Sweden   I left Copenhagen on Beverly’s Train, the X2000. It sped to Stockholm, coast-to-coast diagonally across Sweden, in five hours. It was totally full, maybe because it was a Sunday, but with writing on the laptop (outlets at each seat, also fold-down tables), the time flew. Although my railpass is automatically for first class, I had been given a second-class reservation, yet by writing I was able to ignore the circus of a carload of elementary-school kids returning from a field trip. On my other X2000 trip, I’ll get it right.

Stockholm   I’ve already mentioned that Stockholm is larger than Oslo and Copenhagen combined, and is the de facto capital of Scandinavia. It has more foreign visitors than any city in Scandinavia. It also has a certain impressive flair. I could live in Stockholm, just as I could live in Berlin.

To appreciate one of the main reasons Stockholm is special, you have to understand about the water. Abutting Stockholm to the west is Mälaren, Sweden’s third largest lake. Immediately to the east is Östersjön (Öster+sjö+n, the East Sea, the Baltic). The region is broken up into 24,000 islands, some large, some flyspecks. Stockholm is built on 14 of them, so everywhere you go, you’re crossing water, beautiful channels spanned by charming bridges in a picture-perfect city.

Continue to visualize this west-east water orientation between Mälaren and the Baltic and you’ll begin to understand why Stockholm grew where it did, both for trade and military reasons. But it is first essential to understand Gamla Stan.

On the surface, Gamla Stan means “the Old City”, but that doesn’t express the depth of the concept in this case. Most cities have an original area from which everything grew, some going back centuries, but in Stockholm, Gamla Stan is also a state of mind.

As to the name: we’ve said “stad” means “city”, and “staden” would be “the city”, but Swedish likes to telescope words, especially commonly used ones, and staden telescopes down to just stan. It rhymes with “Don”, so don’t think of Stan(ley).

Gamla Stan developed on an island, since enlarged, plus three smaller, beautiful islets, located right in between Mälaren and the Baltic. Between Gamla Stan and the area north of it is a small dam, and between Gamla Stan and the large island to the south is a lock, including sluice gates, separating the fresh lake water on the west side of Gamla Stan from the brackish Baltic water on the east. This small lock on the south side, Slussen (the sluice), once a main waterway, is now only used for pleasure boats, but above Slussen itself, on bridges, the AREA known as Slussen is a major traffic hub for roads, rail, and subway.

To the north and south of Gamla Stan are much larger islands, appearing in comparison to almost be the mainland. The modern commercial center is to the north. Years ago we stayed there, and longed for Gamla Stan. This time I stayed in Gamla Stan, right on Skeppsbrokajen (Skepp+s+bro+kaj+en, “The Ship’s Bridge Quay”) facing the Baltic, which used to be the maritime entrance to the city. When ships used to arrive centuries ago, porters would portage (carry) cargo through the streets of Gamla Stan to the Mälaren side for reshipment further inland.

In the middle of Gamla Stan, on higher land, actually the highest point of the island, is the square known as Stortorget, the Great Market [Square]. All the side streets leading uphill to it were dirt paths in the 1100’s. Those ancient porters would have to carry goods up the narrow streets leading to it, and then downhill again on the other side. I did this a number of times, since that’s the only way you see the old medieval streets, churches, and other public buildings. One of the streets Köpmansgatan (the Merchant’s Street) is the oldest street name on record in Stockholm, dating from 1323. On the north side of Stortorget is the building of Svenska Akademien (5 syllables in this last word), and it’s here where the Academy decides each year on the recipient for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Nearby in Gamla Stan are the Royal Palace and the Parliament building.

I found one very nice place to go to dinner, and liked it so much, that I went again on my last night. It’s called Fem små hus (Five Small Houses), and is in the medieval, brick vaulted cellars of five adjoining houses, just a block off Skeppsbrokajen where I stayed. The candlelit, charming atmosphere is pervasive.

I got a daypass for the tunnelbana. Of the three lines, I had read that the blue line was most interesting, and it was. It’s the newest one, and was tunneled out of solid bedrock, often deep below the level of the other two. Being so low (it’s reached by long escalators, as is often the case in London) gave it the feeling of being airconditioned. But its decoration was what made it unique. First, it looks like you’re in a cave. They’ve left the raw, angular, bedrock exposed in some places, and gives the feeling of being in a mine. But in most places, they seem to have covered the raw rock with something like gunnite, giving the surface a lumpy look, which has been painted, different colors in different stations. It’s a very unique look. On top of that, almost every station has artwork on these walls. I was advised to go to Rinkeby station (note the –by), where the gunnite-on-rock was painted a terra cotta color, and where mosaics of gold and other colors appeared in various places. It’s very impressive.

