Göteborg
Code Télélegraphique des Hôtels
On the way from Göteborg to Copenhagen, July 1, 1926
I don't know how well I can write in the train, not so much because of motion, for this [is] a quiet well-mannered train, as because of crowding. It was an early start this morning and we did not make it in time to secure seats either good or together. It is difficult to tell when seats are taken, or how many. We see a very blue North Sea and thatched roofs or red tiled roofs on low houses, fields with as many stones and stone walls as in New England, all with a very fresh spring green in the growing things, though islands of grey rocks are all about in the flatter fields.
The good weather lasted to the end. The North Sea was gorgeous all day as we crossed it, with a fine sunset behind the Norway mountains. It was interesting to see the sun go down on the bias as it were. Not [straight down into the horizon] but [at an angle].
I wish I had timed the actual setting the first night out of N.Y. when we had a clear one and this long drawn out affair. I remember how Miss Bardwell used to time that phenomenon, and this was certainly a great variation. It was along about 9:30.
The landing was very early, after a night with little sleep because of our nearness to the Baggage Room and the general excitement of our neighbors, though the Count was out less than some other nights. He was pretty rotten, and the son of the former Amer. ambassador to Sweden, Thomas, not much better. We had breakfast at 6 o'clock and were all off and through the customs by 9:30. Our trunks have been sent by express to Stockholm and I hope we see them again! It is difficult when one doesn't know the language, but Miss Benson, the Bridgeport H.S. teacher who knows Evelyn Davis and who goes home every summer, helped us very kindly. We went to a hotel and by holding off until after 12 got two single rooms for 7 krone each. The food was good & not expensive, though I didn't have enough breakfast owing to lack of time. They really did speak English at the desk!
Göteborg is the cleanest place I ever saw! Of course we were there on a sparkling day, but those laundered white curtains, neatly caught back, at the trolley windows! The trolley windows looked to be of polished plate glass, so clean were they. The cars are painted blue and white, lovely-Swedish-flag blue. The buildings seem somehow flatter in their side lines than ours, with fewer projections around windows &c. But it is all solid and neat. Anne has a cold, caught either from me or others, for there were many on the boat, and she felt horrid after the nearly sleepless night, so she had a shampoo and massage and then a hot bath and full massage at the hotel, a most remarkable performance, but very sensible. She went to bed after a little exploration of the town, but I slept a bit and then sallied forth! Miss Benson left about three and before then we had just fooled around.
The shampoo was good - so much better than we might have gotten on the boat. It is amusing to get what you want done without the language! My hair is slightly curled to see if it will stay up!
The Trägärdsföreiningen (- Board of Trade Public Garden) was lovely, such green grass and nice trees and flowers in English style. The roses are just beginning, so we shall enjoy them. There was a big palm house and nice orchids, also lovely climbing ferns trained on dainty trellises, a different species from ours. Of course the people were eminently well behaved! Then I thought to go to another park of which Miss Klintberg had told me so I boarded a trolley and paid 15 öre (= 4 cents) for a long ride. The park is big like Franklin or some such, and very lovely. Birds sand and the grass and trees were so green. After a while I found a restaurant by a little pond and thought to eat in the garden. Not so, for "Middag" I was shooed into a very new and clean room with many windows, and a lady who did not speak English brought me a menu, about which we talked a good deal! She seemed to think I ought to have "Filkemde" (?) so I took it and was presented with a large bowl of neatly soured milk, a sugar shaker and another shaker, which I found after much strangling contained powdered ginger. Strange to say the stuff wasn't bad! And I now eat caraway seeds calmly without spitting 'em out. Then I had a lovely "fisk," kind unknown, but very good. We talked about dessert a good deal and I took something which I knew had cream on it. It turned out to be strawberries - very pleasant. Meantime the band played, and a lone widow in deep black and of drooping pose had had exactly eleven hors d'oeuvres spread before her! The maid came in with a whole handful of forks to put on these. Wedding silver must be of extraordinary extent in Sweden.
It seemed queer to go to bed in broad daylight at 10 o'clock, but there was no trouble about sleeping. I hope for a quieter boat back.
Anne's cold is better today though she is still more or less done up by it. Mine is really very mild - the head cold left absolutely after two wild days, but the cough is irritating. It's a smoky trip, but a gorgeous day. We cross the strait or Sound at Helsingør about 10'clock [sic] and get to Copenhagen at 3:30.
