it left port, we just happen happen to be reading that the ship that sailed from Tallinn to Stockholm, prior to this one, sunk in stormy weather back in 1994

• from what we have seen so far in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Estonia I would like to let all of you know that if you were planning on going to Japan for a visit don't go right now because nobody's home,  they're all here.

• we visited the Vasa Museum today in Stockholm when we got back from Tallinn. The Vasa Museum is dedicated to the recovery of the Vasa sailing vessel that was built King Gustav. It sank in 1628 on its maiden voyage and was only about a thousand metres out when it sank. It laid in the bottom of the Stockholm Harbour for 333 years before it was salvaged. I couldn't take any pictures of it because of the way it was stored it was very dark inside the museum to help preserve the wood. 

August 6th - A couple more things about Helsinki, Finland

There were a couple more items we wanted to share with you with regards to Helsinki. In the first picture below, this was a church built by two brothers that had to blast the granite out of this in the center of town in Helsinki.  The day we came to visit it, there was a  music camp practicing in this church. I started talking to one of the parents about the camp and was told in order to be eligible for this music camp you had to be a Nordic citizen and they have this camp once a year and students from all the Nordic countries, including Greenland and Iceland, come to participate as well as teachers, parents or even grandparents.  I don't know if you can see it very well in the picture, but the walls are granite, the windows sit on top of the granite, then the ceiling, which is more difficult to see, is made up of 13 miles of copper coil. This was a very interesting church.

I mentioned bike paths dedicated strictly for cyclist. In this picture you can see the bicycle and pedestrian "highway" which I think was probably, once upon a time, where the train ran through the town and as the town grew they relocated the train tracks. But that's pure speculation on my part although it looks like that's very possible to me.

OBSERVATIONS:

• so here we are in our region of the world where nearly all the people seem to have blonde hair. I found it rather interesting that there were many people, mostly younger, that dye their blonde hair grey. I was in style and didn't even know it! 

August 3rd - Stockholm, Sweden and Helsinki, Finland

Stockholm is a large city, some of which is modern, and a lot of the part I like best, the old city. Stockholm is made up of over 700 Islands. So everywhere you go there are bridges and what appears to be streets of water. The first two pictures below show a picture of the Strand which is the popular area and very busy. Notice the unique rooftops of all of these buildings along the Strand. The second picture is of the Strand taken from a different bridge farther away.

In the picture just below you will see this bridge that crosses over some water to yet another island. When you walk through the arches in the building straight ahead, you are walking into the area of the Swedish Parliament. This will also take us into Old Town Stockholm. 

Here's a street in Old Town Stockholm. Notice the horizontal pieces sticking out near the tops of the buildings on the left side. These were beams where the merchants would hang a hoist to unload goods that were delivered by wagon on the street.

This doorway is in Old Town Stockholm and the medallion hanging above the door told the fire department that this place had fire insurance so the fire department would put out a fire if the building caught on fire. Conversely, no medallion, no help from the fire department.

This is a refurbished phone booth in old Stockholm. There will be a more modern phone booth in another picture below.

A Swedish soldier standing guard at the Royal Palace.

This is Stockholmes oldest square. We really enjoyed the different roof structure designs and colors of the buildings. It was at this location where we tried a favorite of the Swedes, a delightful treat called a kanelbullar,  which is a cinnamon bun.

There's nothing special about this building other than I just thought it was really a unique architectural design.

You have probably seen a hand-carved wooden horse like the one below that Bonnie is sitting on in gift shops. This is very Swedish and this particular horse was in a park for people to climb on and have their picture taken.

Here is that more modern phone booth I promised you, however it is no longer in use

This picture shows the transportation variety in one location.  On the far left are the lanes for cars and busses, then there are two paved bicycle lanes then the cobblestone marks the beginning of the pedestrian walkway.

Have you ever seen a boat like this? It is a picnic boat that anyone can rent to go out into the water and have a picnic lunch or dinner.

 I mentioned earlier that Sweden was made up of over 700 islands.  The next five pictures show some of the islands, many of which are inhabited. 

The ship that we took from Sweden to Finland was not just a ordinary ferry. The picture below is taken from inside the ship of the main Promenade on the ship. It felt more like a commercial cruise ship.

We are now in Helsinki, Finland and this building was along the main Esplanade in Helsinki.

Of course being in Europe there are many churches that are very well-kept but are not used for religious services. The one pictured below is Russian Orthodox Church.

The next two pictures are inside the Russian Orthodox Church. Notice the detail in the ornate designs inside this church.

The Lutheran Cathedral pictured below is right near the University of Helsinki.  It is very beautiful and ornate on the outside but the inside of it was very plain and simple.

Some observations that we have made while here.

• the number of people who smoke seems incredibly high

• it seems like we are at the epic center for men, women, and teens piercings,  tattoos,  and unusual hair colors

• the number of women who wear incredibly high heals to walk on cobblestone streets (we saw one bride who wore 6" high heals but couldn't walk in them)

• like it has been for many years,  black is the "in" color for clothing 

• every pregnant woman we have seen was wearing a black maternity top

• In Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, Mercedes Benz is the most popular car for taxis, hands down. When I inquired about the reason for this,  I was told ". . the reliability."

• the Scandinavian countries are very environmentally aware