I’ve noted another thing. I think I mentioned that Sweden used to drive on the left, although apparently not using the British system of driving left, and steering wheel on the right, but instead using drive left, steering wheel also on the left, which must have made it quite awkward. When we were there in 1961, when we drove off the ferry from Denmark there were arrows showing to cross over lanes to drive left in Sweden. Anyway, in the 1970’s Sweden shifted to driving on the right, and I thought that was the end of that. Only now have I noticed that the left-handed mentality remains pervasive. Trains, both intercity and tunnelbana, still ride on the left track, just as in Britain. When you’re in a station waiting for the tunnelbana train to come, it will show up coming from the opposite direction than you expect. Also, when you come to a bank of escalators, the one going in your direction (either up or down) will usually be on the left, not on the right as we’re used to.

Uppsala   I spent part of one day by taking the train for the 35-minute ride to Uppsala, which contains Sweden’s, and Scandinavia’s, oldest university, dating from 1477. Next to the university is the domkyrka, the cathedral, and at noon I came across there a free concert by a brass quintet. The acoustics in the cathedral were impressive, especially with brass instruments. A café I passed was selling paj. You might not recognize it as the respelling of an English word, but you might when I combine it with a Swedish word, äppelpaj, which is just what they were selling. They were also selling tonfisk, and if you correctly pronounce the O as OO, you’ll get it.

Drottningholms Slott   On another day I went back after many years to Drottningholm (“Queen’s Islet”) Palace, the palace complex that was put on the UNESCO list of world heritage sites in 1991. Aside from the palace itself with its gardens, there was the Kina Slott (China Palace), a recently-restored outbuilding built in Chinese style, and the theater, which turned out to be a jewel, and the prize of the lot.

It dates from 1766 and is the oldest theater in the world that’s never been restored. It’s a rectangular shape, so that all seats are straight-on view. It has a proscenium with two curtains, but they are not used during scene changes for reasons to be explained in a moment. The stage is good-sized, and shows a very deep perspective, partially due to a 4% slope. But it’s the stage machinery, all original, and all WOOD AND ROPES, that is absolutely amazing. We couldn’t see it operating in reality (you’d have to see a performance to do so), but they had a video of what the stage could do, which had the huge advantage that you could see not only what was done and how it was done, but the men actually doing it.

I had read about the thunder box and the wind machine, but that was simple compared to the good stuff. The thunder box is a long narrow box on a pivot, filled with rocks. Ropes on either end are maneuvered to tilt it one way or the other, for a convincing thunder sound. The wind machine is a barrel-device with canvas flaps; spinning it sounds like wind.

But it’s the stage transformations that are mind-boggling, and when you think it’s done with a (large) bunch of guys in the cellar pulling ropes and spinning huge cylinders, it’s doubly amazing. When you look at the stage, there are about a half-dozen flats projecting onto the stage on either side, each one a little smaller and a bit closer to the center to contribute to that perspective. Let’s say for example there’s a column painted on the end of each flat, to indicate a ballroom, and you want to change to a garden scene, with a flowered trellis on the end of each flat. On cue, the two half-dozen sets of flats on each side of the stage are pulled offstage on tracks, and are immediately replaced by two other half-dozen sets with the new scene. It takes about five seconds to transform the stage this way, since the new flats are on different tracks than the old ones. The video shows the guys in t-shirts and shorts furiously grabbing handles on a cylinder to move the ropes and pulleys. The transformations are as interesting as the play, and for that reason, the curtain is not dropped during scene changes.

In a similar way, huge masses of clouds can be dropped from above and painted cutouts of trees can rise from the floor. If you think that hydraulic lifts are needed to raise an actor standing on a platform from the basement, you’d be wrong. Workers rotating a vertical cylinder in the basement can do it just as well, as they showed.

I have rarely seen something as unusual, as impressive, and as satisfying. Actually, the theater had fallen into disuse over the years. In the 1920’s, a theater enthusiast took a year, unpaid, to research how the mechanics worked and to restore them, and performances have been given since. I suppose that two centuries ago, the theater paid workers to do this heavy work. It would only be a guess, but I have the feeling that the people who do it now might be volunteers, sort of like volunteer firemen, because nowadays you can’t pay people to do such vigorous, heavy work like that.

