This is not a foodie blog, although I may talk about food from time to time.
It is not a rant blog, although I may do that, too.
It is simply a sharing of my thoughts because we all need an audience who responds to us,
to validate that we mean something, that we are alive.
Enjoy.

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Trip to Sweden - Day 1

Recently, I had the good fortunate to visit Sweden. My husband Neil, a medical anthropologist, was invited to participate in a symposium dedicated to Alzheimer's and dementia in indigenous peoples, which is his specialty. He let me tag along, and we added three extra days as a "honeymoon." (Our first honeymoon was in Sulphur, Oklahoma!)

We boarded the first plane in OKC at around 11, flew to Dallas and changed planes. Nine hours and three movies later, we landed at Heathrow in London, went through security - tougher than in the U.S., got on a bus and rode on the wrong side of the street to a different terminal where we boarded another plane for the 2-and-a-half-hour flight to Arlanda airport north of Stockholm. By this time, we had been up for almost 24 hours, crossed seven time zones, and were running on pure adrenalin.

With the help of a soft-spoken young Swedish man, we managed to purchase train tickets for the hour-and-a-half ride to Norkopping (pronounced Nor-shooping or sometimes Nor- shurping). The train passed through Stockholm (stock = log, holm = small island), which occupies 14 islands where Malaren Lake meets the Baltic Sea. What little we saw of the city was beautiful. Lots of water. Old, but well-kept buildings. Ancient churches. A tourist could spend two weeks in this international city and not see all of the sites.

The ride south from Stockholm to Norrkoping was full of beautiful countryside. Fields of yellow flowers (the seeds of which are the source of canola oil), blood-red farm houses and barns, real rivers - not like Oklahoma's rivulets, and violent green everywhere. About half way into the 90 minute trip, Neil and I both conked out. Jet lag was stalking us.

Finally, at about five o'clock Swedish time, we arrived at our hotel. It was not a separate building, but rather a part of a very old building (nicely refurbished) that housed apartments and businesses along with hotel rooms. The elevator served only two floors so we had to lug our bags up some stairs to the reservation desk (a tiny cubicle), then down more stairs to get to our room.

I honestly cannot remember what we did after that. We were exhausted, starving, and foggy-brained. Neil had to attend the conference the next day so sight-seeing was out of the question. So ended our first day in Sweden.



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