EUROPE – PART 2

 

We had a good plan for our first day in Stockholm, but it started out rather badly. The route from our dock to the Slussen subway stop seemed simple enough and I had Google Maps to guide me. Unfortunately, a construction project put us off course. We finally did find a nearby station though and rode the subway to the central hub as planned.

From there, the route to Budget Rent-a-Car should have been easy, but Google Maps doesn’t work nearly as well when you’re walking as when you’re driving, and definitely not when you’re walking through different levels of a building. Long story short, after asking for directions a couple of times, we stood at the counter across from a rather stern-looking young agent who told me that my credit card wouldn’t work as four of her useless co-workers played with their phones, looking very much like a Charlottetown Public Works crew!

I asked them whether the car had Apple Car Play: “Don’t know”, they answered. “So, where’s the car?”, I asked politely. “Somewhere out in the street”, she answered. “So where do I drop the keys when we get back,” I asked, again politely. “We don’t have a drop box here; you’ll have to drop it off at our other office”, she replied coldly. “Can we use your washroom before we go?”, we asked. ‘It’s only for employees”, she said, rolling her eyes at me. “You’ll have to go inside the mall next door, go into the restaurant and ask for a code”. Sheesh!

Guided by our trusty Hortense, we headed out of the city toward our first stop, the town of Sigtuna, founded by Vikings in 980 AD and one of their most important cities in its heyday. It’s a pleasant place for a walk, featuring a lake, the oldest intact street in Sweden, numerous rune stones, and several churches, the most interesting one being St. Olaf’s.

I’m a student of Viking history and have been since I first heard the story of Eric the Red and his son, Leif the Lucky, in my two-room schoolhouse in Wellington. As we now know, the saga was more than a legend. In fact, the Vikings landed in l’Anse-aux-Meadows almost five centuries before Columbus “discovered” America. The little town museum traces the history of Viking religious belief. Before being Christianized between 900 and 1050, Vikings had their own pantheon of gods: Odin, Thor, and Frey, to name but a few. I like their “pagan” gods better than the Christian one but, without the saints, we wouldn’t have had any church ruins to look at in Sigtuna. St. Olaf’s looked striking in the afternoon sun.

Next, we drove to Uppsala, home to the oldest Nordic university, founded in 1477 and home to 50,000 students. Along the way, we saw some impressive dairy farms; it was harvest time for their cereal crops. Our stop in Uppsala was a short one, just enough time to enjoy tea and coffee on a nice south-facing terrace. From Uppsala, we headed to Mariefred, a small town on Lake Malaren and home to Gripsholm Castle. A stroll through the town featured the railway station, served in the summer months on a narrow-gauge track. The castle itself is massive and magnificent, brilliant in the late afternoon sun. We were back in Stockholm by 7:00 pm, returned our car, and took the subway and bus back to the Princess. A long day for sure but well worth the effort. No favourable review for Budget though!

Day two in Stockholm dawned bright and sunny though a bit cooler. We took the shuttle into the heart of the city and walked around a bit to get our bearings. Tip for travellers: if you need to “go” when you’re downtown, find the swankiest hotel you can, walk in like you own the place, and do your business there. You’ll be treated to the best bécosse you’ve ever sat on, and no one will ask any questions. And, on the way out, ask the doorman for directions to wherever you want to go. They’re always helpful and they always know.

My goal for the morning was to see the Vasa Museum. Elva, not being a museum person, chose to walk around Djurgarden, one of the many beautiful islands that make up Stockholm. The story of the warship Vasa is a rather sad one. She was launched on August 10, 1628 and sank less than 1 kilometer into her maiden voyage. After spending 333 years on the seabed, she was raised and sits preserved for all to see in a magnificent museum. The Vasa is the best-preserved 17^th century ship found anywhere, she’s adorned with hundreds of carved sculptures and she’s 98% original.

Our last stop before heading back to the ship was the changing of the guard at the Royal Palace, an impressive ceremony featuring disciplined soldiers and a large marching band. Stockholm is a world-class city, certainly a cut above anything we’ve seen to date on this trip. 

Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea, is about half the size of Prince Edward Island and home to 60,000 people. We docked in the town of Visby next to the USS Arlington, in the Baltic Sea to participate in an amphibious training exercise with other NATO nations, in other words, to keep Vladimir honest.

