Episode 8 of Maastricht Minutiae: The Swedish Episode

Its been a few weeks, but we’re finally back from our visitors & traveling with a new episode of Maastricht Minutiae for you. Dan’s feeling a bit under the weather, so we hope you’ll forgive the coughing that made it onto the ‘tape’.

This is the Swedish episode because it revolved around our visit to Sweden for Midsummer & a visit from two dear friends with a special place in their hearts for Sweden.

This weeks topics include:
- Keith & Alyssa’s Visit to Maastricht (& a word on EURail tickets)
- Cologne, Germany
- the Grotten Noord here in Maastricht.
- Our trip to Sweden
- Stockholm Impressions
- Midsummer Celebrations
- The Vasa Museum
- The Stockholm Archipelago
- The Historical Museum
- and a short mention of a blogger/journal Focus Group I attended

Check out the Podcast here and don’t forget you can email us your comments or questions at ampotter (at) gmail.com.

Midsummer Celebrations in Sweden

When summers are short and winters dark, it is very important to celebrate what warm weather and sun you get. That’s what Midsummer in Sweden is about. This year, we had the pleasure of attending our first midsummer celebration with the Swedish family our friend Alyssa lived with during a study aboard program. This was our first time traveling to Sweden, but Dan & I have heard a lot about the country over the years so we were excited to see Alyssa’s adopted home away from home in person.

When we got there, the Swedish countryside was beautiful. We celebrated Midsummer in Eskilstuna, which has low rolling hills, huge skies, and lots of wide open spaces. The home we stayed at was on a large lake.

We celebrated Midsummer on Friday night was a big dinner, beer, and schnapps. In addition to our hosts, several of their friends, and Keith and Alyssa were there. Dinner was served in courses, including cheese and flat breads, herring, new potatoes, fish, and strawberries for dessert. It was the first time I’ve had herring (I haven’t tried it Dutch style yet), and I really enjoyed it. It has been prepared two different ways and there was also a smoke salmon dish that was quite tasty.

The schnapps was accompanied by several drinking songs, in Swedish of course. We stumbled our way through as best we could.

By 2 am, the sky was as dark as it was going to get and I couldn’t stay awake any longer. We said our good nights and went to sleep.

Saturday is the official day of Midsummer and it is traditionally celebrated with a maypole and dancing (but not until mid-day so everyone can get plenty of rest). We drove out into the country to see just such an event and eat sausages for lunch. Several children, and a few adults, were dressed in the local traditional dress. It is common to dress up during Midsummer and a true set of regional or national Dress can be a family heirloom.

The dancing was fun to watch, even though we didn’t understand the songs being sung. The dancers generally danced in several linked circles. One dance involved hopping about like frogs, which was funny.

For the sake of archaeological interest, we also visited the Ramsund stone which marked an ancient bridge. It was created as a memorial and bridge mark, and also tells the Norse legend of Sigurd.

Unfortunately, by dinnertime our celebrations from the night before (and the very strong Swedish coffee) had caught up with me, and I missed dinner the second night of our visit. Dan tells me it was delicious.

To our friends and our hosts, thank you so much for sharing this celebration with us. It was a wonderful experience.

Click Here for Photos

Stockholm Notes
Before & after the Midsummer Celebration in Eskilstuna we had time to check out a handful of things in Stockholm. It was a nice city (very attractive), but while it definately had a bay, I wouldn’t call it the “Venice of the North”. Stockholm can complain to me if they like. You can see all the Stockholm photos here or you can click the thumbnails below for slideshows.

Vasa Museum: The Vasa museum encloses its namesake, a 17th century ship that sunk on its maiden voyage. The king of the day, Gustavus Adolphus, demanded that an extra deck of guns be added, which unstabilized the ship. Then the Captain sailed her with open gun ports; making it easier for the wind to swamp them. The ship sunk into the brackish muck, preserving 95% of its structure.

