Ninth Post From Türkiye: Sweden

The first two weeks in October we took a little trip to and around Scandinavia. It was fun, beautiful, expensive, interesting, exciting & exhausting. We had a great time! So, as to not create the world's longest post, I am going to break it up into 3 posts, one for each country we visited. First off, we visited SWEDEN.

 (I have spent the last hour watching ABBA videos on youtube to prepare myself to write about Sweden. I think I am ready.)

We flew into Copenhagen, rented a car and drove into Sweden.

Right away Sweden was full of delights!

 We stopped for snacks and discovered that even the gas stations in Sweden are charming!

FINALLY! Lemon Fanta! It is my all time fav and I haven't been able to find it in Turkey.(You know they use actual juice to flavor their Fanta on this side of the Atlantic? You can pretend you are being healthy when you drink it!)

As we drove along, I just kept thinking, I could take a picture of that & that & that....everything was so picturesque. I finally did make Jack stop so I could take this picture.

Our first stop was on the Island of Öland. There are all of these old windmills scattered all over the Island and we stopped at an Iron-age graveyard with stone circles.

Next we headed into Kalmar. It was getting dark but we still toured around at the castle.

The next morning we wandered around the old town. I was taking pictures of this street and people were staring at me like I was a weirdo. I guess when you are surrounded by quaint streets like this everyday of your life you think it's weird to take pictures of it.

From Kalmar we headed to Stockholm.

We toured Stockhom City Hall.  

 Mosaic Mural (with real gold in the tiles) letting all visitors & natives know that Stockholm is the center of the world (I thought it was Idaho, until I saw this).

This is the hall where they hold the Nobel Prize banquet.

Then we headed out for a walking tour of the city.

Royal Palace

 

Trum's favorite sign.

 

 Iron Boy statue. 

Rune stone and cannon.

I like that my ZERO TOLERANCE stance is made clear in this photo.

 

Then we headed inside to tour the Royal Armory.

It had some truly terrific exhibits. We, of course, only took pictures of the dress-up section.

Wizard's Robes

 

More walking/touring around.

For day two we headed out, fortified with cinnamon rolls, to visit the Church of St. Nicholas to see the statue of Saint George.

Then we took the ferry to Skansen. Skansen is an open air museum and zoo. There are a lot of traditional buildings that have been moved to the island from all over Sweden. And you can see people dong traditional crafts like baking, glass blowing, pottery and what-not. We also had some Swedish meatballs for lunch!

Wow! Look at that, a picture of Jack with a normal face!

Why do I allow myself to be talked into this nonsense? I look ridiculous, and that horse was wet so I had wet pants afterwards!

  

Then we headed over the The Vasa Museum.

The warship Vasa sank on her maiden voyage in Stockholm 1628 and was salvaged in 1961. It was almost perfectly preserved underwater that whole time. The museum was great, so interesting and lots of interactive exhibits.

Replica of what it would have looked like, when it was built.

 

  

That evening we took the opportunity to go the the Temple. For sure, a highlight of Stockholm for us.

  The next day we drove on to Norway.

Here are some random pictures from around Sweden.

Unpleasant public art.

Museum Chickens

Possibly the most charming house in the world.

Enormous troll on top of a shopping center.

Abba Museum, that Jack did NOT let me tour.

 

Eighth Post From Türkiye: More from Ulus!

I seriously love wandering around the markets in Ulus. It is definitely a more work-a-day part of Ankara, than where we live. We headed down there a few weeks ago to buy a belt for Jack. 

Here are some pictures of our adventures!

Trum calls this the "Grandpa Dennis Street" because it is full of hardware stores.

Old caravanserai (ie inn for travelers in caravans), now full of shops and craftsmen/women.  

Folks sitting around making these wire pictures.

Do you need your knives sharpened? We got ya.

Oh, man! I need like a thousand eggs! Oh, wait, here we go.

This guy was super happy for me to take a picture of his fish stall. 

 Okay, here is the story with this. First of all, in most places outside the US, they use all parts of an animal, including the head. Thus we have some excellent sheep's heads for sale at this market. You can also get them raw, but I thought maybe this picture would be better for you. Secondly, right after I took this picture, a guy walked by and saw me and then did the the classic swipe your neck/cut off the head move and then we both laughed and laughed! Oh, man sheep head humor! It needs no translation.

