Vacation photos are up

I finally took the time to sort through and post our photos from Prague. Head on over to Picassa to check them out.

The story of the Vasa

When Kendell and Taryn were in town we had the opportunity to visit Stockholm's most famous museum, the Vasa Museum. Any tourist guide will tell you that this museum is a must-see.

There's a long story behind the name Vasa, but I'll give you the abridged history. Gustav Vasa was elected the king of Sweden after leading a rebellion against the Danes and freeing Sweden from Danish rule in the 16th century. We can also thank him for one of the world's most famous cross country ski races, the Vasaloppet.

In the early 17th century Sweden's King Gustavus Adolphus was at war in Poland. He decided that he wanted to build the world's most magnificent and powerful battleship as a sign of his power and wealth. The world's biggest ship was not enough for this powerful king, he wanted to design it himself. So he designed a massive boat, and to make sure it was the mightiest ship on the sea, he added an extra deck for another row of cannons, an unprecedented move at the time. The ship was to be named the Vasa.

The best Dutch shipbuilders were hired and the best German carpenters were brought to Stockholm. They worked for two years as the king anxiously awaited his new ship in Poland. The pressure was on, and despite signs that the ship's design might be flawed, the builders kept on building. In 1628 the ship was completed. It was decorated with the most ornate carvings and was decorated so that it would be fit for a king.

The sailors were allowed to bring their families on board to celebrate the first few miles of the maiden voyage, then once out of Stockholm's harbor the families would be dropped off on an island in the archipelago to sail back home and the ship would instead be filled with soldiers, ready to sail to war in Poland.

Everybody in Stockholm came out to see the ship's maiden voyage, and it must have been a sight. The ship took to the see, and after traveling just over a mile it caught the wind in its sails. The ship leaned and corrected itself. Again it leaned, dangerously far, but once again righted itself. The third time wasn't so lucky and the ship began taking on water through the cannon holes. The extra row of cannons made the ship so top-heavy that it could not balance itself and 15 minutes into its maiden voyage, the ship had sunk.

It appears that the builders knew that the ship wouldn't last long, but in those days, nobody was willing to stand up to the king. The ship also had tons and tons (literally) of rocks in the bottom of the boat for balance. They should have added more rocks to prevent the boat from rocking so much, but it turns out that if they had added the number of rocks needed to fix the problem, the ship would have been so heavy that it would have sunk anyway. It was doomed from the beginning.

The ship was rediscovered in the harbor in 1958 and raised from the sea and restored in 1961. It was buried in silt for most of those 333 years, preserving wood that should have rotted long ago. It's a very impressive sight, and something I highly recommend for all visitors.

While it's impressive that they were able to raise this ship off the sea floor in once piece and then restore it, there's another question that one should consider. I think my dad threw this question my way and I think it's something that one needs to consider when trying to understand the mentality of the Swedish people: "What kind of country puts so much work into celebrating and showing off their biggest folly?"

Stockholm's PD, FD and EMTs

Miranda pointed this out one day and after months of observation I think I can finally share this with the world: The police, firefighters and EMTs here in Stockholm are typically very attractive people. Unlike the stereotypical American cop, the stereotypical Swedish cops, both men and women, all seem to be built like seasoned triathletes. The same can be said for Sweden's EMTs, while the firefighters are similar, but with broader shoulders. The women fit another Swedish stereotype, they're mostly blond.

Another thing I find interesting is the percentage of men and women in each line of work. These are pretty rough as they're based solely on my observations, but it's the best I can do for now.

Police - 60% male, 40% female
Fire - 90% male, 10% female
EMT - 25% male, 75% female

I have heard that Swedes are very shy, so a single Swede that is looking for love will drink a little liquid courage then try his or her luck at a bar. After a few years of bad luck, they'll turn to the internet. A couple questions come to mind when I see an ambulance parked with one hot blond waiting by the vehicle and two hot blonds and a good looking guy wheeling a gurney out of a building. Mainly, why don't more single guys accidentally fall in the street and sprain a wrist or a knee? Similarly, I'd expect single Swedish women to become experts in attention grabbing but non-damaging arson. Out of control charcoal grills or minor grease fires might be an excellent way to snag a date.

The good old days of fast food

Remember the good old days when fast food restaurants were trying to win the hearts of the American people? Their kids' meals came with high quality toys that no kid could refuse and they often offered something cool for the adults too. For just a little extra we'll give you a Coca-Cola glass to take home. Not the giant plastic summer cups that Arby's advertises every summer, but real glass.

Well, my stomach isn't very happy the campaign, but the Swedish McDonald's are giving free Coke glasses to each customer that supersizes their meal (a supersized meal in Sweden is the same as a regular meal in the U.S., but without the free refills). There's a trick, the glasses are multi-colored.

I think I missed the first week or two of the campaign, but started two weeks ago with a McDonald's splurge and got two green glasses in one week. Then in my second week I got a grey glass. I just needed one more trip to McDonald's to get another grey glass so I could form a four piece glass set, two green and two grey. Perfect. But those tricky devils had something else in mind for me. The ad in the store said that the weekly color was grey, but they gave me a purple glass instead. What were they thinking? My plan was ruined. I didn't know if the purple glass was from a prior week or from the upcoming week, but I couldn't risk it. I had to eat two more meals at McDonald's before the end of the week. One for my grey glass and one for my purple glass.

