IKEA adventure

We left Gotheburg bright and early on the Monday (well, okay it was 9:30) ready for our visit to IKEA. Little did we know that just getting there was going to be as much of an experience as being there. We had decided to save some money on the train tickets so we didn’t get reserved seating. This was how we had travelled around Scandinavia and so far it had worked well, but not so well today. The train was crowded and we ended up moving seats about three times (no easy feat when you consider the amount of luggage we were hauling).

If that wasn’t challenging enough, our train was running late and I started to get concerned about making the connection in Halmstad. I even asked the conductor, as we were getting closer to the station, if we would be alright - would the train wait? He assured me that we would be fine and maybe we would have, if we had known where we were going when we arrived at the station. We had to catch our connecting train two platforms over which meant going up some stairs, through the pedway, back down the stairs (did I mention we were really loaded down with luggage?) and down the platform to where the train was waiting. It was a relief to see our train still there until we noticed the conductor getting back on board, then the train started to move. We ran down the platform, waving our arms frantically, only to see it pick up speed and move right past us. This was the one time I saw Dennis really angry, I was glad I wasn’t the person at the ticket office. It wasn’t so bad though. They extended our tickets so we could catch the next train which would be in an hour. This just gave us a little more downtime than expected.

In due time, we arrived at Älmhult. We discovered that, unlike most train stations, there were no lockers for storing luggage at this station. However, the people at the ticket office graciously allowed us to leave it there so it wasn’t an issue after all.

After a short walk we arrived at the IKEA complex. I have to admit I was a little disappointed with the flagship store - except for a sign in the entryway, it looked like every other IKEA I‘ve ever been in. However, I did pick up a Dala horse baking pan and I’m not sure you’d find that anywhere else.

When I called it a complex earlier I wasn’t kidding. To get to the store itself we walked by a couple of big warehouses and across the parking lot we saw the IKEA hotel and restaurant. I wondered if it was furnished entirely with IKEA product. In lower level of the hotel was an IKEA museum. After we finished shopping, we decided to have a look through it and see what would be there. We arrived just before 3:00 (which was the closing time) but the staff there encouraged us to go through anyway and to take as much time as we wanted. It was basically a history of IKEA (as expected) and had rooms set up with furniture from the different decades - similar to how the stores have their demonstration rooms. We also received a book talking about the life of Ingvar Kampar and the evolution of IKEA. The book was actually written as an internal training tool for new employees so gave a fascinating glimpse into the whole philosophy. Just as an aside - that’s how he came up with the name IKEA - Ingvar Kampar Elmtaryd (family farm) Agunnaryd (home parish)

After leaving IKEA, we spent a little time looking around the town square (bought a Dala horse for myself and a few more things for the kids) then got back on the train and headed for Copenhagen.

In Copenhagen we had booked a CabInn hotel about 5 blocks from the train station so once we got our bearings (or rather once Dennis got his bearings since I’m directionally-challenged) we set off to find it. Once there, we discovered that this room was probably the smallest and least luxurious of any we had stayed in yet - really brought definition to the term ship-shape. I’m pretty sure it was even more compact than our ship cabin, even had bunk beds. Oh well, we had decided while planning the trip that hotel rooms were only a place to lay our heads at the end of the day so this fit that purpose.

After a nice supper at an Italian restaurant (Vesusius in Copenhagen, go figure!) we wandered around the area for a little. We saw a few shops that we pegged for visiting the next day (to hopefully fulfill the quest for a Danish vimple). We also saw a pair of buskers dressed as Native Americans (the full headdress and everything) but their music was nothing like I was expecting - mostly pan flutes, the Sound of Silence, that type of thing. Oh well, they certainly drew a crowd and I guess that was the point.

It had been a long day so we went back to our little hotel room (Dennis opted to sleep on the pull-out bed rather than the top bunk) and prepared to rest up for whatever adventure the next day might hold.

Those Goofy Ears and Riding a Wooden Rollercoaster

Both on the way out to Hestra, and on the way back, I noticed an amusement park with a large wooden rollercoaster. Beth and I had figured there must be an amusement park nearby because we kept seeing young kids (and not so young) wearing these goofy looking pink rabbit ears. I got a yearning to try a wooden rollercoaster, something I’ve never been able to do to date. Once we got back to Göteburg we went to a tourist brochure display and picked up some information on Liseberg Park. Now the presence of so many young families made sense, it was a weekend get-away for people; take the kids to Liseberg Park (something like taking the family to Disneyland - though not quite as big, and with lots of games of chance… the favourite prizes being oversized chocolate bars, including the largest Toblerone I’ve ever seen).

