It's perfect
In case you didn't catch what makes it special, read this and then look again. It's either extraordinarily lucky, or someone at Caltrans was thinkin' ahead when he or she chose the spot and landmarks for this sign.
-
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Progression
Geek alert: It's hard for me to describe just how at peace with the world this sign makes me feel.
It's perfect
In case you didn't catch what makes it special, read this and then look again. It's either extraordinarily lucky, or someone at Caltrans was thinkin' ahead when he or she chose the spot and landmarks for this sign.
-
It's perfect
In case you didn't catch what makes it special, read this and then look again. It's either extraordinarily lucky, or someone at Caltrans was thinkin' ahead when he or she chose the spot and landmarks for this sign.
-
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Extraction
Warm sunlight filters through gangly tree branches and cool mist, falling softly on damp moss. Seconds later, an ear-splitting shriek rises until it reverberates through everything within a couple miles. That shriek is the song of an 18,000 RPM Formula 1 V8 engine, and this is September 2nd, the morning of the Belgian Grand Prix.
While I've already written about this weekend, a side story has finally come full circle, and it's time to share.
Ed has brought a bottle of wine with him, minus any means to open it. At about 11am, and after figuring that no one around us has a corkscrew, Ed wanders off into the woods while announcing that he is going to open the bottle of wine by beating it against the trunk of a tree. He knows it is possible but has never done it himself. A scant five minutes later, he returns, bottle intact, and admits that he couldn't get it to work, and that it was a little scary.
An hour goes by and we get thirsty.
I obtain Ed's consent to give 'er a rip, as the wine only cost about 4 Euros, and I traipse off with little more than Ed's description of the technique and my suitcase full of courage. I find what I believe to be a perfect tree, with smooth and slightly spongy bark, angled just so from vertical, and give the base of the bottle a tentative TWHACK against the trunk.
Nothing.
TWHACK TWHACK TWHACK
Nothing.
After a few minutes of this, I notice the wine in the bottle is starting to bubble a bit. Intrigued, I surmise that there's some cavitation going on, and that the intended water hammer effect is indeed happening. Rather, I suppose that should be "wine hammer," and I also think that would make a great name for a band.
THWACK
The cork has moved. Maybe only half a millimeter, but it's moved. Gotcha, bitch!
THWACK
Another half millimeter. The wine is practically foaming within the bottle.
THWACK
A millimeter. I will win.
THWACK THWACK THWACK
With every bit of movement by the cork, there's less surface area keeping it in the bottle, so this battle is not an uphill one. There's a full centimeter of cork showing.
THWACK
The cork shoots about ten feet with a satisfying "thunk," and I hoot triumphantly while I turn the bottle back upright, perhaps losing one good swig of wine to the grass. Gotta pour a little out for your homies, right?
I return to our spot, feeling like a war hero in a parade. This is the greatest victory of my life. I bask in admiration from Ed and Ethel (that's how I remember it, anyway) while we sip wine in the blistering Belgian heat.
-------------------------
Fast forward a couple of weeks. We're back in Reno, and Phil invites over for dinner with a bunch of other people. If you're one of my seven regular readers, you'll recognize Phil as one of our travelmates from the Europe trip, but he had flown back home before the F1 race. I had, however, bragged to him about my wine triumph.
With 11 people over for dinner, it isn't long before it's time for another bottle of wine to be opened, and I'm bolstered by the prior success with my newfound party trick. Summoning encouraging onlookers, I march into the backyard with a fresh bottle, select my tree, and get to work.
What YouTube has subsequently taught me is that it's not any one big THWACK that does the trick; it's the slow process of gradually building pressure in the bottle with little THWACKS and their associated cavitation.
When this trick goes wrong, it goes unspeakably wrong.
-------------------------
I name thee Pokey
Photographing it was an inevitability. After five months in my body, it's part of the family. I've done my best to make it look super scary by virtue of dragging out the ultra macro lens and lighting it properly, but for scale, it's about 5mm x 3mm x 1mm.
