We went to the hotel booking office to get a hotel and hit the one nightmare of self-arranged tours. (What is the Swedish for 'no room at the inn'?) Stockholm is having a famous horse race (which is especially commemorating the centennial of the Royal Stables this year), one of the world's largest women's bicycle races, and the Leepers, all in one weekend. This was why the youth hostel failed to find a room. The hotel booking office wanted to tell us they could not find anything (and indeed, another tourist who had called all the low-end hotels listed in the 'Lonely Planet' guide had had no success either). Finally they found a room for one night at SEK 1250 (about US$165!) per night at a place called the Memory Hotel. (Good name! Soon it will be a memory.) The place turns out to be a business hotel in an industrial park way outside of Stockholm. We have to do some fancy figuring fast about what we're going to do about the remaining three nights. We take the T-bana (subway) to the stop near it and have a cold wet walk to find the place in the rain.
We are not really ready for a US$165-per-night luxury hotel after three weeks of dusty travel. The hotel is very nice to us. The guests who pass us stare a bit. The hotel agrees that if it is possible they will have us stay two nights, but the weekend is right out.
One problem with setting up plans for the remaining three nights is that we had arranged to meet some fans on Saturday night, which we'll have to cancel if we go to another town on an overnight train (Mark's idea). We agree if we're going to do that, Goteberg is a good choice-- we could go on an overnight train, stay one night there, and return via another overnight train. Another possibility is to try to find a hotel room in Uppsala, about an hour by train from Stockholm. But Evelyn is more hoping that Swedish fandom will bail us out. We'd been offered four nights by Ahrvid Engholm, but told him no, we definitely would not impose. Evelyn is regretting that. Evelyn leaves a phone message for Ahrvid on his machine: 'Help!'
We took our umbrellas and went to explore the local mall, about five minutes' walk away and the only place of interest in the immediate area. It was still raining and we expected to go to sleep early, so it didn't make sense to go back into Stockholm, since it was already 15:00, but we wanted to do something and also to find someplace to eat other than the hotel. Eh! We went to a bookstore but couldn't find a science fiction section, though we did see a few science fiction books.
We had dinner at a place called Levinsky's that was trying desperately to have an American, 50s, rock-and-roll, burger-hop look. Above the menu was a picture of a plate of a hamburger with two paper American flags sticking in it over a New York Times with pictures of Ike and Mamie Eisenhower.
We weren't looking for something so American, but it seemed to be the restaurant with the most substantial food. Mark had a chili-burger. The chili was made with vegetarian baked beans--which is strange, but it was still a nice meal. Evelyn had a Greek salad. The bill, with sodas, came to SEK 91 (about US$12), certainly cheaper than the hotel restaurant would have been.
Mark mentions, 'One of the pieces of wacky American decor was an airplane fuselage stuck as if the plane had crashed through the roof. I have seen that done before and am not quite sure of the message. Here it was done uniquely. The plane was at an upward angle as if it had crashed going upward through the ceiling.'
Speaking of crashing, we went back to the room to write in our logs after exploring the mall and the lack of sleep caught up with us. We slept better than three hours, from about 17:00 to 20:00.
Oh, two comments about the hotel: The front lobby has a mascot. He's a very small, very naked-looking dog. (He looks a lot like Arnold Schwarzenegger's dog in TRUE LIES.) He is only about nine inches (twenty centimeters) long and looks much smaller. He is also a nervous wreck with all the people and big suitcases that go around him. You walk by him and he jumps. Also, the hotel found space for us for Friday night, so we have only two nights to find rooms for.
Sometime around 20:00, Ahrvid called. He had found a place for us to stay Saturday night with someone named Jorgen and was sure he could find us a hotel room for Sunday night. He also thought the overnight trains wouldn't be very comfortable, but we suspect they would have been at least as comfortable as those in the Baltic states or India. We decided this made staying in Stockholm doable, and decided we'd worry about Sunday night later, so we made arrangements to meet Ahrvid Friday morning.
Log-writing was the order of the evening. We'd bought a bottle of lemonade at the mall. Mark had taken a mouthful and discovered it was concentrate. Luckily we had another bottle, but it is tough to do the mixing.
Mark was up writing until after midnight.
May 27, 1994: We were both up about 5:00 and were log-writing, but were able to fall back asleep. Breakfast was included in the room. It was very good but nothing really unusual, except for the little tins of caviar paste. The kind of caviar you get in sushi restaurants is little discrete red-orange fish eggs, the size depending on the breed of fish. Flying fish and one other kind of fish make the eggs you get in sushi. This was just a sort of pink paste. The expensive stuff, Baluga, is black. We've never tried that and it is unlikely to show up free on the breakfast buffet of any hotel we could ever afford.
