Day 3 - Snarestad + Ale's Stone

On to day 3. 

Today we left Malmo.  This entailed taking the bus over to the Hertz agency, figuring out our new Volvo (the guys at the agency seemed to emphasize the newness of the car for some reason), and checking out of our hotel.  All went without a hitch.  We even got out of town swimmingly!

Upon our outstanding hotel receptionist's recommendation, we took E6 from Malmo to Snarestad.  It's a scenic route that follows the coast line.  We drove through Smygehamn, the southern-most town in Sweden (take that, Key West!) and Abbekas, which supposedly has really good fish, but had no restaurants open for lunch. 



At the Snarestad church



The Persson/Jonsson gravestone



Inside the Snarestad Church



Marsvinsholm Church



From there we went to Snarestad.  Snarestad is a little off the coast, up from Svarte.  It's a town of maybe 100.  We went to the church to check out the cemetary to find any Nyberg ancestors.  We didn't, but talked with the groundskeeper for the Snarestad church who called the church up the road past Balkakra.  The church is in a town called Marsvinsholm.  Ingrid and another groundskeeper there helped us to find the gravestone for Lars Persson and Karna Jonsson!  It's really amazing!  They are the parents of Ingrid Persdatter Jonsson who married John Reinhold...and they are the parents of Annie Julia Reinhold who is Grandpa Ferdy Nyberg's mom.  Got it?  :-)  In short, they are my great great great grandparents.  Cool, huh?  After that, we drove to Skarby, with Ingrid in the lead, to the central church office for the area.  We didn't find any matches, but we did get a good recommendation on what to eat at Ale's Stone...

By the time we left our genealogical hunt, it was 3:30.  We were pretty hungry with a lot of road ahead of us. 

The town of Kaseberga is on the coast at the foot of the hill that leads to Ale's Stone.  We ate fried Baltic herring, mashed potatoes, and lingonberry sauce.  Except for the flavorful fish, this was a lot like our Christmas dinners.  (ha!)

Ale's Stone

After we ate, we walked up the hill to the amazing Ale's Stone.  You might have to look this up to more fully understand it, but the Ale's Stone is a series of 30+ stones all on end placed in the shape of a ship.  Like all good ancient stone formations, the axes of the "ship" align with the summer and winter soltice sunrise and sunset.  Much to our surprise there was small herd of docile (sometimes horned) cows in and around the stones.  :-)  The stones are up on hill/cliff that sticks out into the Baltic Sea a bit, giving an amazing panorama.  It was beautiful up there, but extremely windy.  We thought of everyone back home dealing with the heat (though it looks like the heat wave broke...thanks goodness!) as we were shivering. 

After Ale's Stones we drove up to Highway 19 to 23 that took us up to Vaxjo.  The drive took about 3.5 hours and was dotted with animal crossing signs for warthogs (seriously), deer, and moose.  Unfortunately (or fortunately for my car insurance) we didn't see or meet any of them.  The drive was different than we expected.  We expected flat farmland.  Instead we went through lots of hills and forests, and to Mom's dismay, very few rivers. 

Our hotel is really nice.  We got here just as the hotel keeper was leaving...so that was lucky.  Our room is about 1/3 the size of our room in Malmo, but it has everything we need and even overlooks a lake!  We walked over to the nearby restaurant, the Villa Vik, tonight.  I had a Swedish beer (who knew?) and mom had a wonderfully flavored elderflower juice. 



10 p.m. at Villa Vik

 Hope everyone is well and happy. We'll be staying in Vaxjo tomorrow, too!  Take care!

(((The internet is very slow and I'm tired.  I'll edit this to post photos tomorrow.  Loves!)))

Day 2 - Malmo

Hello! 

We are really now Vaxjo at the Toftastrand Hotell AND we have internet!! And we saw lots of neat things today...but first, let me share with you what we did yesterday...

We slept like logs last night!  I think we went to sleep around 9 p.m. Unfortunately, around 3 a.m. some boisterous folks were meandering (we imagine) down our street.  So that woke us up, but by at least an hour later we were both back asleep and woke up by 8 a.m. All in all, we both got a good amount of rest. 



G-ma took this phot for Emily.



 We wanted to see the Malmo Castle, so we took the bus to the central train station, exchanged enough money to hopefully take us through Sweden, and then walked over to the castle.  G-ma thought Emily would get a kick out of seeing the bike parking lot that was floating on the canal by the train station.  We also could see the Turning (Twisting??) Torso building by Santiago Calatrava in the distance.


 They also had cool things that you just don't think about like public air hoses that are located in places that you would really need them...like parks, not gas stations.  So, I took a photo. 

Isn't this a great idea?  Public air hoses *in* the park!

Back to the castle...The castle is surrounded by a moat that is *filled* with alligators!  No, really it just had a few swans and geese ducks. (bummer!) The castle was built at an unfortunate time in which medieval was “out” and renaissance wasn’t quite yet fully defined.  So, it’s just about the ugliest castle we’ve seen, but you be the judge:


Malmo Castle.  Ick.



The castle currently houses a restaurant and a bunch of different museums: art, natural history, castle stuff.  We focused on the castle history, but toured a little of the natural history part as well.  The first diorama we looked at was really an indication of the things to come.  It had 5 taxidermied foxes eating a half-eaten bird.  [see amazing photo @ right]

I don’t think this would have passed typical U.S. diorama standards as it seemed a little brutal, but so be it.  In later exhibits we found that this was pretty normal here as there were human skeletons in numerous exhibits that covered topics ranging from prison life (the castle had been used as a prison at one point) to Bronze Age graveyards.  Then there were the illustrations showing, in flip book fashion, what happens during a beheading.  Then there was the diorama representing some medieval holiday in which there were two people.  One was of a woman’s butt basically sticking out of a herring barrel.  The other was a guy who had drunk too much during the festivities.  Really?!  You have a holiday that has to have *some* sort of cultural meaning and *that* is how you choose to represent it?! Oh, we could go on, but at some point it all got to be too much for us, and we feel like sparing you all the details. 

To be fair, seeing the rooms of the castle was pretty cool. 

But those good exhibits are always offset by this exhibit's name:



The gardens of the castle were really pretty, and we saw the castle windmill. 

We ate lunch at an outdoor restaurant at Lilla Torg which is a square surrounded by really old half-timber buildings.  I got pasta with white sauce and veggies.  Mom got Swedish sausage with potatoes and salad, and cauliflower with a cream sauce.

 

 

And then we walked past a Salon called Rydberg and Company! 

 

More on what happened today later...