Jack actually buying a belt.

Here is why these buses are called Dolmuş (pronounced Dolmush) . They are literally "stuffed" with people. This was my view on our ride home. That lady's bag kept knocking into me. 

See! Ulus! So fun!

Seventh Post From Türkiye: Hattuşa!

Well, this happened over a month ago, but as we have been out of town for a bit, I will use that as an excuse for how long it has taken me to post about it.

We had a day off and Jack took us on a surprise road trip. He wouldn't tell us where we were going, until we were nearly there. Frankly as I know very little about sites around Ankara, he could have taken us to a field and told us it was something special and I probably would have bought it. But instead he took us to Hattuşa, which was super cool! It was the capital of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age.

 It is always so amazing to stand in these sites and imagine the lives that were lived there and the capacity the people had to build these impressive structures. The size of the stones that they moved to make the temple! It was in incredible. Anyway here are some pictures.

The temple

The Mysterious Green Stone!

Umm...some sort of cistern??

The appropriately named, Lion's Gate. 

Lion with Hieroglyphs.

The Rampart

Spooky tunnel through the rampart. Look really close, the speck at the end is Jack.

Sphinx Gate

Overlooking some of the sites.

Here you can see why we say it looks like Idaho in this part of Turkey. Except, somebody left some ancient ruins lying around.

More Hieroglyphs. 

Reconstruction.

Super nice, Kurdish Rug Salesman/Village Headman. His English was sooo good, it was crazy! We didn't buy any rugs, but he gave us some of his homemade cherry-apple tea. So tasty! He should be selling that stuff!

 Nearby Yazılıkaya, a sanctuary of Hattusa.

Crazy, skinny crack in the rock you had to navigate.

 

And of course, some dudes selling us stuff.

Jack did not buy that. 

I bought a little stone medallion for my sister and this guy carved her name on the back. One stop shopping!

Sixth Post From Türkiye: Odds & Ends From Ankara

Almost every Saturday we head out to try something new and wander around the city. Since it was Jack's Birthday this month we spent a few Saturdays doing stuff that he wanted to do. Also I wanted to share a few of the Turkish things we see around town that we love/are baffled by.

 We went to buy Jack's birthday gift to himself ( he bought a saz, long necked stringed instrument) & he got a bonus of some excellent Communist graffiti. He of course need his picture by his 2 facial hair idols.

We went the next week to see the first Turkish Parliment Building. It was really cool & had some good exhibits. Probably more fun when you speak/read Turkish. Jack sure enjoyed it.

After the museum we went across the street to have our fortune told by this bunny. I don't even remember what the fortune said, I was too busy petting the bunny.

We got the rest of our stuff and it's nice to feel like we really live here now.

 This box has moved with us since Idaho, so for over 10 years & 6 moves. Western Family sure uses quality packing materials.

This box cracked me up. It's labelled HAT and that was entirely accurate. It contained ONE hat. I'm glad it made it in one piece.

Here are some odd stuff (at least to us).

There are these creepy naked mannequins outside of most Eczanes (pharmacies). They obviously advertise the medical wear but couldn't they just use a picture? At least this one has medical underwear on.

We have passed this several times and I love it. It's a tea shop under an overpass. Excellent use of space.

Okay, apparently Turks love corn! You can get a nice cup o' corn for a snack all over town. You'll notice that Bugs Bunny totally endorses this as an excellent treat!

 

 This is something we love, McDonald's and Burger King have these little ice-cream booths outside of their stores. So you don't have to go all the way in when all you want is your 1₺ (Turkish Lira, about 50 cents) ice-cream cone!

These are some of the grounds around our building. They are gorgeous! We have peacocks and swans and some bunnies that always escape their enclosure. One night we were walking home from dinner with friends and Trum fell into this fake river, so basically fun times all around.

This is the air-conditioning system on the older buses and dulmus. Driving around with the doors fully open. And if you want to stand down on that bottom step to catch a breeze while we zoom around town, go right ahead!

Not odd, but it is the end of the post. (This is for you Mike!)

Our new Killim. Tadaaaa!