Swedish Shopping Day

Rather than think about how much money we spent today, I’m trying to focus on how much we saved!  We bought several things we needed for our condo in Norway, and all of it was much cheaper than we could have gotten closer to home because we found an Ikea store in the city where we are staying in Sweden.  Talk about sweet!

This morning we walked around the very vibrant downtown area of Sundsvall for over an hour – taking photos of the incredible architecture and enjoying the quaintness of downtown.  Everything was closed because it’s Sunday, but it was all near the hotel so we really enjoyed the morning stroll after breakfast.  Kaleb was fascinated by the variously decorated dragons throughout the downtown area. The minute we came into the hotel, the rain started, so we were lucky once again with timing.   

We found out there was a huge shopping center just a few miles from the downtown area, so we drove on over there to see what we might find.  It was a treasure trove of big box stores – an area of commerce that would make America proud.  I’ve never seen anything like it – massive warehouses of every kind – even a Toys R Us, and all the stores were super sized.   It was awesome.

Normally, I hate shopping, but I was on a mission today as we needed so many things that would cost a fortune in Norway.  We bought curtain rods at Ikea for our whole condo for about $40, versus the cheapest ones in Norway were almost $200.  The cheapest food processor in Norway was nearly $400 and I got one today for $60!  Kaleb’s replacement Sonicare toothbrush was over $100 in Norway but in Sweden - $40 – cheaper than we can get at Costco back home. 

I also stocked up on candles, napkins and all kinds of do-dads for the house.  We bought a new kitchen sink faucet as the one we have isn’t the best and we saved at least a hundred bucks on that purchase. (The above photo is where Kaleb hung out for hours while we were in Ikea.)

I’m sure we more than paid for the gas to get here with what we saved shopping today – especially since the one store where we bought so much had an extra 20% off sale going on.  Woo hoo.  We also saved a ton by eating at Ikea for both lunch and dinner (Kory splurged and had cold smoked salmon, boiled potatoes and salad.)

My big purchase of the day, however, was a new charging cable for my laptop!  I was a bit shocked at the price tag – over a hundred dollars – but it’s an official Apple product and I don’t have to worry about the power surging and blowing up my computer.  I’m also glad to finally have a European plug-in so I don’t even have to use a converter anymore, and it came with two cables so Kory can use the other one for his i-pad.  Sweet.  Kaleb, however, is devastated that his Nook charging cable just flat out broke today and we have no idea how to get a new one.  He’s can’t imagine going another six weeks without reading books.

We shopped for nearly eight hours straight, as I also bought groceries that I can use up in the next month, and a little beer and wine to take home.  A single can of beer costs over five dollars in Norway, but in Sweden, the same can is just a little over a dollar.  It’s nice to have a few beers on hand when certain company stops by. 

We were blessed with a rainy day so there was nothing more we wanted to do than be indoors somewhere, and the mall was just fine with us.  I’m surprised the downtown area of Sundsvall is still so alive with so many stores just up the street.  There seems to be a lot of industry in this town, so that must help. 

Swedish and Norwegian are close enough that I’ve been able to understand nearly all of what people are saying – and if I speak slow enough, they’ve been able to understand me.  Kinda cool for me to feel comfortable with another language.

Kaleb started getting the sniffles today.  I think it’s in direct correlation to the sugar cubes he’s been popping in his mouth on a regular basis.  I told him it will weaken his immune system and now he believes me.  The combination of his dead Nook and his weak body nearly brought him to tears tonight.

It will take us hours to unload our van once we get home on Wednesday.  The one thing we didn’t get today is a wrist brace for Kory.  We looked for them but didn’t find the right thing.  I’m really hoping he gets that wrist brace as he seems well enough now to make the six-hour drive home from Trondheim, but I don’t want to take any chances.  Tomorrow will be my last marathon day of driving, but I have a few stops to make before we leave town.  Life is good.

Leaving Stockholm

About an hour outside of Stockholm I realized I left my power converter back in the hotel.  Kaleb had been using it, so it didn’t cross my mind to double check the plug-in in the room.  I was not a happy camper after that, as my laptop will soon become useless without the ability to charge its battery.  (If I don’t post any more blogs, that’s WHY!)

