Berlin in WWII features a lot in historical fiction books I’ve read over the years. Since I had a few days before my Workaway in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, I decided to spend 3 days in Berlin. I was curious about it asa modern day city, and about how the horrors of WWII would be presented and acknowledged.

I saw this mural of Anne Frank the first evening I was walking around. She looks so young and alive. I was surprised there was a center dedicated to her in Berlin, and happy to read on their website about their focus on education and sharing Anne’s story with young people all over Germany. My wanderings around the city over the next couple days took me farther afield, and I’m sorry to say I didn’t get back there during opening hours.

Public transportation is really good in Berlin, and in between walking miles, I used trains, subway and buses. But mostly I walked. I heard a lot of Germans speaking English, and many people speaking other languages too. The city feels very international and not unlike New York in some ways. I stayed in Berlin Mitte area at Rosenplatz, the city centre where it seems to be a mix of very old and newer.

As I walked, I began to notice people stopping and reading small gold plaques in the sidewalks in seemingly random places.

Once I saw one, I began to see more and more as I walked. They are also in other cities in Europe.

The Berlin Wall Memorial is at the corners of some neighborhood streets where the wall was first build. The information center they have on one corner shows photos of how the neighborhood was instantly divided, and has recorded interviews from neighborhood residents talking about how their lives abruptly and harshly impacted. Several of them told stories of their efforts to escape the Eastern side and how neighbors on the Western side helped them. On the opposite corner had been a church that was damaged in WWII and was in the ‘death strip” when the wall went up. The GDR (East German government) blew it up. What’s there now is the Chapel of Reconciliation, made from clay with glass, soil and rubble from the site mixed into it.

I visited Checkpoint Charlie later the same day.

On my last day, I went to The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It covers a city block or more, and has an underground information center.

I posted photos of the Opera House last year, but I think it looks different with changes in light and weather. We booked for one of the many tours in English. It was led by a man named Dag whose love of the arts and the house shone through everything he said. No photos were allowed in the areas behind stage sadly. About 85% of the Opera House’s budget comes from the government,making tickets affordable for all to see concerts and ballet there!!The workshops and practice theaters are larger than the actual main hall. So many creative people were at work sewing, making models of sets, moving huge walls on wheels to make space for new designs, welding, and meeting over sketches and plans. Will was able to get a few photos peering inside when we walked along one back side of the building- amazing!

I had two sculpture parks on my wishlist for Oslo. Ekeberg Sculpture Park is located on a hill that gives great views of Oslo. The park is free and the 43+ sculptures are scattered about on grass and in the forest. I’m addling links to the titles of works below – the info about the artist(s) is really good

I’ll include one more we came upon as we wandered the forest part of the park. It was striking and heartfelt.

Vigeland Park is the other sculpture garden we walked to at another end of the city. All of the sculptures are the life work of Gustav Vigeland. Again, the park is free and open all the time. All of this work is of human figures showing the range of human emotions. It was a gorgeous sunny day when we were there along with many other people. The sculptures don’t have any written info with them. I felt like I just wandered along staring and considering what each figure was feeling. We did look up some of the museum info later as we walked to get some of the history. Next time I think we’ll go to the museum to see photos and drawings about how the park was planned and built.

These are just a glimpse of the 200 sculptures in the park. We did see a couple of his other works in other places in Oslo, and there are more in other parts of Norway and Stockholm. What a prolific artist.

Oslo has so much art all over the city outside of these 2 parks. It’s very apparent that the city and the country encourage and support artists of all kinds. It’s refreshing to see that countries can be so arts-minded!

We saw these incredible wire mesh figures hanging high above a walkway in a busy restaurant area.

These last two figures were on the restroom doors at a great Italian restaurant.

Will gets the credit for most of these photos- he tends to get more good photos at times.

We’ve been to several saunas on this trip and find the small ones to be some of the best. I’m starting to understand why sauna is such a big part of life in Scandinavia and other places. It’s really relaxing, even when the sauna is in a busier place. The one pictured above is on a lake about 40 min by tram and bus from where we stayed in Stora Essingen. It was a very peaceful time. The lake was cool and

Will discovered Eden, another little local sauna just before we left Stockholm. It’s part of a little beach club where there is a restaurant, kayak rentals, a waterway that is mixed fresh water with salt water from the Baltic Sea, and their own little sauna radio! Too bad they weren’t playing while we were there. It’s a shared local sauna, but we had it to ourselves when we visited.

