26 octobre 2009 (Day 56)
Well, here is a little about Sweden. The language is a mélange of German and Danish among some other languages. It is easy to speak once you know how to pronounce the different letters.
The Bjornbergs are an adorable family. Both parents work. Gabriella is 17 and Axel is 14. They are a really polite and proper family although Gabriella is quite sassy to her parents when she is speaking in Swedish, but in English she is a complete angel. Axel has quite the personality in English. They are all so kind and make an effort to make us feel comfortable. I love their house. It is an adorable yellow house from 1904. There is lots of wood and the house has such a character. There house is right across the street from a small supermarket. They have a tree house and a boat in the front yard and a rabbit and a little sledding hill in the back.
We (by we I mean myself, Brooke, and Gabriella) woke up and had breakfast, and then headed off to the train stop to go to Stockholm. We went and took pictures at St. Johannes Forsamling. We saw where the prime minister of Sweden was shot dead in the street one day and headed off to the Vasa Museum.
The Vasa Museum (vasamuseet) displays the only almost fully intact 17th century ship that has ever been salvaged [95%!], and by this way cool dude in 1961, we watched a film about it. Why was it salvaged? On the 10th of August, 1628 after sailing for 20 minutes the Vasa sunk. This 69 meter long ship was built in two years for Gustav the 2nd because he wanted a giant ship to control the Baltic Sea and show that he was the Swedish King, the Lion of the North. (You see, Poland was fighting because they had the same king and Sweden wanted a protestant (non Catholic king) or something like that).This ship was too narrow and had 2 gun decks, which was unheard of and 64 cannons. Another ship like it was built, only 1 meter wider and it sailed for 30 years. It was really neat to take a tour and learn about the ship and the history of good old Gustav (there were many). We had fun taking pictures and spying on the French people that were on the tour.
We went home afterwards and have some delicious lasagna. There was traditional lasagna and a white sauce spinach and mushroom lasagna for vegetarian Brooke. Afterwards we watched Miss Marple and had Swedish cheesecake, which is quite good.
