Sweden: Walking History

Exploring Skara.  But first, a proper Swedish bakery breakfast! We ate here two mornings. I would be in so much trouble if this was in my town.

Om nom nom.

I had the little cornered pastries on the top row of the photo below one morning.  Sooo good.  But I really don't think you could go wrong with any of it!

Now I know why my mom likes bakeries so much and I don't care for them... these are truly a world apart!

 

The cathedral by morning light.  It truly was spectacular and amazing to be in such a relatively small town.

Look, we were here! (and my phone takes really distorted pictures with it's rear facing camera)

Actually the photo of us was taken from the ruins of this other church that's even older than the cathedral.









Then we walked over to the Vastergotlands Museum.

 

Clara found a helmet in the gift shop!

This is in the basement of the building above, a little history of the area during medieval times.

You can see the cathedral in the middle obviously, the ruins of the church we were standing in are in front of it, the red building across the water to the left is the museum building this is in.  And off to the right is a hill with a moat around it, Clara's mom's house is now just to the right of that!  The amazing part is that Skara really isn't that much bigger than this map.  Fill in the green areas and maybe make it slightly bigger than the whole board and that's it.

The hotel I was staying at was roughly on that main road in the center and towards the bottom of the picture.  This view is looking east at the town.

After wandering through the few rooms we went out back to the area called Fornbyn which was like a recreation of the area.  Or possibly some of the buildings were original.  I don't know, most of the signs here were only in Swedish and Clara had a cold so I didn't need her to translate everything!

They had some short people back then! Or else they just had small doorways to keep things out!

Just a pretty picture of the windmill.  Not sure what the building actually was.

 

We wandered back through town and stopped at a cafe for lunch.  Clara got the smorgastorte so I could try some, but she said it wasn't very good.  And soooo much mayonaise.  Gross.  I think if I'd had a better one I might have liked it okay.  It's interesting, but very common.

The cake above is traditional for birthdays.  It looked yummy!

Then we walked to Clara's mom's house (so you can see the town really isn't that big when we walked across the whole thing just casually!) and borrowed her car to drive out into the country looking for this church...

Where my great grandparents got married!  It wasn't open, but we peeked in one window we could reach.  VERY thick walls and once again, very short doorways!  This place is still in use on Sundays and some of the tombstones in the churchyard have recent dates on them.

Really cool to think about my great grandparents (who I never met) having walked in the same place.

 

This was the name of the area, Lindarva, just a very small area with a few houses, mostly farming area.  Back across from this sign was Hilltorp where my great grandfather was born, but we couldn't figure out which house it might have been.

 

We were dodging rain clouds all day, but mostly stayed dry and saw this lovely rainbow.  You can't tell very well, but this was the countryside there.  Mostly just flat and ALL the houses have red roofs!

Next we skirted back around Skara and went east to visit this old church called Varnhem which has the ruins of the abbey that used to be connected to it.

Unfortunately the church was closed as well so we couldn't go inside, but we did wander around in the ruins and there were little signs telling what each room was used for and they had English translations!

This church really was huge, I had a hard time backing up far enough to get it all in one frame!  There is a cow pasture behind it and I didn't really want to see if the cows were friendly or not!

While we were there it turned 6 o'clock and the doors at the top of the steeple opened and beautiful bells chimed for about 2 minutes.

Still fighting the rain, but at least you can see the grounds better when it's not completely sunny for pictures!

Walking the pathways where monks once walked (in what was also once a fully covered building) is almost surreal.  It's like you can feel the history!

Then back to Skara and a takeout pizza place for dinner.  I know I didn't have pizza, but it's been too long, can't remember what!  Anyway, nothing is very far from the cathedral so I had to get one more picture by twilight.

And then across from my hotel was the grocery store.  Their big chain is called IKA (pronounced ick-a) and this one is IKA Munken and has these monks on the outside that are practically life size!  As a reference to the monks from the abbey we had just visited.  Such cool history!

And that was all in one day... tired yet?

Remember...

Uncle Dick passed away this week.  Technically he wasn't my uncle, but my mom's, but that's what I knew him as.

He made it to my cousin's wedding this summer which was awesome.

Uncle Dick and my cousin Brooke (we're one day apart!)
January 2010

He's the last of my grandfather's brother's.  Lilly passed away almost 2 years ago, Grandma this year, and now Richard.

No more first person memories of life after WWII in Spokane and Seattle.  A different era than the one we live in now.