Really, this is a museum you need to see to believe. My camera wasn’t able to handle the lighting, so unfortunately many of my photos were awful and the remainders dark. In addition to the ship, the museum discusses the preservation and conservation of the large structure. I was impressed to learn that the entire thing is actually filled with PEG, a wax-like substance that replaced the water in the wood’s cells. Contamination from reusing the PEG and simple exposure to visitors is actually slowly shrinking the ship, so this is one archaeological find you should probably see sooner rather than later.

Archipelago: The coast of Stockholm is filled with thousands of islands of all shapes and sizes. The definition of “island” is pretty loose, so some are just rocks with a couple of trees. The rest had cute little houses or villages on them. These islands, in addition to island forts, have protected Stockholm from invasion several times.

We took a dinner tour of the Archipelago with Keith & Alyssa. The food was decent (a little pricier than we would have gone otherwise, but you only live once) and the ride both lovely and relaxing. We took Princess I, although I’ve forgotten the tour company. The Princess ships are faster than the other types; making it a preferable ship to see as much as possible. It is also used as a ferry by the people who live on the islands and we made several pick-ups along the way.

Historiska Museet: Our hostel had an advertisement for the Viking Exhibit at the Historical Museum and we like vikings, so we hunted it down the morning before our flight back to Amsterdam. Inside, the Viking exhibit was interesting, but very dark. I also found the English language audio guide to be a little condescending, as if it was saying “look, pretty things” rather than actually trying to tell me the story of the artifacts. I expect this is related to me being unable to interact fully with the exhibits because I don’t know Swedish.

While we were there, we also visited the Gold Room. No bags inside. No cameras. The room is built like a vault. The audio tour was better in here and the gold items inside varied and interesting.

Skansen: We made a short visit to Skansen, an open-air museum in the middle of Stockholm intend to show life in Sweden “back then”. We checked out various houses dating from 15th-18th centuries, farm animals, and the zoo. The bears were just waking up when we came by and the cubs were adorable. Apparently the bears are very popular (bears were the first animal in the zoo when it opened) and have new cubs every year.

Skansen is also on a fairly large hill and the view of Stockholm is one of the best I’d seen. I would have liked more time, but it is a large museum and probably would take a day to cover.

Home Again
We can home again on Monday via Hamburg and Amsterdam. Alyssa told us that Sweden is a popular destination for Germans on holiday. I can see why. Some day, I’d like to go back to hike and camp.

Amusing/Ironic Smoking Sign

Last weekend, we flew to Sweden to celebrate Midsummer with our friends and Alyssa’s host family. More to come on that.

I’m not a smoker, but I found this sign on all the smoking rooms at the Zurich Airport to be pretty funny. The cartons in the shops were more explicit: “Smoking Kills”.

Grotten Noord: Underground in Maastricht

When Dan & I first visited Maastricht a year ago for a scouting expedition, we were thrilled with the underground tour we took at Grotten Zonneberg (Zonneberg Cave). On June 14th, we shared a similar experience with our visitors, Keith & Alyssa, when we climbed up to the entrance of Grotten Noord (North Cave) for a one hour English-language tour.

Grotten Noord, like the Zonneberg cave, is not a natural cave. It is actually a quarry that was started in Roman times to mine the marl that makes up St. Pietersberg (St. Peter Mountain). While a smaller group of chambers, Grotten Noord’s history began with Roman miners and includes several instances of Maastricht residents hiding from invaders, and even evidence of an (unsuccessful) attempt by Napoleon to blow up St. Pieter Fort.

Fun fact: the red church tower over the Vrifholf square use to be painted red with ox blood to prevent the marl from turning black.

Dinosaur fossils have even been found in the chambers and you can still see evidence of the ancient seabed that created this limestone deposit. Today, the system of rooms is use for tours and to grow mushrooms.

The tour was excellent and our guide was knowledgeable and friendly. She pointed out a number of interesting charcoal paintings throughout the cave system, including a commemorative piece of Napoleon “visiting” Maastricht in 1803 and a 1940s sketch of Mickey Mouse. The drawings, done in charcoal because it doesn’t smudge in the moist environment, are one of my favorite things about these caves so I took lots of pictures of them.