The wound is healing nicely now; it's acting like there's nothing foreign in there. And as far as that party trick goes? Hey, I'm still batting .500...
-
While I've already written about this weekend, a side story has finally come full circle, and it's time to share.
Ed has brought a bottle of wine with him, minus any means to open it. At about 11am, and after figuring that no one around us has a corkscrew, Ed wanders off into the woods while announcing that he is going to open the bottle of wine by beating it against the trunk of a tree. He knows it is possible but has never done it himself. A scant five minutes later, he returns, bottle intact, and admits that he couldn't get it to work, and that it was a little scary.
An hour goes by and we get thirsty.
I obtain Ed's consent to give 'er a rip, as the wine only cost about 4 Euros, and I traipse off with little more than Ed's description of the technique and my suitcase full of courage. I find what I believe to be a perfect tree, with smooth and slightly spongy bark, angled just so from vertical, and give the base of the bottle a tentative TWHACK against the trunk.
Nothing.
TWHACK TWHACK TWHACK
Nothing.
After a few minutes of this, I notice the wine in the bottle is starting to bubble a bit. Intrigued, I surmise that there's some cavitation going on, and that the intended water hammer effect is indeed happening. Rather, I suppose that should be "wine hammer," and I also think that would make a great name for a band.
THWACK
The cork has moved. Maybe only half a millimeter, but it's moved. Gotcha, bitch!
THWACK
Another half millimeter. The wine is practically foaming within the bottle.
THWACK
A millimeter. I will win.
THWACK THWACK THWACK
With every bit of movement by the cork, there's less surface area keeping it in the bottle, so this battle is not an uphill one. There's a full centimeter of cork showing.
THWACK
The cork shoots about ten feet with a satisfying "thunk," and I hoot triumphantly while I turn the bottle back upright, perhaps losing one good swig of wine to the grass. Gotta pour a little out for your homies, right?
I return to our spot, feeling like a war hero in a parade. This is the greatest victory of my life. I bask in admiration from Ed and Ethel (that's how I remember it, anyway) while we sip wine in the blistering Belgian heat.
-------------------------
Fast forward a couple of weeks. We're back in Reno, and Phil invites over for dinner with a bunch of other people. If you're one of my seven regular readers, you'll recognize Phil as one of our travelmates from the Europe trip, but he had flown back home before the F1 race. I had, however, bragged to him about my wine triumph.
With 11 people over for dinner, it isn't long before it's time for another bottle of wine to be opened, and I'm bolstered by the prior success with my newfound party trick. Summoning encouraging onlookers, I march into the backyard with a fresh bottle, select my tree, and get to work.
What YouTube has subsequently taught me is that it's not any one big THWACK that does the trick; it's the slow process of gradually building pressure in the bottle with little THWACKS and their associated cavitation.
When this trick goes wrong, it goes unspeakably wrong.
-------------------------
Since I'm all confident and shit, I start off with a big THWACK.
No cork movement. Harder is obviously the answer.
THWACK
Nothing. Harder. Audience is starting to doubt.
THWACK
Nothing. Harder.
THWABLAAAAASSSSSSTTTTTTT
When the mist clears, I find myself holding the neck of the bottle and nothing else. The force of my swing, added to the pressure spike within the bottle, has proven to be monumentally greater than what the bottle can sustain, and it has quite literally exploded. It's red wine, and it looks like I've been disemboweled, as the wine is coating me from nipples to knees. Onlookers immediately find large chunks of glass about twenty feet away. I realize that I'm bleeding from several places. I then become eminently grateful that a very human reflex is to close one's eyes at moments of impact, as I'm dusted from head to toe with microscopic shards of Used to be a Wine Bottle.
Fortunately, Phil is a paramedic, and also in attendance is an ER doctor, so if things had been really ugly, I would have been in good hands. Well, it's not really ugly, so we rinse my wounds out and bandage them up. After I spend 15 minutes gingerly removing those shards from my eyelids, ears, hair, face, arms, legs, and clothes, I rejoin the party with heavily damaged dignity and clothes that make me smell like my hobbies include being unemployed. And a well-bandaged pinkie finger.