[By the way, I found out that the Swedish name for “The Magic Flute” is “Trollflöjten”. Those trolls seem to get involved everywhere in Scandinavia.]

The other big plus of having revisted Drottningholm is the way I got there. Years ago, we had driven, but this time I went by boat on the advice of Michelin, who pointed out that the palace was meant to be seen from the water approach, which is quite true. The company that does this is Strömma, and I took a round trip on their boats on Mälaren, an hour each way.

[A side comment on palaces, which all seem to lie southwest or west of major cities. Drottningholm is on an island in Mälaren SW of Stockholm; Versailles is SW of Paris; Schönbrunn is SW of Wien/Vienna; Windsor is W of London; Sans Souci in Potsdam is SW of Berlin; Petrodvorets/Peterhof/Petergof is W and the Catherine Palace (Amber Room) is SW of Saint Petersburg. Is there a trend here?]

The surprise with Strömma is that they run historic boats, in this case, day boats, some of which, maybe all, are historically protected. I was lucky enough to go on the s/s Drottningholm from 1909, which takes 95 passengers. Not only was it steam-run (an ångbåt), but there was posted a Certificate from Föreningen för Ångbåtsvänner (the Society of Steamboat-Friends) certifying its authenticity. (You can also do the “English flip” on that name and translate it as the Society of the Friends of Steamboats.) I came back on Strömma’s m/s Prins Carl Philip, which is older, dating from 1901, and bigger, at 147 passengers, but as the m/s instead of the s/s indicates, it was converted to diesel in the 1950’s, losing just a bit of cachet.

The Vasa   On 10 August 1628, the newly-built warship Vasa (VAHH.ssa) set sail in Stockholm. It was a huge ship for its time, 69 meters/yards long, and 53 meters/yards high from its keel to its masthead. It had a crew of 145, plus 300 soldiers on board. It was all wood, of course, with an impressive prow, and was decorated with 700 hand-carved wooden sculptures, a large number of them decorating the stern of the ship from top almost down to the waterline. The ship was painted red, and all the sculptures were brightly painted, skin colors were clear, with bright red cheeks and lips, and dazzling colors on the costumes. Bright gold paint accented many features. The Vasa carried 64 cannons, each the weight of a modern car, and instead of having just one of the underdecks sprouting cannons on each side, it was unique in having a second deck with openings for the cannons to protrude. This one ship had taken almost two years to build, and had used up a good bite of the national budget.

On this, its maiden voyage, to the cheers of Stockholmers who had watched it being built for all that time, it sailed for twenty minutes out into Stockholm harbor, just southeast of Gamla Stan—and promptly sank to the bottom.

[I mentioned the Vasa to the captain of the Juno while sailing on the Göta Kanal, and mentioned that the Titanic also sank on its maiden voyage, but in the case of the Vasa, the Swedes did it first, and three centuries earlier! He roared with laughter and said he’d have to use that sometime. More seriously, consider the parallel of live and TV spectators watching failed, fatal space ship launchings.]

It was particularly galling that the Vasa was so tall, so that after it sank, its masts still stuck out above the waterline, with the Swedish flag flying away. Apparently they had known that there was trouble with a center of gravity that was too high, due to all the weight of those guns on the unique two gun decks, but were still hoping for the best. Yet, a sudden gust caused the Vasa to tilt, water rushed in through the open gun turrets, and down it went. In modern times it was determined that the captain had not arranged for enough ballast to be put at the bottom of the ship to counterbalance its topheaviness. At the inquiry at the time, the captain lied that he had, and the admiral and shipbuilder said they had done nothing wrong. The inquiry commission ended up determining that it was the fault of the original shipbuilder, who was already conveniently dead.

Little could be done, given the lack of underwater technology in 1628. But there was one thing they could do to at least retrieve some of those cannons. They took a huge church bell, removed the clapper, and installed four leather straps on the rim holding up a lead plate below the opening of the bell. A man was dressed in leather (no wet suits then), got under the church bell and stood on the lead plate so that only his lower legs showed. As the bell was lowered into the water, an air bubble remained under the bell (which decreased in size the lower the bell went, due to the increased pressure), allowing the man to breathe while he tried to locate a cannon and fasten a rope around it. He must have had to work in complete darkness, since candlelight was the only illumination available in those days, and useless here.

