Well, we had
a lovely day yesterday. The temperature was about -3ºC but with no wind and he
winter sun it didn’t feel that cold. Both of us slept very well the night we
arrived – we were in bed by 20h00 and although we both woke up during the
night, we managed to get back to sleep. Last night we made it for about half an
hour longer, but were both asleep by 21h00 and both woke up early this morning,
giving me time to check the e-mail, read the South African and Australian
papers and even check my PayPal
account. I’m still amazed by the Internet!
But to get
back to yesterday. We went upstairs at about 08h00 to an excellent Swedish
breakfast – mainly cheese, cold meat ad a variety of bread and crispbread with
some home-made muesli and Gerd’s blackberry preserve, which was delicious.
Accompanied by a lot of talk and chatter, of course.
We went into
town at about 10h30 to pick up our air tickets for the Riga/Warsaw leg from LOT (Polish) offices in town. There was surprisingly
little traffic but some rather hair-raising driving from Lars! We parked
illegally and I was surprised at the security measures to stop us getting into
the LOT offices. First of all there was the
street door, where you had to enter a code to get a response. Lars punched in
the numbers but – no reply and the door did not open. Tried again with the same
result. At that stage fortunately a postman arrived so we followed him in – so
much for the security! When we got to the LOT
office we had to buzz again, although this time it worked. Lars mentioned the
problem with the front door buzzer downstairs to the woman who greeted us and
she said they knew about ti – it was broken. As I said to Lars, if it hadn’t
been for him and the postman, I might have frozen to death waiting for a
response!
From there
we drove out to what is called the King’s Animal Garden
– the old hunting grounds of the Swedish kings. There are hundreds of acres of
national parklands and it all looked so wondrous. There are cleared paths
everywhere for walkers and riders and we spotted a number of ski tracks where
cross-country skiers had got their exercise. Lars and I went for a stroll
looking for photo opportunities but we couldn’t lure Rab out of the car.
The snow and
the trees and the little frozen river/canal/lake all looked tremendous and I
took what looked like some excellent shots but Alas! We may never know because
my memory stick suddenly gave up the ghost and refused to accept or display any more images. I hope we will be
able to get it open when we get back home, but fear the worst. Fortunately Lars
had taken some shots, so we will be able to take these with us. (I couldn’t recover the shots but I found
out the most likely cause of the problem. My camera battery was low and with
the cold, it dropped even more quickly than usual, finally petering out as the
camera was transferring an image to the memory stick. Cutting off power during this
action has the effect of jamming the stick. I always check my batteries now!!)
We drove
around the park for a while, admiring the wonderful grand houses on the fringes
of the park. Many of these are very old and owned by the very wealthy. We
stopped to get some views of a little inlet and for once Rab joined us.
There was an
enormous swan that swam towards us, obviously expecting food, and within a
short time mallard ducks and seagulls were skidding in to land. What a pity we
had to disappoint them all.
From there
we drove on to Skänsen
Gardens, aiming to have
lunch at a restaurant that Gerd knew – but it was closed for winter. Rab
spotted two wolves near the parking lot, but it turned out that they were in a
part of the Skänsen Zoo grounds. I had spotted some deer spoor and hare too and
Lars had said that there had been a wolf or two in their neighbourhood a year
or two back. Gerd complained that the deer come out of the woods in summer and
eat her flowers!
The spot
where we had lunch was very pleasant but jammed full of young mothers and
babies. There must have been 20 strollers parked about the premises, some in
the foyer and some in an overflow park in the courtyard. The rest of the
clientele were mainly women with very few men in evidence. We just had rolls
and coffee at a cost of about SWK240 – about A$40 which was pretty pricey.
We thought
we might try to see if a camera shop would be able to open my memory stick, so
popped into an Onoff shop on the way home. The joke about the name of this
chain is that when they first opened up in Sweden, Lars thought it was yet
another Russian invasion, failing to grasp that it was On + Off! Anyway, as I
expected they were not able to help but at least we established that the camera
itself was OK and I bought another memory stick – with plenty of room being 1G.
it cost about the same as it would have in the Melbourne
duty-free where I had been contemplating buying one. Rab and Gerd paddled
around the shops for a while then joined Lars and me for a very good coffee in
a rather smart coffee shop.
We had a good laugh over dinner. It was Lars' turn to cook and he and I went down to the supermarket to get the ingredients. I noticed that he bought about one and a half kilos of Baltic Herring - which he said he was going to put into a pie. I said nothing but wondered how many people might be joining us for the meal! In due course he presented this enormous pie - with all the little tails sticking out - and by the time we had eaten our fill there was enought left for half a dozen more people. We assumed that Lars and Gerd would be having cold herring pie most of the week.
A lovely day (apart from that darned
camera stick!!)
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