-------------------------
Fully expecting the healing process to take awhile, as my pinkie had been cut deeply, I start working the scar tissue after a few weeks to help things along. After several days of doing this, I start feeling something sharp in there. Uh oh. Perhaps we didn't get it cleaned out properly. I ease off and hope that my body will reject whatever it is.
Maybe three weeks ago, I brush my finger along the edge of my desk, and it bursts open and immediately starts bleeding. Believing that it's time for some little fleck of glass to come out, I go digging after it with tweezers to no avail. I can feel something in there, but I can't get it. I decide to let it heal again and to be patient.
A few days ago, the scab catches on the seam of my jeans pocket and starts bleeding again. This time, I can see a little sparkle from the glass, so I know it's go time. I get home, retrieve the tweezers, and have an easy go of it; the little bastard is right near the surface and I get a good grip on it immediately. However, it keeps coming as I gingerly pull outwards; that sparkle is literally the tip of the iceberg. It's in there the scary way, shark-fin style. Yikes.
I name thee Pokey
Photographing it was an inevitability. After five months in my body, it's part of the family. I've done my best to make it look super scary by virtue of dragging out the ultra macro lens and lighting it properly, but for scale, it's about 5mm x 3mm x 1mm.
The wound is healing nicely now; it's acting like there's nothing foreign in there. And as far as that party trick goes? Hey, I'm still batting .500...
-
Monday, February 18, 2013
Westward
Well, this is it from Sweden. I'm subjecting you to more in-transit photos, mostly because I can, and also because I think they're cool.
We ended up having about two and a half days to ourselves after our business was done, and I'm ridiculously glad that we had that opportunity. Being able to explore on our own time was very much worth it, and I think we would have left unfulfilled otherwise.
Rory looks busy on the pre-dawn train to Arlanda
We did finally see the sun in Sweden; we were sitting on the tarmac at Arlanda at about 9:15am, and suddenly, the cabin of the plane was filled with an unfamiliar flood of radiation. For the first time in 5 days, the sky was clear, and a quick look out the plane window confirmed that that flood was indeed the sun peeking over the horizon. I basked in it for about 30 seconds and then we took off. So thanks for the appearance, Mr. Sun!
Start of the longest sunset ever
When flying east, the transition from day to night is easy to miss; the plane is on a collision course with the oncoming veil of darkness, and sunset is a nonevent. Flying west, however...
Several false sunsets later; still going strong
On this particular day, there was enough in the way of clouds and whatnot near our cruising altitude that I got treated to about two hours of discrete sunsets. The light would turn spectacular for a couple of minutes and die out, and then it'd come back a few minutes later for another show. At least four of them were extraordinary. I was impressed, and I'm sure my sleeping rowmate was not.
Now that I've wrapped this set of serial installments up, I'll spend some time getting current. For once, I feel like I've got a sufficient backlog of material to keep you vampires entertained.
-
We ended up having about two and a half days to ourselves after our business was done, and I'm ridiculously glad that we had that opportunity. Being able to explore on our own time was very much worth it, and I think we would have left unfulfilled otherwise.
Rory looks busy on the pre-dawn train to Arlanda
We did finally see the sun in Sweden; we were sitting on the tarmac at Arlanda at about 9:15am, and suddenly, the cabin of the plane was filled with an unfamiliar flood of radiation. For the first time in 5 days, the sky was clear, and a quick look out the plane window confirmed that that flood was indeed the sun peeking over the horizon. I basked in it for about 30 seconds and then we took off. So thanks for the appearance, Mr. Sun!
Start of the longest sunset ever
When flying east, the transition from day to night is easy to miss; the plane is on a collision course with the oncoming veil of darkness, and sunset is a nonevent. Flying west, however...
Several false sunsets later; still going strong
On this particular day, there was enough in the way of clouds and whatnot near our cruising altitude that I got treated to about two hours of discrete sunsets. The light would turn spectacular for a couple of minutes and die out, and then it'd come back a few minutes later for another show. At least four of them were extraordinary. I was impressed, and I'm sure my sleeping rowmate was not.
