2012_08_04 August Norway and Sweden!

   NORWAY!
     Couchsurf hosts are never as you imagine. My Norwegian hostess Bente's picture shows her smiling up from a flower she is bending over to sniff. I didn't expect the vigorous 60-year-old who met me at the station on her bicycle. She was on a break from work, where she is a groundskeeper for the Eidsvoll Constitution center, and after I recovered from my early flight from Denmark, I followed her map the next day to the center for lunch and a tour. Many tourists are from Minnesota, Garrison Keillor is well known. The mansion where the constitution was worked out is undergoing renovation for a big anniversary celebration in 2014. Bente gave up her bed (havent slept on a couch yet!) and the co-worker who led the tour joined us for lamb chops and political chat. Bente is gay, which I guessed after looking at her extensive book collection, many in English. I dived into a Nina Simone biography (born Eunice Wayans).

      I am poor at following maps and the next day missed my intended train and then couldn't find the way back to her house to wait for the next one. Again, entrusted with keys! Finally got to the station and to Oslo for a furious dash through as many parks and museums as I could fit. First Vigiland Park by tram, with hundreds of statues by that sculptor. I almost visited the Ibsen museum but was urged by a woman on the tram to take the boat across the bay, which I did after visiting the Nobel Peace prize museum. Hello Barack Obama!

     It was a long uphill walk to the Folk Museum from the boat, and there I found dozens of restored and collected old farmhouses as well as a museum and snapped away. Then to the Viking museum for a quick peek and snap, but my goal was the Kon-Tiki museum, another long traipse to the harbor followed by a look into the North Pole explorers' museum. Then the boat back to Oslo and its fantastic city hall and shopping street and a mad rush for the train back to Eidsvoll for Bente's dinner of fish stew, a Portuguese dish. Sounds like bacalao.

      Bente has radiant heating in the floor of her bathroom and I was wrong to turn it down because she lies there to restore her back and it takes lots of hydropower energy to get it warmer. That final evening her tech support pal dropped in to download my hundreds of pictures to Dropbox. Then we enjoyed her American Masters DVD of Joan Baez, who lives in a treehouse. Bente is also a fine guitarist and singer!

      Because of my getting lost in the maze of houses, I took an early morning taxi to the station to be sure to catch my flight to Stockkholm. I used up my Danish and Norwegian money buying a dutyfree bottle of Aqua Vitae replacing the one that customs confiscated in Denmark because I didn't have proof of purchase. I liked the little taste I got!

SWEDEN!
     Bus from the airport to T-central, metro and bus to Inga-Maj's house in the country. Here I will mention how very tall people are becoming! Because they were no longer in bloom, I couldnt find the lilacs marking her home, the first on the left. After ten minutes of dragging it, I hid my big suitcase in shrubbery and stopped the only car I saw - reporters looking for Inga-Maj to interview her about Couchsurfing for a daily Stockholmer feature! We hugged and posed for the photographer, sat outside eating sweets and I enjoyed listening to Inga-Maj's British English. She recounted many negative couchsurfing experiences: the couple who made love four times in one night, the subsequent showers awakening Inga-Maj though her hearing aids were out; the girls who asked to do one load of laundry and did eight in her absence; the German man who insisted she cook for him. We didn't tell the reporter Inga-Maj withdrew her invitation after I delayed my arrival date, saying I didn't know my own mind, had always had things done for me and she had too many "deseases" to put up with me. I responded I was trying to smile through my tears and did she want to defriend me on Facebook. No, she didn't, though the Swedish is poorly translated by Bing and makes little sense; then she relented and said I could come after all. 

After a nap (wonder if it's worth taking early cheap flights it takes a day to recover from) she woke me up for a typical Swedish meal of boiled potatoes, marinated and sour cream herring, and my aqua vitae and beer. Then we walked up the road to visit with her neighbors. It was a lovely party, the hostess's brother married his elementary school sweetheart after both had married and divorced other people. A very beautiful home and I was glad I could show up the next morning inquiring for a bus schedule, not wanting to awaken Inga-Maj. Her cat wouldn't help me.

      So I was back on the bus and metro, where I met a lovely Sri Lankan woman in finances who travels four hours a day to work. She supervised my buying a transit pass and promised travel tips by email for my eventual visit to her country. This turned out to be an error, because the 3 day Stockholm pass included transport. I started with a sightseeing cruise around the harbor, then the modern art museum which features Yoko Ono's work. 