Copenhagen, July 2
We have just come home from the trip down the Harbor, and our bathroom is full of laundry. We may never have another bathroom! But for this we are paying about 2.50 each - a large double room with red velvet furniture and more white lace curtains than you could count, also a red geranium, and a perfectly lovely white tiled bath-room! It's also convenient and pleasant as to office. I shall renew it cheerfully in the Rest Tour book.
We passed Hamlet's castle in crossing the Sound from Sweden, and I hope my little snaps come out well. It was such a lovely little water bit - and Helsingør (= Elsinore) did stand up fair in the bright sun. There was a pillar with a fine statue flying towar dthe sea from the Sweden side at Hälsingbord but I spoiled my shot at it with the camera, alas.
Yesterday after we got here we went out to view the town and found such wonderful porcelain! I'd like to buy you a blue plaque for your wall - but it might cost a million! A simple little thing the size of a butter pat was about 4.00 - and I didn't buy it. We saw a few towers, too, and they are so amusing. I've never seen the like - they're with rounded curves and broken by golden balls and topped by a series of similar gay things, they're of dragons' tails twisted, with the heads down below, oh, I can't tell the number and variety. And some of the fountains make me think of Rome.
We went to Tivoli, the great amusement park only two blocks away, for dinner and the evening. It's the biggest and the gayest and the really nicest place of the kind I ever struck. A friendly policeman sent a little boy to guide us to the best restaurant and we had a good dinner, with literally thousands of people all filling the space just below this restaurant (with huge windows and verandah) looking at an open-air vaudeville, trained animals and such. Then we went along by one place after another - huge and ornate and arrived at the Koncert salon as the crowd went in. So we went, and all but fell into some seats from which we heard most excellent music - orchestra and soloists, Saint-Saens, Gounod, Brahms, &c. The ushers and guards had lovely crimson [...ers] on their coats and the girls who sold programs had a hat of the same colors. When we came out all the place was alight, and quite equal to the blaze and color of Broadway. The lights like flowers around the fountain, the colored lights outlining domes and turrets were charming. And such orderly thousands of folks! All sorts of amusements and so much eating and drinking, and that of good alcoholics, too, but I saw nobody even too gay! The folks were of all sorts - entrance fee only 60 öre (= 15 cents) and plenty to see and hear for that alone. We came home at a discreet hour and had a good sleep though 'tis a noisy town from auto horns and cobblestones, and dangerous with thousands of bicycles.
This morning we went to the office of the Swedish State Railway and negotiated our tickets clear through to Narvik, where we have boat again. The youth was most pleasant and helpful, and knew enough English to get on. We went back this p.m. for the tickets which he made up meanwhile. Then I got my Norwegian visa, and so saved $7.20 over what it would have cost in June in N.Y. - very simple. Also money at a most elegant bank where I was ushered into a velvet-carpeted salon and led to a table to write my name. The Danes have a good deal of elegance, we think. There were bits of canals and markets and towers for sky-lines all along, and some very elegant and small shops in that region. This afternoon we got to the Bourse (with the tower of twisted dragon tails) where the Exchange is evidently in this ancient hall with gilded leather in the panelled walls and where, as in the Ryksdag, there are huge picture[s] with many life-sized portraits in recent historic scenes. It's entertaining to see these gentlemen in clothes of today. We went to the castle - to the Parliament building where a guide with two words of English got all out of breath running after a book of pictures with English tags so we could see all there was! It's all so well-kept and clean, sturdy and with a fine spirit as far as we could sense the inscriptions. It seems severe perhaps, yet there's always a gaiety in either color or decoration, to match the towers.
Then the idea struck us to go down the Harbour - we were sure we could eat there for they eat everywhere and all the time. We struck for the canal and very soon found a man who could talk excellent English, who knew exactly what we wanted, and there at a boat landing about ten minutes away was the little motor boat! I've never seen a harbor fuller of shipping of all sizes, even one U.S. freighter, and we had such a nice time!
That Smörgasbord (= hors d'oeuvres)!! You just ought to see it! We couldn't eat anything else at all. We had an oblong silver tray about 18 x 20 inches on which sat 12 little silver dishes, with some lettuce in nearly all and more around the edge.
