TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013
Easter in Easter-Colored Tallinn, Estonia
Carl and I spent four days in Tallinn over Easter, which is
a national four-day weekend holiday in Sweden.
Tallinn is quite easy to reach from Stockholm—you just hop on a ferry in
the evening and you arrive in Tallinn at 10 am.
The rooms are comfortable and clean, even if you don’t splurge on a room
with a view.
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| leaving Stockholm and powering through the archipelago |
However, I am glad that
before I went to bed I didn’t see all the ice that we were plowing through all
night. I never would have been able to
sleep a wink if I had been thinking about Titanic
survival strategies. But when we
woke up the next morning, the ferry was plowing its way through a foot-thick
layer of ice which made a slightly scary grinding and churning sound as the
boat crunched through. Clearly, Baltic
ferries are made to withstand quite a lot of ice, but I still felt relieved
when we safely arrived in port.
I wasn’t very familiar with Tallinn or Estonia before we
starting thinking about going there. But
once I started looking at google image photos, I saw that Tallinn is a
fairy-tale city with medieval walls and towers and buildings galore (i.e.,
right up my alley). This is fairly
surprising considering that Estonia’s history is a different version of the
same old sad story common in Eastern Europe—under foreign rule from the
beginning of time until 20 years ago. If
it wasn’t the Swedes, it was the Danish or the Germans or the Russians or the
Nazis or the Soviets who ruled over the country, trampling citizens’ rights and
opportunities. (Actually, I have to give
kudos to Sweden: The Swedish Empire was the kindest and least oppressive
“guest” to rule Estonia. Sweden even
tried (unsuccessfully) to end serfdom in Estonia.)
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| Tallinn's onion-domed Russian Orthodox church is one clue of its Russian occupation |
Amazingly and wonderfully, the local language and culture more-or-less
survived the various oppressive regimes and Estonia has managed to rise from
its Soviet Union ashes to become one of the EU’s fastest growing and strongest
economies (Skype is from Estonia, for instance) despite a total population of
only 1.3 million people (nearly 1/3 of which live in the capital). I’m sure that tourism to the fairy-tale
Tallinn helps to inject much-needed cash into the country as Tallinn saw 1.5
million tourists in 2011 alone.
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| Tallinn's main square is huge |
Yes, Tallinn is touristy.
However, it manages to be touristy in a compelling, authentic
manner. There are no Ripley’s Believe It
or Not nightmares, there are no Starbucks, and while restaurants and cafes
cater to and attract many tourists, we saw many locals dining in them as
well. Tacky souvenir shops are minimized
while high-quality hand-made goods are prevalent. Tallinn seems to be handling all the tourism
well.
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| local cafes instead of Starbucks |
Despite rampaging armies and WWII bombings, Tallinn’s Old
Town is wonderfully intact. Large
sections of the rampart/moat/earthwork system that once completely surrounded
the city are intact and are preserved in a linear park that shields the western side
of the city from newer development. The
moat was fed with fresh flowing water from canals that piped water from a lake
30km inland, through the moats, and then out to sea. The canals also piped fresh water into the
city and provided drinking water in the city's fountains and wells.
Additionally, long sections of the medieval city walls are
intact
as are 26 of the city’s 50ish original defense towers.
The city was so well protected because it was
an important Hanseatic harbor town (Hansa was the trade and commerce league in
the Baltic) and therefore quite wealthy and of great strategic importance. I’m a total sucker for towers so it was fun
to see them pop up all over the place. A
few of them are even integrated into relatively modern buildings and we saw the
plan of one apartment building that uses the integrated tower as a
library/study space on each floor!
Two sections of the city walls are in good enough condition
that you can walk on them for a good distance. Visitors can even climb up one of the defense
towers and look at how they hauled cannonballs up. Soldiers stationed in the towers also had the
convenience of toilets (emptying outside the walls) and fireplaces.
Inside the walls, buildings from the 14th, 15th,
16th, and 17th centuries abound with their red tile
roofs. Cobblestone lanes meander through
the town, connecting the many small squares together. There are quite a few historic churches in the
old town, including a church spire that is believed to have been the tallest
building in the world for centuries.