We’d visited Varberg for their classic old sauna last year, and returned this year to spend a windy sunny afternoon. The photo above shows the corner of the courtyard of the women’s side,and the window in the middle is the window of the women’s sauna. Will got this photo when we walked out the jetty later in the day. It was busier this year and equally as relaxing and special. I love the old style sling back sun chairs to sit and read between sea dips and going back into the sauna. The cost is about $10 per person!

In Oslo, we went to several different sauna, including one in the “Sauna Village” just past the museums on the harbor. There were cold baths as well as the fjord to hop into to alternate with the warmth of the saunas. The fjord was warmer this year- 68 degrees.

Having become a sauna “enthusiast” I’m wishing we could have a floating sauna on Peaks. But I know the insurance and licensing of such an idea would make it all very cost prohibitive. I’ll just have to wait til we get our own sauna finished!

This year we decided to return to Sweden, but to start in Stockholm, the capital city on the East coast. It was a little intimidating to think about where to stay in a city that ‘straddles 14 islands and is connected by more than 57 bridges.” (Eurocities.com). But it was a fun puzzle to tackle on a cold sunny day back in February, and we came up with a pretty great plan.

I found us a house called the Charred House, named for the siding used on the house. The siding is Nordic spruce that has been burnt and turns a lovely dark charred color. Stora Essingen and its neighbor Lilla Essingen are both primarily residential areas that have houses and apartment buildings on quiet streets and woodsy walks to swimming areas or boardwalks.

We caught a bus or tram each day into the city center to walk the streets that connect the different neighborhoods. Tickets are easy to buy on an app, with a discount for seniors even!

Will found us a sauna to relax away our travels at the end of our first full day in Stockholm. The sauna is part of a tennis/paddle ball club on the top floor of a building in the center of the city.

The sauna had 3 guys in it when we entered the sauna, all speaking in Swedish. But they quickly switched over to English to include us in their conversation about ‘sauna culture” and also some very astute conversation on climate change. Suffice to say, they were super nice and we had a lot of fun talking with them. The cold dip tub outside was a good balance to the toasty sauna; the temp was a chilly 41! When we were all leaving, one of the guys put something around his neck that looked like a small life jacket.

We had a recommendation for a fish restaurant that we ended up going to twice in our 5 days in Stockholm- so good! Fresh fish soup, fresh smoked salmon with dill, cucumber and hard boiled egg and tuna to name a few things. We were excited to see this shell figure and tableau in the window. The artist is Tilda Lovell; we recognized her style after seeing a larger bronze she did in Gothenburg last year called Oraklet (the Oracle).

Over the course of the week, we used ferries, trams, buses, subway (noticeably very clean!),and taxis to get around. One day we went farther afield by several means of transport to visit Artipelag, “where art and nature meet” as their website says. Well worth the trip to see incredible art, architecture and design!

We spent a lot of time in the Lars Wallin Atelier: 35 Years of Fashion Stories exhibit. It details Wallins’ process of creating with descriptions of his first meetings with clients, sketches and patterns, and the final remarkable dresses. There was also a video where he speaks about his process as patterns are being cut and fabrics are selected.

The Enchanted Forest exhibit was a little eerie as well as enchanting. We walked for a while outside admiring the views to other islands, the beautifully planted roof of the building and the outdoor exhibition Art in Nature.

More soon from Norway.

We had the offer of staying in our Peaks Island neighbors’ flat again in London, so we went there before heading home. It was breezy and sunny when we arrived from damp old Bergen. I got the drying rack out and put out our bathing suits and ‘quick” dry towels before they started molding in our suitcases.

Richmond London is on the Thames, and has trains, buses and subways to get all over London. I returned to a Pilates studio I found a couple of years ago near Battersea Station- with the help of Apple maps telling me what train to take to catch the right bus. It’s a different way to experience a place when visiting, sort of taking a peek into “what would it be like to live here”.

After eating lunch somewhere neat Battersea, Will and I walked through streets to visit BrixtonVillage Market. Many folks who live there came from the Caribbean and West Indies. The fabric stores were amazing and there was lots of good street music.

