Skansen and Vasa

 

1830 Farmer

This morning, we explored the Skansen open air museum. Established in 1891, over 150 structures from throughout Sweden were moved here to celebrate Swedish culture and tradition. First up was a 11^th century Rune stone. Next was an 1830 farmhouse. The farmer explained that the cows, pigs, and chickens spent 7 months of the year in the barns, but all their feed for the winter must be grown in 3 months. They grow primarily barley and potatoes. The women take care of the animals, while the men do everything else. We continued to a 19^th century town, Several different other farms, windmills, churches, schools, and tradesman. Further on were the typical farm animals of Sweden, and then a zoo of Nordic animals like moose, caribou, and brown bears.

14th Century Storehouse

The Vasa is a unique find, a 17th-century century ship where 98% of the ship is original. This warship was designed to be the most powerful ship in existence: 64 cannon arranged on two decks. 

Two decks of cannon

At the time, Sweden was at war with Denmark, Poland, and Russia. King Gustavus Adolphus wanted a new flagship for his navy. The ship set sail on August 10, 1628, sailed 1300 meters, a gust of wind came up, the ship was top-heavy, foundered on its side, took on water through the cannon ports, and sank. The ship was 53 meters high, 69 meters long and only 11 meters wide. In the museum the masts are only half the original height, the full height extends outside the building. The ballast of the ship was too light compared to what was above the waterline. During testing for stability, they learned that the ship was unstable, but who was going to tell the king that he couldn’t have a second deck of guns? This ship was meant to impress with over 600 carvings, originally in very bright colors. 

Model of ship in original colors

Stockholm, the Royal Palace

 

Old Town of Stockholm 

Sweden is the size of California, but with only 10 million people. 900,000 live in Stockholm on 14 islands connected by 57 bridges. Our day started with a walking tour of the Old Town, just across the bridge from the Hotel Sheraton Stockholm. Our primary visit was the Royal Palace with 1430 rooms, the official residence of the King. Next door is the much more ornate Parliament Building. The treasury stored the Royal Crowns and other regalia. Above are the Royal rooms. At first the rooms, were under inspiring until we reached the third floor where the wall, ceilings, painting, and furnishing were more typical of a Palace. 

Victoria Drawing Room

We had lunch of perch in old town. Then quite a few of us took a boat tour around Djurgården island. At first there were numerous monumental buildings, many of them hotels or museums, but as we went along more of the sights were parks, a third of Stockholm is park land. 

Start of Djurgården Cruise

In the evening, a few of us joined Stephen, our program director, for a Thai restaurant in a ship anchored on the lake. Afterwards, we took an adventurous path up the cliff face to catch the views of the Old Town and a scene from "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".

Scene from "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"

Bucharest

 

On our way to the People's House

Our bus today was a relic built in 1977 under the communist regime. The regime wanted to be self-sufficient, so Romania built their own cars, buses, and trucks.

The People's House

The People’s House was built between 1984 and 1989 by over 100,000 laborers. It is 4 million square feet, the second largest administrative building in the world (the Pentagon is bigger).  They removed over 10,000 houses in the center of the city to make room for this building. It is meant to impress starting with the staircase modeled after the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. There are 22 football fields worth of carpet on the floors. Half the building is on eight underground levels. We saw a conference room the size of Nicolae Ceausescu’s office. But he was executed just before it was completed. His office is now used by the President of the Senate. The People's House now houses the Parliament, three museums, and an International Conference Center.  Our one-hour tour covered about five percent of the building. Today about seventy percent of the building remains empty.

The Grand Staircase

In the afternoon we took a walk in the Old Town section. Bucharest is called the Paris of the East because many of the buildings were designed by French Architects. We saw the Romanian Athenium concert hall, the Cismigiu gardens, and the Stavropoleos Convent.

Romanian Athenium

This is the ideal trip if you want to see and understand the history of Eastern Europe, especially the years under communism and since the fall of the Iron Curtain. It was wonderful to see Eastern Europe via a riverboat again, the crew of the Adagio was attentive and wonderful. The lecturers and entertainers brought on board really added to the places we visited. Budapest remains the highlight of the tour with its majestic buildings and their history, especially understanding how their leader is taking them back to a dictatorship. The scenic highlight was the Iron Gates portion of the Danube. It was fun sharing the trip with my brothers and their spouses.  

A video of this trip is available on youtube

Constanta to Bucharest

We spent the morning retracing our route along the Danube - Black Sea Canal by bus and then turning North. Most of the land was flat Agricultural plains growing wheat, corn, and sun flowers.

Romanian countryside

Christian told us about how his in-laws worked in a ball bearing plant, but after they retired, they restored their parent’s home and maintained the vineyard in the area outside of Bucharest. They grew five types of Romanian grapes that survived the disease that devastated most European grapes in the 19^th century.

Romania, like so many other communist countries, confiscated farms and property, and brought people to the cities to industrialize the country, providing 700 Sq ft apartments which were heated by a centralized steam plant outside the city. After the revolution in 1989, these apartments were owned by their occupants. Some of the people added extra insulation, bought heater units, and added air conditioning.

Bucharest has 2.1 million of Romania’s 19 million people. The city has 3 million vehicles making it the most congested traffic in Europe. Romania joined NATO in 2004, and the EU in 2007.