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| just a few of Tallinn's surviving medieval buildings |
Carl and I spent most of our four days slowly meandering the
streets, savoring the medieval atmosphere, walking on the walls, admiring the
towers, photographing the pastel buildings, and sipping coffee and hot
chocolate in the many charming cafes. We
did visit a few interesting museums, but Tallinn’s real draw is the cityscape
itself.
It turns out that Easter was a perfect time of year to visit
Tallinn because its buildings are all Easter egg-colored. I found it fascinating that despite the
governmental, political, geographical, and commercial ties between Stockholm
and Tallinn, the two medieval cities feel so different. Much of the architecture is similar in
principal, but the colors create a completely different atmosphere. While both cities feature yellow, rose,
green, and blue-plastered facades, Stockholm’s colors are more earth-toned
while Tallinn’s colors are lighter and purer.
The lighter colors along with the slightly wider streets make Tallinn
feel much airier than Stockholm’s old town.
I fell in love with Tallinn’s doors. The wooden masterpieces are painted to
compliment and contrast the building’s plaster colors. I must have photographed 50 doors, but I’ll limit myself as much as possible.
Another interesting difference between Tallinn and Stockholm
is the level of renovation of the buildings.
In Stockholm’s old town, there isn’t a single dilapidated or abandoned
building. Even in the rest of downtown
Stockholm, one would be hard-pressed to find a building visibly in need of
renovation. Stockholm’s building stock
is impressively preserved, but I hadn’t noticed just how extensive Stockholm’s preservation is until we went to
Tallinn. While the majority of Tallinn’s
Old Town buildings are beautifully renovated and in great shape, probably about
20% of the building stock is in need of serious help.
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| a few of the buildings inside the city walls that need renovation |
Outside of the Old Town, that ratio is
probably almost exactly reversed: only one in every four or five buildings
looks habitable.
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| a typical wooden apartment building that needs renovation outside of the city center |
It is obvious that the city and the inhabitants of Stockholm
have far more money available to devote to its buildings than in Tallinn. Another vital factor is that Stockholm has
been renovating since at least the 1950’s while Tallinn has only had the resources
to do so since it gained its independence from Moscow in 1991.
Perhaps the most interesting museum we visited was the KBG
museum. During Soviet times, visitors to
Tallinn had only one lodging choice—the Soviet-built and Soviet-owned Viru
Hotel. The hotel was Estonia’s first
“skyscraper” at 23 stories. However, the
23rd story was a secret as it housed the local KGB. From the 23rd story, the KBG was
able to monitor secret radio transmissions from Sweden and Finland and to relay
messages from spies in Sweden to Moscow.
From another hidden space on the second floor, the KGB monitored
suspicious guests to the hotel. The
suspicious guests were placed in special rooms that the KGB could secretly
visually and auditorily monitor through hidden wide-angle pin-hole cameras and
microphones. The dinner conversations of
suspicious guests (locals and foreigners alike) were monitored using
microphones sealed into the false bottoms of ash trays, vases, and bread
plates. In the ceiling above the
restaurant and above the special hotel rooms, transceivers relayed the
conversations from the microphones to the KGB’s hidden workroom.
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| The Viru Hotel from the city wall and some of the KGB chaos that was left behind in 1991 |
The tour didn’t give a sense of what specific information
was gathered in or transmitted from the hotel, but it was fascinating to see how the information was gathered. I’m surprised that there was never a James
Bond movie based on the hotel. Despite
its shady history, Hotel Viru is still one of Tallinn’s largest and busiest
hotels.
There’s not a whole lot of other easily-visible evidence of
Soviet occupation in Tallinn. We did
come across a theater building which is definitely communist with its
decorative stars and hammers as well as the strangely blocky classical styling.
Another great museum was at the Kadriorg Palace. The palace was built by Czar Peter the Great
so that he’d have a suitable place to stay when visiting “provincial”
Tallinn. The baroque palace is
relatively small but the exquisite ballroom is wonderfully intact. The formal French gardens are supposed to be
lovely as well, but since they were covered in snow during our visit, I can’t
really say much about them.
The museum’s
European art collection was nice but seeing the building was the best part.
 |
| Kadriorg ballroom |
Two of our dinners were at traditional Estonian
restaurants. The first dinner served
Sunday-dinner-at-Grandma’s-House type of dishes and we enjoyed a duck breast
with saffron sauce with mounds of sauerkraut, lingon-like berries, and roasted
root-fruits. The second dinner was at a
candlelit, mideval-themed restaurant that serves dishes that noblemen and
extremely wealthy merchants would have enjoyed.