Grotten Noord is an easy 20 minute walk from the Maastricht VVV. They offer English language tours on Saturday and Sunday from April 11th to June 28th at 2 pm. The tour costs 4.90 euros. The Maastricht Underground website is cute (it’s in Flash) but in Dutch so if you have questions I recommend you ask at the VVV. The website indicated that the cave was handicapped accessible, but I would disagree with that assessment as the path down is fairly rough and the path inside had some short steep parts.

If you are around when Grotten Noord isn’t offering English tours, try Zonneberg from July 5th to September 6th daily at 1:50 pm. It is further out of town (ask at the VVV about the bus), but larger and has more World War II history associated with it. I’d recommend both tours to pretty much anyone who can sustain a steady walk and isn’t afraid of the dark.

UPDATE: I forgot to include the link to my Flickr photos. Check em out.

A Visit to Cologne with Friends

[I was out of town for the weekend so be prepared for a blitz of new posts about things that happened up to over a week ago.]

Our first guests from the USA, Keith & Alyssa, came to visit us for a long weekend June 11th. They are currently on a tour of Europe: taking trains from Great Brittan to Sweden with lots of stops and detours in between. While they were here we took the time to cross one of those 1,000 Places to See Before You Die by taking a trip to Cologne, Germany to see and walk up the Cologne Cathedral.

I enjoyed Cologne, so I’ll only take a small detour to say it was our silver-lining around a EURail debacle. Keith & Alyssa have been traveling using a EURail pass and have had nothing but trouble with it. The company told them they could save money on the booking fees by getting all their tickets once they arrived at their first EURail country. Instead it turned out that they have had to book tickets as they went along. And paying booking feeds of course. The Maastricht Station said they couldn’t help them book a ticket to Copenhagen, but we found out that the train station in Eindhoven could so we woke up bright and early to get their tickets squared away. Based on their experience, I’d recommend caution to others considering the EURail pass. It might be better if you only plan on using local & regional train (which are free, but I don’t know how the cost would shake out) or can book everything before leaving the States. Fortunately, Cologne is a straight shot by train from Eindhoven, so it made sense to head there next.

The Cologne Cathedral is truly a masterpiece of Gothic design. One of the largest cathedrals in the world (the largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe), its placement on a hill made it tower over the city. Inside there were many shrines including one of the oldest wooden crucifixes in Europe, an early shrine to Mother Mary, and the Shrine and Reliquary of the Three Magi. Contrary to its name, the brochure we picked up said that there are two saints enshrined in the reliquary; not the three wise men.

After exploring the inside of the cathedral, we decided to scale to the top of one of the towers. 533 steps around and around. Exhausting. Rather dangerous too, with all the tourists we had to pass on the way up and down.

The view at the top was breathtaking, of course, and it was fun to see the outside carvings up close. They look almost like lace and frills from far away, but are quite substantial when you stand right next to them. The tower still extended well above the highest staircase.

The bells could also be viewed and we walked around the set up 4 bells of varying size and weight. I was lucky enough not to be in the bell tower when it went off. Alyssa was not so lucky and was caught by the hourly bell. Not fun.

Back on terra firma, the four of us went on a boat cruise to rest our feet. It lasted an hour and the audio tour part wasn’t much to listen to, but the view was lovely. And we can now say we’ve taken a cruise on the Rhine.

Sadly, by that time we got off the boat, the Chocolate Museum was closed for the day. None of us were hungry for a big dinner (we had a big German-style lunch), so we went for the next best thing. Dessert!

We settled in to an ice cream café where they served all sorts of strange sundaes. Keith & Alyssa ordered one loaded with nuts, chocolate pieces, and berries. I ordered a tiramisu themed one which had lots of cream and coffee ice cream. And Dan got the most interesting dessert: a vanilla “lasagna” with a whipped cream filling, flat layers of vanilla ice cream, and red berries for sauce. All around a tasty alternative to dinner.

We got home from Cologne pretty late, but it was a good time. Check out my Flickr for more photos.

The next day Keith & Alyssa checked out the caves of Maastricht with us before catching their train to Amsterdam. But that is a story for another post.

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