Hearing about the Romanian Revolution

We stopped at Revolution Square to listen to Egmund, who as a 15-year-old participated in the protests here on December 21^st, 1989. Why? His grandfather had spent three years working on the canal. Under communism, there was lack of fuel and electricity, little ability to travel, no free speech, and it was illegal for more than five people to gather. Nicolae Ceaușescu made a mistake by encouraging folks to gather on this square to protest hooligans, but the crowd of 100,000 turned it into a protest against him. Troops and tanks killed 1200 here and 4000 were wounded. Ceaușescu escaped via helicopter from the roof but was captured and held for trial 3 ½ hours later. By December 23^rd the army switched sides. Ceaușescu had a 70-minute trial and on December 25^th and was executed. This was the Romanian Revolution.

Egmund with the flag he carried that day

Constanta

 

Communist Youth Memorial on canal

We spent the morning sailing down the Danube-Black Sea Canal. The purpose of the canal is to avoid the difficult to navigate Danube delta into the Black Sea, it also reduced the length of passage from over 248 miles to 40 miles.  The canal was started in 1949 and the communists turned their political prisoners into laborers, about 50,000 died between 1949 and 1953. The project was resumed in 1973 and completed in 1987.

Fortuna from Roman times

Constanța was first called Tomis, by the Greeks in 625BC and then named Constantina by the Romans. We visited Ovid Square, named for the Roman poet, who was exiled here by the Roman Emperor Augustus. The archeology museum is filled with statues and gold items found here in 1962 when they began building a railway station. Nearby is a picturesque Mosque and Saint Peter and Paul Orthodox Church. We then headed for Mamia Resort along the Black Sea. The port of Constanta is the largest on the Black Sea. Now a lot of Ukrainian grain is being shipped from here with the Russian Invasion closing the Ukrainian ports. This caused a black market of Ukrainian grain to flood the local market, resulting in farmer protests.

St. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church

That evening we shared dinner with the captain and our program director, Christian.

The Captain escorts us to dinner

Abanasi, Bulgaria (from port of Rousseau)

 

Our local guide reported that on Sunday, Bulgaria had their sixth election in three years among the 26 parties. It resulted in little change with six parties gaining seats in the legislature.  Her joke was: “what do diapers and politicians share in common? They need to be changed frequently and for the same reason.” After the end of communist control, the standard of living went down 40% and didn’t recover until 2002. Many of the youth left the country to find jobs in other countries. Farms were returned to their former owners, but only if you could provide documentation or neighbors’ testimony that you had owned the farm in the 1940’s. Yet today, 24% live below the poverty line, mostly pensioners. Seventy percent of the GDP is from farming: corn, wheat, and soybeans in the north; vegetables and roses in the south. Bulgaria provides 60% of the world’s rose oil. The good economic news is that 80% of the population own their flat.

Bulgaria is an old country, the first Bulgarian empire was established in 681 AD. In the 9th century, the conversion to Christianity began and the Cyrillic alphabet was created, a very phonetic alphabet. Bulgaria was ruled by the Ottomans for 500 years and was liberated in 1878 in the Russo-Turkish War.

Church of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel

We visited the village of Abanasi. The Church of Archangels Michael and Gabriel has murals from the 17^th century. The outer chamber is the women’s section decorated with women saints. The main altar has the icons of saints above and Old Testament stories below. The back wall depicts the death of Mary, while the Cupola has the holy trinity. While there we were serenaded by an acapella quartet.

Then we visited a fortified house built in the 17^th century. All the rooms had large platforms covered with carpets that were used for sitting, sleeping, eating or working. Each room had a heating unit fed by the fire in the dining room.

Dining Room of the Fortified House

We had a great Bulgarian lunch with a tomato and cucumber salad, a flavorful chicken stew, and baklava and a sweet yogurt, washed down with beer

In the afternoon we visited artisan shops in the town of Veliko Turnover, but the temperature was in the mid-90s so we quickly found a cooler spot in a hotel.

Vidin, Bulgaria

 

Vidin's Mosque

Vidin had 90,000 people in 1989, but only 40,000 today. With over ten factories closed in this region the unemployment rate reached 60%. Under communism, these factories sold goods to Russia, but they quickly went bankrupt because of the low quality of their goods. Vidin is primarily known as the producer of rose water today. Bought by former politicians for pennies other dollar and sold for their machinery. Bulgaria was ruled by the Ottomans from the 15^th century until 1877, a result of the First Balkan War. We visited a 15^th century mosque with a heart, rather than a moon on top of its dome. when we were here in 2013, the Iman opened the mosque to us. Down the street was a renovated Jewish Synagogue, it was a ruin last time. The Jews came in the 14^th and 15^th centuries from Bratislava (Ashkenazi) and Spain (Sephardic).  During WW II, about 8500 were sent to the concentration camps but about 50,000 were saved by the Orthodox Christians.

Bab Vida Fortress

Bada Vida Fortress has existed here since Roman times. This fortress has survived because the Ottomans converted it into a prison. We explored the fortress, discovering a chapel, and rooms displaying clothes of nobility, and suits of armor. From the fortress, we could see the bridge built in 2022 with EU cohesion funds, only the 2^nd to connect Romania and Bulgaria.

Fortress Chapel

In the afternoon, we had a concert by the Vidin Sinfonietta, the Grand Circle Foundation helps to support them. We had a mix of popular classics, a Romanian Rhapsody by Bartok and compositions by two Bulgarian composers.