I've obviously spent a lot of time in McDonald's as well, and from what I can tell, I'm the only person that's been suckered into this sweet deal. In my last six trips to McDonald's I've only seen one Swede walk away from the register with a Coke glass in hand. I'm such a silly American.

Well, I achieved my goal and now have six glasses. My mind is pretty happy with my accomplishment, but my body is screaming for me to stop this madness. Four trips to McDonald's in one week used to be normal for me, but I don't think I can handle that diet any longer. Needless to say, I really hope I missed the pink, yellow and blue weeks.

Belated birthday messages

Many of our readers are probably wondering how I can dedicate so much time to writing birthday blogs yet miss one of the most important birthdays of all...Miranda's! It gets worse...since she shares a birthday with my Dad, that means I forgot to blog about his birthday as well. Talk about a disaster.

August 2nd really was a pretty crazy day without a spare second to sit down and blog, but that's not much of an excuse considering the importance of these two people in my life.

I'll start with the person I've known longer, so happy belated birthday Dad! Most of the readers of this blog probably don't know or have barely met my father. Until you get to know him, you'll never be able to understand just how much I look up to him. For the last hour I have tried to describe how he has helped shape me into the man I am today, and I now know that writing that such a story in this blog is an impossible feat. He is the man and the father that I hope to become. I don't know if I can put it any better than that, so I won't even try. I just hope he enjoyed the wonderful birthday that he deserved.

Then there's that girl in my life, what do I call her? Oh yeah, "min älskling." Off the topic, but do you know how much cooler pet names are when they're in a foreign language? I do now. Anyway, I can't write long enough to express how I feel about Miranda, and if I wanted to try I wouldn't do it in a public blog. I will state publicly that she is absolutely incredible. I'm glad that I will never know what I would have done had she made the choice to stay in Minnesota. Asking her to move here was not easy for me and I can only imagine what she must have gone through in making the decision to move to Sweden. I will never take her sacrifices for granted.

Every thought of Miranda brings a smile to my face, and each day with her is happier than the previous day. We have no intention of declaring permanent residency in Sweden, or even extending our stay here, but I have never been as happy as I am now. And while Sweden and all it includes gets some of the credit for that, I'd give Miranda the other 99% of that credit. Moving to Sweden with her has so far been one of the best experiences of my life. We're constantly learning more about ourselves and each other, and there's at least one moment in each day when I catch myself falling for Miranda in a completely new way. I didn't even know that was possible! I love her with all my heart, and was extremely happy that her mom and sister were able to help me provide her with the fun and exciting birthday she wanted. Happy birthday, min älskling!

There's no good way to transition into this, but for her birthday present, I gave Miranda tickets for a hot air baloon ride over Stockholm. The tickets are good for a year out and we have to book a few weeks in advance, but hopefully we'll have some cool pictures from the ride to post before the end of the fall. She also enjoyed an amazingly good traditional Swedish birthday cake, a prinsesstårta, otherwise known as a princess cake. If you ever have the chance to try a Swedish princess cake, jump at it. We all agreed that we'd never had such a good cake in our lives. I looked into the recipe and it looks like it might even challenge the best bakers, and the recipe also says that it takes three and a half hours over three days (translation, six hours for the average joe), so I shelved it. If any of you are up for the challenge, let me know and I'll pass the recipe along. I can almost promise a delicious reward at the end.

The Truly Artificial Sweden-ers

Hej (hello) from Sweden! Taryn and Kendell are writing this blog, for those of you that don't know we are Miranda's sister and mom, respectively. We would first and foremost like to thank our hosts for doing everything they could to make our trip very special, and for putting up with us for two weeks!

From the moment we stepped off the plane we were lost. Only due to Scott's detailed step by step instructions did we find our way through customs and on to find our luggage. After finding our bags and converting our U.S. dollars to Swedish crowns we walked out of the airport only to be bombarded by a million cab drivers all yelling, "You come with me!" Being the only two possible customers in sight it was a bit intimidating. Thanks to Mom finding the cheapest one we were off on our way to find Miranda and Scott. Our very nice cab driver informed us after we had left the airport that he was a very new cab driver and would do his "very best" to get us to our destination, and he "really hoped he could do it." They weren't the most encouraging statements but we smiled and sat back for the scenic drive. After several wrong turns, one dead end, and few chuckles from the backseat (us) we finally reached our destination. Waiting for us outside the building, Miranda and Scott finally came into view, both with big smiles on their faces.

Our trip was eventful from the moment we arrived. Miranda and Scott took us on a seven-mile "stroll," as they called it, just a few hours after stepping off the plane. The days didn't get any less eventful as we averaged at least several miles of walking every day. The city of Stockholm is beautiful, and the streets have been packed with people daily. Mom says every day looks like Christmas shopping, with the constant traffic of people.