A little checking on the internet and we determined the park was open until 10 PM, which would give us time to go to the park and for me to ride the rollercoaster. It was at this point that I discovered the wooden rollercoaster is called Balder, and has been voted the world’s best wooden rollercoaster several years running. In rollercoaster fan circles the wooden rollercoasters are known as Woodies, and some people have made it their life’s passion to ride every wooden rollercoaster in the world. So after brief deliberation we decided to squeeze this little adventure in.

The gal at the reception desk must have thought we looked like walkers (which we are) because that was how she gave us directions when we asked. About 20 or 25 minutes later we were at the gate (it was now 9 PM), the admission person said “You know the park closes in one hour” which we assured him was enough time (though we didn’t get a break on the price of admission). Once inside we made our way quickly across the park (Balder being on the opposite side of course), looking for a token seller (the first booths were all empty, but eventually we found one and I bought my three tokens needed to ride the rollercoaster).

Beth was not going to join me in this adventure, instead she became the keeper of my stuff as I wasn’t about to have my money pouch, Rider hat, or camera go flying off into space on one of those sharp turns. At that hour the line up wasn’t too bad and within 15 minutes I was strapping myself into one of the rollercoaster cars. Then the cars began climbing a long, long hill of wood and steel to the top of Balder, then whoosh we dropped at a 70 degree angle and the ride was in full speed.

I don’t know why, but I start laughing and yelling “woooooh” on rollercoasters, this happens spontaneously, and for the next 2 minutes and 15 seconds that’s exactly what happened. I can’t compare it with any other wooden rollercoasters since this is the only one I've ridden, but it certainly was a great ride (the ride seemed less jarring than most of the metal rollercoasters I’ve ridden). We have a picture to prove it, one of those ones taken by the amusement park which you can purchase for an arm and a leg after the ride.

After I had my ride on Balder we walked around the park looking at rides that you would catch neither of us on (ones with spinning involved simply make me sick - in fact the only amusement rides I really enjoy are rollercoasters, and now I can say that I have ridden one of the best in the world). We decided to grab a bite to eat in the park, and expected typical fair food, but I had a sausage in a baguette and Beth had little meatballs with mashed potatoes and lingonberry sauce - and both dishes were really tasty! So we sat in the growing twilight listening to the screams and laughter from people on the rides and enjoyed our simple meal. Then I took a picture of Beth by a giant Dala horse, something we’ve been looking for since getting to Sweden (a little one to take home, not a large one). Even though the park closed at 10 PM, most of the food places stayed open later, and people were not pushed out of the park, so we actually had a little more time to enjoy our food after which we strolled leisurely out of Liseberg and back to our hotel.

This was one of those pleasant, unplanned surprises of our trip. I had no idea the world’s best wooden rollercoaster was in Göteburg, but it was a bonus for me that it was, and that we had enough time to allow me to ride it. So we’ve been to Liseberg park, and I have ridden Balder (and have a picture to prove it), but in case anyone reading this blog was wondering, no we didn’t buy any pink rabbit ears.

Hestra

We arrived at Hestra in the rain, good thing the bike rental idea had fallen through. When we got out of the taxi we saw some people down by the cow barn so started heading in that direction.

We introduced ourselves to Bjorn, the current owner of Hestra. Bjorn’s parents, Helge and Sonja Stensson, had purchased the farm from my great-uncle, Johan Huvudsson back in the 1950’s. (I think I mentioned in an earlier post that only one of my grandfather’s brothers and a sister had remained on the farm with their parents and neither of them had married.)

It was interesting to look around at the outbuildings. With the exception of the new barn, the farm looked much like the pictures I’d seen of it.

Bjorn had limited English, mostly he was just self-conscious about it, and my Swedish was limited to what I could look up in the pocket Swedish-English dictionary I had purchased in Gothenburg - so needless to say, our conversation was limited. He had tried to arrange for some relatives to act as a buffer but no one was available so we just had to muddle through it ourselves. He actually could speak better than he thought so we didn’t have to resort to too much pantomime.

The rain had let up enough for us to tour some of the farmyard but when it started to come down again, Sonja came to the door of the farmhouse and called to Bjorn to bring us in.

We had planned to have the taxi wait because I didn’t want to impose on Sonja and Bjorn’s generosity and take up too much of their time. It was a pleasant surprise to discover that they had planned to have coffee with us and that Bjorn was willing to transport us back to Fristad afterwards.

Sonja is a delightful lady. She’s in her 90’s but, similar to my mom’s cousin Karin, is so full of life. One of the first things she did when we sat down to the table for coffee was to bring out a guest book for me to look through and identify my relatives. This book was amazing - it dated back to the 1960’s. I found many entries written by my relatives, including a few different ones by my parents (Dad once and Mom twice). It was fun to see how often the Hedlin name cropped up, and interesting to see some unfamiliar relatives, obviously some of the U.S. branch of the family had also made this pilgrimage.