Now that I've wrapped this set of serial installments up, I'll spend some time getting current. For once, I feel like I've got a sufficient backlog of material to keep you vampires entertained.
-
Friday, February 8, 2013
Getaway in Stockholm
If you were on the internet before video content was embedded in every stinkin' thing out there, you may remember the Getaway in Stockholm videos; they glorified disregard for traffic laws as an anonymous driver blasted around the city at night.
Between the 20+ hours of travel to get to Stockholm and then the whirlwind 48 hours of work obligations after we got there, when I finally had the opportunity to escape for a run on the fourth day of our trip, I felt like a prison escapee as I channeled those old videos and gleefully braved the arctic conditions.
Looking across one of many waterways
I'll wait a few months to swim...
As a city of islands and water, it's easy to always be running along some shoreline. And even though every road and trail was covered in snow and ice, runners and bike commuters were out in full force. No sissies here!
Whiteout
I certainly wasn't setting any records on surfaces like that, but I think it makes for good technique practice. Land soft and push off soft, or else you'll break your ass!
Royal Palace
The central area of Stockholm is pretty compact; within only a couple miles, one can see many landmarks and attractions, a welcome break from the sprawl back home.
Always a good time for a skate
Doing more with less
Well-refreshed and with brain chemistry tending away from homicidal, the obligations from earlier in the week started to melt away and I began to really enjoy being away from home. Right up until it got dark at 3pm.
-
Between the 20+ hours of travel to get to Stockholm and then the whirlwind 48 hours of work obligations after we got there, when I finally had the opportunity to escape for a run on the fourth day of our trip, I felt like a prison escapee as I channeled those old videos and gleefully braved the arctic conditions.
Looking across one of many waterways
I'll wait a few months to swim...
As a city of islands and water, it's easy to always be running along some shoreline. And even though every road and trail was covered in snow and ice, runners and bike commuters were out in full force. No sissies here!
Whiteout
I certainly wasn't setting any records on surfaces like that, but I think it makes for good technique practice. Land soft and push off soft, or else you'll break your ass!
Royal Palace
The central area of Stockholm is pretty compact; within only a couple miles, one can see many landmarks and attractions, a welcome break from the sprawl back home.
Always a good time for a skate
Doing more with less
Well-refreshed and with brain chemistry tending away from homicidal, the obligations from earlier in the week started to melt away and I began to really enjoy being away from home. Right up until it got dark at 3pm.
-
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Foodie Explorations in Stockholm
I'm not really a foodie, but when I travel, I like to build my days around meals (actually, I do that all the time...), and I do my best to eat what and when the locals eat. Granted, I've never really tested myself by going to a part of the world worthy of garnering Andrew Zimmern's attention, but you will NOT find me in a McDonald's or a Starbucks at any cost!
My recollection is fuzzy due to extreme jetlag and attentiveness to the work mission, but I believe I ate fish with every meal in Sweden, mostly because it was unabashedly fantastic. My other overriding memory from Sweden's food is that it's also unabashedly expensive. I recall an excellent coffee room called Vete-Katten, where two coffees and four pastries come to something approaching 40USD.
The hotels we get are clean, fairly spartan, and pretty expensive (at least by my standards), but the inclusion of breakfast in the rate makes things remarkably more reasonable, as there are a couple days where I easily plow through fifty bucks worth of food before 8am. There are certainly less expensive ways to get food there; an outdoor market near our hotel is totally unconcerned with adverse weather.
Come rain or snow...
With breakfast carrying us well into the day, all we really need to be concerned with is snacking and dinner. A loose search for akvavit and pickled herring lands us at Den Gyldene Freden (OK, we were looking for beer, and got lucky to find the other things). This place was built as a restaurant and has been operating as such since 1722. The akvavit reminds me of Génépi in France, and the pickled herring is apparently an excellent preparation, as it can be done poorly, and this stuff is good. Also, it's not to be confused with sour herring, which must be opened under running water or else you have to burn your house down to get the smell out.