Visby contains the medieval town of Dalmansporten, a UNESCO World Heritage Site featuring an intact wall and narrow cobbled streets. There are ten church ruins, but the town skyline is dominated by the impressive Cathedral of St. Mary, built in the 12^th century as a Roman Catholic church and now a Lutheran place of worship. While the town is a popular tourist destination during the summer months, it was practically empty except for the 1,400 or so passengers on the Island Princess. 

Elva and I left the ship early and were among the first to wander through this magical place. We were struck by the small, tidy homes, many of them with roses and hollyhocks planted at their front doors. They had a whimsical character, and I could only imagine happy people living inside them. I’d never seen houses made of creosoted wood and the smell reminded me of the railroad ties of my youth in Wellington.

Our next stop, the town of Ronne on the island of Bornholm, Denmark, proved to be a bit of a disappointment. It’s a nice enough place, very clean and orderly, but not much to see or do there. Its main claim to fame is the role its port plays as the assembly area for huge offshore windmills that will be installed off the northern coast of Germany. We took a stroll through town and stopped for a coffee and a tea at a café on a nice cobble-stoned street. We chatted with a young couple from Nuremburg and two musicians who play every evening onboard the ship. When it came time to pay the bill, I gulped a bit: $12 CDN!

“The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley”; so wrote Scot Robbie Burns in his poem To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough. I remembered the words from our Grade 11 Great Poems book. On the morning of day fourteen, a sea day before some passengers were to disembark in Copenhagen, we were summoned to a mandatory COVID test. While neither of us had symptoms, we both tested positive and were confined to our room for six days.

We knew we'd miss out on at least Copenhagen and Fredericia in Denmark, and the Norwegian ports of Kristiansand, Haugesund, and Alesund. Hopefully, we’d be OK when the ship docked at Lerwick on the Shetland Islands. Had we known about this mandatory test and the consequences of being positive, I’m not sure we’d have booked with Princess. But it’s too late for that now. Thankfully, we have a window and wifi. And this was the only thing worth seeing during our six-day confinement: the bridge between Denmark and Sweden as seen through a very dirty porthole.

Being cooped up in a 250-square-foot room for six days is no picnic. Our cabin has a toilet, a shower, a bed, and a TV. We order our meals from room service and have learned that it’s better to order something cold since it’ll be cold by the time it gets delivered to us anyway. The first day’s oatmeal reminded me of the Lepage’s glue we used in la petite école! It was all I could do to get it down. Dinner is late two days out of three; my bottle of Heineken 0 arrives with no bottle opener; my oatmeal arrives with no spoon; a nice, chilled bottle of wine is delivered to our door one evening; I don’t drink and there’s no corkscrew to open it if I did! We’re not impressed with Princess, not in quarantine anyway.

It’s a good thing Elva and I get along. She has never “rested” for six days in a row and, as for me, it did happen once when I was eight years old. Diagnosed with pneumonia and with no one to look after me at home, I spent a week in the old Prince County Hospital with a wardful of sick kids. I remember watching the Lobster Carnival parade from a window as it went past. I can’t imagine how people in community care and nursing homes must feel, being confined because of COVID.

We’d been told what would happen if we tested positive on Day 7. “You’ll be tested every subsequent day until you come up negative and, if not, we’ll let you out on Day 10.” Needless to say, we were nervous as hell as Day 7 approached. Most puzzling was the fact that neither of us had felt sick before the test. Our symptoms never changed through the entire six days we spent in our cabin.

The nice nurse arrived at our door promptly at 8:00 am on Day 7, stuck Q-Tips up our noses and disappeared. It was a long half-hour before the phone rang. I’d asked Elva to answer because she’s luckier than I am, and I’m superstitious as hell about these things. “We’re both negative,” she said, jumping up and down. We hugged one another and got out of the GD room as quick as our little feet could carry us.

It reminded me of the 1992 First Ministers’ Conference that led to the infamous Charlottetown Accord. I’d been asked to accompany the Québec delegation, led by Robert Bourassa. I stood outside the meeting room at the Delta Prince Edward and waited for the Premiers and the Prime Ministers to announce they’d reached an agreement. The doors burst open, and Frank McKenna was the first one out, waving his hands in the air, borrowing the famous line from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

The captain had announced the day before that we’d be staying overnight in Alesund, Norway, instead of landing in Lerwick on the Shetland Islands, because of forecast high winds. We put on rain gear and warm clothes and got off the ship. I jumped in the first puddle I could find, and Elva did a bit of jumping of her own. Alesund is a beautiful town with a lot of history and some beautiful cityscapes. We only had a couple of hours to visit but we made the best of it. Next, we’re off to Iceland!