Well, when Evelyn talked to Ahrvid, he had suggested that we get together at a talk called 'Multimedia, Mass Media, and Trends in Youth Culture.' It was being given by an American, Ken Goffman. That was to be at 10:30. Since we were going to be in Stockholm the rest of our trip, we decided to get a three-day metro pass, which turned out to be a wise decision. (We just wanted to mention that once in a while we make the right choice.)
We made it to the talk late but it started later. On the way we took little looks at the 'world's longest art exhibit.' That is, they turned the T-bana (subway) stations in exhibitions of art. Two problems: The first is that you run through them so fast and don't know where to look to see the art. The second is that when you do stop to look, the art has features that the artists never intended, such as empty cans of Heineken. Subway stations often invite the wrong sort of art patron.
Mark says say that people seem a little more cheerful have than in the Baltic republics. Certainly more people smile.
We got to the Institute for Journalism, Media, and Communications (JMK) of the Stockholm Univerity about five minutes late, but the talk didn't start until about ten minutes after that. Ahrvid saw us arrive and introduced himself. (We'd only corresponded on the Net.) He hadn't had a chance to call hotels for Sunday night, but said if necessary we could stay at Jorgen's two nights instead of just one.
Goffman himself (who also goes by the name 'R. U. Sirius') is what some people erroneously call short. As Mark describes him, 'He is about 5 feet 6 inches (170 centimeters) tall--about my height. He wears his hair to about 2 CUs and has no beard, or he would look like me. I wear my hair to about 0.4 CU, which means only about down to my ears. (A CU is a measure of hair length. Just like by definition the earth is 1 AU--astronomical unit--from the sun--93,000,000 miles or 150,000,000 kilometers, by definition someone with one CU of hair wears it about down to their chin. Goffman's hair is about twice the length of his head, so it is 2 CUs.)'
We may describe Goffman's talk in a separate article, but at the rate it took us to get this typed in, who knows? Curiously, it concerned some of what we talked about in this log: little pockets of fame for people who produce art or reviews for a small audience over the Internet or distributed otherwise.
Ahrvid invited us to have lunch with him and hear him interview Goffman. We'd had a big breakfast so we had only Coca-Colas. The interview covered much the same ground as the talk, though other aspects, and we did get to hear a little about Goffman's background. We'd gone to a cafeteria and Goffman had gotten a hamburger and fries. The hamburger he took off the plate, tore in half, and laid on the tray. He then salted the plate and rubbed fries in the salt. The burger he alternately broke pieces off of and ate, or picked up the entire half and ate it.
Ahrvid had the afternoon free, so asked what we wanted to see and hosted us. Everyone here is treating us so well--we wish we had some way to reciprocate. But few European fans seem to come to the United States for vacation, and an even smaller number come to New Jersey. Actually, to the best of our knowledge, *no* European fans come to New Jersey, although one did express an interest in Atlantic City.
Ahrvid writes professionally for computer magazines about PCs and the Internet. He also reads the Internet Nordic, science fiction, and (curiously) urban folklore groups, the last of which somehow Mark says he thinks of as an American group. It is devoted to these stories that crop up and people actually believe, but which are really complete fabrications, such as the $250 cookie recipe, the family that thought they were adopting a small dog except it turned out to be a large South American rat, the leopard carcass near the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and the suppressed engine that runs on water.
Our first stop was the aquarium. It was actually a fairly small aquarium with something like eight exhibits, though some are fairly complex. The first is a rain forest lake. The room is kept at a temperature of something like 38 degrees Centigrade. Coming in from the street the first thing that happens is your eyeglasses steam up completely. Among the fish are a small manta ray, of which Mark says, 'I would not have thought a manta ray would be found in a lake, but I could easily be wrong.' Although it looks like a single body of water, it is divided under the surface into discrete sections which are populated by various kinds of fish that might not get along if they were in the same section. This exhibit is on a ten-minute cycle. It is sunny, night falls and it rains heavily, then it gets light again. (The museum-goers are under a porch roof, so they don't get drenched.) Evelyn notes, 'The sprinklers that create the rainstorm are not aligned, so the rainstorm effect is somewhat weakened by the fact that the falling rain is going in multiple directions. Yes, here I am in an aquarium in Stockholm, criticizing the special effects. Maybe I've been away from movies too long.'
There is a small mangrove swamp (about one by three meters and not very swampy looking--it looked more like a cement pool). (Those of you of a certain age from the United States may be reminded of the old television show 'The Beverly Hillbillies' and their 'see-ment pond.') There was also a nice ocean exhibit with lemon sharks. There was a section you could crawl through and have water above, below, beneath, and on both sides of you so that you can see the sharks from all angles.