There are two interesting facts about this primitive method of underwater recovery. First, it had been invented much earlier by Leonardo da Vinci, and still can be found among his drawings. The second point is a language one: to this day, even the most modern underwater contrivance is still called a diving bell, even though it’s been a long time since actual church bells were used.

Just as it was a private individual in the 1920’s who spent his own time and energy to bring the Drottningholm Court Theater back into operation, it was also a private individual who rediscovered the location of the long-forgotten Vasa. In the late 1950’s, he went out on a small boat in Stockholm harbor using the simplest of devices, a lead weight on a rope. The sharp, circular bottom of the weight could cut a ring out of any wood it hit on sinking, and eventually, through trial and error, he pulled up a sample of blackened oak, leading to the discovery of the Vasa.

The harbor water, like the Baltic in general, is brackish, with a low salt content, so shipworms cannot survive, which explains why the oak of the Vasa was so well preserved. Modern divers (no church bells) installed four cables under the Vasa, mud was pumped out, and she was floated in 1961. The Vasa had been underwater for 333 years, a third of a milennium.

But only then did the preservation work begin. If the wood had dried out, it would have rotted. It was decided to preserve the wood by spraying it with a waxy plastic, which is how Beverly and I first saw the Vasa. During our visit in 1973, you could visit the Vasa as it was being preserved. The museum then told you the story, but the actual visit of the ship involved entering an area covered with plastic sheeting and seeing little sprinklers all over spraying this mixture onto the ship. That eerie image is the one that has stayed with me over all these years, since the spraying went on for about two decades, first constant spraying, then intermittent spraying.

I was eager to see what it looks like today. It’s in a new building, and the first thing you see on approaching it is two steel masts on the roof, which imitate the height of the original wooden masts, as though they were piercing the roof of the museum. Drama is accented on entering Vasamuseet. As you enter at the 6 o’clock position, the massive, decorated prow is facing 7 o’clock, as though it’s just missing hitting you. The illumination is muted, adding to the aura of mystery. The oak wood looks brown-black. You can view the ship from seven different galleries. You enter on level 4, which would be water level, and can go down levels to view it from further below, as well as up higher.

The most interesting view is of all the statuary on the stern. They have some full-size copies of works on a side wall that they’ve painted, based on their research, and have set two painted copies of statues onto the Vasa itself so you can get an idea of how the whole ship looked in its original colors. They are still researching colors, and it is not clear if they plan to restore the colors on the ship itself, or just leave the copies on the wall. You can argue either way, but I’d like to see what the Vasa itself looks like in its original, restored colors. Visiting the Vasa is an adventure in art, in history, and in historic preservation.

All the side galleries have related exhibitions. Since the public can’t physically enter the ship, there is a full-size duplication in wood of part of a gun deck (don’t hit your head on the low ceiling). There is a four-stage model showing the raising of the Vasa. There is a language booth with a recording speaking the Swedish of 1628, although I couldn’t hear too many differences. There was a display of bones found, and three life-size clothed busts, reconstructions of individual faces based on actual skulls. They have done a wonderful restauration job.

Göta Kanal   I’ve been mentioning the Göta Kanal for some time now. Again, it’s pronounced YÖ.ta, and I’ll spell canal the Swedish way just for a bit more authenticity. On the surface, it “connects” the two biggest cities in Sweden, Stockholm and Göteborg (Gothenburg). In reality it does no such thing, which requires an explanation.

What it does do is allow you to go by boat between those two cities, right across the middle of Sweden. But a distinction has to be made between Göta Kanalen itself and the ROUTE of Göta Kanalen, since the canal was built to connect gaps between other already established waterways, allowing the cross-Sweden route to work. The entire water ROUTE between those cities is 398 kilometers (100 kilometers are 62 miles), but the canal itself covers only 190 kilometers of that, or roughly half. First some background.

The cross-Sweden water route had been a wish for some centuries, both for military and commercial reasons. Construction finally started in 1809, and the canal became a reality when it opened in 1832. It had been excavated by hand mainly by 50,000 soldiers. It is roughly three meters/yards deep, although that varies, based on silting up. Its width varies between 7 and 26 meters/yards, the wider spots allowing for boats to pass each other.

It remains as Sweden’s largest building project EVER. In 1998 it was awarded the status of “International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark”, along with the Eiffel Tower, Panama Canal, and others, including the White Pass and Yukon Railroad in Alaska and British Columbia that I discussed last year (Reflections 2005 Series 12 “Engineering Landmarks”). Our old friend “HO SE”, Hans Christian Andersen, traveled on it in 1837; so did Henrik Ibsen, later.

