Sweden Day 4 - Trip Day 62 - Sunday, October 14
At some point, somehow, I noticed a recipe for Swedish pancakes on, I think, the inside of the egg crate. I'm not really sure how that happened, or how I figured out what it was for, considering that the recipe was in Swedish. We somehow puzzled it out and made Swedish pancakes for breakfast, and ate them with lingonberry jam. They were really good and it felt very Swedish. Hmm, now I want pancakes. Okay, moving on.
We wanted to go see Gamla Uppsala, "Old Uppsala," home to the old Uppsala cathedral and also to some Viking burial mounds. We thought about taking the bus, but were once again intimidated by the Scandinavian buses, so we decided to walk. We looked on Google Maps and found what appeared to be a walking trail, starting a couple blocks from Jenny's place and going all the way to Old Uppsala. This turned out to be an excellent decision.
It started out as a paved town trail, with other walkers and bikers. But after a little while, it turned into a dirt hiking trail, nice to walk on and super scenic! It went through forests, and through fields, and it had all kinds of informative signs about natural features in the area. Bilingual informative signs, even. (Sweden was so nice to English speakers. Thank you, Sweden.)
We learned about plants, and animals, and how the water is pumped to the top of hills and filtered down through the hills because they are sandy and very permeable. Isn't that super cool? It's cool. We ended up taking a detour and hiking up a hill to see the water pumping thing, which also allowed us a great look around at Uppsala.
The only negative to this walk was that it did rain part of the time, but it was a light rain, and it wasn't too bad.
Here's one of our first sightings of the Viking burial mounds, along the cathedral.
Now, these burial mounds, I was expecting that they'd be like five, maybe ten feet tall. Not so. They were a good 20-30 feet tall. They are really striking, and really big. When we saw them from far away, I thought, "Are those the mounds? Nah, those must just be hills, they're too big!" But as we got closer, it became more and more clear that they were man-made.
This is the old cathedral. It was built in 1164 AD, and was a very important cathedral until the new one was built in the 15th century.
The cathedral has some fantastic medieval (ca. 15th century) artwork. Sadly, it's badly damaged, but you can tell how amazing it must have been in its day.
It was quite a small church, but very interesting. The women who worked there were so friendly and informative, too.
Here, have another view of the Viking mounds.
Gamla Uppsala didn't sound that exciting, but it was actually terrific, definitely a rewarding venture. I was very glad that we went. There was also a museum but it was a little expensive and we weren't that excited by it, so we passed.
After that, we walked back to Jenny's apartment, through a little more rain, and collected our things. Then we trekked off to go find a bus back to Knivsta.
Now is the part of the story where we totally fail at the Scandinavian bus because it didn't take cash money. Seriously?!! You could pay by credit card... but only if you had a chip-and-PIN card. And you could pay by text message... but only if you had a Swedish SIM card. Not okaaaay. Oh, yeah, and the bus driver was the only man in Sweden who doesn't speak English.
Well, what ended up happening was that we fumbled at the credit card reader for a little while, willing it to read our card even though it was so clearly not going to, ever. Then the bus driver started talking to another guy who was standing outside of the bus and he wasn't really paying attention to us, so... I just shrugged and dragged Jonathan to a seat. My reasoning was, hey, worst case scenario, he comes and orders off the bus, and we go figure something else out. But best case scenario, he just lets us ride, either because (a) he didn't notice that we didn't pay, or (b) he takes pity on us and/or doesn't feel like it's worth the trouble to kick us off.
Whatever his motivation was, he let us stay on the bus, so we got to go back to Knivsta, yay!! And for free! I do feel a little bad about this, actually, because I believe in supporting public transit, but come on. They sure didn't make it easy for us to, you know?! Anyway, we spent a ton of money on trains, and this was only one free bus trip, so I'm not stressing about it.
Anyway, we had a nice bus ride through the country, and we played Ticket to Ride on Jonathan's phone. It was kind of a long bus ride, but we got to catch a bus close to Jenny's place instead of having to walk back into town and catch a more expensive train, so that was nice. Oh, and then a rainbow happened. One of the most glorious vivid rainbows I've ever seen.
I mean, check this out. And this picture isn't even the full glory; it was already fading when we got off the bus and were able to take a picture.