1. Small pieces of pickled herring, very salt[y] - raw(?) Bay leaf on top.
2. Cold tongue
3. Sardines with lemon - (Excellent)
4. Salad with mayonnaise - peas, &c Tomato to garnish.
5. 2 halves of eggs, hard boiled with a clump of fish eggs about the size of frogs eggs - black, salt and fishy, but not so bad! Sturgeon?
6. Very thin slices, raw smoked salmon. Salt.
7. Olives, stuffed, as usual.
8. Egg omelet, cold, and long pieces of smoky herring.
9. Shrimps - pale pink - lots of 'em.
10. Cold lamb and small thin slices of cucumber.
11. Mayonnaise on lobster and asparagus.
12. Raw onions on pieces of smoked mackerel.
There was butter, in large thin leaves, and three kinds of bread, rye, pale grey and white. Now how do you feel about that? I tried 'em all, though not largely, except plain cold tongue and raw onion! We felt the experience was worth the $1.60 it cost! You just never saw anything like these layouts! They brought us also three large slices of salmon (with scales on) 4 veal cutlets and some cold beef and horseradish, each on a separate platter, but we declined both these and cheese which we really ought to have had - and then gone on to a regular meal.
Dr. Krogh was leaving as my note reached him and the other man hasn't replied - so my notes of introduction are no good here. We leave tomorrow evening for Lund to which I've sent a letter tonight for rooms. We cross the Sund in the cheerful evening, and I hope the water will be as nice as tonight. It's no long journey - maybe 3 hours, mostly water. Before that we hope to see a good deal more of this town, but we shall leave out much.
Guess I'll start this as we have some Danish stamps to use.
Much love to you -
Abby
Sunday July 4
Dear Honey:-
It's now the morning of the 5th and we wait for breakfast "fünf Minueten" - our porter speaks German. You ought to hear me converse in that language! Compared with Swedish it sounds like my mother tongue. However, we add a few Swedish words daily and though our errors at meals have cost us a fe kronen they haven't been serious.
Saturday we took an auto-bus ride around Copenhagen and found it very interesting. We went to the largest brewery in the world, Carlsberg, where 4,000 workmen are employed. Sat. was scrubbing day and they were doing a thorough job! A most wonderful place, with all profits going to the support of Art Museums and such. The entrance has two great elephants supporting a tower - "Laboremus pro patria", and beyond busts of the founder, Jacobsen and wife, look out of one window at portraits of either their own or the royal family on the next wall! Very amusing. Of course we were given glasses of beer or soda.
The strawberries are the largest and sweetest I've ever seen. We've bought them recklessly, but with great pleasure. The little basket in which the last lot came will now carry various little miscellanies for our journeys. The luggage folks carry away! I never saw either as much or such an assortment.
Evening.
It was too joggly to write on the train which I regretted. We had a whole compartment to ourselves and were most comfortable. Following the example of our neighbors we snapped up the bars between the seats and reclined - a nap in the morning, one in the afternoon. For these long all day journeys we're going second - about equal to a Pullman in comfort. The thirds have only hard wooden seats and seem rather rigorous for 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. as today. We're in Stockholm, which is charming. We're well located and my wash is out! Those little clothes pins are almost as useful as my pass-port. That has been called for 9 times already.
To go back to Saturday. After lunch a man to whom Florence Read gave me a note came and took me to see the State Serum Institute where he is engaged in research. It was very interesting. He was immunizing horses against scarlet fever by using the living organisms suspended in warm agar, a new method, and I urged him to do the injection so I could see it - and so I'd not inconvenience him. He was a sweet boy who had been in the U.S. for 6 mos. last year and is now an International Health Board research fellow at 6,000 kr per year with 2,000 for expenses, e.g. in all epidemic[s]. The I.H.B. has given $200,000 for a new lab. building and stables. He took (a) a picture of this lab., (b) he took my picture, (c) I took his picture! It was most amusing! But it seemed to be the natural thing. He introduced me to a most splendid great chap, brilliant and enthusiastic, Inakov [?] by name, who has a new method for watching individual bacteria multiply, and who finds the rate of multiplication varying greatly from hour to hour, both in vitro and in vivo. The boy - name Svend Ahrend Larsen - then took me to his apartment so I could tell F. Read how he lived! She was evidently very kind to him. His brother was there, chemical engineer in a school like M.I.T. Then he took me for coffee to one of these sidewalk places, very numerous they are, and brought me home, all from 2-5:30. It seemed to be a real grief to him that he and a friend could not take us in the evening to see Midsummer Night's Dream out in "the forest" outside the city, but we were leaving for Lund at 7 o'clock.