It was quite interesting to read about what types of foods and
seasonings were available at the time. I
had a tasty and intriguingly spiced ground meat dish with wild boar and wild
deer. Carl drank an herb-spiced beer and
one of our desserts was delicious a rose-flavored cream custard. By the third dinner we had had enough of
heavy, meaty Estonian food and opted for Indian instead.
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| medieval, candlelit dinner |
We mainly stuck to the Old Town, but I did catch a glimpse
of a couple of interesting contemporary buildings just outside the walls:
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| goodbye Estonia! |
Model photo came from: http://www.pbase.com/bmcmorrow/image/81736426
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2013
Skiing in Chamonix
Carl and I just got back from an incredible week of skiing
in Chamonix in the French Alps. We went
with two friends and seven of their friends, so the week was quite social in
addition to being outdoorsy and exhaustingly active. Our friends Jessica and Johan introduced us
to the non-profit organization UCPA whose founding goal is to get French youth
(youth being up to 45) out into nature as affordably as possible. We’re still not sure why so many Swedes are
allowed to join in on the fun, but our wallets are very grateful! The trip package included transportation from
Stockholm to Chamonix and back, 7 nights lodging, a 6 ½ day lift ticket, all
meals, equipment rental, and 25 hours
of ski instruction for about a third of the price tag of a charter trip to the
Alps which wouldn’t even include food or lessons!
The catch to this incredibly cheap trip to the Alps is that
it involved a 30 HOUR BUS TRIP in each direction. The time on the bus wasn’t
quite as bad as I had expected, and the movies they showed were actually pretty
good, but I still think that it will be worth spending the extra money to fly
next year. To make the long trip a bit
more comfortable, the bus seats convert into 2 layers of beds at night. Carl, who can sleep well in just about any
situation, got some good sleep both nights, but I, who has LOTS of trouble
falling asleep, didn’t sleep a wink in either direction.
UCPA has about six or seven destinations in the French Alps,
so potentially we have years of cheap skiing ahead of us before having to
repeat any runs. In Chamonix, the
organization owns an old hotel that has been recently renovated. You can choose to stay in a four person dorm
room or pay about $80 for the entire week to upgrade to a double room. The rooms are simple but adequate and every
room has an amazing mountain view. Breakfasts
and dinners are self-serve buffets and you make a sack lunch for yourself after
breakfast. The center even provides an
afternoon tea with sweet snacks! There
was a bar at the hotel, but we did most of our après-ski celebrating out on the
sunny slopes instead of inside the hotel.
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| Our room's view. |
Chamonix is a cute tourist town with some interesting
buildings, but naturally, the main draw is the mountain landscape. The town is in a long, flat valley between
two gigantic mountain ridges, so wherever you are, there are jagged peaks
within view. Interestingly, the town is
much busier with tourists in the summer than in the winter and the town of
10,000 people has about 60,000 hotel beds and has about two million hotel stays
each year. Tourism is the industry in town.
I’m sure that the summer hiking is amazing, but the winter
skiing is phenomenal. Unlike the US
where ski resorts tend to be huge with a hundred interconnected runs, the
geography of Chamonix means that there are about 6 smaller resorts with about
ten chairlifts and maybe 20 runs each.
These resorts are not connected up on the mountain; instead, you have to
go down the mountain, take a bus, and then take another gondola or cable car
back up the mountain. If you combine the
smaller resorts, Chamonix is more epic than Vail, but the disconnectedness
means that you have to stay in the valley for a week in order to experience all
the areas.
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| This ski map only shows lifts and doesn't depict any runs. |
Most of the runs are above treeline, and only one or two
runs at each resort navigate the extra-steep slopes below treeline down to the
valley. Generally, you take a gondola or
cable car up to treeline and then continue upward on chairlifts. Most resorts in the valley had three stages
of lifts. The gondola and cable cars get
you from the valley at 3,400 feet to about 6,500 near treeline. After taking the next two chair lifts up, you’re
high in the sky at about 10,800 feet.
This means that skiing from the top of the highest chairlift down to the
valley, you lose 7,400 feet of elevation!
