Volvos, volvos, volvos

Today was our last day with our car. We decided to drive to the ancient town of Sigturna on the northeast arm of Lake Malvern. Sigturna was a pretty little town on the lake. The only trace of the Vikings however was the Rune stones that had been organized around town on a little walk. We ate our lunch by the lake which was filled with Lilly pads and then decided to head to the University town of Uppsala. Uppsala is a university town. We visited the Cathedral with the longest nave in Scandinavia. It was of Gothic design build in 1453. It was a very impressive building and even the kids tolerated visiting it. After the church we headed off to the house of Carl Linnaeus, Uppsula's most famous son which is quite the claim given that scientists from Uppsula's university have won a total of 8 Nobel prizes. Carl Linnaeus was a physician and botanist who developed the formal naming system for plants and animals between 1743 and 1778. Think genus and species. He is quite big here having had his picture on the 100 kronor note. I thought of my colleagues Mark who maybe had he been born in another time would have been a great botanist. The museum and garden were quite beautiful. They had an audio tour where one would walk from room to room in the house and click on a light to hear information about the room and about Carl's accomplishments. The children stayed amused for 45 minutes and maybe even learnt something. Our last visit was to Gamla Uppsala. This consisted of nine large viking burial mounds from 500 AD. They were pretty large. We walked around them and visited the gift shop. No one wanted to go into the museum. We enquired at the museum about a swimming location and learned that the town of Uppsula's maintained a swimming spot on a river with bathrooms, a beach and a dock. It was quite busy. Madeline and I ended up chatting with some graduate students from the university doing Phds in molecular biology. It wasn't the spot that I would have thought that I would have had such a scientific discussion. It was kind of fun to think that we were swimming where Vikings once swam. We returned to Stockholm and after supper we returned our car to the Avis car rental with no cars and dropped the keys off.

Having spent the last three days driving around in Sweden, it is tough not to notice that there are an incredible number of Volvos here. There are Volvos everywhere. I think about 50% of the cars are Volvos. Seeing all of these old Volvos has been a little nostalgic. We told someone that we met that Volvos were considered prestigious cars in Canada and they really thought that was funny. Whether it is Volvos or Skodas or BMWs, the Swedes love their station wagons. We also notice that they don't drive minivans or trucks. I think we only saw 4-5 personal trucks while driving around. We wondered what would all of the doctors drive to work at the Royal Alex if they didn't drive Volvos. Teslas ? The one car that we came across that piqued my curiosity was a 1981 Toyota Cirdan. It looked a lot like a Camry. We talked to the elderly owner who told us she was the original owner. It was 37 years old. By comparison my Toyota Odessey is only 15 years old. I am unsure It will make it another 20 years. For Ross there were a fair number of BMWs here but not many vintage ones. Maybe you could get a better price for your Beamer if you shipped it to Sweden.Read more