We had some ice cream (good) and pastry at another sidewalk place before startin and then took our large basket of strawberries and bought Rämlösa (minteral water) and Wienerbrod (good) on the boat. The boat was a comfortable fair-sized craft crossing in the exquisite evening light to Malmö in about an hour and a half. We either saw or missed Tycho Brahe's island - 'twas right around there. From Malmö a train in a half hour took us to Lund where we stayed happily at the "Grand Hotel."
Lund is about as big as Northampton - it was old Cannte's Swedish capital. He had three of the same name, London, Leyden and Lund, the last being the metropolis of Sweden for some centuries. The cathedral dates from 1150 +/- and is one of the most charming I've seen - not large, but a Romanesque gem. Very well restored in the last half of the 19th Cent, and as neat and in order as everything else. I'll send my cards home presently - a good set of pictures of the cathedral, though we could buy nothing else. The service is now Lutheran and we heard two Swedish sermons! Our command of the language is inadequate. The music was good though there was no anthem - a male choir. The cathedral has a most wonderful old crypt with extraordinary pillars, tombs and carvings as you will see. And the clock was as nice as the one at Strasburg. Hundreds of people were there to see it perform at 12 o'clock.
In the afternoon a Finnish musician who "knew only two Americans, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford", assisted us with alcoholic gayety to capture an auto to take us for a ride. We went at breakneck pace in an open car across country to the shore, and not knowing Swedish we couldn't stop the youth! It was most amusing. Good roads but dusty. The country is fertile and the little farms really should have had their pictures taken. One church with a big belfry and a flowery churchyard we may not see the like of again!
I had a note of introduction to Prof. Thunberg, but a messenger boy by whom I sent a polite note in the morning said he was away. After the p.m. service I felt to walk up by the lab. anyhow - tried the door - open - went in - found his office - he was there! But his family (Amer. wife - I think I used to meet her at W.H.) were away and his house closed. He was awfully nice. We saw his lab, heard about his research on artificial respiration and seed enzymes, went through the beautiful bio-chem. lab, finer than any I've seen anywhere, and then to the Bot. Garden. He's a gentleman of about my age and knows lots of Americans from having worked at Hopkins. The Garden is old, for Lund is an old university with a scientific reputation. It was fun to be shown around by somebody who knew botanic terms and plants, and I now know what book to buy.
This morning we rose early and the journey has been the kind I'd like to have shared with Alma Stokey, beginning with fertile plains with grain, rising to evergreen instead of deciduous trees and including real moors, with piles of peat, and heather (?) - then coming down to more broken but very fertile country on the east side. The pines are lovely, Norway, short-needled, with red trunks and Italian outlines, only tall. The birches are mostly "weeping" and many of them large trees. And I was crazy to stop the train and pick flowers. There were many lovely lakes. It wall [sic] all interesting.
Tonight we've dined on a terrace overlooking the water and fine buildings. We shall like Stockholm, I'm sure. Now I'll go to bed.
July 8
We're on the train to Dalecarlia! And already much farther north than I've ever been before[.] In Stockholm the sun set along toward ten, out all night was twilight, with a glow shifting along through the north. The sun was lighting the windows at a quarter before three this morning. There's a bit of rain, the first we have seen save for a little summer shower yesterday.
Monday all day we travelled from Lund to Stockholm - 8:03-6:11, with a compartment to ourselves. We are taking 2nd class for all long trips for there are no cushions at all in the 3rd, and a wooden bench for a whole day is rather severe. We now have tickets bought clear to Amsterdam including the aeroplane reservation. It is necessary to reserve everything ahead, they say.
We stayed at a pleasant pension in Stockholm, and it surely is a lovely city. There is water everywhere, but not messy like Venice. It's clean and I saw never a mosquito. The whole effect is spacious and elegant. The towers aren't quite so frisky as in Copenhagen but they are lovely, and everywhere folks are out-of-doors to eat - and eating all the time!