They also had a living coral reef, maybe the best exhibit there. The plants and animals that inhabit a coral reef (and telling which are the plants and which the animals is not easy) are so beautiful and so alien-looking. It's almost as if you're looking at another planet. In WONDERFUL LIFE Stephen Jay Gould talks about the weird creatures that died off shortly after the time of the Burgess Shale (about 500 million years ago), but to a person not trained in biology, the corals, anemones, and who knows what else in all shapes and colors are quite weird enough. One creature (plant? group of creatures?) looked like a cluster of segmented pale green tentacles attached to a rock and waving and pulsating as if preparing to attack--in some strange fashion]--the next fish that swam too close. And the corals are not those stiff rock-like things you see in the shops at the beaches. When they're alive they are flexible and, well, alive-looking.
Compared to other aquaria, this one seems very small. This would be a minor addition to the Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) or the Monterey (California) aquarium. SEK 40 (about US$5.50) is a fairly hefty price for such a small museum. You can see the entire aquarium in maybe forty minutes. (There will also be an exhibit of a Swedish mountain lake, but it wasn't completed yet.)
Another complaint Mark has is the lack of English in the descriptions. Well, he says he cannot really complain, but it is the lack of a positive feature that would be easy to add. In this part of Europe English and German are the languages of tourism. Many of the tourists in this city speak English. You hear English a lot on the streets. It is a minor expense to have someone go through and translate the signs into English, type them up on paper, and glue the paper to the wall near the exhibit, or just put it inside display cases (well, not in the aquarium, but elsewhere). There are certainly enough people who know English that well. Several of the museums we've seen have done that to give us English in a quick and dirty way, but it works. Others will put an English description of all the items on sheets of paper and put them by the door so that you can pick them up and carry them around the room, then return them. (Of course, we had Ahrvid to translate the descriptions, but not every tourist gets a personal guide.)
Of course, New York City museums are probably no better, but they certainly should be.
Following the aquarium we headed toward the Vasa Museum. Ahrvid suggested we stop at the boat museum we were passing. This was really just one big room with small boats of the last hundred years. Especially featured is the king's ceremonial boat with lots of gold paint. Other things they had were steam-driven boats from the 1880s that looked like fugitives from THE SIGN OF THE FOUR. There also were some torpedoes.
Well, last time we visited, the Vasa was in a smaller museum in a different place (in fact, where the aquarium is now). Now it is in a much larger museum. And everything is labeled in English, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese, as well as in Swedish--at least everything pertaining directly to the ship. (Some of the other exhibits may not have been so variously translated.) This is because the Wasa Museum seems to be the main tourist attraction in Stockholm. It's sort of like Lithuania picking Darius and Girenas as their national heroes: the Swedish pick their biggest naval disaster as their main tourist draw. But we have to agree--this is the museum I would recommend to people going to Stockholm (although as we discovered later, the Telemuseum may be a better choice for the people we work with).
But a little of the history first: In the early 1600s, Gustav II Adolf wanted to show his support for the Protestant side in the Thirty Years' War. He commissioned a great warship to be built. The ship was designed and partially built when the King said, 'No, I want it bigger. Add another deck and more guns.'
'It wasn't designed for another deck and more guns.'
'Well, conditions have changed.'
So a taller and more magnificent boat was built instead. Not everybody thought that changing the spec was such a great idea, but the King is, after all, the King.
So in 1628 the day to launch came and the Vasa was a magnificent ship that would strike terror into the hearts of the Catholics. It hit the water and looked beautiful. Then a breeze came up and it started listing to one side. But it righted itself straight up again, and continued over to list on the other side. It almost fell over sideways. Water filled its gun ports and the huge hull filled with water and fell to the bottom. Most on board drowned. For a while the mast stuck out of the water as a monument to the changed specification. In time it was removed.
In the 20th Century the Vasa was resurrected in a remarkable feat of nautical archaeology. Today the Vasa is the center of a museum to 17th Century sailing. Ramps go up beside the ship to let you see the carvings and the scale of the ship.
IBM helped in the project to resurrect the ship and also in equipping the new museum. They have computer displays to show you what happened to the Vasa and to let you try out different ship designs to see if you can design a more stable ship. It is not easy, but you learn something about ship stability in the process.
From there the three of us walked a bit, got rained on a bit, and finally had dinner. Ahrvid was not sure where was a good place to eat in this part of town, but he found one place that didn't look too bad. Ahrvid described pytt i panna, a locally popular dish. It sounded a lot like, and turned out to be, corned beef hash. Evelyn had a lax (lox) special.
After that Ahrvid was to lead us to the T-bana stop, but as we passed Kungstradgarden we saw a book sale, so we all took time out and went through that.
We rode the T-bana around for a while just to see some stations and areas we had not yet seen (since it goes above ground outside of the center of the city), then took it back to our hotel. Mostly the sky had been dreary and the subway stations we saw did not have a whole lot of interesting character.
From Mark's log: 'Back at the room I should have been writing up the day's activities, but it was Friday night and I decided to veg out and enjoy the high-priced room and the fancy television. I watched MOONLIGHTING for the first time. It used to be a very popular television show, but if this was any sample it was not very good. Then it turned out that THE GODFATHER was being shown. It was up to the first scene of Michael's exile to Sicily. I watched it to the end of the film.'