Den Gyldene Freden
Another meal takes us here (not on the company dime, as it's exorbitantly expensive):
A flickering welcome
This gem is located in a building dating to 1651. The food and service? Stunning. Vendace roe, reindeer fillet, and cheesecake with cloudberries, oh my. Our table is about 30' below street level, and getting down there feels like a trip to the catacombs.
Inside the vaulted caverns of Fem Små Hus
The extraordinarily short days wreak havoc with our appetites, however. We'd find ourselves walking around after dark, discussing what type of food we'd like, if we could find something good within walking distance, plans for the rest of the night, etc., and then realize that it was 3:45...
Other meals feature numerous varieties of fish, including excellent arctic char, unfamiliar preparations of halibut, and a sushi course comprised entirely of fish from Scandinavian waters, including the best raw scallops I've ever had. A work dinner introduces me to raw reindeer (the dish includes bits of dried reindeer heart, too), and I must say that I'm a fan.
Cafe along Österlånggatan
In case you've noticed a trend, all of this food is happening in increasingly old establishments. The cafe pictured above takes the cake, though. Built as a stable in the 1400s, it's not a roped-off national historic monument; it's simply open for business. Mind. Blown. Excellent cappuccino, too.
In general, the age at which we consider something "old" in the US doesn't even move the needle in other parts of the world. It almost makes me feel like a post-modernist pig to be living in a house built in 1954.
Rory looks pensive
And one last photo from a trip to the tourist-trap Ice Bar, where they tell you that your knowledge of how to stay warm is of no consequence and give you a glorified poncho to keep you alive. The place was kind of rubbish, but it did make for a fun photo or two!
All in all, loved the food there and found the search for it to be an excellent avenue to explore the city. Executive summary: go there and eat fish :)
-
My recollection is fuzzy due to extreme jetlag and attentiveness to the work mission, but I believe I ate fish with every meal in Sweden, mostly because it was unabashedly fantastic. My other overriding memory from Sweden's food is that it's also unabashedly expensive. I recall an excellent coffee room called Vete-Katten, where two coffees and four pastries come to something approaching 40USD.
The hotels we get are clean, fairly spartan, and pretty expensive (at least by my standards), but the inclusion of breakfast in the rate makes things remarkably more reasonable, as there are a couple days where I easily plow through fifty bucks worth of food before 8am. There are certainly less expensive ways to get food there; an outdoor market near our hotel is totally unconcerned with adverse weather.
Come rain or snow...
With breakfast carrying us well into the day, all we really need to be concerned with is snacking and dinner. A loose search for akvavit and pickled herring lands us at Den Gyldene Freden (OK, we were looking for beer, and got lucky to find the other things). This place was built as a restaurant and has been operating as such since 1722. The akvavit reminds me of Génépi in France, and the pickled herring is apparently an excellent preparation, as it can be done poorly, and this stuff is good. Also, it's not to be confused with sour herring, which must be opened under running water or else you have to burn your house down to get the smell out.
Den Gyldene Freden
Another meal takes us here (not on the company dime, as it's exorbitantly expensive):
A flickering welcome
This gem is located in a building dating to 1651. The food and service? Stunning. Vendace roe, reindeer fillet, and cheesecake with cloudberries, oh my. Our table is about 30' below street level, and getting down there feels like a trip to the catacombs.
Inside the vaulted caverns of Fem Små Hus
The extraordinarily short days wreak havoc with our appetites, however. We'd find ourselves walking around after dark, discussing what type of food we'd like, if we could find something good within walking distance, plans for the rest of the night, etc., and then realize that it was 3:45...
Other meals feature numerous varieties of fish, including excellent arctic char, unfamiliar preparations of halibut, and a sushi course comprised entirely of fish from Scandinavian waters, including the best raw scallops I've ever had. A work dinner introduces me to raw reindeer (the dish includes bits of dried reindeer heart, too), and I must say that I'm a fan.