I don’t think that there’re any resorts in the US that can compare to
that kind of elevation change.
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| View from a chair lift. Sigh. |
We were totally lucky with clear, sunny skies nearly every
day. The snow did start to feel “used”
by the end of the week, but the skies graced us with a winning combination of
fresh powder and sunshine for our last day of skiing before we got back on the
bus to travel back to Stockholm.
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| Three of the colorful guys from our group. It was super fun skiing together on our last day. |
Sunday, Wednesday, and Saturday were “free” ski days without
lessons, and we spent those days skiing with the larger group of friends. The remaining four days were filled with
lessons (in English). Because our group
of eleven had very different ski competencies as well as ambitions, we were in
several different lesson groups. My
friend Jessica and I ended up in the same intermediate ski group, and it was
fun to share the days with her. Our
lessons focused on ski technique and we spent nearly all the time doing various
exercises like turning on one ski only, hopping up and down while going
downhill, and skiing backwards to improve our balance, form, and technique. The craziest exercise was called the
Waltz. You and a partner face each other
and hold on to each others’ poles. One
person swoops downhill, ending up going backward until the next person swoops
downhill, turning themselves backward and the first person forward again. I never imagined that I would be skiing
backward in my lessons, much less waltzing, but it was a fun challenge!
 |
| Lovely views from our lessons. |
Carl is a much more advanced skier than I am and he decided
to go with an off-piste group instead of taking advanced lessons on the groomed
ski slopes. He had a blast on his
extra-fat powder skis. Generally, his
group would take the lifts as high as they went and then continued walking
uphill. Eventually, the group would drop
into a bowl or chute and ski down it to the valley. A couple of times his group even passed over
the ridge and skied down into Swiss villages!
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| Carl's group walking up hill and then little ants skiing down the bowl. |
Every day after skiing, parts of our group would assemble at
a pre-determined location on the slopes for après-ski drinks. With all the sunshine and relatively warm
temperatures, we were generally able to sit outside with the sun on our faces
as we enjoyed our hot mulled wine, spiked hot chocolate, cider, or beer. The sun was so intense that we were forced to wear our ski goggles while enjoying our drinks—it was functional if not the
most chic look!
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| The view from our one indoor après-ski and a typical, loungy and totally casual outdoor après-ski. |
Wednesday, a “free” ski day without lessons, our group
decided to take the morning off and took a series of cable cars up to Aiguille
du Midi, a needle-like peak just below Mont Blanc. We spent the entire week looking at Mont
Blanc, so it was fun to get a closer look at the Alps’ highest mountain. The
morning dawned cloudy, but once we were up there, the clouds began to part and
drift away.
It was gorgeous to watch the
process of the clouds dissolving before our very eyes, and after a time, we had
completely clear views in all directions. Although it’s the highest, Mont Blanc isn’t
the most impressive mountain around. Its
rounded top isn’t quite as “Alp-y” and jagged as the surrounding peaks.
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| Mont Blanc |
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| The surrounding, more jagged peaks and ridges. |
While we were up on the needle enjoying the views, hundreds
of people were descending the needle with crampons on their feet and skis
strapped to their backs. Once on the
glacier below, they skied all the way back down to the valley. I thought it looked like a crazy thing to do,
but four of our group were in an advanced off-piste group that did that ski
route the next day. They reported that after
the initial scary decent to the glacier, the route actually wasn’t so
advanced. Maybe one day Carl and I will
do the route ourselves (with a guide, of course!).
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| Hundreds of skiers descending the needle to begin their long ski down. |
I highly recommend UCPA to anyone interested in skiing on a
budget. The trip was an incredible
value, but not only that, the other people in our ski groups and on the buses
were very friendly and fun to hang out with.
Carl even made friends with one couple who invited us to come skiing
with them at their house in middle Sweden!
It has been a bit of a bummer to come home and to return
back to “reality” after such a magical trip with such amazing, story-book
scenery. But life goes on, and now it’s
time for us to dream up our next adventure!
New Year's in Lofsdalen
Carl and I are about to embark on our next ski trip, so I
decided that it was high time to finally post about the last one!