'When that ended, I changed the channel and saw on their commercial television a film that would have gotten a very strong R rating in the United States. It was about a sculptor who was getting emotionally and biologically involved with his model. It apparently had a lot of female nudity and sexual scenes. I was shocked and revolted, of course, and was ready to turn it off when I heard a footstep on the soundtrack that sounded just like one in MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY. Naturally I was curious if the film had the same person who had done the sound effects. Of course, that meant I had to see the end credits and, not knowing how long the film was likely to run, I had to watch the whole shocking and degrading film. And then the ultimate irony was that I missed the very credit I was looking for. I guess it is just as well, since I don't know who did the sound effects for MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY, but I was kicking myself for the waste of time watching this film. I am sure you can imagine. But anyway, it seemed like surprisingly strong stuff for anybody-can-get-it public television. The film was in the English language, by the way, and subtitled in Swedish. Earlier in the trip, when I was in Turku, I was discussing subtitles versus dubbing. This film was a prime example where it makes a difference. Occasionally there was important action at the bottom of the screen and the subtitles covered it up,' he concludes.
May 28, 1994: We had breakfast and checked out of the room. They'd lowered the rate to about US$100 per night for the weekend. That was expensive, but not ridiculous.
On the T-bana we sat opposite a biker-type in black leather. Mark says that seems to be a culture that transcends international boundaries.
We got to the train station and checked our luggage in a locker, which entailed going to practically the other end of the station just to get change at the main luggage check (but it made sense to check our bags near the entrance to the T-bana, since we'd be taking them back onto the T-bana tonight). The luggage lockers here are much simpler than those in Lithuania; you close the door, put in your money, and take a key out that will re-open the locker later.
Now, some people told us that this weekend is not some sort of special weekend in Stockholm, but there certainly were a bunch of special events happening all at once. We got to the center of the city and there seemed to be some huge group meeting there, most carrying balloons. We didn't know what that was all about.
There certainly were a lot of people in the streets. As we walked on, we saw a ceremonial procession of horse-drawn carriages go by.
We went through a park which turned out to be the same park where the book sale was going on the previous evening. There were a bunch of art exhibits. One was a VAX 11/780 (a kind of computer we used to work with) and above it various computer-related objects were attached together to form the shape of a ten-foot-tall man. Another piece was container-ship containers--sort of like big box cars--put together like blocks to form a shape like the Arch d'Triomphe. It was called the Art d'Triomphe. There was also a rock band playing rather lackadaisically.
From there we continued around, looking at and photographing impressive-looking state buildings and buildings like the Opera House.
Yet another procession was going through the streets. This one was knights in armor on steeds. Someone was passing out flyers inviting people to a free tournament at the Medieval Museum, which would also have free admission this day to celebrate its tenth anniversary. (And it wasn't even Wednesday!)
We continued on the walking tour, seeing the Crown Prince's house, the Royal Palace, the Parliament House, and other ornamented buildings of state. It really is a nice-looking city.
We stopped in a square to get an ice cream. Amnesty (whom we know as Amnesty International) was trying to get people to send postcards to various world leaders accused of ignoring human rights. We told them we were members, signed a card, and gave them a contribution.
Leaving the square we came to the local statue of St. George and the Dragon. Old G&D seem to be popular just about everywhere this trip. In fact, everywhere from Britain to Russia there seem to be statues, paintings, and icons of G&D. And Mark says that like Martin & Lewis or Abbott & Costello, it's the guy with second billing who is the real powerhouse behind the team. The world is full to over-flowing with dragonless saints and they just don't get the same treatment. Godzilla makes it very nicely without a saint, you may note. People tolerate George, but it's the dragon they like. We know we don't spend a whole lot of time looking at old George. Stockholm has a particularly nice dragon, dead or alive.
We continued threading our way through shops, stopping at a very good science fiction shop, SF-Bokhandeln at Stora Nygatan 45 in Gamla Stan. Evelyn says it is as good as the science fiction shops in the New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles areas. Of course the books are fairly expensive, this being Scandinavia, but it's still *the* place to go for science fiction fans.
We decided we would go to the tournament and arrived there about ten minutes early. From a distance we saw a huge swarm of people going through the streets with posters about how much they love Jesus. Mark writes, 'Now I really don't have any objections to people loving Jesus, even people of the same sex Jesus was. But I think it should be strictly on a 'don't ask, don't tell' basis. I just feel a little uncomfortable having them looking at my beliefs and perhaps trying to make a move on me or my loved ones. They do seem to want to recruit people. I'd prefer not to be in a really confined space, like a submarine, with one. And I think it is a little ... well, distasteful, having them parading around streets flaunting their proclivities. Well, let me change the subject because it does make me feel a little ill at ease.'
