Mer let us sleep in this morning until 8:30 since we’d had such a long day yesterday. That was a welcome decision. I’ve been having trouble sleeping this vacation (oddly, usually because our rooms have been too hot when it’s been fifty degrees outside), and getting a decent sleep was needed.
After a rather extensive breakfast where we also got to sit outside on a sunny day (but in the shade, of course), we headed off to church. Meredith had found another Pentecostal church that had live English translations, and it was about a fifteen-minute walk away. It was called Lorensberg Church, and we found it with about four minutes to spare.
It was a lovely service. The entire thing, including the songs, was all in Swedish, which, to me, is how it should be for any church that isn’t trying to minister to international people. Our translator did a fantastic job, and he even translated the lyrics of the songs for us. The sermon was given by an elder since the pastor was out of town, and he spoke on what baptism and “living in your baptism” means. It was a solid sermon.
Sometimes Pentecostal churches can be a little wild for outsiders – they can be very emotional, and interactive, with lots of raising of hands and verbal affirmations from the congregation. Lorensberg Church was very much on the “tame” end of the spectrum and was pretty much what we’re used to back home. There was a lot of speaking in tongues, but I’m pretty sure it was all Swedish.
I did crack myself up. During one song, I saw some English cognates in the song, so I was excited to follow along with, “You are my hope, You are my life, You are my filbblegibbit.” There was a disconnect there toward the end. Some Swedish words are similar to their English equivalents, but others, not so much.
After the service, a retired man came up to speak to us, and he used very solid English. He invited us to stay for “fika,” which is the Swedish term for coffee and light food. We were happy to stick around, and he pointed out a man sitting outside who had lived in Dallas for a couple of years, and he had been the guitar player for the church service today. Mer and I went up to him and introduced ourselves, and we chatted for a long time. A couple of other English speakers joined us and chatted with Meredith, but I kept talking to Par (the guitar player) about guitars and his line of work. He and his son spent six months building a guitar from wood sourced from family property, which is very cool. He was a quality control engineer for Ericsson, which had a factory in Dallas, which is why he lived there for a couple of years. Meredith and I had a great time getting to talk to locals. We finally thanked everyone and left around 1:30.
We got changed and organized back in the room, and then headed out, driving to the island of Oland. Oland was connected to the mainland by a nearly four-mile-long bridge back in 1972, so it makes for an easy drive. We were aiming for the largest town, Borgholm, about forty-five minutes away.
It was a pleasant drive, except for the unsettlingly tall bridge we had to cross. The island does have dozens of old-style wooden windmills scattered all over, and even a few modern ones as well. The old ones no longer turn in the wind since the arms aren’t covered in cloth.
Just before the town, an old semi-ruined castle broods on a cliff overlooking the sea. It’s very weird in that the roof is completely gone, but the rest of the stone structure is intact. Usually at least a wall or two is damaged, but not in this case. We turned off at the castle drive, but kept going past it and on to Solliden Palace, the summer escape home for the royal family. The home is closed to the public, but the gardens are open.
We only had two hours to closing time, but while the grounds weren’t tiny, they weren’t extensive. We saw everything in about an hour and fifteen minutes. The gardens were quite lovely, and everything was heavily shaded. The garden had a very cool three-tier fountain waterfall, and there were classical statues scattered around, and some modern sculpture as well. There was a large art installation in one part of the grounds that celebrated a husband-and-wife team of artists who are well known in Sweden. The wife passed away in 2018, but the husband is still making art at age eighty-eight.
One of the more random features of the garden was encountered as we came along a road on the back of the public area: we saw some small gates set up in a circle that looked like a mini show-jumping ring, like in the Olympics. I joked that it was for horses, and then we saw that there was a rack of hobby horses for little kids. The course was for them, so of course we tried it, stepping over the taller gates so as not to fall over ourselves. Mer decided that the hardest thing was keeping the horse stick between her knees.
The last major exhibit in the garden was a series of photos of the royal family, mostly at Solliden. The king and queen have been married for fifty years and the king turns eighty this year, so it was a celebration of the family. Many of the photos were taken by the family or even the king himself. From an outsider’s perspective, the family seems to be fairly normal, if a bit richer than your average Riordan.
After the gardens, we went back to the car and drove back to the ruined castle. It was now almost 4:30, so there wasn’t any point in paying for admission, but we did get closer to the walls, and also looked out to sea some. We investigated a huge cairn that was put up as a memorial to a king from the 1800s by his hunting buddies. We then drove on to town.
It turns out that Borgholm is a very quiet town of a Sunday. We parked by the sea and then walked up to the four-block-long main pedestrian street. There were a few restaurants open, but that was it; no shops were open. There was only a handful of people about. It was a cute street, and the city hall was a cheerful bright yellow. We liked the walk, but it was strange to see a European shopping area so nearly deserted.
Sadly, toward the end of the walk, I started having stomach cramps. I have no idea what I ate today that made me sick, but I found a pay-for bathroom and was in there long enough that Meredith came over to the door to ask if I was okay. Once I was fit for traveling, we drove the forty-five minutes back to the hotel, where I was cramped up again for a time. And then again after supper while still at the restaurant. It wasn’t food poisoning, which I had last year, but it was a reaction to something I ate, or possibly dehydration (I probably didn’t drink so much as I normally do today). It was a bit frustrating, because I’d wanted to wander around in Borgholm or at least back here in Kalmar, but I felt I needed to stay near a bathroom. And the worst of it is is that I don’t know what caused it, so I could end up doing it again tomorrow when I have the same breakfast options.
Still, a rough ending of a day doesn’t negate the good of the rest of the day. Church was excellent ,and we got to meet some locals, and then the gardens on Oland were a happy place to wander around in. Tomorrow I take over again for the next several days, and we head further south in Sweden.