We left London one day to go to North Devon, about 4 hours by train. Will has a book at home that has ocean swimming pools all over the world, and we’d put a sticky note on one in Ilfracombe, North Devon. The train took us to Barnstaple where we did an overnight and bike ride on the estuary there. For any Ann Cleeves fans of her newer Matthew Venn series,those books take place around the Taw River there.

After a good brunch at Boston Tea Party Cafe, we got a bus for the 45 min trip to Ilfracombe. Our destination was The Tunnel Beaches.

When we arrived in the afternoon, there were lots of families and people on the beach and in the water. The surf was strong as the tide was rising. It wasn’t cold really, and there was a warm southerly breeze that got rid of the clouds evening.

There were lots of historical information about bathing during Victorian times, with cool photos of ‘bathing machines’ people got into for privacy drawn down to the water! Check out their website.

Back to London, and we’re off home today. Good travels- so much time outside,great food, beautiful art,. And it will be good to return home to our little piece of heaven.

Everything you read about the train across Norway from Oslo to Bergen on the west coast mentions that it’s one of the most scenic train trips in Northern Europe. For the 1st hour or 2, I was wondering what all the excitement was about. But then the train began to climb into the mountains and the scenery got a lot more interesting. Will is much more adept at getting good photos out the window of a speeding train, so suffice to say all of these are his. Turf roofs, ski mountains, glaciers, waterfalls and many tunnels were the hallmarks of the trip from about the 3d hour of the 7 hour trip to Bergen. Each station stop was announced by the conductor in sort of a droning voice; first in Norwegian, then German I think, maybe another Scandinavian language and finally English. He always ended with “and the train is on schedule”! We could hear many different languages being spoken on the train.

Everyone we spoke to in Oslo about heading to Bergen said “oh it rains all the time there”. We were prepared with rain gear, and very nicely surprised to have the sun around our first evening and a little on the next morning. It was grey but still dry as we took the funicular up to the top of Floyen, one of 7 mountains around Bergen. Smooth trip, and faster than the one I remember in Barcelona.There are hiking trails at the top and ways to walk down mountain, but the weather wasn’t great…

It was quite crowded walking around Bergen’s port with tourists from everwhere and two huge cruise ships in port. Even though it was very scenic above the town, it did feel a little like Portland when a cruise ship is in port. It was nice to walk away from the port, through some neighborhoods and some industrial areas to get a feel for where residents live.

There were lots of outdoor gear stores advertising rain gear in their windows, and yarn stores again on many corners. We walked through the market where fresh and cooked foods were sold and served under tents. They really have the wet weather thing nailed there! Bergen claims to have 200 days of rain per year, and the best outdoor gear-yikes!

As in Oslo, Will found the floating sauna and got us in for a late afternoon soak and swim.I’m not sure their harbor is as pristine as Olso’s but it was a good chilly swim in between lounging in the sauna. I can’t say I’ve ever swum so near a large crane as I did there. Some people were in the sauna beside us, and I happened to be in the water with one of the guys swimming. He’s Norwegian and had just started cold water swimming this winter. It told him Will and I did too, but we don’t have the sauna part (yet) in our routine. He told me he had to break the ice at a fresh water place he swam in one time- that’s pretty inspiring!

I wish we could ship that sweet little sauna over to our yard.

Our 2d day in Bergen was big rain and some wind all day. We moseyed around, did a short city tour cruise around the harbor and began to make plans to find dinner and a drink to take back to the apt for a low key evening. Beer is sold in grocery stores. Alcohol is sold in the Vinmonopolet, the Norwegian state alcohol stores. It took a little searching before we found it; and it was busy. . I went looking for Prosecco and found myself in a wonderland of creative labels. It was so fun to walk the aisles – the designers must be loving what they do!

I laughed a lot in that store and called Will over a bunch of times to see yet another design. But hey,if it rains 200 days in Bergen, let’s hope graphic designers are having as much fun being creative as the folks who are drinking these are.

I’m not sure we’d go back to Bergen even with it being an interesting port and home to access to many fjords. Oslo has a lot more we’d like to explore, and the country around it. The weather cleared just as we reached the airport to fly to London for a few days- brilliant sun as we took off.

We stayed in an apartment in the old Posthallen building (former post office). Beautiful marble entry floors and stairs that are clearly old and well maintained. There are 200 or so apartments in the building with halls like dormitory hallways with no windows, with the overhead lights turning on as you approach a section. Our apartment was small and filled with light from large sliding doors that opened on to a balcony; we could see other apartments across the courtyard and the roof top shared space garden.

