7/15/10

Today was another adventure. Vivian and I took the bus to Karlskrona, all by ourselves! It was pretty fun! And I felt very independent and proud of myself. :) and we didn’t even get lost, not even once.
We woke up at 8 and ate breakfast then got all our stuff together so we could catch the 9:43 bus to Centrum (what Karlskrona is called on all the street signs)
Oh, last night Vivian and I looked up and made a list of all the things we want to see in the city and we are planning to split everything in to multiple days. A few days ago we stopped at the tourist center and got maps and pamphlets.
Anyways the bus stop is a short walk from the house so we got to it in plenty of time, plus the bus was 4 mins late (not a big deal to me but to Vivian it was sort of) then we got across to the bus driver that we are both 17 so we could pay the youth fee instead of the adult fee of 20 kronors. (Vivian is 21 but she can definitely still pass as 17 or 18)
Once in the city, we made our way to the Great Square which I would say is the main square of the city. There we saw the Fredrik Church, the Water Castle, and the Church of the Holy Trinity (aka the German Church).
The Fredrik Church was named after King Fredrik I. it resembles a roman Basilica and it’s façade was most likely inspired by the Santa Trinita dei Monti church in Rome. Inside it looked pretty but it doesn’t even come close to the churches I saw in Italy. Though, it did have a pretty organ.
The Water Tower was eh. Now it has been turned into some type of museum with artifacts from other places, so we didn’t go in. Before, it was a water tower that supplied water to the city in the 19th century. It sorta looks like a castle, hence the name.
The Church of the Holy Trinity is also known as the German Church since it was for all the Germans that moved to the city. It has a rotunda that was inspired by Italian architecture. Right now it wasn’t much to look at outside because they are in the process of restoring it. But inside when I walked to the center and looked up, into the rotunda, it looked really cool…it had an eye catching pattern. Also inside they were showing a 10 min video of the history of the city which Vivian watched.
Then we walked pass (and took pics of) the Admiralty Clock Tower and the Batallion af Trolle. I think they both have a pretty orange color when the sun shines on them. Then we went to the Admiralty Church. That is where my host parents go to church. It’s shaped like a Greek cross and it is a barn red color. Inside it is blue and it has a navy theme because it is a church for the Swedish navy people and their families.
In front of the church is a statue of “old Rosenbom” he is a sailor from the 1700’s and he was poor and had lots of children that he needed to feed so one night he went out begging and he forgot to raise his hat to some rich guy so (I think if I remember right) the rich guy didn’t give him money and then the next day Rosenbom was found frozen to death. So the rich guy felt really bad so he built a statue that was designed so you have to lift his hat yourself in order to put money in.
There is also a sculpture of a storybook character named Nils coming out of a book. The story is, one night Nils came out of the book and also old Rosenbom came alive and some guy was chasing Nils all over Sweden and Nils was flying on a goose (I think) and he landed in Karlskrona and old Rosenbom hid Nils in his hat. Haha I don’t think that made sense…I need to ask someone to explain the story to me again.
After all that, we looked for the Aurora Bastion but I think it was inside the naval base and people are not allowed to go in unless they are on a tour. So we decided to go get lunch. Vivian didn’t bring a lot of money on the trip so she didn’t want to go to a restaurant or pay a lot for lunch. We ended up going to a grocery store and picked up some potato salad from the deli section. So do you know how in some delis in stores there is food that is packaged and priced according to weight? Well yeah the package I picked out only cost 12.50 Swedish Kronors which is like less then 2 US dollars. :) But they charged for forks, 5 Kronors (around $0.75 US) so we walked down to the local McDonalds and tried to find free forks there but all we could find were coffee stirrers. So we used those, lol! Boy, am I cheap! But my motto for this trip is “doing ordinary things in different ways” so using coffee stirrers as a fork was definitely different! But either way, the potato salad was really good and it filled me up. And that’s what really matters. After lunch I convinced Vivian to get ice cream so we ended up getting ice cream. I got one cup full of triple chocolate for 25 Swedish Kronors (I think somewhere around $3) oh man was it yummy!
After, we decided to go walk to a neighborhood called Björkholmen. This was where all the ship yard workers lived in the 1700’s. Their building materials mostly consisted of stolen wood and such from the ship yard where they worked. So the houses are really short. They remind me of troll houses. And the houses here are SO colorful! I love it!
We then found our way back to the main area of the city and just walked around and looked in some shops before taking the bus back home. It was a super fun day!