Day 22-23 Nykoping, Ostergotland Sweden
Awake at 8am to say thanks and goodbye to Ulf as he leaves for work on Monday. Ingalill has been gone to work an hour earlier! Ulla Britt is in the kitchen and has prepared a wonderful frukost and coffee for us with the final input on genealogy completed. With sadness, we say goodbye and leave Figeholm for our next destination: Astrid Lindgren’s Varld. Unfortunately, we stopped at the local Coop Konsum grocery store to purchase some goodies for our car trip and found that the car battery was dead. Made a few inquires, and within an hour were on our way after a battery jump. Turns out, Volvo’s don’t start unless you have the brake completely depressed before turning the ignition key. Battery wasn’t really dead – I just hadn’t depressed the brake petal fully. Lesson learned. I wasn’t the only service call the guy had made for the same problem.
Arrived at Astrid Lindgren’s Varld and was treated to a child’s theme park based upon her beloved books starring none other than Pippi Longstocking. A cute place including a child-sized village with buildings and places featured in her books.
Continued our drive from Vimmerby to Nykoping where we arrived 2 hours late (due to the rain) to the home of Carlos and Christina, our paternal relatives. We were greeted warmly and taken into their lovely home from the 1700’s, restored with no detail missed from the original hardwood floors to the wood-burning stove. Architectural Digest should visit this home. Absolutely amazing. Christina has such a talent for interior design, blending new and old with stunning pieces from her parents’ home as well as antique shops.
Dinner was quite a surprise. Diane and I were treated to both deer and reindeer as our entrée – as procured by Carlos during recent hunting trips within Ostergotland. Diane pronounced the meal “Good!” – high praise from a novice to game meats. Desert was ostkaka served with cream and cloudberry jam handmade by a gentleman from “up north”. The wine was from France. Ooh, la la! We floated off to sleep sometime in the wee hours of the morning. When it doesn’t get dark, time just seems to go on forever….
The next morning, Carlos and I travel into Nykoping to meet with Gunnel of the Nykoping Slaktforskarforening Genealogy Society. I must have said “Wow” 20 times over the next two hours as Gunnel laid out my paternal family history back 6 generations. To sit and actually see the church documents enlarged on a screen while she translated these documents from Swedish to English was amazing. Within two hours, I went from knowing little of my mother’s paternal side to minute detail. It was amazing to see the transcription work undertaken by the parish priests in keeping track of births, deaths, communions, baptisms, as well as those who moved from, and out of, the parish, all recorded in different books (birth, death, marriage). Amazing and humbling at the same time. I actually cried with some of the detail that was revealed about my paternal family … these were real people with real feelings. They become validated as one reads about children who died within weeks of each other – due to illnesses that raged before vaccines existed, and other children who left for America never to return to their parents again.
Diane joined Carlos and I when we drove to the cemetery where Diane (and Christopher’s) paternal great-great grandparents are buried at Vangabygden. A beautiful drive and a lovely day! Christina awaited our arrival at home where she made a wonderful pasta dinner (with a blue cheese/sour cream sauce) despite her slowly healing fractured ankle. If anyone knows how hard it is to get around on a walker, it’s me, so her efforts were greatly appreciated!
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