From the Big City to the Boonies in Sweden

It is about 11:00 at night here in Stenungsund, Sweden. Wherever that is.  We are between Copenhagen and Oslo at a teeny weeny Airbnb cottage/pod somewhere in the dark and cold. The room is about 15' x 18', including a bathroom, an efficient little IKEA kitchen unit, a large bed and insufficient heat.  Becca and I have not taken off our down jackets since we came in.  We three plan to sleep all piled up in the same bed (rat king style, with our feet tangled together to stay warm) as the blanket situation is not nearly as indulgent as it has been at all our other spots.  I am sure this is an extremely cute and cozy location in the summer.

Getting warm.

First thing this morning, we learned that Becca is now having her turn with the queasy stomach ailment.  She was not in big trouble but she definitely had no interest in food all day today.  That seems to be the best response to this yucky bug.  She couldn't just stay horizontal all day, though, because we had to move out and move on.  We packed up slowly and headed to the bus stop.  She had the good idea to find a coffee shop (a real one) and leave her there with the luggage while Jon and I set off for one more brief sightseeing effort.

Jon and I got on the bus and rode three stops around the giant block that holds the Tivoli Gardens and then walked to the National Museum of Denmark.  This is the kind of museum that tells you what you want to know about the country you have just landed in, without preparing.  Starts from the Stone Age and slowly works you all the way up to now.  There was far too much for us to see in just a few hours but we learned a lot.  One theme that Jon noticed is how comfortable the Danes are with structure and rules and government authority.  And there was a very odd story about how they instituted a monarchy in the 1600s when the normal ruling class just couldn't decide what to do next.  They even gave the job of writing the constitution to the king. That just seems weird, when they already had a governance structure.  There was some overlap with what we learned yesterday about the working class, but mostly we learned about flint axe heads and how well bog preserves everything (clothing intact from 1350 BCE in burial mounds) and about Vikings and how the good old days ended in 1660 when they lost a big war with Sweden.

When we came out of the museum we realized we could just walk the fourth side of the square to get back to Becca. She was still in the exact same spot, not feeling much better but not worse either. We gathered ourselves to walk to the rental car place in the rain and wind (the weather has been unfriendly ever since we got to Denmark).

Right in tourist central, at the corner of the Tivoli Gardens, but a perfect spot
(on a rainy day in winter) for Becca to spend a few hours.

Once we got settled in our spiffy little Mazda 4-door with all the bells and whistles of a new car, Becca could relax and sit back and forget about her queasiness for a bit.  She set the GPS and then hassled Jon every time he wandered toward the edge of the lane and set off the newfangled alarm in the car. We drove across the long bridge that crosses to Sweden, over that water that connects the North Sea and the Baltic Sea.  In Sweden there were tidy farms with larger fields than in the Netherlands, beautiful brown soil, not much happening. It got dark pretty fast.  We drove about 300 km, stopped at a small supermarket for more groceries, and found our way to this little tiny cabin in the snow.

Jon made rice and fish and cauliflower, poured some store-bought Thai sauce over it.  Yum.  R. just stayed in bed, keeping warm and cozy in her winter coat.