Today’s my first day of vacation, though it’s actually a day off because it’s a holiday here in Sweden: Midsummer Eve. Tomorrow is Midsummer Day, which is a bit weird because the actual summer solstice was 2 days ago on Wednesday, June 21. Sweden celebrates midsummer eve on the Friday closest to the solstice, though, so it FEELS like today is the longest day of the year, even though we’re actually already on the downward slide to darkness.
It’s Anders’ first day of vacation, too, though he said he has a couple of work things he has to deal with. And it’s Karin’s (at least from her regular day job) because she is leaving tomorrow for a week to Roskilde, Denmark, where she will be working at the Roskilde Music Festival for the 3rd year in a row. And Martin is already on vacation, in his second week, which he is spending up in Gävle with Theo (where Theo is from). He gets back on Monday, and we will have dinner with him on Tuesday on the start of our “Tip-to-tip trip” which we are taking in the Tesla.*
We are planning to drive the Tesla from Smygehuk, which is Sweden’s southernmost point, to Treriksröset which is the northernmost, and the point at which 3 countries come together: Norway, Sweden, and Finland. I just tried to see if Smygehuk meant something in English, but only got its literal translation in Google Translate, which made me laugh out loud: “sneak squat”. Turns out the “huk” is borrowed from Dutch and means promontory or point (headland), and “smyge” is Scanian for a constricted passage or hidden nook.
Treriksröset translates literally as “the three-kingdom heap”, which is fitting, since the actual point is covered by a giant concrete clump. Wikipedia more elegantly translates it as “Three Country Cairn”, even though it’s not currently a heap of stones, which is what a cairn usually is. The current tripoint monument was built in 1926 and is a beige, conical frustum made of concrete, located about 10 meters out in a lake. We have to hike 3 kilometers from the boat to the monument, and back in the space of about 2.5 hours, which means we can’t dawdle. 5k takes me about an hour, and that’s on flat, paved surfaces. If we don’t make it back in time, we have an 11-kilometer hike back to the hotel. EEK.
It will just be me and Anders, since we couldn’t work the timing to include the kids, even though we had been hoping they could at least fly up to Kiruna and do the last half of the trip with us. We are spending Tuesday night at Debbie and Ola’s Air BNB, which is down closer to Smygehuk, and after making a stop at the coast to document our southernmost starting point, we’ll turn around and drive ALL THE WAY north.
We are planning to only drive between 3 to 6-ish hours per day, stopping as we like along the way to see things. We have a couple of shorter and a couple of longer driving days, but mostly it should be pretty easy. We’ll be staying in Vadstena, Höga Kusten, Harads, Umeå, Jokkmokk, Jukkasjärvi, Kiruna, and Kilpisjärvi, among other places (and not in that order). In Harads, we’ll be staying in a treehouse hotel, which I’m inexplicably excited about considering that I have vertigo. 😀
We already have tickets to visit Carl Larsson’s home and the Falu copper mine, as well as the ice hotel exhibition (though the hotel itself isn’t open (or constructed) during the summer). On our way back, we will be driving down through Finland, and we will be stopping at the official home of Santa, and the Moomin Museum in Tammerfors (Tampere) before taking the ferry over to spend 2 nights on the island of Åland. Then we’ll get to Stockholm, where we will hopefully be able to meet up with Sofia (Anders’ sister’s daughter) before the last day of driving home. Whew!
This is the first really inclusive trip that we’ve taken through so much of Sweden, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of this country I call home. I’ve been to Stockholm and Gothenburg numerous times, but the farthest north I’ve been is Sälen, and that’s only a third of the way up the country! Crazy! And I’ve never been to Finland at all (Karin has actually been TWICE, for work), so I’ll be adding another country to my visited list. 🙂
We are spending this evening celebrating midsummer eve, with Camilla included, at Mats and Annelotte’s, who have a new puppy (squee!) and then plan to take it fairly easy tomorrow, just doing cleaning and some pre-trip stuff before we get serious about packing and getting the Tesla serviced on Monday. We have a few days after we get home as well to unwind and relax before we have to go back to work. Yay for vacay!
Mood: excited
Music: Titiyo—Man in the Moon
*Assuming that Tesla can fix the problem we’ve been having with a pop-up warning this past month that says super-charging isn’t available. We are taking the car in for service on MONDAY (the earliest we could get it in), so fingers crossed we can actually leave, since the entire trip is based on the plan that we can supercharge along the way.