Some of our favorite things we saw here were the Skansen open air museum, the Vasa Museum, canal sightseeing boat trips, our cruise to Finland, the Nordic Museum, the Nobel Museum, City Hall, the new Batman movie, Miranda's birthday cake (princess cake, a traditional Swedish birthday cake), the beautiful city itself, the Europride parade, and last but not least our most favorite sight was Miranda and Scott. It was so nice to spend time with both of them after not getting to see them for months!

A few of our favorite Swedish dishes included the princess cake, lasagna, Swedish pizza, Swedish meatballs, kabob sandwiches, Max (a Swedish hamburger chain), Biff Rydberg and McDreams (chocolate cake sundaes from McDonald's), plus tacos and stir fry at home, and Miranda's homemade chocolate cookies.

Our trip was great, and Stockholm is truly a beautiful city! Thank you again Miranda and Scott, we love you both!

What is an archipelago anyway?

Sorry for the blogging hiatus. We have a lot to write, but decided that instead of spending a perfectly nice month in front of our computer, we'd enjoy our vacation, the city and most importantly our time with our guests.

I have been told that this July has been pretty hot for a Swedish summer. We've had two straight weeks of sustained temperatures between 75 and 80. 80 is a little hot, but really, it's almost perfect. There was one hot day that I broke down and bought a stylish tank-top. Not the typical white one that the overly macho American men choose to wear, but a black one with grey horizontal stripes. Very European in look and cut. I'm a little reluctant to wear the shirt, even if they're common here. But when I gain a little more confidence, or when the temperature passes 80 again, I'll bust it out in no time.

Some of the last few posts have mentioned the archipelago. I don't know how much detail I've provided on the archipelago, so sorry if I bore you with a repeat description, but it's pretty important to the city of Stockholm and will certainly be mentioned again, so here's the story...Stockholm is built on a group of islands where a large inland lake flows into the Baltic Sea. An archipelago is a group of islands clustered together, and Stockholm has such clusters, one small group to the west in Lake Mälaren, and one big one to the east in the Baltic Sea. I've read different promotional literature mentioning between 24,000 and 30,000 different islands in the two archipelagos. We've enjoyed a few trips out in the Baltic to some nearby islands when we were invited to the cabins of two of my coworkers, but got a much better chance to see more of the islands when we hopped a cruise to Finland. Most of the islands are tiny. Some just a few rocks sticking out of the water. Most are big enough for a few houses to a few hundred tightly-packed houses, and the largest islands have small cities that may or may not be connected to the mainland by bridge.

Personally, I find the islands fascinating. It's a good thing that Luther didn't offer a major in geology, otherwise I might have dropped my math/stats major and spent my life doing something most people consider even more boring than mysterious actuarial work: looking at rocks. Yep, it's true, I really am that big of a nerd.

Prepare yourself, because I'm about to share my excitement with all of you. I could spend hours just looking at the islands. My second trip among the islands I noticed that on most of the islands the rock met the water and the bottom continued to plunge deep to the point that you couldn't even see the bottom just a few feet from the shore. There were few shallow shores. Most of the islands are hard rock too, so you don't see much sand or dirt beaches...things you'd expect to see on shores that have formed from thousands upon thousands of years of waves lapping against the rock. This seemed a little suspect, so I did my research. Turns out that as late as the Viking Age (1,000 A.D.), the thousands of islands to the east of Stockholm were still under water. Now some of the islands tower to 100 feet above water. Think about that, in the course of a thousand and eight years, 20,000+ islands have risen out of the water! I know that no man can truly appreciate that in his lifetime, but it just blows my mind how dynamic our world can be. Does that mean that as the land continues to rise that the lake to the west will someday rise so high as to completely drain itself into the Baltic? Or maybe the islands in Stockholm will rise high enough to stop the water flowing from Lake Mälaren to the Baltic?

Cruising among the islands almost felt like somebody had flooded the Appalachian Mountains to the point that only the worn and rounded peaks were sticking out of the water. You could even see where different islands were grouped together like mountain ridges. I truly believe that if the water were to recede you'd have a beautifully old mountain range with deep valleys and weather-worn peaks. I dug further in my research to figure out how these were formed and found that it was the work of the glaciers (go figure). But unlike the glaciers that flattened Minnesota and inland Sweden, these glaciers didn't level out the land when they retreated. Instead, their weight was so heavy that the land below was pressed towards the earth's core. The molten part of the earth's mantle was squeezed out until the land could sink no further. After the glaciers retreated, the magma started to slowly return underneath the earth's crust, pushing it upwards, causing land to very slowly rise from the sea. I guess the land is still rising about one centimeter a year, causing lake front property to retreat from the shores, Viking-era fishing villages to lie hundreds of meters inland, and new islands to form every year.

To bring this closer to home, the same thing is happening along Lake Superior. The Canadian shore is slowly rising and the U.S. shore is slowly sinking. Maybe in another 1,000 years the town of Superior, Wisconsin, will be completely under water.

To wrap it all up, the archipelago is Stockholm's playground. Everyone appreciates it for different reasons. Mostly for the beauty and the boating and camping opportunities, but there are also nerds like me who appreciate it just because it exists.