Cafe along Österlånggatan
In case you've noticed a trend, all of this food is happening in increasingly old establishments. The cafe pictured above takes the cake, though. Built as a stable in the 1400s, it's not a roped-off national historic monument; it's simply open for business. Mind. Blown. Excellent cappuccino, too.
In general, the age at which we consider something "old" in the US doesn't even move the needle in other parts of the world. It almost makes me feel like a post-modernist pig to be living in a house built in 1954.
Rory looks pensive
And one last photo from a trip to the tourist-trap Ice Bar, where they tell you that your knowledge of how to stay warm is of no consequence and give you a glorified poncho to keep you alive. The place was kind of rubbish, but it did make for a fun photo or two!
All in all, loved the food there and found the search for it to be an excellent avenue to explore the city. Executive summary: go there and eat fish :)
-
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Fartygsmagasinet
Have fun pronouncing that tongue twister? Snickering 'cause it starts with "fart?" I don't care; it's the name of THE coolest shop I've ever been in. The shop wouldn't be what it is without considering its import beyond its walls and contents, though. Meet Freddy:
Freddy
Freddy works in this shop in Stockholm, and it's a purveyor of exquisite nautical gear. He's a cool dude, in large part due to his encyclopedic knowledge of every item in there. More on him in a minute.
Fartygsmagasinet is chock-full of antique nautical and maritime equipment. Every cubic foot seems to be filled with something precious, and I'm abjectly terrified of touching anything, so I scrunch my shoulders together as much as I can and explore gingerly.
I'll take two!
From simple little brass latches and portholes to chronographs, diving helmets, and air pumps, the shop is a literal treasure trove of items recovered from decommissioned and wrecked ships. Their entire inventory is near ten thousand items, most stored offsite. I believe only a couple thousand are in the shop, and most of them are exorbitantly priced, which will make sense very shortly.
On to Freddy. At first we're just curious, but then we start testing him. Turns out that he can, for any item we select, tell us: which craftsman in which city in which country made the item in which year, which ship it was installed in, when the item was recovered from the ship, why the ship sank or was decommissioned, where the item went next, when it came into the care of the shop, perhaps when it was sold from the shop a couple decades ago, when it came back into the care of the shop, so on and so forth. We're stunned. I've never met anyone in any walk of life who's a repository of information like he is.
We decide to pass on purchasing any $10k chronographs (no credit cards accepted) and leave the shop in a mixture of shock and astonishment; it's simply not every day that one accidentally wanders into a place like this.
Next time you're in Stockholm, specifically Gamla Stan, you'd best stop in...
-
Freddy
Freddy works in this shop in Stockholm, and it's a purveyor of exquisite nautical gear. He's a cool dude, in large part due to his encyclopedic knowledge of every item in there. More on him in a minute.
Fartygsmagasinet is chock-full of antique nautical and maritime equipment. Every cubic foot seems to be filled with something precious, and I'm abjectly terrified of touching anything, so I scrunch my shoulders together as much as I can and explore gingerly.
I'll take two!
From simple little brass latches and portholes to chronographs, diving helmets, and air pumps, the shop is a literal treasure trove of items recovered from decommissioned and wrecked ships. Their entire inventory is near ten thousand items, most stored offsite. I believe only a couple thousand are in the shop, and most of them are exorbitantly priced, which will make sense very shortly.
On to Freddy. At first we're just curious, but then we start testing him. Turns out that he can, for any item we select, tell us: which craftsman in which city in which country made the item in which year, which ship it was installed in, when the item was recovered from the ship, why the ship sank or was decommissioned, where the item went next, when it came into the care of the shop, perhaps when it was sold from the shop a couple decades ago, when it came back into the care of the shop, so on and so forth. We're stunned. I've never met anyone in any walk of life who's a repository of information like he is.
We decide to pass on purchasing any $10k chronographs (no credit cards accepted) and leave the shop in a mixture of shock and astonishment; it's simply not every day that one accidentally wanders into a place like this.
Next time you're in Stockholm, specifically Gamla Stan, you'd best stop in...