The trip on the Göta Kanal is billed as a trip on “two seas, one river, three canals, eight lakes, and 66 locks”. That is true, but you should note that the Göta Kanal itself includes 58 of those 66 locks, which is an indication of the difficulty of building it, and of its importance. Of course, importance is relative. The great canal-building era everywhere was in the early 1800’s, yet by the mid-1800’s the great railroad-building era started and took most of the business away from the canals, along with their importance. I expect to be talking about American canals in this regard in the next month or two.

The two seas referred to are of course the Baltic and the North Sea, of which the Kattegat is an arm. The one river is the Göta alv, at Göteborg. The other two canals are the Södertälje canal near Stockholm and the Trollhättan canal on the Göta alv near Göteborg, which dates from 1800 and pre-exists the Göta Kanal. Of the eight lakes, the two most important ones are the large Vättern and the huge Vänern, which are easily visible on any map of Sweden, like two eyes peering out of the middle of Sweden.

The canal boat company owns three boats, the Juno (1874), Wilhelm Tham (1912), and the Diana (1931). When on board, I found out that Strömma, who owns and runs the other historic boats such as the s/s Drottningholm, recently bought the canal boat company, and so will be able to continue to maintain the boats. When making plans last winter, I was very happy to find out the trip I was able to schedule time-wise would be on the Juno, the oldest one. I heard that there is a day-trip boat in service somewhere that is the oldest boat in regular service anywhere, but can’t take overnight passengers. The Juno is the oldest “cruise” boat in the world, therefore. I’ve never taken an overnight trip on an older boat, and never will.

When picturing the Göta Kanal, you certainly won’t be picturing the Panama Canal, and, frankly, don’t even picture the Kiel Canal, either. You will not see the Europa sailing down the Göta Kanal. The only boats that fit the locks are very small ones. They are what you can call “dedicated” sizes, meaning they’re built to fit these locks; any day-trip pleasure boat wanting to do the same (we passed one, the “Bellevue”) will have to be this size or smaller, as well as any yachts or other private boats. As a matter of fact, there is what you might call a boating culture all along the canal and lakes you pass. Most houses have a dock or boathouse, typical of areas on the water.

When on board, I asked the Staff Captain about the size of the Juno (which is typical of all three). For the record, it’s 6.87 meters wide (22.5 feet) and 31.45 meters long (103 feet), and weighs 259 gross tons. I point this out because in the locks of the actual Göta Kanal, the Juno just fits, with one meter/yard TOTAL clearance, either sideways or front-to-back. It fits these locks like a hand in a glove.

As I think I’ve pointed out, my hotel in Gamla Stan was right on Skeppsbrokajen, and it was a matter of just crossing the couple of lanes of traffic to walk where all the sightseeing boats were tied up along the kaj/quay. A couple of days before I was to leave, the Wilhelm Tham was tied up there overnight, and looked so small in between the larger boats. Then the night before I left, the Juno was waiting as well, which I boarded the next morning for a 3 ½-day trip to Göteborg.

The petiteness of the ship is a pleasant surprise. You can walk the complete circle of all the open corridors circling its deck in about 30 seconds. Picture a Mississippi steamboat from Mark Twain’s day in miniature, of course with no paddlewheel. As you look at the side of such a vessel, you’ll see the cabin doors. That’s what the Juno and others look like.

It has a capacity of 54 passengers; on this trip there were 43. It certainly seemed that all cabins were taken, so the difference is probably due to single passengers in a cabin, like me.

There are three decks, each connected by a single, narrow, VERY steep flight of stairs, the type where you want to hold on to the bannisters on both sides, and still watch your step very carefully. I visited the lower deck just once, on that first day, and that was enough for me. It has maybe 13-15 cabins, the galley, and crew quarters. The cabins each have a small, openable porthole. They were cheaper, but I think that you lost part of the experience living down below. The cabins on the middle and upper deck had all the view.

The upper deck had six cabins, three on a side. I didn’t think in advance it was worth the extra expense to be upstairs and I was right. The back of the upper deck was the open deck area, covered by a canvas roof. The roof tended to get hot in the sun, so I spent only occasional time there. The front of the upper deck had the bridge, so you could watch the captain and staff captain steering the boat, and talk with them (English).