We walked back to Laurel's from wherever we got off the bus. I don't remember if we got off downtown and bought groceries, or if we rode the bus past downtown. I think that we got groceries because I remember walking and drinking juice. We had dinner back at the house with Laurel. I know that we cooked for once, that time that we got groceries, but I don't remember what we made.
We wanted to go see Gamla Uppsala, "Old Uppsala," home to the old Uppsala cathedral and also to some Viking burial mounds. We thought about taking the bus, but were once again intimidated by the Scandinavian buses, so we decided to walk. We looked on Google Maps and found what appeared to be a walking trail, starting a couple blocks from Jenny's place and going all the way to Old Uppsala. This turned out to be an excellent decision.
It started out as a paved town trail, with other walkers and bikers. But after a little while, it turned into a dirt hiking trail, nice to walk on and super scenic! It went through forests, and through fields, and it had all kinds of informative signs about natural features in the area. Bilingual informative signs, even. (Sweden was so nice to English speakers. Thank you, Sweden.)
We learned about plants, and animals, and how the water is pumped to the top of hills and filtered down through the hills because they are sandy and very permeable. Isn't that super cool? It's cool. We ended up taking a detour and hiking up a hill to see the water pumping thing, which also allowed us a great look around at Uppsala.
The only negative to this walk was that it did rain part of the time, but it was a light rain, and it wasn't too bad.
Here's one of our first sightings of the Viking burial mounds, along the cathedral.
Now, these burial mounds, I was expecting that they'd be like five, maybe ten feet tall. Not so. They were a good 20-30 feet tall. They are really striking, and really big. When we saw them from far away, I thought, "Are those the mounds? Nah, those must just be hills, they're too big!" But as we got closer, it became more and more clear that they were man-made.
This is the old cathedral. It was built in 1164 AD, and was a very important cathedral until the new one was built in the 15th century.
The cathedral has some fantastic medieval (ca. 15th century) artwork. Sadly, it's badly damaged, but you can tell how amazing it must have been in its day.
It was quite a small church, but very interesting. The women who worked there were so friendly and informative, too.
Here, have another view of the Viking mounds.
Gamla Uppsala didn't sound that exciting, but it was actually terrific, definitely a rewarding venture. I was very glad that we went. There was also a museum but it was a little expensive and we weren't that excited by it, so we passed.
After that, we walked back to Jenny's apartment, through a little more rain, and collected our things. Then we trekked off to go find a bus back to Knivsta.
Now is the part of the story where we totally fail at the Scandinavian bus because it didn't take cash money. Seriously?!! You could pay by credit card... but only if you had a chip-and-PIN card. And you could pay by text message... but only if you had a Swedish SIM card. Not okaaaay. Oh, yeah, and the bus driver was the only man in Sweden who doesn't speak English.
Well, what ended up happening was that we fumbled at the credit card reader for a little while, willing it to read our card even though it was so clearly not going to, ever. Then the bus driver started talking to another guy who was standing outside of the bus and he wasn't really paying attention to us, so... I just shrugged and dragged Jonathan to a seat. My reasoning was, hey, worst case scenario, he comes and orders off the bus, and we go figure something else out. But best case scenario, he just lets us ride, either because (a) he didn't notice that we didn't pay, or (b) he takes pity on us and/or doesn't feel like it's worth the trouble to kick us off.
Whatever his motivation was, he let us stay on the bus, so we got to go back to Knivsta, yay!! And for free! I do feel a little bad about this, actually, because I believe in supporting public transit, but come on. They sure didn't make it easy for us to, you know?! Anyway, we spent a ton of money on trains, and this was only one free bus trip, so I'm not stressing about it.
Anyway, we had a nice bus ride through the country, and we played Ticket to Ride on Jonathan's phone. It was kind of a long bus ride, but we got to catch a bus close to Jenny's place instead of having to walk back into town and catch a more expensive train, so that was nice. Oh, and then a rainbow happened. One of the most glorious vivid rainbows I've ever seen.
I mean, check this out. And this picture isn't even the full glory; it was already fading when we got off the bus and were able to take a picture.
We walked back to Laurel's from wherever we got off the bus. I don't remember if we got off downtown and bought groceries, or if we rode the bus past downtown. I think that we got groceries because I remember walking and drinking juice. We had dinner back at the house with Laurel. I know that we cooked for once, that time that we got groceries, but I don't remember what we made.