We spent New Year’s week with Carl’s aunt Eva in
Lofsdalen. We stayed in the same cozy
cabin as last year, but this time, Carl and I didn’t have to rush home to an
apartment renovation so we were able to stay the whole week. Although we alternated cross-country and
downhill skiing days to give our muscles a chance to recover, we were
completely exhausted after six days of fierce activity!
The snow was much better this year, so all the runs and
lifts were open and we were able to fully explore the ski resort (last year the
limited snow meant that several runs and lifts were closed). In Sweden, runs are rated green, blue, red, and
black from easiest to hardest, and I am now fairly confident on red runs. It feels amazing to noticeably improve every
time I go skiing!
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| Carl going backwards down the slope and me going forwards. |
Like our experience last year, we found that the days in mid-Sweden
in December are incredibly short and basically consist of a three hour sunrise
immediately followed by a three hour sunset.
While we didn’t have a lot of day light, we did have incredible, prolonged
sunsets. Skiing back to base toward a
fiery orange sky over a misty blue valley was a magical end to every day.
We explored a couple of new cross country trails as well as
repeated a few of the trails we had liked last year. This year, though, we used our own skis instead of renting!
At the far end of a long, exposed trail, we
enjoyed warming up by a blazing fire at a hut.
There were a ton of people in the warming hut, and nearly all of them had
brought sausages to roast over the open fire.
It made our cold sandwiches seam a little boring! If we go back to the same area next year, we’ll
know to bring a gourmet lunch to cook over the fire.
While our cold sandwiches seemed boring compared to others’ fire-roasted
sausages, we certainly did not suffer from lack of nutrition. The long evenings meant that we could spend quite
a lot of time preparing gourmet meals every night. Eva alternated with Carl and I and between
the three of us, we cooked and enjoyed some amazing meals. If it wasn’t oven-roasted trout it was
reindeer stew, all with perfectly paired wines and then several types of
gourmet cheeses for dessert. Skiing and
gourmet meals are now indelibly linked together in my mind.
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| our dining table centerpiece |
We were in Lofsdalen over New Year’s, and while there wasn’t
an official town-sponsored fireworks show, individuals put on an amazing
performance for us. We stood out on the
cabin's front porch which overlooks the valley and watched the incredibly numerous and
colorful explosions. My favorite sight
wasn’t actually a firework, but instead small floating hot air balloons. The balloons are powered by a large candle
which is powerful enough to send the two-foot-tall balloon soaring 2000 feet
over the valley. The candle illuminates
the balloon as well, so you can watch it float along from a mile away. Seeing the illuminated, candle-powered balloons
drift along was indescribably beautiful.
You could never do this in Texas because it would set off forest fires
of apocalyptic proportions, but here in winter Sweden, it’s apparently not a
problem.
Poor Eva had to drive the entire six hours both to and from
Lofsdalen because Carl and I do not have valid drivers’ licenses anymore. New arrivals are given a one year grace
period when their home country’s license is valid, but after that, you’re
expected to get a Swedish license. Of
course the process is long and complicated and expensive, and Carl and I haven’t
had the energy to embark on that journey yet.
Our goal is to get it finished before the roads get icy again next
winter, and hopefully, if we return to Lofsdalen again next year, we’ll be able
to relieve Eva from some of the driving.
Thank you Eva for an amazing week with you in beautiful
Lofsdalen!
THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 2013
Christmas Along Amsterdam's Canals
Carl and I are absolutely loving living in Europe for many
reasons, one of which is how easy it is to get from European capitol to
European capitol. It only took a two
hour flight to travel the distance between Stockholm and Amsterdam where we
spent Christmas week. From San Antonio,
that two hour flight would have gotten us to such exciting places as Oklahoma
City or Little Rock, Arkansas.
Admittedly, Denver was within a two hour flight, but even Denver and the
Rockies start to pale in comparison to Paris and the Alps!
We totally lucked out because Amsterdam had a warmer than
usual December. Instead of the freezing
temperatures we had expected, it was a balmy 50° F. This meant that we could spend far more time
wandering along the canals than we thought we would. In fact, we spent most of the week outside
wandering with occasional stops at some of Amsterdam’s wonderful museums.
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| it was even warm enough to enjoy a sunset drink outside one evening! |
For an architect interested in city development and city
planning, Amsterdam is like a candy store.