A little later the tournament started but for a while it was just some guy in medieval dress talking in some foreign language. From the way it sounded and from the reaction of the crowd Mark deduced the language was Swedish since, as he put it, 'There is a unique sound to Swedish that we linguistics experts refer to as 'the thing they made fun of on the 'Muppet Show.'' It is interesting that while the 'Muppet Show' tried to be good-natured, wholesome entertainment for the most part, they did pick Swedes out to hold up for to ridicule. The Swedes got angry. And they had a good point, that really it is not nice to make fun of Swedes, but they over-reacted to many people's opinion by deciding to send a warship against the United States in retaliation. They loaded it chock-full of heavy guns and missiles and sent it out to protect Swedish honor with cold steel. A few minutes after it was launched it started listing to starboard and sank right there. The very contrite head of the Joint Chiefs of the military had to go to the King and remind him that there were sound Swedish military considerations that are the reason Sweden remains a neutral nation. The whole incident was hushed up and only one crusading newspaper got the story, and even there it was over-shadowed by the revelation that two former United States Presidents were actually space aliens, but that nobody knew which two.'
Anyway, the announcer said something that did not go over well with the crowd. Mark was afraid that he knew what he told them and it turned out he was right, unfortunately. Apparently the police had decided that some old law on the books had to be enforced and none of the competitions could be to the death. A bunch of the locals left but, heck, how often do we get to see any sort of tournament? About the only tournaments we get an opportunity to see are bridge tournaments and the only deaths there are from spectator boredom.
There were only four horses with riders. Two of the riders were obviously women, though they did their best to hide it. The events were mostly things like picking up Styrofoam bricks on lances. This is a new event due to a severe shortage of Styrofoam that lasted most of the Middle Ages. There was also an event of picking up rings with lances. This was traditionally performed mostly with brass rings from wooden merry-go-rounds. There was a great tradition of reaching for the brass ring, so much so that 'reaching for the brass ring' became a metaphor for going for success. That has gone out of common parlance after the metaphor became 'suing the amusement park after your kid fell off his horse while going for the brass ring.'
Anyway, the tournament lasted about forty minutes. From there Mark suggested we finish the walking tour before going into the museum, since *everyone* else was going into the museum at this point. (And who knew how long the walking tour would remain open?) About all that was left was to see the City Hall from across the Norrstrom. It is a nice view.
We returned to the Medieval Museum. They were selling mead and lingonberry juice on the way in. Evelyn likes mead, so Mark suggested that she get some. He decided not to try the lingonberry juice because it was a bit pricey.
To understand completely lingonberries, take everything you know about cranberries and replace the word 'cran' with 'lingon' and change all geographical references from North American sites to Swedish sites. Oh, yes, lingonberries are smaller, about the size of currants. Swedes make lingonberry juice, lingonberry sauce, and lingonberry jam. We can't vouch for whether lingonberry juice is thought to be good for kidney stones. They served the wine and juice from big kegs with a tap on the hidden side. Mark sat on the hidden side and got a picture of the plastic bottles in the phoney keg shells.
Oh, what is in the museum itself? You come in through a section of medieval canal tunnel. (Mark immediately recognized the museum from our last trip.) You see cathedral furnishings. You walk under cathedral arches in a section with mirrors on either so it looks like you are in a huge vaulted room with exceptionally handsome people off to your left and right. Other exhibits include a piece of the old city wall in its original position. (This plot of land was going to be a parking garage until while digging they found the wall and decided to make it a museum.) Other things you see are runestones and an almost complete boat. (We are not totally clear on the process by which an entire boat twenty feet long becomes abandoned and buried in the center of what was even then a major city of its time. Is there some point at which it is half-buried?) They have exhibits of what the city looked like at the time of the Hanseatic League. The latter had a small re-creation of a building to climb through. There was also an exhibit of the negative excesses that gave the Middle Ages a bad name (i.e., the Dark Ages). There were shackles and crude instruments of torture that would be refined and improved during the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment. The museum starts with some English but it really peters out. For some of the exhibits we had to do some guessing as to what we were seeing.
After that we left and did a little light shopping waiting until it was time to go to dinner. We bought a CD of Swedish classical music. And we explored some department stores, looking for gift ideas.
The plan for the evening was to get together with a group of Stockholm science fiction fans. They were going to meet us at Tre Backer (a bar) that evening. We took the trolley and went to the designated location. We met Ahrvid there about 17:55 and the bar opened (late) about 18:05. About six or seven people showed up and we talked till about 22:00 about travel and computers and science fiction fandom in Baltic Europe. Ahrvid was there and two different people named Jorgen and two different people named Magnus, but only one Holger. While the Turku group seemed like students, grad students, and people close to the University, these people seemed a little older on average and were either professionals or were out of work. Jorgen Stadje was interested to try out the keyboard on Thing. Mark bought a bottle of wine for the table, but in large part for Jorgen S., who had agreed to let us stay at his condo overnight. Mark got a decent wine, though he says that being a total non-alcohol drinker, his knowledge of wine is zero to eight decimal places. The bottle he got was Soave Something. He also got a plate of nachos for the table. They were terrible. They came with generous dollops of salsa, guacamole, and sour cream, but the chips had no cheese and were burnt in places. We later found out that they usually did come with cheese. We are not sure why we didn't get any.