After we had perused the guest book and added our own entry, Sonja was off on the search through various photo albums and once again I was called upon to identify pictures of my relatives. It was great to see the old photos, always taken with Sonja and her husband. Before we left we had our picture taken with Sonja, and I intend to send a print to her to be added to her photo album. It was also interesting to me to see pictures of my great-uncle Johan’s funeral and a picture of my great-aunt Ida, taken on her 85th birthday. Community events were apparently very meaningful to Sonja.

Sonja didn’t speak any English so a few times we did have to resort to a form of sign language to communicate. I had to laugh to myself when she showed us that she could count to ten in English, which was certainly more than I could manage in Swedish. However, I did attempt to write a thank you note in Swedish, with the help of my little dictionary. (I included an English translation just in case I wasn’t actually saying what I thought I was.)

A few times during the process of getting to Hestra, I had been tempted to just cancel the whole expedition. It seemed like there were so many roadblocks, that maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. After visiting with Sonja and Bjorn, I was so thankful that Dennis had been willing to persevere. We had such a nice visit and it was very meaningful for me to see where my grandfather grew up. Sonja welcomed us so graciously, it really was a joy to be in her house.

How We Got to Hestra

There were only two times on our trip that we thought we might need to rent a car to get to the places we wanted to visit. The first was in Denmark where were wanted to visit the Mårup Kirke and Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse - which we managed to get to by public transportation and walking (as covered in an earlier post). The second occasion was in Sweden when we wanted to get to Hestra, the farm where Beth’s grandfather grew up.

One problem we didn’t count on was trying to rent a car on Sunday. Doing internet research we discovered that the only place we could rent a car from in Gothenburg on a Sunday was the airport (which was a fair distance from the train station and our hotel). The other problem was that renting a car for one day simply wasn’t economical - most car rentals only became reasonable with a rental of a week or longer. So the next option was public transportation, combined with cycling. We found out that often Tourist Bureaus had bicycles to rent, and we knew that it was possible to take bikes on the train (at least in some places) so we started checking into that option. The reason we were looking into bicycles was because the closest we could get to Hestra by public transportation was the small town of Fristad which was still about 10 kilometres from the farm.

So here is how our travel adventure unfolded: We started off by taking a bus from Gothenburg (or Göteborg as the Swedes spell it). The bus depot was in the same building as the train station, so that was handy. We first looked at taking a train from Gothenburg to Borås but the trains didn’t run as frequent on the weekends, so the bus became our best choice based on our schedule. Once we got to Borås we walked to the Tourist Bureau to check on renting some bikes. In talking with the Tourist Bureau people we discovered that we would have needed to get the bikes back by the time the office closed, which was 3 PM, and there was no way we could make that happen. So time for Plan B.

Back to the Borås Train Station (which looked pretty cool - see the picture), and went inside to buy some train tickets to Fristad. The next problem we encountered was that there was no one in the ticket office (because it was Sunday). There was an automated ticket machine, but it didn’t like any of our credit cards. As a last resort we figured we should be able to buy a ticket directly from the conductor on the train. When the appropriate train pulled into the station we got on board. The trip to Fristad was not that long, less than half an hour, and in that time no conductor ever came through our coach… so when we arrived a Fristad not knowing what else to do we simply got off. It turned out to be a free ride! (I felt justified in this because the stupid ticket machines didn’t accept any of our cards - we tried to pay, honest!).

Now the question was how to get to Hestra from Fristad. The good news was that there was a local bus service that stopped right by the farm (the bus stop is actually called ‘Hestra’) but the bad news was that the bus wasn’t running that day since it was a Sunday. This was where we had been planning on using the bicycles, but that plan fell through, so then we contemplated walking, but it seemed to be a bit far for that, so finally we decided to call a taxi. There was no pay phone at the train station, so we went wandering in search of a pay phone, eventually ending up at a gas station where we asked the attendant where the closest pay phone was. When he found out we were trying to call a taxi he offered to do that for us, and within ten minutes the cab was there.

We showed the cab driver a map of where we wanted to go and he said he could do that for us, and I asked for an approximate price which he quoted and which seemed reasonable. So we loaded in the car and drove to the farm. When we arrived there we asked the driver if it would be better if he waited for 10 minutes, or came back to get us later. He said he would wait and even turned off his meter while doing so!

