Life in a small northern town

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JenniferSo it's true that in a town like Uppsala a car is not really needed (although it would come in handy for those weekend Ikea binges), and many people do not own cars. On the other hand, having a driver's license is not at all unusual, and renting a car or RV for summer camping is a common way to vacation. There is a lot of Scandinavia to see that is not readily accessible by train or bus. Besides, we are used to having a car, and being able to just up and go somewhere for a day or a weekend. Sounds good, right? But... how? The first step was to spend an afternoon in small-town Sweden for a test drive.

A bucolic nature walk

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JenniferIt's true that the 'summer feeling' has gone from the air now, but even so the weather can still be quite nice, so yesterday we went for a little walk in Hågadal, the nature reserve near our apartment. Hågadal is not really pristine wilderness, as it includes several more-or-less ancient human monuments, such bronze age burial mounds and a runestone. The valley is the bottom of what used to be an inland sea, which is not too hard to imagine, as you stand on the rocks at eastern edge and look down and out onto the cultivated fields and pastures and forest fragments. It is a very pleasant place to walk on a sunny day. And on this walk, we were treated to an unusual amount of animal life as well.

Akut Situation

Joe I know that the meteorologists of SMHI would frown at the suggestion, but it certainly feels like autumn has arrived. Daytime highs have fallen below 20°, rain storms are blowing through every other day or so, and the sheep have gone home for the season. Autumn means students, and students in Uppsala means housing trouble, as evidenced by this translation of the e-mail I received yesterday from the University rektor:

A Rainy Afternoon with the Stasi

Joe We had a beautiful week here—clear and sunny, with highs in the mid 20s—but nothing lasts forever, and today has been gray, wet, and 19°. In response, we decided to have a movie afternoon, so in honor of our recent stay in the former East Berlin we re-watched the excellent Das Leben der Anderen. And since the weather has suddenly become autumnal, I decided to make us an extremely traditional autumn fika treat: Swedish äppelkaka. It's a very simple recipe, one that everyone in Sweden should have learned from their mormor. It's too simple, in fact, to show up in any of our cookbooks, so I was forced to googlar it. I eventually settled on a combination of two recipes, mainly a very traditional one from Dorie Greenspan. The other was a recipe that Jennifer found, which suggested sautéing the apples in butter and cinnamon beforehand. Here's what I did:

I mentioned the war once…

(but I think I got away with it.)

Abbey in the Oakwood (1808), Caspar David Freidrich

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Joe Berlin was the end of our (by this time conjoined) trip. I'd never been before—Jennifer had, of course, but that was before the wall came down, and things have changed a bit in the meanwhile. On second thought, let's give that present perfect a progressive aspect: things have been changing, for by Friday afternoon it was clear that the reconstruction isn't done yet. But that's getting ahead of the story.

Wolfsburg

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JenniferJuly 7, 2011: Wolfsburg was, as predicted, not especially tourist-y, although there are some nice things there in addition to soccer. For instance, there is a castle, and what American doesn't love a castle? Schloß Wolfsburg includes a relatively tiny but obsessively well-clipped Baroque garden, plenty of decorative animal-themed flourishes (dragons for downspouts, wolves for weathervanes, and eagles just for pretty), a sizable garden of mirrors. There was also a Teahouse at the end of the garden, which had a bit of Art in it. The best thing, though, was that the castle housed a family of kestrel falcons ('Turmfalke' in German and 'tornfalk' in Swedish; 'tower falcon' in both languages). One young kestrel had left its nest, high up on the castle wall; the young 'un was now hopping about on a lower windowsill, while the other chicks peered out from the nest, and occasionally peeped at their precocious sibling.

Hannover

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JenniferJuly 4-6, 2011: The Women's World Cup of Football was in Germany this year. Don't worry, Gentle Readers, I shan't bore you with endless details of the sport I'm passionate about (not yet, anyway); this post will only be about non-sport-related tourist activities. The games were in Wolfsburg, a small town nearly devoid of tourist stuff, so my friend S., who was also going to a few games, thought it would be fun for us to spend some time in nearby(-ish) Hannover, a larger city with a much better reputation for touristic sights and activities. So off we went, in search of gardens and good beer...

Those must be some mighty fine neighbors*

* That was supposed to be a Frost reference, but with walls instead of fences…
Yes, fine, I'll admit that it didn't really work. But I'm leaving it anyway.

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JoeFor my last day in Istanbul, I still wasn't feeling the whole "crowd" vibe, so I opted to do something a little off the beaten track, namely to walk the land walls. The Theodosian Walls, to be more precise: 6.5 km of double wall, completed in the early 5th century AD, and so ridiculously successful at protecting the city that they helped to keep Constantinople inviolate long after the power of the eastern empire had waned. Indeed, the city was taken only twice in the thousand years that followed the completion of these walls (first when the Fourth Crusade sacked the city by breaking through the medieval replacement wall at the northern end by Blachernae Palace; second when Mehmed won the 15th century arms race by punching a great big hole in the middle of the wall with a cannon).

A Peaceful Moment

JoeWhile the splendors of Istanbul are obvious, its charm has proved to be more elusive, buried beneath a thick veneer of overly friendly carpet touts and pushy restauranteurs. But today — sitting in the cool evening breeze outside one of the dozens of fish places under Galata bridge, sipping wickedly strong tea from a tulip-bulb glass, and watching dolphins cavort around the ferry boats that madly ply the waters of the Golden Horn — today I see it.

My new found sense of harmony with the place is partly a reaction to the peace and quiet of being the restaurant's only patron at the moment, as the dinner rush won't start for another couple of hours. The solitude, while welcome, was not my intent; I'm here early because I unintentionally skipped lunch today. I was quite ravenous by the time I got here—but that's getting ahead of myself.

Just like Byzantium, but with more carpet (sellers)

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JoeI've been fascinated by Istanbul, née Constantinople, née Byzantium, for years, so it seemed foolish to come all this way and not drop by to say, "Howdy!" Thus, my weekend in Istanbul. I've been doing my best to make it a weekend in Constantinople, actually—nothing against Istanbul or the Ottomans mind you, I just wanted to start with the place that was, and work my way up to the place that is, if you see what I mean.