Our "Northern"-most visit to Tanum and Stromstad

Tuesday, March 24 – Kara and I started out the day shopping with Lotta in Goteborg. We stopped by a little handicraft shop just of The Avenue near the Art Museum – we each found a couple of items to bring home AND Lotta was kind enough to buy us each a Dala horse towel for our kitchens.

Jennifer and I are staying in a little fishing village called Grebbestad with Krister and Nina Jansson and their white cat named Champis (Sham-piece) right on the water.

Wednesday, March 25 – Two stops today on our program. The first was the Eko Park in Strömstad which was located in a relatively new facility built in 2000. Here they have developed programs to provide environmental training and conferences for everyone from 4 years old and up. The building was funded jointly through the EU, Sweden, the District and the Kommun but is now run with funding only from the Strömstad Kommun. The building was erected to be almost self-sufficient based on the technology available at the time. The displays along with Margareta’s stories are very entertaining and would certainly appeal to the younger audiences to help them learn about recycling and taking care of the environment.

The Loven Center for Marine Sciences was our second stop of the day and was located on the coast in Tjärnö. It is part of the University of Göteborg and in addition to being an educational center, they conduct quite a bit of research here and also have an aquarium to show their visitors. The various tanks in the aquarium allow the visitors to see the various fish and other animals that live at the different depths off the coast of Sweden. In the middle of the room, they have a shallow pool with animals that can be touched or even picked up by the visitors. I almost forgot - - for fika today, we got to help celebrate Waffle Day in Sweden with some waffles, fruit and cream.

Our evening plans included a boat ride out on the sea around Grebbestad with Krister & Nina’s friend Per. Their other friend, also Per, joined us and we left the harbor just after 6 PM so there wasn’t a lot of daylight left but just enough to sit on the front of the boat and soak it in for a few minutes before the sun set. As it was getting darker, we stopped by some rocks and caught a brief glimpse of two seals that were in the area. It was a delightful evening spent with some of our new Swedish friends!

Thursday, March 26 - We’ve been looking forward to today! Almost an entire day spent outside – the weather was once again sunny but a little chilly. First, we were shown some rock carvings at a location known as Litsleby. In our minds, we all thought rock carvings would be on a wall but these were actually on the ground! They’ve been painted with red paint to make them more visible for the more than 160,000 tourists EACH YEAR that visit the area! Some date back to 1600 BC. We enjoyed lunch and more information about the rock carvings at a local museum that specializes in documenting and research on rock carvings.

Next, was a walking tour of a small fishing village called Fjällbacka on the west coast of Sweden. This sleepy little town has about 1,000 residents in the winter months but comes alive in the summer with the visiting boats and people. Hans, our tour guide, told us the story of this town. It became part of Sweden from Denmark without much fanfare as Denmark thought it was a dying town but shortly after becoming part of Sweden, there was a “run of herring” that lasted 27 years and brought much wealth to the community…it was a quaint little town with a lot of character and a huge rock “mountain” that we got to climb to the top of and look over the city and towards the sea. Once we caught our breath from the climb up, the view was breath-taking!!! The descent was just as much fun as we wandered down a path through a part in the rocks.
Jennifer and I ended the day by having dinner with Krister and Per at the Nautic Restaurang. We all enjoyed a glass of Sweden-produced beer called Falcon and I tried a pizza known as Tjurpannan Pizzor. It was made of köttfärs (pronounced shurts-far and is ground beef with kind of a taco seasoning), bacon (no Swedish name for this ingredient), champinjoner (mushrooms) and I added some vitlök (garlic). It was really good but it’s been haunting me all evening! After dinner, while we waited for Nina’s movie to get done, we played Virtual Bowling…. It’s the same concept as Mark Lynch’s golf simulator where you actually throw a ball down a lane that ends about 15 feet from the line and then the ball continues down a tv screen and shows it hitting the pins. Our scores were horrible but we enjoyed it!

Friday, March 27 - We awoke to snow this morning! It is a beautiful sight on the Swedish coastline! After lunch and another Rotary presentation, it's back on the train to head "south" again and meet our next host families.

Steph