15 August 1988 - Tombstone Day

Today we drove to Stockholm on the way we stopped and looked at various Churches to see if we could find any graves of our ancestors.  We didn't find any but got to see some really beautiful small churches and one archaeological dig at one of the churches. I think that all of the photos of the church are of Vreta Kloster where my great grandfather was... christened (that is what my notes say but need to confirm with my Mom.

These are two other photos from today and I have no idea where they were taken or what the stone is.

14 August 1988 - Rest Day

Today was a rest day so I thought I would share some photos of the farm where were staying.

13 August 1988

Phyllis showed us around a lot of interesting sites today.  A megoliths burial mound which had little dips in it and there was a superstition about putting butter in it if someone in your family was sick.  We also saw a stone age burial mound and a 12th century church.

That evening was Phyllis' birthday and we had for dinner: caviar, crayfish, hamburgers for the children, fish for the adluts.  For Dessert Anders joined us (the farmer)  and we had multiple courses of cookies (7 or 8 is the custom) before the birthday cake.

12 August 1988

I think this taken at breakfast on the 12th where we were fed another scrumptious meal!

They saw us off on the ferry to Sweden.

There are certain parts of our travels that really show how much technology has changed.  For one, not all the photos are good, because we didn't see them until they were printed and it was expensive to print.  My brother is especially into photography and he remembers that he was only allowed one photo per day.  The other was that we spent the entire year with no phone.  Not even when we had our apartment.  Hence, organizing visiting was always interesting.  Having just told you about our meeting with the Christensen's,  I will now tell you about my cousin Phyllis.  

Phyllis grew up in the USA but having become an archaeologist, was living in Sweden.  My mother had her address and a phone number but hadn't told her we would be in the area.  Hopefully eventually she will write in the comments.  In any case, we arrive in Sweden and drive to Veddiga where Phyllis was living.  Once we got close my Mom phoned her from a store and when she said "Where are you?"  was told we were very close by.  She and her partner and friend were about to leave for the weekend and if we had been much later we would have missed them altogether!  As it was we were invited to spend the weekend with them.  The farm where they stayed had an extra house for us to stay in.  More to come...

11 August 1988

The next two days proved quite interesting.  We drove up to Helsingor and saw Kronborg Castle - known for being the setting for Hamlet.  It is a beautiful castle and what I remember most from visiting it was the statue of Holger the Dane which according to legend when Denmark is threatened it will turn to flesh and bone and rise to defend the country.  During the Second World War, one of the most important resistance cells was named after Holger.

So that night we spent in the backyard of friends of my honourary grandparents.  We had never met them before and when we were going over my grandparents had said call them and stop by.  So we did, only my grandparents had forgotten to mention this to the Christensen's.  Opps!! Anyways being the wonderfully nice people that they were, they invited us to stay with them and fed us absolutely delicious food!  They had however on inviting us to stay with them had mowed their backyard and my poor mother to this day despairs of all the grass we tracked into the house.  So after our tent was up and the dinner was eaten, they phoned my grandparents to make sure we were who we said we were.  This was the start of a long friendship that still goes on to this day.

From my album I'm guessing that this is our car at the Christensen's House but I'm not 100% sure.   As you can see it was quite an art to packing it with all our camping gear.

Our tent set up in the Christensen's backyard.  They lived on the water looking towards Sweden.