I was glad I had chosen a cabin on the middle deck. You were in the center of activity, since there were three cabins on a side, and mine was right at the gangway. In the back of this deck was the dining room, an in front was the salon, which converted into a second dining room. You could get great views from anywhere, including up front at the prow of the ship.

The fittings were totally modern, all mahoganny and brass. Still, it was a ship from 1874, and the cabins were like walk-in closets. Actually, they were like the usual railroad sleeping compartments. There were two bunk beds (the upper one kept folded up for me), and the remaining floor space was the SIZE of a bunk bed, with a beautiful mahoganny covered sink at the end, and hooks for clothes. I had to manoeuver around my big suitcase, and I used the portable stepstool for the upper bunk as a desk to write on the laptop while sitting on the bunk.

The question of privacy was interesting. The bath/toilet was down the deck (fortunately only two doors down for me), so you had to get used to being seen by others as you came out of the shower not yet looking your best. It was the old-fashioned “one big happy family” atmosphere. The cabin doors had large windows in them, but were not lockable. There was a large, heavy, tapestry-like drape that could cover the opening when the door was hooked outside in open position. At first one thought one would close the door at night, outside of the drape. Beyond that you then thought that, for ventilation, you would use the latch that kept the door open about four inches, on the other side of the drape. Finally, you decided, who cares, you locked the door outside in totally open position overnight, and slept behind nothing but the heavy drape wafting in the breeze. It was great.

Why was it great? I woke up the first morning to the smell of new-mown hay. I stuck my head out beyond the drape and there were 10-15 brown cows about 10 meters/yards away sitting in a green field on the edge of the canal chewing their cud. Later on, we were to sail across large Lake Vättern at night and wouldn’t really see it, so I stuck my head out in the middle of the night and saw the lake by moonlight. On the last morning we were going down the huge Trollhättan locks very early, so out came the head once again. That’s why it was great. Also, you would not have had this same experience on the lower deck. The two upper decks were the place to be.

The woman who was the cruise director later told me she used to work for Swedish television, but had been downsized into retirement, so this was her retirement job. Aside from Swedish, she spoke perfect English, and very good German with the occasional grammatical error, or with putting an English word into a German sentence, particularly “guide”. As I boarded, she had news for me. I was the only American on board, in fact, the only English speaker, so that I would have a private explanation for everything. Everyone else on board was either Danish or German. I made her day when I told her she could drop giving any announcements in English; German would be fine for me, so all announcements were in Swedish and German. [Do note that the Danes followed the Swedish just fine. Also, in Stockholm they were showing an American movie with subtitles in Danish, not Swedish. I’m beginning to think more and more that the Scandinavian languages are not much more different from each other than British and American English, though probably a bit moreso.]

Once again that bane of travel, the tours. More than half the passengers were on a Danish tour from near Århus, Denmark’s second city. They were all small-town people who all knew each other, two elements that can be deadly. As it turns out, they were assigned the dining room, and “we Germans (also an Austrian couple and a Swiss couple)” got the salon which was converted to a dining room for lunch and dinner. After the first lunch, four Danes who were not in that tour hurried to join our group, since they couldn’t take the inbred atmosphere in the back, so our table for nine was German-speaking to my left and English-speaking to my right, on the “Danish” side. Two of the Danes were a brother, who still lived in Denmark, and a sister, who lives in Los Angeles, (she flipped between Danish and English) so there were in reality two Americans on board, although I got all the credit, since she passed for Danish. On the last night, the Captain joined our table, since he wanted to sit between the two Americans. As it turned out, his first name was Don-Axel, an unusual combination, but again, showing the penchant for this type of double first name.

The cruise director pointed out that it was very odd to have only “one” American. When these trips started a few decades ago, it was mostly Americans on board, since it was still too expensive for Swedes. Now there are up to 40% Swedes on the trips, and other Europeans, but I suppose that Danish tour group skewed the totals this time.

Although I’ve discussed locks before, particularly on the Panama Canal, it still might not be clear to all what they are. Let’s try looking at it this way. If the land ahead of you goes uphill, you just build your highway uphill as well. The same with a railroad line. But how do you get a canal to go uphill? You can’t tilt a canal. The water would run out.

Let’s say there’s a simple rise of just a short distance, such as between Mälaren and the Baltic. Mälaren is just 0.3 meters above sea level, which is just about one foot. You close off the higher water (Mälaren, here) with an earthen berm, and put a gate in it. The gate (wood, or metal) has two doors which come together in a V-form, the V pointing toward the higher water, so that the pressure helps keep them closed. The Baltic is then the lower water, by one foot.

