Archives for June 2013

Last night Hank and I went to a “cruising” in the nearby town of Hammarstrand, Sweden, population around 1,050. A big turnout on the main street saw lots of restored cars, mostly American cars from the 50s-70s. I’m told that these cruisings happen in several different towns. It felt funny seeing all these beautifully restored American cars in a small town in northern Sweden. The most unusual transport was a jet powered bicycle (a great Mathews science project). This place would be perfect for a Wagoneers concert. Hank and I had a great time.

P.S.: Uncle Ray, there was a very nice Shelby Cobra that would look so good on Nadine for her 16th birthday.

We were very fortunate to stay with the Missneback family for two weeks on their farm in northern Sweden. This is a picture of the farm from across the river. The Missnebacks have four very sweet children and welcomed us as part of their family. We met the Missnebacks through the WWOOF organic farming organization. We worked on their farm and they allowed us to stay in a cabin there, taught us about the farm, showed us around this very beautiful area and took us fishing and swimming. We had dinner with the Missnebacks most nights. Peter and Camilla are very friendly and interesting, explaining many things about Sweden to us and inquiring about things in the U.S. Hank, Nadine and I enjoyed playing with the four Missneback children. We hope they will come visit us in Austin.

This area of northern Sweden looks a lot like parts of Vermont: very green with thick forests, big hills and some mountains. The small towns and farms here are more spread out than in Vermont. Population density is very low. During our stay in late June, it never really got dark at night. Although the sun went down, I guess it was close enough to the horizon that it did not get dark. It was fully light from around 3 in the morning until 11 or so at night. Although I don’t think I am man enough to tolerate the winters here, I would love to have a cabin by a lake up in these mountains.

We arrived just a few days before Midsummer Eve festival, which is one of the big festivals in Sweden. The Missnebacks took us to their festival and then to another fiddle festival in the woods that night. The fiddle festival reminded me of Kerrville Folk Festival many years ago, with people camping and generally walking around the festival and joining in music.

We also had our first hospital visit of the trip after Nadine hurt her knee. Given that there is no doctor close to the farm, we drove about 45 minutes to a hospital emergency room to get an x-ray of Nadine’s knee. We waited about an hour to get the x-ray and visit with the doctor, which is a little bit quicker than we have experienced in Austin for visits to the emergency room.

Copenhagen (June 11-17, 2013)

My favorite activity was swimming at the Islands Brygge area in Copenhagen harbor. When we jumped into the cold water there, we realized that it was salt water. Very nice. We will see if the new walking path on Lady Bird Lake in Austin has a swimming area like this.

The first things I noticed in downtown Copenhagen were the widespread use of bicycles; the impressive number of tall, attractive blond people; and the incredibly high number of young people who smoke cigarettes.

At some point in history, the people of Copenhagen included two bike lanes on each side of many of their bigger roads. Imagine big bike lanes running for 5 miles or more each way from downtown Austin along Lamar and Burnet Lane with thousands of bike commuters each day. The bike lanes have their own set of traffic lights that some smart engineer has timed so that on bikes you ride quite far before having to stop at red lights for cars. Hank, Nadine and I rode our bikes about 5 miles from our hotel to the new aquarium, Den Blu Planet. I read that over 30% of people in Copenhagen commute to work and school by bike.

One day while it rained we saw Ironman 3, and noted that Nadine bears many similarities to Pepper Potts. In Copenhagen we also arrived at our first trip motto for Nadine: “Usually right, always certain.”

Copenhagen is very fun, it is different from Austin in some ways, but same in others. These are some of the things that are different, many of the women wear tights instead of socks, and the people in Copenhagen will wear swim suits in 50 degree weather, which is their normal temperature in the early summer. They also seem to have a lot of pizzarias, and the people there also ride bikes all the time, which is really fun. There is an amusement park called Tivoli, it is the oldest amusement park in the world. There is also a very fun Planetarium, and the buildings there are very cool because half of them are modern and half of them are old looking. These are some cool things about Copenhagen.