Author: Grubb

Post by Grubb. But that didn’t stop me from suggesting we check out the Gothenburg Fine Arts Museum.  The first exhibit on the second floor should have been a warning. As we made all the hallway connections there were enough old masters cropping up to make me pause and be wowed.   But the majority of the…

Post by Grubb Göta älv, or “River of the Greats”, drains the Vanern, a Baltic ice lake, into the Kattegat, an inlet connected to the North Sea.  Upriver at Trollhattan Falls, Gota Alv supplied the hydropower for the steel factories that were part of Sweden’s own Industrial Revolution.  Here we’re looking at it from the rooftop bar…

Post by Grubb. The Haga is an old neighborhood in Gothenburg not far from the docks on the south side of the river.  It was originally a working class section of town.  Now its well-preserved wooden houses and streets allowing only pedestrians give it a nineteenth century feel with small cafes and stores selling antiques at twenty-first…

Post by Grubb This morning we took the train from Malmo to Gothenburg.  It was a two-and-a-half hour ride, but we were traveling first class (highly discounted for seniors) so it was very comfortable.  When we arrived in Gothenburg and emerged from the station we found ourselves in the middle of a noisy construction zone that looked…

Post by Grubb. While we were slurping up our fish stew in a restaurant off a central plaza in downtown Malmo, it was invaded by a mob of teenagers in white captain’s caps.  At first I thought the young crew to a cruise liner had docked and were celebrating a port of call.  Then I found out…

Post by Grubb. Late this morning we walked to the Malmo Art Museum located inside the Malmo Castle, a Renaissance fortress of thick brick surrounded by a moat in the center of the old city.  Their current collection of Swedish artwork took us from the late sixteenth century to the present day.  The colorful modern pieces dispelled…

An apartment complex built in 2005 in Malmo, designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. Called “Turning Torso”, sometimes called “Twisted Torso”.

The kardemummabullar pastry of soft sweet dough delicately dusted with cardamom called out for a smooth cappuccino.  This palate pleasing combination was appreciated in a park cafe with the dulcet singsong of Swedish accents in the background.

These busts were seen offsetting each other at the entrance to a university building in Lund.  Neither one is in a joking mood.

My aunt Ruth married Roger Sutherland, son of a Swedish Minnesota farmer, who had a job working for the Feds in the Department of Agriculture.  They had four daughters, blond, athletic, and self-assured.  My friends loved it when my “Swedish cousins” came to visit.  At family get togethers, my father would argue with Roger who had the best…

Post by Grubb. The fantasy world that I thought would be Malmo actually turns out to be an open-air museum in Lund called the Kuturen in Lund.  Stretching over two blocks, buildings replicating structures that Scandinavians have lived in since the Middle Ages are laid out in a village format and open for inspection.  It was like…

Post by Grubb Along with graveyards, Ella and I enjoy the quiet seclusion of a good crypt.  The Lund Cathedral, an early 12th century Nordic monument to Romanesque architecture, has a crypt made up of stone arches, carved sarcophagi, and several like “the giant Finn and his wife.”  Legend has it that the giant helped build the…

Post by Grubb. I didn’t know what expect from Lund, a university town northeast of Malmo, about thirty minutes by train.  But after spending most of the day there, I’m a definitely a Lundsfan.  The university is over 400 years old, so it has the cloistered charm of a scholarly retreat where the ponds are quiet and…

Post by Grubb. Leaving Copenhagen this morning, I wanted to make note of how safe the platforms were due to the glass walls that only opened to allow passengers on and off the train when it was stopped.  No Anna Karenina moves here.