-
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Vasa
I hate museums. Especially the historical kind. Hate hate hate. Some art museums, I'm pretty OK with, but one of the most dreadful ways I can imagine spending a day is shuffling around learning how [insert group of people] did [insert daily chore] in the [insert past era] in [insert geographic region]. It's like my own personal version of Mad Libs from Hell. Put slightly more eloquently, my hate for museums burns hotter than a syphilitic hooker in a police line-up.
The Vasamuseet changed all that. Holy shit.
The Vasa is a Swedish warship that sank in 1628 and was raised, mostly intact, in 1961. Yes, it sat essentially undisturbed for 333 years. When they raised it, they moved it to shore and built a building around it, and then set about restoring it and learning about how it was built, why it sank, and otherwise all about their ancestors.
It's stunning.
Bow view
It's a look into our human past that resonated with me. Here's a spectacle of engineering, construction, and ingenuity, and it's steeped in culture and national pride that we could all learn from. Furthermore, the photos and accounts of the recovery effort were top-notch. You think your shoes have a lot of suction when they get stuck in the mud?
Gun ports along the port side
The ship was decked out from bow to stern with hand-carved wooden sculptures, many of which are in excellent condition. There were enough bits of paint left on the ship when it was raised that they've been able to reconstruct its full color scheme. They found unused sails, folded neatly. Even the lower sections of the masts were intact. Basically, it's stunning that the Swedish waters preserved it to the degree they did, and that's what made it fascinating to me.
Stern carvings
Every detail on the ship is both ornate and functional, and all designed without the advent of CAD :). The museum was kind enough to build multiple levels from which to view the ship, so while we weren't allowed inside, we could get right up close to just about every detail and feature.
Stern and port view
The level of craftsmanship in the sculptures was a little mind-blowing to me. The lions' heads on the gun ports were curious as they were only visible with the ports open, and they were definitely designed to intimidate the enemy. As though the rows of lurking cannons weren't intimidation enough.
Lion carving on starboard side
I could easily have spent all day in there with Rory, but a) we got hungry, and b) it was daylight hours, so we felt obligated to be outside in case the sun made an appearance. I left Vasamuseet impressed like I've never been impressed before, and I'd -highly- recommend it as a must-do on any visit to Stockholm.
-
The Vasamuseet changed all that. Holy shit.
The Vasa is a Swedish warship that sank in 1628 and was raised, mostly intact, in 1961. Yes, it sat essentially undisturbed for 333 years. When they raised it, they moved it to shore and built a building around it, and then set about restoring it and learning about how it was built, why it sank, and otherwise all about their ancestors.
It's stunning.
Bow view
It's a look into our human past that resonated with me. Here's a spectacle of engineering, construction, and ingenuity, and it's steeped in culture and national pride that we could all learn from. Furthermore, the photos and accounts of the recovery effort were top-notch. You think your shoes have a lot of suction when they get stuck in the mud?
Gun ports along the port side
The ship was decked out from bow to stern with hand-carved wooden sculptures, many of which are in excellent condition. There were enough bits of paint left on the ship when it was raised that they've been able to reconstruct its full color scheme. They found unused sails, folded neatly. Even the lower sections of the masts were intact. Basically, it's stunning that the Swedish waters preserved it to the degree they did, and that's what made it fascinating to me.
Stern carvings
Every detail on the ship is both ornate and functional, and all designed without the advent of CAD :). The museum was kind enough to build multiple levels from which to view the ship, so while we weren't allowed inside, we could get right up close to just about every detail and feature.
Stern and port view
The level of craftsmanship in the sculptures was a little mind-blowing to me. The lions' heads on the gun ports were curious as they were only visible with the ports open, and they were definitely designed to intimidate the enemy. As though the rows of lurking cannons weren't intimidation enough.
Lion carving on starboard side
I could easily have spent all day in there with Rory, but a) we got hungry, and b) it was daylight hours, so we felt obligated to be outside in case the sun made an appearance. I left Vasamuseet impressed like I've never been impressed before, and I'd -highly- recommend it as a must-do on any visit to Stockholm.
-
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