Mark writes, 'I talked for a while to Jorgen Forsberg. He had been an engineer who designed some networking for PCs. Suddenly he and a friend started getting big contracts for networking and were making very good money. Then IBM came along and took over the market and he was out of work. He now helps to manage the science fiction bookshop that we'd seen earlier that day.'
We also joined this year's Baltcon (a Baltic science fiction convention) as supporting members with the 20 Lt that we found in a pocket after we had left Lithuania. (Supporting membership was US$3, but since the convention was to be held in Vilnius, we figured we could pay in litu.)
After the meeting broke up we bid goodbye to Ahrvid, who had helped us a lot. We went with Jorgen S. to get our checked luggage at the train station, and then took a bus to his house.
As Mark writes in his log, 'Jorgen is a large man in his 30s. He has one crossed eye which makes it a little difficult to know exactly how to maintain eye contact with him when talking to him. A look at his house or a few minutes talking to him both lead to the same conclusion: this guy has an incredible intellect and is good at doing a tremendous number of things. He is a computer contractor, he writes about computers, and he translates English-language computer books into Swedish. He could forget 90% of what he knows about computers and still qualify as a wizard. He is also into photography and is extremely good at it. He is a fairly proficient carpenter. He has very refined tastes in classical music and opera. (And he likes Puccini!) This is a man who does things his own way and figures things out. He also seems to be a good friend of Ralph Lundsten, a sort of Swedish New Age composer who has been chosen to do all the music for the United Nations 50th Anniversary ceremonies. Jorgen designs the CD packages for Lundsten's music. He also does some traveling. He did a contract job in Bahrain. We were up past midnight talking.'
May 29, 1994: Jorgen claimed to be a late sleeper but he was up before 9:00. We had a small breakfast of bread, tea, butter, orange juice, and horse meat. ('Okay, I heard that! Somebody just made gagging noises. The reason horse meat sounds disgusting in the United States is that it is made to the culinary aesthetic of dogs, the majority of whom can be expected to have less than totally refined palates. Horse meat is fine. It is dog food that is disgusting. Dogs wouldn't eat it if they had something better to choose.' Or so claims Mark, at any rate.)
One of the things we talked about was Mars candy bars. He thought they were made by a Dutch company since the bars he eats were made in Holland. We were under the impression Mars was an American company, but we couldn't be absolutely sure. Later investigation indicated that indeed Mars was an American company.)
Jorgen saw us to the bus. Ahrvid had called about two dozen hotels the day before and finally had been able to get us reservations for Sunday night at a hotel called the Gustav Vasa. We took the T-bana to the hotel.
Mark says he should comment on the noise made by traffic lights for pedestrians. It is different in Sweden than in Finland. When you are not supposed to walk, the whole light pole will tap slowly to give the effect of waiting whole a clock ticks off seconds. When the signal is to walk, the tapping suddenly speeds up to give the effect of little mouse feet scurrying.
The Hotel Gustav Vasa is old without having acquired an iota of charm. The rooms are ugly and surprisingly dirty. Ours is laid out long and narrow as if it was an afterthought. The wallpaper is beige with brown stains of who knows what vintage. The room is furnished with a shortwave radio that looks like it was made in 1940 and perhaps broke in 1945. Knobs are missing and seem to have left when the radio was in the 'on' position, but plugging the radio in has no effect. The sink overhangs the toilet, so one must sit on it bent over or turned to one side. It costs SEK 490 (US$67) a night. We were lucky to get a room, but Mark cannot say he was really thrilled by our room. (Evelyn was a bit more forgiving, or perhaps just lesssht.)
We wanted to go to the Technical Museum (Techniska museet). We took the T-bana to the center of town. We had to find the stop for bus 69. Mark considered the technique of writing '69?' on a piece of paper and asking someone, but decided it was not a good idea. He says he might have gotten his teeth knocked down his throat.
We did find the bus on our own. But then it didn't seem to go to the right places. We were not the only ones confused. Finally the bus driver explained in two languages that there was this women's bicycle race, and the road going to the museum had been closed off for their use. Oh, yes! It got us again. Just about now the skies that had been getting blacker and blacker let go with a cold wet rain.
Well, we could get off the bus at its nearest point to the museum and decided to walk in the rain, not knowing if the museum was open or not.
Mark adds, 'Our one consolation was that the stupid bicycle riders who'd caused all this had to race in the rain. I had no sympathy.'
