I’ll start off this post with some of the words I learned in
Swedish:
Tack-thank you
Fika-a generalized term for a break usually with tea,
coffee, light snack, etc.
Herre forbarma dig- Lord have mercy
IKEA-IKEA
I think these words give an appropriate snapshot of my time
in Sweden.
After a lovely wedding in New York, I jetted off to
Stockholm (on Norwegian air- super cheap if you are interested!) for a rainy
day of wandering the city and playing legos with the Swedish-Russian children I
was staying with. Most of my time in Sweden, however, was spent in Uppsala, a
city in Uppland about forty minutes from Stockholm. Uppsala is a university
city and its university library contains a lot of Soviet propaganda material
and pre-revolutionary maps. The latter was why I picked the city as my first
stop. I spent most of my time in the Carolina Rediviva library which contains
the famous Codex Argenteus, an illuminated manuscript from the 6th
century containing a 4th century translation of the Bible into
Gothic. Besides nerding out about their incredible collections and jumping up
and down when finding the maps I was looking for, I was able to wander the city
a bit. Here are a few sites from around the town.
The 13th century church in the photo is one of the main sites of Uppsala and not surprisingly called the Uppsala Cathedral. It was originally built as a Roman Catholic church and the site of many Swedish coronations and is now part of the Lutheran Church of Sweden.
Inside the church was an exhibition including this crown of Erik IX-also the oldest surviving crown in the Nordic countries.
One of the many 11th century runes in the center of Uppsala.
I also attended my first Swedish Orthodox church service,
and, since there were only two other people in the choir, I helped sing even
though my ability to read Swedish is sub-par at best. Thankfully, I knew the
melodies of almost all the hymns and was able to fudge my way through.
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I have to say Sweden, as my first stop, was a bit of a shock
to me. After a year of living and breathing Russia, I had equated traveling
abroad as traveling in Russia. Somehow in the back of my head, I assumed that
heading off to Sweden would pose the same challenges as Russia. I know this
sounds completely inane since I have visited other countries and experienced
cultures other than Russia, but I was
still taken a back by how…in short… effortless
it was to navigate the city, approach people for directions, etc. It’s easy to build
up a trip in your mind with some attending trepidation about any upcoming
adventure. I remember thinking to myself, “That’s it? There’s a bus schedule?
It was on time? That was too easy! Where is the challenge?” Well, don’t worry I
have adjusted all too well to these conveniences. (Hopefully not too much since
I dream of visiting Russia again someday soon).
Next to come: Oslo, Norway