Oslo is a busy city especially around the major tourist sights. It felt a little overwhelming at first on a sunny Sunday afternoon with people crowding sidewalks taking photos everywhere. So we rented the Oslo City bikes and cruised away to some of the lesser known sights along cool shady streets. And, we got on a boat to see some of the waterfront from the water.

I really want to make it up to see that ski museum on our next visit; they have a ski jump simulator! There were loads of sailboats and cruises crisscrossing the harbor. We took in the sights and enjoyed the breeze, surprised at how warm it was walking or biking around. After dinner outdoors at a nice little restaurant, we made our way back to the Oslo Opera House to climb the steep slopes and watch the sunset with many other people.

Will scoped out the floating saunas all along the waterfront, and managed to get us a reservation for early Monday morning. We got our best view of the Opera House before it was open to pedestrians when we were swimming in the harbor and/or sitting in the sauna.

The water was clear and cool, much warmer than we expected. The guy who tended the saunas and stoves told us he’s originally from California, married a Norwegian woman and they have a family here in Oslo. He said it’s a great place to have a family with many social policies that support people with kids.

We liked the sauna so much that we booked to return again early Tuesday morning before our train.

We saw lots of people biking as their means of transportation in Oslo. Some of the bikes were road bikes and it was easy to tell some of the riders were commuting to work Monday and Tuesday morning. Other bikes were like those we saw in Sweden and the Netherlands with seats on the back or boxes on the front for kids, groceries and dogs. There were a LOT of Teslas on the road too; one guy told us Norway has the highest number per capita of them. Sustainability and climate change are mentioned in hotel and shopping information as well as on signs around the city for recycling. Menus in restaurants gave information about where fish came from, how animals for meat were raised, etc. It feels like it’s a real topic of concern and consideration in Scandinavia .Another thing I noticed was that while there are plenty of high fashion clothing stores, there are also lots of vintage and second hand clothing stores that were bustling with shoppers.

The library holds a place of honor beside the Oslo Opera House on the waterfront. It’s an amazing example of beautiful architecture and the value Oslo places on the library as a multi-pronged resource for its citizens. Will and I could have spent days there. It has a gift shop, a cafe, many meeting and read-aloud spaces, an escalator that carries you to the top floors very quickly, The children’s floor is welcoming to kids, families and teens who speak/read Norwegian and many other languages. There’s a mezzanine that has newspapers and magazines in Norwegian as well as English and other languages. We were in the library until closing at 10 one night, and the place was very busy right up til the final call for leaving. There are branches too in other parts of the city.

Artwork was featured or integrated into some corners all over the library. It felt like a very busy museum, even at nearly. 10pm. I stopped in again on Tuesday morning before our train west to write down a couple of books I’d seen on display. There were many people there as soon as it opened.

We’d both like to return to Oslo again, to the library and to many other places in and around the city.

The Rohsska Museum of Design and Craft in Gothenburg isn’t big, but it sure held our attention for a few hours. They have a permanent exhibit on East Asian crafts and other exhibits that show how Scandinavian art is influenced by those designs and crafts. Will and I watched a short video on the process of Japanese woodblock printing, amazed at the time, patience and skill necessary to produce such fine art. The textile exhibit called Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom was my favorite, especially the work by Elsa Pars-Berglund.

Beautiful Scandinavian design is evident everywhere we went in the city too.

We rented a car for an overnight trip to Tjorn, the 6th largest of the Swedish islands on the West coast, so that we could go to the Nordic Watercolor Museum. It turned out to be the first really stormy day we’d had complete with wind and rain. So we joined many other visitors at this amazing museum. Somehow, even though the place was really busy, people moved around easily and politely.

They had a sitting area where the posters of past exhibits were displayed; the posters were an exhibit in themselves.

There are 2 rooms with paintings from the main collection that get rotated every 6 months or so. All of the paintings were done with watercolor and so different in style.