It was a long, cold, wet walk but indeed the Technical Museum was open. And what a little honey this museum turned out to be! It was a huge science museum with some very interesting exhibits. It has a subset museum as big as the first called the Telemuseum, a museum devoted to communications. It was all in Swedish, but that was good or we'd never have gotten through it all. In the telephone section it had old telegraphs, old telephones, and more telephone switches than you can imagine. Then they did the same with radio and television and teletype. They had exhibits of old radio and television shows. They showed you old radio stations and television stations--not just photographs but the actual equipment. They had an amateur radio shack there and exhibits of CB radio.
They had in the other part (the main Technical Museum) exhibits of chemistry and wood production and printing, the latter two coming together. After all the little tiny museums we'd seen, particularly at the high Stockholm prices, this was a relatively inexpensive museum (SEK 25 each) and we ran out of time long before we could run out of museum.
However, the museum closed at 16:00 and we were chased out. Near the museum was the television transmitter, a 39-story building. The 3- day travel pass includes free admission to theshion decks. We went up and got a commanding view of the city. Mark took several pictures, perhaps more than he really needed, but this was the last real site on this trip and he was sorry to let the trip go.
Eventually we came down and caught bus 69. Since the race was over it was running again. We took the bus to the center of the city. We needed a little more money for the last night and getting to the airport the next day. For some reason we were refused by three different ATM machines of different types, all claiming to accept Visa. We finally had to go to the Forex money exchange at the train station, which we exchanged US$90 for SEK 668.5. Then we went back to the hotel.
We picked a restaurant from the 'Lonely Planet' guide and went to it. It was closed Sunday and we had to pick a restaurant without a recommendation. That usually has not given us a good restaurant. This time we found a good restaurant. We got a salad and bread. Mark got Wiener Schnitzel with capers and anchovies; Evelyn got pepper steak (not the Chinese kind, but a steak rolled in crushed black pepper) and it was very nice.
Mark writes, 'One thing I will not miss going home is the smoke. I am bothered by cigarette smoke. Here almost everywhere you go, in almost every restaurant, somebody sits near you with a smudge-burner. A lot fewer people smoke in the United States and it is beginning to be acknowledged that people who want to avoid smoke should be able to. When I was first working for AT&T there was someone who used to visit my officemate and who used to smoke in my office. I think I asked him not to do it and he didn't seem to care. I declared the office a nonsmoking office and the guy told me I couldn't do that. To be fair, he would now stand in the door holding the smoking cigarette in the aisle. I went to my supervisor to say I wanted a no-smoking office and he said I couldn't do it because it was crating an 'us versus them' situation. Things have changed a great deal. Smokers have to go outside the building. Oh, I ran into the person who used to smoke in my office. He eventually gave up smoking, he said. I told him I was impressed. Then he said he had to--he got emphysema.'
After that Mark got an ice cream from a corner grocery and we went back to the room.
Mark would have liked to stay up all night, but he felt that in the tiny room the light would have kept disturbing Evelyn. He decided he could get by just limiting his sleep so he was up until 3:00.
May 30, 1994: Breakfast is included with the room. It was wrapped processed cheese, processed cheese spread, and white bread. Also hot chocolate. We checked the drawers as we were leaving and found an old empty brandy bottle. Great place.
We took our last T-bana ride to the Central Station, and put our luggage in a locker. It was Monday again and the train station is again full of school classes on field trips.
About all we had to do today was spend the last of our money on gifts and get to the plane. We took a look at the posters outside the theater where Webber's PHANTOM OF THE OPERA was being performed.
We dropped into a used bookstore, the Cyrano Antikvariat. (It's very convenient for travelers, being about a half a block from the bus station, which is in turn right across from the train station.) Evelyn collects foreign editions of Sherlock Holmes, but had not found any in Swedish. Mark suggested a used bookstore might have some. The books were alphabetical and it wasn't with the mysteries. Evelyn was ready to give up. Just to be sure Mark asked the owner. He claimed there was one there since he had just gotten it. He started looking in a catchall section and Mark found it. 'Good,' he said. 'Evelyn deserves it.'
There wasn't much to do but spend our final kronor and we went around the shopping area, getting a piece of crystal for ourselves, buying some gifts, and going into bookstores and picking up some old books and calendars cheap. Evelyn termed this part of the trip 'Crystalquest,' but she also found another Swedish paperback of Holmes.
We stopped in a cafe and tried their apple strudel (a little pasty), a roll of chocolate filled with whipped cream, and orange juice, and a cup of coffee. A last stop to buy a piece of crystal and we were on our way to the airport. Finally we are getting some nice weather (although it will probably change to rain in another hour or so). The plane flights have been a source of a lot of orange juice. The first leg the snack was a sort of filled pizza bread. The meal on the second leg was stuffed chicken (the purser, who is not strong on English, called it 'chicklette'). There was a chocolate tart for dessert and a little pack of Samsoe cheese.
Mark in his role of film reviewer reports, 'The movie was THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS--with all the really unpleasant parts snipped out. I saw the film about a month before and there was a disgusting scene about taking care of an invalid and another scene with a child molestation and both were cut out of this version.'