There were small trees outside for wishes and I hung a note hoping for Obama's success in getting a second term. Old films of a fly climbing all over a nude woman, of Yoko sitting onstage at Carnegie Hall as audience members at her invitation took up scissors to cut away pieces of her clothes; ideas for films, a video of buttocks...and John. I dashed through the rest of the collection, Warhol's Marilyn, a Picasso head I've known most of my life, then the architecture museum, and headed back to T-central for the Metro to the bus, home for another delicious meal prepared by Inga-Maj. Pork with sour cream! She took a look at Forks Over Knives but wasn't interested. I thought following it might cure her diabetes and fibromyalgia.
     That night she told me about her art student days and explored all her cupboards and walls to show me water-colors, sand-blasted vases, embroidery, jewelry she made and oddities she had gotten at auction, such as a box that was a puzzle to open with more puzzles inside. The first  night she had given both the reporter and me our choice of jewelry she had made, so now I have earrings to wear once again.
     Back to Stockholm the next day for more museums, starting with the city museum. Centuries ago, a woman was accused of killing her husband and children. Somehow in jail she cobbled together cloth to embroider her 'complaint'; she was eventually beheaded. A long walk along the harbor in the wrong direction, then finally the photography museum featuring Sally Mann and memorial photos of Olympics past, and Strindberg portraits. Then to the Absolut spirits museum, where you could sniff herbal additives to the vodka, and the boat museum, Vasa. This elegant carved sailing ship capsized in the harbor on its maiden voyage and centuries later was recovered and restored. Then I raced to the Nordic museum, but it had closed.
     The next day I started with that museum, where I learned about the indigenous people of the North, the Sami, and took the tram to Prince Eugene's collection, but it  was closed, it being Monday, so I spent the day in Scansen, a huge park of old farmhouses and a mansion, all imported and rebuilt from different parts of Sweden, including Sami A-frames,  native animals from bear, moose, lynx, owl, sheep, cattle, goats; old apothecaries, bakeries, an aquarium and monkey house, and a superlong escalator at the entrance which so terrifies me. That night it was minced reindeer and a walk up the hill to another neighbor's beautiful house. Only fifty, she was in the hospital with a stroke and terminal alcoholism; her family was staying in the house.
     It was time to book my travel to Russia. I decided on a ferry to Helsinki and a bus to St. Petersburg but hit a snag, they wanted GSM which turned out to be a mobile phone number to reserve the ferry berth. Inga-Maj contacted her tech support, her ex-husband, who provided his mobile and soon got a confirmation on it with the booking number.

     My final day in Stockholm I squeezed in two more museums and paid for a boat ride to the Drottingham castle but my Stockholm card had expired and cameras were not allowed within so I snapped the grounds and rode back to the capital on the old steamsheet to visit the oldest part of the city, Gamla Sten.

     The end of the story is a sad one, which gave me a sleepless night in Mother Russia. Inga-Maj had asked me to pick up duty-free cigarettes (she takes snuff) and whiskey she would buy. She paid for the cigarettes the first day but not the whiskey, which I asked about the last day. She paid me and then wanted her money back. I wasn't happy to have the additional weight. I had gone to the supermarket and she found mold on the vollkornbrot I bought and thrown it away. I wanted to see if I could save it or freeze it, and she mentioned our discussion on Facebook. Because of slugs everywhere in her garden, she does not compost. 

She had a large rhubarb plant which she doesn't like so allowed me to harvest it to take to Russia. I followed her instructions squeegeeing the bathroom floor after showers and washed my laundry by hand, not using her machine. She wanted to see my friend Janet's jewelry website but gave up on my sister's movie after a few minutes because she couldn't understand a child who lisped. When I commented on seeing her up early the last morning, she snapped, "None of your business." I had already written a glowing reference of her as a Couchsurfing hostess. I, on the other hand, was "unintelligent" (the moldy bread?) and made her life "a misery," because I didn't gift her the whiskey? I gave her my transport card I couldn't use and mailed her the rest of my bus tickets from the ferry. She said she won't be couchsurfing again. I walked on eggshells around her, but such is life. At least I got to see some of Sweden!