The First Normal Summer In Some Time

My summer trip this year was once again intended to bring me closer to my adopted country. With the pandemic less intense it almost seemed normal. Sweden is a land of lakes, and I mean a lot of them. Pond-like ones, scenic petite ones, large ones, and some that are more like small inland seas dot the country. I grew up on the Great Lakes in the U.S. so I’m not as impressed by the big ones but they are still majestic. The second largest lake is called Vättern and I’ve been to it a few times. However, this year the trip was on the Western shore which isn’t as well visited as the more populous Eastern one. 

On the route there we spent a night at Nora which has a rich railroad history. In fact the hostel that kept us warm and cozy that stay was made of 1930’s sleeper rail cars. It was quite interesting to imagine moving along the tracks in the past although I struggled with high and somewhat claustrophobic bed. Still, even stationary one gets a warm feeling of nostalgia for a time when you could lay down and sleep the miles away in a comforting environment with wooden accents. 

Then we went to Karlsborg, Hjo, and Jönköping all of which were fascinating. I’ll quit here since you can google them. Below are some pictures.

Crawling to Normal

Well, I’m fully vaccinated and an increasing amount of people in Sweden have joined me. There’s the specter of the Delta variant in the world now and it’s tweaked infections up a bit here, but we’re lucky that it’s not so much. So far this Spring and Summer I’ve been able to venture out and here’s a range of pictures. I guess the theme is transport, but there’s also some sunny scenes of other things as well. Pictures here include those taken at the Vasa and Ship history museums in Stockholm as well as our local historic railway called Lennakatten.