So far, so good, but how do you get a boat through from one level to the other? Well, where the boat’s going to be, facing that V-gate, you put up two stone walls, and behind the boat, put another V-gate. The Juno comes at Baltic (low) level into the back gate, and it closes. Inside this “lock” the Juno is still at the lower level. Panels in the front gate are lifted and higher Mälaren water flows right through these openings in the gate and raises the water level in the lock around the Juno. When this water is equal in height to Mälaren, the water stops flowing, the front gates are opened, and Juno has risen from the lower to the upper level of water. Going “downhill”, the system is reversed.

You can have two locks in a row, sharing a common gate. Actually, Göta Kanalen has several multiple locks, the most spectacular being at Berg, where there is the Carl-Johan lock stairway, which has seven interconnected locks. You can get out of the boat and walk up the path on the side of the lock to watch the Juno rise, or stay on board. It’s fun staying on board, looking at the stone walls seem to sink, as in reality you are rising.

At each lock the Juno is tied up, and untied, again and again. There is a young crew of 4-5, in this case, more young women than men, hopping on and off, tying and untying. This is serious business, as they are all in nautical programs, working for the classification of “able seaman”. By the way, there were two young women who did all the cooking in that tiny galley. I don’t imagine how they prepared such a variety of gourmet meals. They even baked their own bread on board, although the captain confided at our table that the loaves are actually par-baked earlier on land.

When we were in Sweden in 1973 I had picked up a folder on the Göta Canal, expecting that we might travel on it someday. I had had it in our files all these years, so I brought it along. It said “1973” on the front in large numbers, and people particularly enjoyed noting the difference in price over the years.

There was a little pigtailed girl on board, maybe nine years old. It had been announced that someone on the waitstaff would go around with a hand gong when it was time for lunch or dinner, but from the very beginning, the little girl was given that job instead, and as she marched along with a businesslike expression on her face, she always left a wake of smiles behind her.

So, now for our route. We left Gamla Stan and crossed the harbor, passing over where the Vasa had gone down, and also passing by where the Viking Line ferry was preparing to leave for Helsinki, which I would be doing on my return. We did not use the too-small lock at Slussen, but went around to the south of Stockholm to the lock described earlier. In Mälaren, we went a bit out of the way to pull up to Drottningholm, where I had just gone two days earlier. We turned south into the Södertälje canal, a major waterway for big ships connecting from the south into Mälaren. The one lock was the largest we would go through, which, at 135 meters/yards, was over four times the length of Juno. We then entered the open Baltic, although not too “open”, since we again sailed among the coastal islands.

We then re-entered mainland Sweden by turning west again, up an estuary. We had been sailing a whole day, and hadn’t reached the actual Göta Kanal yet, which would happen during the night at Mem. The next morning was my “morning of the cows” on the narrow Göta Kanal.

Standing on my deck up front, or the upper deck, the view ahead is idyllic. You wind through the green fields on the narrow canal, stop for a lock here and there, and continue onward. In some places the canal is wider, to allow for passing. Bridges rise for us, smaller country roads have crossings that just slide backwards over the road at ground level. The pace is delightfully slow, slow, slow, occasionally going the length of some smaller lake, and then the canal resuming again.

I got some interesting information from the captain when I asked him what had preceded diesel, and earlier, steam power. It turns out that the canal was originally built for sailing vessels, since it preceeded the steam era. When there was not enough wind, they’d be pulled along the towpath by horses, or workers. That also explains why the canal winds so gracefully. It wasn’t for esthetics. In case a sailing vessel got out of hand because of a sudden gust of wind, it could be guided to the side at one of the bends to slow it down, rather than having it ram a sluice gate at a lock.

At Norsholm lock the main railway line from Malmö to Stockholm crosses at ground level, so the tracks lift. I hadn’t even noticed the canal from the train a few days earlier.

After going up the lock stairway at Berg, we went over the first of several aqueducts. In actuality, the highway crossing our path goes UNDER the canal via an underpass.

In the evening of the second day we came to Borensberg, which has one of two hand-operated locks that have been left on the canal. It was a wonderful idea to have left these, probably since the change in water level wasn’t that great, anyway. Usually, there’s a canal employee working mechanical controls, but here, boat workers jump out and do the honors on each side of the canal, first at the sluice gates up front to enter the lock, then again at the other sluice gates behind to leave the lock. Actually, at this time, a passenger, who said he’d done it before, worked one of them. It’s really quite simple. Picture a hockey stick with a vertical gear below, which connects to a ratchet along a wooden beam. This beam is connected to one of the gates. As you walk in a circle pushing the “hockey stick”, it turns the gear, which pulls or pushes the ratchet and beam and opens, or closes, the gate.