I love to read about history, but it seems often there's not enough time to actually spend with the people in our lives who are our living history.  Perhaps it's because of distance or perhaps it's simply because when we get together there are the now things to talk about, but it happens too infrequently.

I wonder how much we lose by not hearing these stories?  I wonder what will be remembered of me and this time and our generation in the future?

We are so much better at cataloging our lives now (hello blog!) in words and pictures... sometimes it's information overload.

I think we all want to be remembered, but some of us put down our memories for other reasons.  I want to be able to remember myself, mostly the good times of course!  I also like stability and the past is one thing that doesn't change.  Not that I really want to live in the past, but sometimes it's nice to visit.  You know what to expect!

Here's a question: What do you remember most about someone who's passed away in your family?

This is a post prompt from The Gypsy Mama. Join in?

An Eyeball Story

I spend a lot of time on the computer. What? You're shocked? Well, just because I neglect my blog from time to time doesn't mean I'm not here... a lot!

In the last couple of weeks I've noticed I'm having a much harder time seeing things in focus. Especially trying to read the words up on the screen at church. (we go to a large church with a huge stage which makes them that much farther away)

I'd been thinking about calling in for an eye appointment when I went to Walmart and noticed their nice new Optics department had some openings for the following day. So I made an appointment for last Friday.

Let me back up a bit...

When I was in college I noticed I was having some trouble seeing the writing on the board. After I graduated and got a job that actually had insurance I went and got an eye exam and glasses. They worked just fine for about 6 months until I had them adjusted one day and suddenly my head just seemed to reject them. (my roommate from that time is now rolling her eyes, Hi Wendy!) The muscles behind my ears would just clench up any time I put them on.

I tried many things (including contacts, but they don't work well for dry eyes plus astygmatisms) and finally just gave up and quit wearing them figuring that having things be a little blurry was better than having a head ache all the time.

Back to this week...

I was fitted for contacts again now that they have newer ones out that help with dry eyes. Then I went to a scrapbooking weekend...

Since I couldn't wear my contacts all day just starting out I had to pull out my old glasses. The doc said they should work even though my prescription has changed a little bit.

Well, apparently he didn't tell me that it had actually changed quite a bit and I'm now getting major light glare from any light, especially ones that are unfiltered by shades, like oh say, head lights from oncoming traffic! I could get used to that, but the worst part is that at night in a town like Leavenworth, where there are literally a million lights, the glare was so bad when I was walking I literally couldn't see where I was going!

And then the contacts started giving me blurry spots. I faithfully tried them every day for a few hours, but since Friday the time has been getting shorter and shorter.

So on Monday night I went ahead and ordered some new glasses. Oh, did I mention that my head is still clenching when I wear them?

Good times!

If you think of it, will you please pray that I can survive (or that my husband can survive my whining!) and hopefully find the solution to my eyeball problem? Thanks!

An Upcoming Adventure

So it appears that many of you might be curious as to why we are going to Saudi Arabia next March.

For those who are not old friends or family of Brian... maybe I'd better start at the beginning!

In 1979, when Brian and Allison were 10 months old (did you know he was a twin, too? :) their dad got a job working for Saudi Aramco. It's the oil company there in Saudi Arabia and he was working in the refinery (correct me if I'm wrong?) so that meant they all moved over there. They lived on a large compound with other families from many countries who were also working for the oil company.

They were there until 1990 when they moved to Corvallis, Oregon. Therefore Brian went to school and made friends and generally spent more of his growing up years overseas and traveling (I'm jealous!) than he did in the US.

In 2001, I believe, his dad went back to work there for another 2 years or so. Brian was able to go back and visit in the summer, but as he was out of college by then he didn't stay.

Now the reason we're going back...

In case you didn't know, Saudi Arabia is a closed country. That means that you can't just decide to go there, you have to have a good reason - like work or immediate family.

So how are we going?

Well, it's the 75th anniversary of the oil company next year so someone got the idea to sponsor a reunion. 600 people are invited and Brian's dad decided we were all going. He is the official employee allowed to go and he can bring his immediate family. That means there are 7 of us going (Brian's mom and dad, Brian, Cory, and I, plus Allison and her husband Joel). The company is officially "sponsoring" this reunion so that we can get visas to get into the country. We'll be staying with some friends of theirs that still live and work there.

Should be quite the adventure!

Technology, ain't it grand?

I think it's fun to read my friend's blogs/pictures, etc. and find out where they are in their life. Since we now also have a digital camera (thanks parents) and everyone wants to see pictures I thought it might be fun to post them here. I'll try not to post anything too embarrassing... :)