We had lunch yesterday with the delightful Miss Klintberg I met on the boat, and a younger and equally charming sister. This was on the paritally closed verandah of a famous restaurant, Rosenbad, where we looked out at fine buildings and water, of course. Miss K- certainly was mighty nice to do it for us. I have a picture of her which isn't either bad or good.
My pictures as a whole are lovely. You'll enjoy both them and the postcards, and also a book I acquired. We have joined the Swedish Tourist Association - the "Sverige Turist Föreningen" - which does everything for one! The girl there was lovely in her consideration. Also they have many 5% "Rebat"-s and we expect to save our 5 krone easily. We're now on the way to the "Valley" country where the gay costumes grow - or grew - and where I hope to match some flowers to my botany book. The fields recently have been full of blue campanulas like that slender one in my flower bed. I've seen whole clumps of a white orchid, too. Of deciduous trees there's not much left except birches and poplars, but the beech forests south of Stockholm were wonderful.
The first night we were in Stockholm we ate on a terrace in front of the Royal Opera House; the second at an open air restaurant in Skansen, the famous out-of-door museum with all the old style cottages fully furnished & with the animals also present, with music by the Royal Naval Band: the third night, on the terrace of the Royal Theatre, none expensive - that is, we didn't find it impossible to get dinner for a dollar! I'm now quite devoted to Filbunke, and as for salt fish of small size, they're very appetizing!
We've seen a part of the Royal Palace - and it's quite like a palace in elegance, too. We've seen a part of the town hall, Radhus, which looks austere in the pictures but is just alive with gay details, and so elegant withal. But most of our time went to planning the trip ahead, and we know we are coming back! We had rooms engaged at the Grand Hotel at the same price as at the pension but I'll bet we don't like it as well! There are to be 11 physiologists and families of some at the place where we were, including the Dutch Nobel prize man, Einthoven, but Dr. Benedict and his wife urged me to go to the bigger hotel and Anne has an instinct for hotels!
The Norway trip we have planned through Bennett and have a bunch of their coupons. I have an idea that with a companion who would occasionally rough it we could do it much more cheaply by ourselves - we'd see different things - but Anne does not wish to travel economically and there are advantages in hot and cold running water! I've washed everything! The clothesline works every night. From now on we'll have little planning to do until after we get to Stockholm next time. We can't go via Stalheim because the hotel is closed - Norway has prohibition, we hear! But the Bennett plan looks very nice - Trondhjem to some place called Aaldness by a mountain railroad, then to Molde, and among others we hit Merok, Olden, Balholm, Flam, Bergen and Finse.
I was sorry not to have any South Hadley letter in Stockholm. There were some from Beryl and Eleanor Mason (who is getting on very well, I judge) and Anne had some. It isn't possible to get any now until July 15 at Trondhjem, but such is life. We had reservations sent for Amsterdam, but gave them up for a place where we shall meet Grace Bacon, a pension where Anne and Blanche Hamson stayed in 1907.
There are lots of amusing things. The Stockholm streetcars are very narrow and little, but also very neat. We got on one yesterday which took us through an old part of the city, by a flower market, and then in a minute by the royal palace. At breakfast at the pension you go to a central table and collect your own breakfast! The everlasting smörgasbord are there of course, perhaps a half dozen kinds, but this place also had hot cereal, kept hot over an alcohol lamp, and ordinary eggs. The napkins are kept in neat embroidered envelopes, with embroidered numbers, on a long embroidered strip, colored, down the middle of the table. We weren't there at either lunch or dinner. The first lunch was on the roof of a large department store, where they had an "Interpreter", if you please, and also a nice little place at the front, with pans of water for the dogs and chains to hitch them with. There are by no means as many bicycles as in Copenhagen, but the autos certainly do come around the corners with speed - and from the wrong direction, for folks pass to the left in this country.
I guess I'll stop and pay attention to the country. I'll mail this in Leksand, on Lake Siljan and start it on its way. There are two trains a day, so it ought to start with fair speed, but of course it will have a more or less prolonged journey from South Hadley. I hope it'll find you're in some very nice place, perhaps on the Gasfé peninsula.
Lots of love, honey -
Abby -