We had a leisurely morning before heading north out of Stockholm.  The sun was shining and we decided to take another “road less traveled.”  The freeways here are so similar to America that there’s nothing special to enjoy about being in a foreign country, since even the buildings look a lot like American ones.  We wanted the small town feel, so we opted for a road along the coast, even though it nearly doubled our time to our next destination and we never saw the coast.  It’s incredible how much unused land there is in Sweden.

Today I was actually in search of thrift stores, since I heard that Sweden is crazy about thrift stores, garage sales, flea markets – they have it all.  They call them “Loppis” so I was intending to use this day as a major shopping day – stopping whenever I could find a reason.

Nearly every town had one or two “Loppis” signs and I followed several of them, looking for Swedish treasures that would outshine my Norwegian finds.  I was sorely disappointed.  For one thing, the prices are even higher here than in Norway – I guess because there is a market for old things.  In Norway, everyone throws stuff out and no one wants to buy them, so things are super cheap there - yet in Sweden, the prices are nearly what they are to buy something brand new.  Crazy.

The other thing I was bummed about is that in Norway, most of the thrift stores are run by charity organizations so a bunch of little old ladies keep things dusted and well organized.  They also have high standards as to what they will put in their stores.  The Swedish places are just like junky old garage sales where you have to sift through all the stuff that should be thrown out, in order to find something worth keeping.  I hate thrift stores and garage sales in America for this very reason, and here in Sweden, the stores we stopped in were disorganized, dirty and with no bargains to be found.  Sniff sniff.  I did find a few things – Norwegian made – that were in the “acceptable” price range (under five bucks), but I lost my taste for stopping and checking on future ones real fast.  I saw lots of cool old stuff I’d love to have, but not for the price they were asking.

We stopped a lot today looking for different things – food items, electronic kitchen things, old stuff and household items we need and were hoping to find cheaper in Sweden.  We scored on a few things – like an alarm clock for only ten bucks – as everyone I’ve brought from America won’t keep proper time here using a power converter – go figure.  I also got an immersion blender for $25 brand new that is exactly the same as the one for $150 in Norway, so that cheered me up.  But for the most part, it was just a stop and go day with lots of driving in between.  We didn’t hear a word out of Kaleb as he was sulking in the backseat over me yelling at him for leaving the power converter behind.  He even stayed in the car when we left to go shopping.

The sun was just setting when we arrived at our hotel for the night in the town of Sundsvoll.  We didn’t know what to expect here, other than it is on the Baltic Sea and we are hoping for a nice enough day tomorrow to dip our toes in a body of water we’ve never touched before.  It’s a bigger town than I thought, very European looking and the best thing is, all the stores are open on Sunday, so maybe I can find a power cable for my laptop and my stress level will go down.

Tonight, just after we got cozy in our room and watched an episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos, the hotel fire alarm sounded.  We rounded up our most precious things (electronics!) and headed down to the lobby.  It was caused by someone smoking in their room (in a non-smoking hotel), but I thought it was funny we left everything behind but our electronics.  Several days on this trip we haven’t even turned on the hotel TV, as we each have our own electronic gadget to surf the web, read the news, play games or communicate.  Kory has his I-pad, Kaleb has his Nook and I have my laptop.  If my laptop dies, I’m not sure I can go on.  I need to find a power source!

( I didn't take many photos today as there wasn't much that caught my eye... just a few scenes from the road :)  - Now my laptop battery has only a few minutes left on it.... aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhggggggggg.

Museum Day

It wasn’t the thrill of theme parks today, but the three museums we visited were still pretty fun.

The day started out at the Vasa Museum.  Kory’s ex-boss (a Swede) told us to be sure to visit that museum when we are in town.  He said the Norwegians really love it because it’s all about a huge war ship that was built – the biggest in it’s day (1627), and when it was launched, it capsized within a kilometer of the dock and sank to the bottom of the harbor.  Norwegians get a big kick out of that one.

The ship stayed there for 333 years until 1959 when a local guy “discovered” it and with the help of the King and the Navy – brought it back up to the surface.  It took 30 years to preserve and put the pieces back together and now it’s a sight to behold.

The guide at the museum wanted to be sure we knew it was the “oldest, largest and most complete ship” in the world.  The oldest boat would be a Viking boat in Oslo, but that is just a shell of it’s former self.  The largest would be the Mary Rose in England but that had many parts not original.  What makes the Vasa Ship special is that it’s 98% original – and it is pretty impressive to see. (The model below shows what it was like originally - compared to what it is now - above.)