Because of its watery location, every development in Amsterdam since the
middle ages has been fully planned and administrated. A confluence of climate, late-Renaissance
timing, and canal-side location produced a style of architecture that is
uniquely “Amsterdam.” Not only has the
ingenious system of canals survived into the 21st century, but a
tremendous stock of buildings from the 1600’s has also been preserved.
 |
| some typical canals and canal houses |
However, even though so much of Amsterdam is
historic, very few areas have an overly old-timey or touristy feel. Modern interpretations of the traditional
canal house periodically puncture the blocks of historic buildings, and very
few stores and restaurants are geared toward tourists. Amsterdam is very much a living city where
real, modern life takes place amidst a historic backdrop.
 |
| One of my favorite modern buildings in Amsterdam. Love the shutters! |
Of course, Amsterdam is also known for its tolerance in
addition to its unique architecture and canals.
Brothels and marijuana/mushroom shops coexist peacefully side-by-side
with cafes, schools, grocery stores, town houses, and restaurants. Memorably, there are several brothels across
the street from Amsterdam’s Old Church and a head shop resides in one of the
periphery buildings of the New Church.
I
don’t feel very strongly one way or the other about the legalized marijuana in
Amsterdam, but I did find walking by store windows filled with naked, writhing
women uncomfortable. In Amsterdam, “window
shopping” has a whole different meaning.
We rented an apartment off of the website Vacation Rentals
By Owner. It was our first time using
the website and we were a little nervous about our down payment disappearing,
so we went with an apartment that had numerous good reviews. The experience turned out to be wonderful and
relatively inexpensive considering the location, the amount of space, and the
kitchen. Our apartment was the garden
apartment to a canal house and it consisted of a main living/dining/kitchen
area with a sleeping loft. There were
HUGE windows looking out into the garden, so during the day, the apartment had
lots of natural light. A gas heater did
a good job of keeping the garden apartment cozy, and at night, we lit lots of
tea candles whose flickering light added to the cozy atmosphere. The apartment was about the same cost as a
moderate hotel room, but we had a lot more space, a lot more privacy, and the
apartment had a lot more charm and character than a moderate hotel room. We also saved a lot of money due to the
kitchen. I definitely recommend the
website.
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| Left: Our garden apartment was behind the right-most short house. Right: Approaching the garden apartment. |
We literally spent almost the entire week walking the canals
and by the end of the trip, we really gained a good sense of the city’s various
neighborhoods and eras. Several areas we
walked both during the day and at night, and because of Amsterdamers’ habit of not
using curtains, we got good peeks into the evening life at many canal
houses. We loved seeing the incredibly
narrow houses and imagining how the spaces were arranged inside and how life
could take place in a six foot-wide house.
We were also amazed by the gigantic double hung windows—because the
staircases are so narrow and windy, all moving in and out of goods and furniture has always
(and still is) done with ropes and pulleys from the roof ridge beam and in
through the windows. Most of the windows
were huge, but some of them were downright gigantic.
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| Seriously huge windows: These double hung windows are larger than a porta-poty! |
The gables lean toward the street, making it easier to haul up furniture
without damaging the building.
Buildings that originally had been warehouses
also had thick wooden shutters.
I
was also interested in all the black painted brick accented with stark
white trim. I would never have thought that a black building would be
handsome, but they are beautiful in Amsterdam!
I
also loved seeing all the houseboats lining the canals. The trend
started after World War II when Amsterdam experienced a critical housing
shortage, but these days new houseboats aren't converted sea-faring
boats but are designed for the purpose.
And of course we loved the
varied and ornate gables from the 16- and 1700’s.
 |
| These are some of the more ornate gables |
 |
| and these are some of the "typical" gables. |
Most
of the canals have narrow streets between the water and the buildings,
but in the medieval quarter, there are several "Venice-like" canals
where the water laps the buildings' foundations.
I seem to have a little bit of bad luck when it comes to
Amsterdam and art museums. The only
other time I had been to Amsterdam was in 1999 on a long weekend with my
mom. We saw a lot that weekend, but we
were very disappointed that the Van Gogh museum was closed for renovation. As luck would have it, 14 years later, the
Van Gogh museum was closed again for
renovation! Luckily, they moved about
half of the Van Gogh collection to the Hermitage Museum, so at least I got to
feast my eyes on some Van Gogh this
visit. However, Van Gogh’s presence at
the Hermitage means that we missed out on spectacular Russian-owned art. Not only was the Van Gogh museum closed for
renovation, but most of the Riksmuseum was closed, too. We did get to see one or two paintings of all
the various Dutch masters, but I would have loved to have seen more!
