Vasa Museum

We had our first friend fly from the U.S. to visit for the weekend. We spent most of the time checking out different restaurants and bars for the Stockholm Jazz Festival with a wide variety of jazz bands. We did many of the basic tourist sites that can be done in a couple of days. I already posted about most of them like the Gamla Stan area. The new one we hadn't seen was the Vasa Museum since we've saved many of the museums for the winter when we're more likely to do indoor activities.

Located on the island of Djurgården, the Vasa Museum displays the only almost fully intact 17th century ship that has ever been salvaged, the 64-gun warship Vasa that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628. The Vasa Museum opened in 1990 and, according to the official web site, is the most visited museum in Scandinavia. (Wikipedia)


Here's a few pictures but it's mostly one of those big things you have to see in person:

Lisbon Portugal

I had to go to Lisbon for a week of information systems security training. Life is just so rough sometimes. :-) I hung out for the weekend before returning to Stockholm. I had a wonderful time and highly recommend it for a vacation based on just the weekend.

We started down at the docas (docks) to eat at one of the nice restaurants. It's near the 25 de Abril Bridge built by the same people that built the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. Lisbon feels a bit like San Francisco built over many hills with trolleys rolling around town.

Monteliusvägen in Stockholm

Here's pictures of our walk towards and along Monteliusvägen in the Södermalm neighborhood. It was a beautiful day for a walk!

Berlin Germany

We took our first of many weekend excursions to another country. It was slightly more than an hour to fly to Berlin which is about how long it'd take to fly from San Antonio to Dallas. Flying around in the European Union feels strange because we didn't have to show passports. I didn't really expect to get around as freely as moving around the United States. Sweden isn't a part of the Euro economic zone so sometimes I forget they're a part of the EU since we did have to get different currency.

The other odd travel thing about Berlin is their transit system with proof-of-payment enforced with random spot checks we never witnessed. There's no turnstiles or any other kind of barriers or toll attendants. There's just fare machines on the platform to buy tickets for 2-3 euros. If undercover Kontrollers catch you not paying then the fine is 40 euros. We bought 72 hour city passes for our tourist weekend which included various discounts and unlimited transit rides. I felt kind of ripped off because it seemed like we could just wander on and off the rail system without it. The bus drivers didn't seem all that interested in the validity of the tickets we flashed them.

Berlin was an interesting trip. We obviously spent some time on the Berlin Wall and the history of the city but we also just soaked in Berlin and did a little shopping since things there are a good bit cheaper than expensive Stockholm. OK, enough writing. Here's a variety of pictures from the trip.

We stayed at Hotel Gat Point Charlie with these cool light boxes over our beds.

Stockholm Apartment

Our apartment is finally looking like our home. I hadn't really posted any pictures of it. I was waiting until it had our stuff in it and didn't look like we were still moving in. Our daughter's bedroom may never be finished because we're not doing it, but we finally finished the rest of it. First, here's a picture near work of the lovely day outside. There wasn't any rain and it was a nice warm 64F. It's been more rainy and overcast so it was a nice break. I'm having some fun with the panorama feature on my phone (click to enlarge).

Household Effects Delivered!

Our Household Effects (HHE) were delivered today! My wife did most of the directing in the rooms and I mostly marked off the items on the list as they came up the elevator over and over and... I saw the scene below at least 50 times. I sat a good bit but still ended up hobbling around on a crutch to help keep an eye on the action around the apartment.

First FS Post - 5 Weeks Later

Blogging and many other things were sidelined by knee problems, so I'm finally writing an update about how we're settling in at our first post and Foreign Service assignment after 5 weeks.