Kaleb couldn’t stop laughing over the fact that Sweden would build a museum highlighting one of their worst failures.  But as we found out, it was a Dutch shipbuilder that was partly to blame.  There were no blueprints.  The King of Sweden ordered a ship 40 meters long, with two levels of cannons, so the Dutch guy just built what the king wanted, in the way he’d always built ships before - forget the fact that math and science need to play a part in it all.

The two levels of cannons were something new in that time, but no consideration was made for the extra ballast that was needed to keep the thing upright, so when it was launched, it just plopped over on its side and sank right then and there.  They figure 30-50 men died of the hundreds on board.

As museums go, it was pretty spiffy and we could have stayed much longer, but we had places to go and other museums to see.  Our Stockholm Pass got us into all of them for free, so we wanted to use them as much as we could.

Fortunately for us, all three museums were right across the street from each other.  Sadly for Kaleb, they were also right next to the amusement park where we were yesterday, so all day he was trying to figure out a way to convince us to go back there for a few more hours.  He’s persistent, that boy.

The Nordisk Museum is all about the history of Sweden with every kind of display a person would need to understand life in the past – from the food, customs, clothes, furniture, handworks and even how they set the tables.  We didn’t spend much time in there – except in the “craft room” (above) where they have a lot of supplies and they let people be as creative as they want.  Kaleb made some kind of weapon and Kory made a cross. I practiced my croqueting skills, which I haven’t done in maybe 40 years.

In the “traditions” section of the museum, which I found most interesting, all the information plaques were just in Swedish – and braille – but no English.  I can’t read Swedish well enough to get all that they were saying, so that was a bummer, but they did have little “updates” about the contrasts in modern life now – with English subtitles.  For example, in the case where they showed the events surrounding the life of the church (baptism, marriage, confirmation), they mentioned the ringing of the church bells.  The “update” was that there is now one area of Sweden where there are so many Muslims living that it became forbidden to ring the church bells during Ramadan, but now it’s forbidden at all times because a Mosque was built nearby.

Other updates include statistics like 44% of children born in Sweden today are “legitimate,” and that over half the 9^th grade kids have reported being drunk at least once (with their first time getting drunk at around age 14).  So much for progress.

Our last stop of the day was at Skansen, an open-air living history museum that also included a small aquarium and zoo.  They had it all – on nearly 100 acres – so there was more to see than we could fit in within six hours or so we were there.  Fortunately, they stayed open late, and it was a gorgeous sunny day so we were happy to be outside walking around.

Oslo has a similar type museum where they have assembled many old buildings from around the country in one convenient location.  Skansen has taken entire farms and small towns from different time periods, so it was cool to walk down “main street” and be able to go into the old bakery and buy fresh rolls, or watch the glass blower working his craft. 

Several of the buildings were open so we got to see tradespeople at work, shop in the stores or visit farms and watch a woman work the loom.  Teachers were in classrooms and pastors were in churches.  It was all very cool as everyone had on their period costumes and would answer any questions.

Later in the day, I saw a dark cloud approaching, so we were sure to stay near a place we could duck into when the rain started.  Good planning, as rain it did.  We were entertained by the otters while we waited out the worst of it.  Most people left the park at that point, but we carried on, once the rain let up a little.

As we were getting ready to leave, we saw many people in bunads (traditional formal attire) approaching a community hall building, so we went over to see what was going on, and we were invited in.  It was all part of the museum’s programs - a Friday night wedding party – so we saw how it would have been a hundred or so years ago – the traditional dances and customs that would have happened back in the day.  What a thrill that was, as the fiddle music was lively and the swirl of colors from all the bunads going by was a great way to finish off the day.

When we came out of the building, the sun was setting, the rain was gone, and we headed back to our hotel.  It was a full day and even Kaleb said it was pretty good - so that’s something.  His favorite part was watching the glass blowers at work.

Tomorrow we head north, as we came to see what we wanted to see in Stockholm.  I actually love the feel of this city, especially the efficiency of the mass transit system.  I’m not much for big city living, but I might be able to live here for a while and not complain too loudly.