We ended the second day having arrived at Motala (MOO.ta.la), where we docked for much of the night rather then traveling through. It’s a mid-size town that grew with the canal, and is considered the cradle of Swedish industry. Many of the historic boats I’d been on had been built here.

The eastern part of Göta Kanalen ends in Motala. On our third day at 4 AM (I peeked out) we crossed Lake Vättern (Vätt- rhymes with get), 89 meters/292 feet high and Sweden’s second largest and also deepest lake at 128 meters. We then entered the western part of the canal, which connects Sweden’s two biggest lakes. On its way it passes through Lake Viken, which, at 91.8 meters, about 300 feet, is the highest point of the trip. Allowing ten feet per storey, the Juno has been lifted by locks, step by step, the height of a 30-storey building. We now go back down to sea level.

At Tåtorp is the other set of hand-operated locks. I know that in 1973, on one of our weekend driving trips out of Göteborg, we had stopped to see people using hand-operated locks; since this one is closer to Göteborg, I assume this was the one.

At Töreboda, the railway line between Göteborg and Stockholm crosses the canal at ground level at about a 45° angle. The station itself is right where the railroad bridge opens, and I made a mental note to look for the intersection again from the train the next day.

That evening we leave the Göta Kanal to finally enter the second large lake, Vänern (Vä- rhymes with cafE), which is Sweden’s and Western Europe’s largest lake, and Europe’s third largest lake after Lakes Ladoga and Onega in Russia. We are already down to 44 meters/144 feet. Crossing the lake in the evening, we feel the difference being out on choppy, open water. Just before midnight, we are at the south end of the lake at Läckö Castle (1298), which we pull up to at water’s edge (by moonlight, no less). The ship shines its lights on the white walls of the castle. We stay there for a while, since it’s a special experience.

It gets more special. We are scheduled to meet sister ship Wilhelm Tham (1912), coming up from Göteborg. She appears out of the darkness, and gives the familiar three-toot greeting, which the Juno replies to.

The morning of that last half-day is when we go through the four huge Trollhättan locks, for a total drop of 32 meters. The locks replaced a waterfall of that height (the waterfall is turned on again one day a year). The Trollhättan locks had been rebuilt and enlarged three times, most recently in 1916. Shortly afterward we go through the last lock of the trip at Lilla Edet, also from 1916, but originally built in 1607 as the very first lock in Sweden. We are on the Göta alv (alv = river), which drains Vänern and becomes Göteborg’s harbor, just as the Elbe is Hamburg’s harbor. Several points can be made here. The commercial connection between Vänern and the west coast is an old one, and solving the problems of the Göta alv, such as its waterfall, have been going on for a long time. Since this western end of the route has had canal and lake traffic for a long time, it becomes clearer why the Göta Kanal was a connection that went from Vänern EASTWARD. Also, since the original lock at Lilla Edet dates from 1607, you can see that the thinking for a cross-Sweden canal had been around for two centures before the Göta Kanal was built, since the lock technology already existed.

Going down the Göta alv we ended up crossing the path of our other sister ship, Diana (1931), so we did another mutual three-toot greeting. We were a bit early, so we had a tour of the harbor, before debarking mid-afternoon. I walked around downtown for a while, but remembered little of the center from years ago, which is ironic, since Beverly’s diary says all foreign students were given a reception by the city when we studied Swedish those three weeks in the summer of 1973.

I took Beverly’s Train, the X2000, back to Stockholm. It was as full as the one the previous week had been, but this time I had my first class reservation, so it was calmer. You were served a complimentary snack and beverage at your seat, and writing, the time flew by. From Stockholm to Gothenburg had taken 3 ½ days, but wouldn’t have been much less without the stops. The X2000 reversed it in just over 3 hours. It being an express train, I knew we’d be just be passing Töreboda, but I hoped to spot the station and its sign, to judge where the canal was. As I looked up, what could have been the station flew by, but just beyond it was a tiny drainage ditch running under the tracks at a curious 45° angle. I realized that, in a fraction of a second we had zoomed past not a drainage ditch, but the Göta Kanal.