One of the reasons that we chose Amsterdam as our Christmas
destination is that the city keeps full opening hours over the holiday. All the major museums were open, even on
Christmas day! We did have a little trouble
with grocery store and restaurants being closed for 24 or 36 hours over the
holiday, but thanks to our handy fridge and kitchen we didn’t starve. On Christmas Eve, we had tickets to a
performance of the ballet Cinderella. It
was the world premier of a modern interpretation of the fairytale using the
traditional music, and it was absolutely fantastic. If you see that Christopher Wheeldon’s
Cinderella is coming to town, I highly, highly recommend getting tickets.
One of the other cool things about Amsterdam over the
holiday is that they had a Festival of Lights with lit art installations by
various artists all over the city. After
the ballet, we spent Christmas Eve evening wandering around town looking at the
very cool installations.
I’m having trouble
deciding if the suspended net or if the egg was my favorite, but there were
also some other interesting installations that involved using architecture as the canvas.
Another
great thing about being in Amsterdam in the winter is that all the
lovey trees that line the canals are bare and they don't block your view
of the canal houses. Better views for archidorks! And even though
winter isn't exactly tulip season, the flower market was still filled
with beautiful blooms.
One
spring, I would definitely love to get back to Amsterdam and out into
the Dutch countryside to see all the blooming fields of tulips. One
day...
Kolarbyn
 |
| our hut |
Last weekend, Carl and I took a train then bus about 2 hours
northwest of Stockholm to stay in a little “hobbit” hut at Kolarbyn (literally
translates as “The Charcoal burners’ village”).
Originally, the huts were used by charcoal burners working out in the
forest, but now they comprise a rustic hostel.
We were the only guests last weekend, so after the caretaker left, we
had the entire little village in the forest to ourselves. After getting a fire started in the open
fireplace, the hut warmed up quickly. A
combination of the massive, stone and concrete fireplace plus the sod earth exterior
of the hut kept the interior warm and cozy, even after the fire died out in the
middle of the night. The huts have no
electricity, so lighting is by candles.
Between the fire and the candlelight, the hut was very romantic and
cozy!!
The “facilities” consisted of outhouses and we got water out
of a not-yet-frozen-over stream.
Kolarbyn also has several large fire pits for cooking, but we decided to
stay warm and cozy and to cook in our hut instead. An outdoor fire in the snow would have been
cool, but cold.
Another cool feature were the tiki torches. I have always associated tiki torches with Caribbean
or South Pacific themed restaurants, but they were absolutely beautiful as they
lit Kolarbyn’s snowy pathways which wind through the giant spruce and pine
trees.
We spent the evenings reading by candlelight and the days
cross country skiing. When we had booked
the weekend, we weren’t sure if there would be snow, but a massive Wednesday
snowstorm meant that there was plenty of snow by our Friday arrival. A network of groomed cross-country ski trails
was just a few steps outside our hut’s door, so we spent all day both days
exploring various trails. It was awesome
to finally get out on the skis that we had bought in the April sales. Luckily, the skis and shoes seem to work
quite well and to be quite comfortable! The
going was rather awkward at first but after an hour or so we found a good
rhythm.
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| The winter wonderland was so beautiful and perfect that it felt like a Hollywood winter! |
In addition to the surprise snow, we were totally lucky and
ended up with unexpectedly gorgeous, sunny skies both days. Even though it was -20 degrees Celcius (-4
degrees F!!!) Sunday morning, the sun felt warm on our faces and we were never
uncomfortably cold. In fact, we found
that we were wearing far too much clothing and ended up tying our coats around
our waists. Eventually, we’ll get a feel
for how much clothing we should wear on our skis.
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| One of the trails led to a iced- and snowed-over lake. Notice the sun's position. It was noon when we took this photo! |
It was an absolutely fabulous weekend in a more beautiful
than expected area with a more comfortable than expected cabin, and I think we’re
likely to make Kolarbyn a yearly winter tradition.
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| The nearby town of Skinnskateberg at sunset. |
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