The major exhibit was called Vanishing Point by a Belgian artist Hans Op de Beeck. They had a video of him talking about his work, process and the inspiration for Vanishing Point. His work in general includes sculptures, video works, watercolor paintings, photography, drawings, and large installations. This exhibit had dreamy black and white paintings, an animated film, sculptures and a baroque life-size carousel all in grey. When I was listening to him talk about his life and work in the video interview, I realized I was leaning forward not just to hear him but because his quiet manner was so captivating. His work was equally so. He spoke of creating fictitious worlds in his painting in which the viewer can create their own stories. In the museum director’s preface in the booklet for the exhibit, she wrote “time as a concept and moment between life and death are central themes in Hans Op de Beech’s art, where reality and dream merge”.

Will and I were both reluctant to leave; the paintings and sculptures were so mesmerizing and thought provoking. The rain had stopped when we got outside, so we were able to walk out on the deck around the museum a little.

We drove a few minutes further on the island to the Salt and Sill, a floating hotel where we spent the night. The sun came out just before dinner to show off the beautiful rocky islands all around, some with houses.

It was a lovely place to stay. The wind continued, however, and I found myself feeling a little seasick the next morning! Will swam off the dock outside of our room before we headed out back to Gothenburg for a late brunch and our train to Oslo.

The train station departure board said the Oslo train was delayed by 2 hrs, so we stashed our bags in a luggage locker, rented the City bikes and rode to see some landmarks we’d read about. Poseidon is famous for not just being the sea god, but apparently the statue caused some scandal when installed in 1931 because his genitalia was considered too large and prominent. The sculptor amended it, but added the large fish in his hand. The smaller statues and reliefs of nymphs, mermaids, tritons and fish are lovely in their detail.

It was an easy ride back to the station. We returned the bikes, retrieved our luggage and the much delayed train finally arrived to take us on to Oslo. Exploring more of Sweden will have to wait til the next time.

I always like going to grocery stores when I travel, especially in countries where I don’t know the language well, or at all in this case. Seeing how foods are presented, what the predominant snacks or treats are, and trying to translate labels (before resorting to Google Translate) can keep me looking at the shelves for quite awhile- usually laughing my head off. This happened the day we went to Varberg, south of Gothenburg 45 minutes by train. The town of Varberg was bigger than we thought it would be, and had quite the big grocery store.

Will and I found some fruit and a couple snacks, and made our way out of the grocery store via self-checkout. It’s quite the challenge to do in Swedish. I love how you get a receipt for your purchases and then scan it to release the gate at the exit of the store.

The sauna/bathhouse at Varberg is the reason we went to Varberg. The beaches are small and sandy with coarse sand near the bathhouse. It’s been rebuilt twice after major storms damaged it. Entrance is by a pier that brings you into a small cafe. At the desk, you pay for your sauna and can leave valuables in a box they store behind the desk. The saunas, sunbathing, and swimming in the sea are separate by sex, and in the nude. Will and I parted ways with plans to meet outside in an hour or so.

The changing/shower room was immaculate. I found my way to the women’s sauna wrapped in my towel and was immediately blown away by the view from the sauna.

When I got too warm, I walked out into the courtyard, left my towel on a chair and went down the steps and ladder into the water. It was cool, but not too cold at all. I repeated the sauna/swim a couple of times, and then sat out in the breezy sun to dry off. It was quiet, with a couple of women sitting separately around the courtyard reading or sunning,; there was a young girl and her mother going in and out of the sauna and water as I did. Very relaxing in the old country style of public saunas for the very reasonable price of $10. I became a sauna lover that day.

The tram goes from the center of Gothenburg out to Saltholmen ferry terminal for the ferries to the southern archipelago islands. The terminal is small but impressive with its signs telling when each boat is leaving in real time.

We got off at the end of the blue line on Vrango (which sounds nothing like it’s spelled!) and walked across the island to one of the many swim spots. The late afternoon sun made the little houses and gardens even more picturesque.

Vrango is one of a few islands that has year round residents- about 350 now. They had to close their school a couple of years ago due to low enrollment, and the kids who live there go to school off island every day. Like Maine’s coast, the islanders are facing housing shortages as houses are bought as summer homes, prices increase, etc. These islands were mostly fishing villages in the past.

Another day in Gothenburg, we rented the city bikes to cycle around on the bike lanes that line most streets.

We biked to Frihamnen where the Jubileumsparken is. It is a park built for the city’s 400th anniversary where people can swim and sauna. The photos say it all:

This was just one of the many saunas we hoped to visit. More later.