When we found out that we were invited to stay for coffee, and that Bjorn (the current owner of the farm) would drive us back to Fristad, we sent the taxi driver on his way with a big thank you and a (hopefully) decent tip. Beth will write about our time at Hestra, but I will conclude this post by explaining how we got back to Gothenburg. Bjorn did drive us to Fristad, and by that time it was raining pretty good (including some thunder and lightning) so Beth and I were glad the bicycle option didn’t pan out - we would have gotten soaked!

From Fristad we ended up taking a bus back to Borås simply because the bus was available before the train. As this was a local bus we were dropped off somewhere other than the train station (where the regional buses were based). It took a little wandering and asking to make our way to the train station, but eventually we found it, and having just missed the hourly run to Gothenburg, waited for close to an hour in an outside bus shelter (much like you would see at a city bus stop) until the next bus arrived. At least by that point it was no longer raining.

The trip to Gothenburg was uneventful and eventually we were back in our hotel room glad to have survived our transportation adventure. I did a little mental calculating and the way I figured it, even with the taxi ride, we probably spent as little as a third or a quarter of what we would have spent renting a car for a day… so in that way our adventure was definitely worth it.

First Hotel G

Our train arrived in Sweden around 9:00 pm. Typically our next step at this point would be to schlep all our luggage off the train, through the station and out the front door to see if we could find a taxi (by this point we’d pretty much given up on the idea of walking to our hotel, unless it was within a few short blocks). Today we could skip the taxi ritual because our hotel (called First Hotel G) was built right into the train station! We did have to go out of the train station because the entrance to the hotel was on the exterior but at the end of a long travelling day it was a treat to just have to walk a few more steps. It was a surprisingly quiet hotel, from our room we heard very little of the train/bus announcements (did I mention that the train and bus system run out of the same complex?). It probably helped that the station basically shut down by 10:30 pm and didn’t start up again until around 8:00 am.

Speaking of things shutting down - we thought we’d try to be proactive and do some of our research into travel to Boras. However, that was when we discovered that the all the ticket offices were closed, as were the currency converter offices and virtually all the shops.

However, we weren’t totally out of luck. We hadn’t really eaten supper, just some snacks on the train, so were both feeling like we needed some food. We didn’t feel like venturing out of the train station so Dennis settle on a sub from Mr. Sub (just like being at home) and I got a couple of tubs of yogurt and some bananas from 7-Eleven - I never imagined I’d be buying fruit from 7-Eleven. Dennis had an interesting experience with the server at Mr. Sub so this is probably a good time for an editorial comment.

<Here's my story from Mr. Sub: I decided on a Louisiana Chicken Sub, and went through the normal process of adding extras like mushrooms, onions and such. Then the girl behind the counter asked if I wanted any sauce on that. I asked "What kind of sauce do you have?" She replied by listing off 5 different kinds of sauce, after which I picked the one I thought sounded good - it was a Honey Mustard sauce if I remember correctly. Her reaction was pretty funny, she shook her head and said "You don't want that! You want the Southwestern Sauce" and proceeded to put on the 'right' sauce. I wondered why she had asked about sauces in the first place if there was only one 'right' sauce for this particular type of sub sandwich. Beth and I had a good chuckle over that, and to be fair the sub really did taste good! DH>

So at the end of a long day with another full day looming in front of us, it was nice to go back to our nicely appointed room and settle in for a good sleep. Another bonus was that we had booked two nights in this hotel so would have a brief reprieve from packing up and moving suitcases.

On the Road (Rails) Again

Saturday July 4 was another travelling day and a long one at that. This was our trip from Kolbu to Gotheburg via Oslo. In total I think we spent about 6 or so hours on the train - we’re sure getting good at organizing all our luggage and ourselves, especially when each country seems to have a different system of doing this.

Geir had plans for his day so Gae came to spend some time with Grandpa and Grandma. She is certainly Bestemor’s girl (I love the Norwegian names for Grandpa and Grandma, wish I’d known them about 20 years ago).

As a special treat before we headed for the train, Magne had made waffles - I finally got to try the famous ‘vaffle and kaffe‘ combo that I‘ve heard so much about. The Nosterud clan laughed about we Canadians eating waffles drowned in maple syrup and I could understand why. We ate these with some sour cream and strawberry jam - a delightful change. It was not nearly so sweet as what we’re used to - I wonder if the kids will go for this?

Before we left Kari was looking through her address book and came across a letter that had been written to her oldest son, Tore, from my cousin (who shall remain unnamed). This letter dates back to 1976 or so, shortly after my parents and Grandpa had been over visiting. She had asked him many questions about himself and life in Norway but Kari said she didn’t think he had ever responded. I’ll have to ask her if she remembers sending the letter.