The unexpected often mystifies and delights. And sometimes the mystification is about why we are surprised.
I was surprised at how rocky the parts of Sweden that we saw were. Very much as I imagine Northern Ontario to be. The high speed train we were on did take us through parts of inland Sweden and there, I was surprised at how farming is the same… barns, farmyards, big round bales…while being different….crops, breeds of animals, size of farms, crops. Even the barns are red, although I did find out that the most popular colour of barn-red in Sweden was created from a by-product of the copper mining industry. (Falu red, from the Falun mine, now closed, but declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 2001.)
I was surprised how some of the houses in Copenhagen and in Amsterdam remind me of the jelly bean houses I saw in St. John’s, Newfoundland when I was there a couple of years back…..the European houses were taller and older, but both Canadian and European houses were tall, skinny and colourful. And St. John’s says it is the oldest city in North America, with year round settlement beginning in 1630, so maybe the European houses weren’t that much older after all.
I was surprised to see a man in full highland regalia wandering the streets of Gamla Stan (the Old Town) in Stockholm. I was even more surprised to see a group of six or eight of them in the streets of Copenhagen, four different tartans, some more formally “finished” than others.
Even though I had read about bike-friendly Copenhagen and Amsterdam, I was gob smacked by the numbers of bicycles on the streets. In Copenhagen particularly the traffic jams and rush hour are all about bikes. Bike parking facilities abound. I saw one in Copenhagen where the bikes were stacked two or three high (I have no idea how retrieval works). In Amsterdam we saw one bike parkade that was several stories high, a for motor vehicles, but for bikes, built over water behind the Central train station.
And bicycles and their riders rule. They stop for nothing and no one. They have their own bike lanes, even traffic lights, and heaven help the pedestrian who may stumble or be jostled into a bike land as a bike approaches. At least riders ring their bells to alert you to their approach.
But they push and pull the oddest contraptions, carrying everything from briefcases to groceries and children (and each other) and ride clothed in everything from business attire (men in suits and ties, women in short tight skirts) to jeans, shorts, sweats or long flowing skirts (eek). And no helmets anywhere in sight, although I did see a windshield in place to protect baby from wind and bugs.
Today we saw a young couple arrive at an upscale restaurant for a Saturday lunch, by bicycle, one each, he dressed in a suit and tie, she in a pretty dress, stockings and high heels, they dismounted, locked their bikes together and walked into the restaurant. The parking lot only held bikes, no cars allowed.
In nations such as Denmark and the Netherlands, which pride themselves on their attention to the environment, wind power, being close to achieving a carbon neutral standard, good water (you can swim and fish in Copenhagen’s inner harbour — in fact swimming areas are marked off and even though it was only +11 and raining, people were swimming when we were there), in nations such as these (I repeat this in case you’ve lost track of the nouns and verbs) which are also fitness crazy with all their cycling, jogging, walking, we were surprised at how many people smoked. And that smoking is still allowed in many outdoor venues where it is not allowed in North America.
In spite of being prepared for it, we were surprised at how expensive things were in Stockholm and Denmark. A cup of coffee cost 29 SEK which is close to $6.
Dinner out for two with wine costs a minimum of $200. Two coffees and two croissants were nearly $30, and don’t even get me started on taxis.
We were surprised by how small the world is, how jeans seem to represent the levelling of the playing field. How ubiquitous McDonald’s, Body Shop, Burger King, Lush, North Face, Pearl Vision, Mac, Apple, Starbucks, Subwway have become.
This isn’t so much a surprise as a raised eyebrow. Bedding. I knew that in Europe, often you get a bottom sheet and a duvet. No top sheet, no surprise. Twice on this trip though, the bottom sheet has been wrapped around a mattress cover, with the mattress exposed under that, and not one duvet but two. Folded to look like two sleeping bags, neither wide enough to cover the width of the bed. Not wide enough to treat like a sleeping bag, and neither wide enough to cover us both on its own. And overlapped with two layers of duvet in the middle, even I was too warm. Our bed was made that way in Stockholm and Copenhagen. Maybe it’s a Scandinavian thing.
Signs can be surprising too. This one was on the side of a McDonald’s truck, yes the hamburger people. It said: “We recycle used cooking oil into biofuel for our trucks.” Huh. Who knew.
And this sign was just fun. Seen on the side of a Stockholm building housing a Rum Club. It said: “Drinking rum before 10:00 a.m. doesn’t make you an alcoholic. It makes you a pirate.”