Mark had hoped to do some reading on the flight, but as of the time we got on the bus to the airport he had not yet written about the tournament, so he had two days to catch up on and he says he is a slow writer. With the landing about twenty minutes away, he is just now getting caught up in his log. Evelyn, on the other hand, hasn't written about anything since the VAX 11/780, and figures she'll just write it as she types the logs in. The sun is finally setting, having been in sight for the last 22 hours.
The display on the plane says we are twelve minutes from landing (but it is probably more like twenty-two), and a map shows the plane advancing. We are right now over Poughkeepsie, New York. Mark writes, 'This flight did seem a little wearing on me. It is funny that the flight from India did not seem that way. It was about as comfortable as anything in India.' (Evelyn reminds our readers that Mark was not traveling with a sprained ankle that got larger each hour it couldn't be propped up--which on a plane from India is a lot of hours.)
We were landing just about 17:00 on a Memorial Day and out the window Mark could see the grand finale of a fireworks display. He'd never seen one from this angle before. Neither had Evelyn, but she didn't see this one either.
Well, the landing was just a bit later. This was not one of our better immigration and customs experiences for the United States. The lines were longer and slower than they have been in the past. Also complicating things was a half-hour wait at the luggage carousel. When you see the rate at which new pieces of luggage are introduced to the carousel, it is hard to believe that more than one person is doing the unloading.
Jo Paltin was at the airport to pick up both us and her husband Dale, who must have landed within minutes of when we did.
Our expenses for this trip were as follows:
SAS $2019
Pre-Trip Books 100
Visas 60
Film and Developing 241
Hotels 1186
Train/Boat 179
Local Transportation 87
Food 434
Misc 244
Crystal 170
TOTAL $4720
This is actually less than we spent for tahalf weeks in 1986 on a package tour, though that was entirely in Scandinavia and this was primarily in the much cheaper Baltic States.
Since Evelyn began this log, Mark will finish it:
'I tell people I am not jet-lagged from the trip and it is a small lie. The first morning back I woke up about 5:40. That is about 40 minutes early for me. I found Evelyn in the den, working on the terminal since about 3:30. I think the next couple of mornings I woke up about 6:00.'
'My first day back about 90% of my time is affected by having been gone. Well, there is telling people about the trip, and there is cleaning up a huge accumulation of mail. This time there was also reloading programs into Thing.'
'I guess for me one of the most surprising aspects of returning home after an international trip is nighttime disorientation. You would think the layout of my bedroom is second nature to me, but it really gets jammed by a trip. I will wake up in the night the first night and think I am still on the trip someplace for a second. Even remembering being home, the bedroom will seem strangely unfamiliar to me. I will have to think where the door is, and where the windows are. It happens almost every time. Coming back from China I was convinced I was in the Reed Flute Cave in Guilin.'
'About the toughest part of the trip is picking out the high points to tell people. You want to pick three or four incidents and by the end of the trip not a whole lot really stands out as being special.'
'I guess what stands out for me is:
how well we were treated by science fiction fans in Europe and their familiarity with our writing,
mismatches of technology in some parts (abacus near computer terminal), and how Finland and Sweden were really advanced beyond the United States (I was impressed by the teletext on the television in Jorgen's house in Stockholm),
the bizarre museum at Tartu University, and how weird Soviet science seemed. (I would have had better examples for the log, but I lost my notes when Thing lost its memory that night.)'
'The big disappointment of the trip was that we really were too late or too nonsht to see change flooding into the Baltic republics. On a previous trip in Bulgaria, we saw people still excited about the coming of democracy. This trip it seemed already taken for granted. Now it just manifests itself as a very apparent hatred for the Russians and their old system. But capitalism and Western ways are not rushing in--they are already in. The radio seems to have one station after another with Western rock music.'
'Words of wisdom about this trip, and some conclusion? Nothing really. I guess we have seen two or three very different sorts of places this trip. We have seen the Baltic republics, which were scarred by war, then not really allowed to heal because they were controlled by the Soviets. Finland and Sweden were what the Baltic republics might have been if somehow the Soviets could have been kept out. They are advanced and prosperous. In fact, they seem to be better off than the United States right now, just by what limitedshions we could make. Perhaps the conclusions I would draw are the ones I drew coming from China twelve years ago. I went to China thinking that governments should have a strong hand to prevent social ills. At that time you heard a lot of claptrap about how well China was managed. Starvation had ended and there was little crime. I expect the first was true, but the standard of living was low. Crime was a serious problem even in China.'
'But going from China to Hong Kong you saw the real effect communism had had. It stifled initiative and really provided little. I came away feeling that, at least economically, people do better managing themselves. Hong Kong is much better off for its hands-off policy. Much the same seems to be true in Baltic Europe. Each successive country we visited had less influence of the Soviets and was more prosperous.'
THE END
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