Another Day in Uppsala

The day after we arrived at Uppsala, Nora and Felix went off to school and we took a bus into downtown Uppsala (kids travel free). We hopped off near Stora Torget and walked a block over to Güntherska for a mid morning fika of delicious chocolate treats, baked goods and very dark roasted coffee. To order we pointed to things on the shelf which worked. But the items on the menu board were a complete mystery and I had to eat Evan and Vivian’s food and Jo’s sandwich stayed in it’s wrapper and we gave it to the middle eastern looking gentleman sitting outside the church door.

Then we walked down some old streets and bought tiny delicious strawberries (weren’t we too full?) from a stall and sat on wooden recliner benches by the river and ate them in the sun. Our next stop was the Linnaeus home / garden / museum but the kids and Jo balked at the idea of seeing 10,000 different species of plants and animals, and instead opted to take photos with the statue of Uppsala’s most famous citizen and move on.

The evening before Nina and I had argued if Andres Celsius should be considered Uppsala’s greatest scientific celebrity instead. After all, in most places in the world people say the word “Celsius” many times in their lives but they hardly ever say Linnaeus. Interestingly Andres and Carl were contemporaries - Andres was born in 1701 but died at a young 43, while Carl was seven years younger but lived into his seventies.

I firmly vote for Carl. At about the time Andres was dreaming up the Celsius scale (which he initially did up-side-down from the way it is today, with water boiling at zero degrees and freezing at 100 degrees) Fahrenheit was coming up with his scale, which though much more random than the Celsius scale, is still in use in some primitive societies today. On the other hand, no one had or has since categorized the world’s living things the way Linnaeus did. In the intervening two hundred and fifty years we have improved it and switched to using genes instead of relying on the phenotype, but the Linnaeus’ method makes sense even today. And the depth and width of his work is astounding. It’s what I learned in Mr. Cherian’s biology class in 1978 at HPS. 

From Linnaeus’ home we walked back towards the river, crossed a very picturesque bridge where most of Uppsala University’s students seemed to be hanging out and enjoying the beautiful sunny day, and walked up to the Domkryka - the cathedral. The outside was imposing with the dual spires, the inside was divine, and the crypts and statuary was interesting. Vivian was intrigued by a royal crypt where the king was buried with his three wives. The statue on top of the crypt shows him in bed with is two wives - there was apparently no room for the third.

Vivian found a shelf full of bibles from all over the world and wanted me to take a photo of one she thought was in Mandarin. Evan wandered into a room where there was a priest sitting in case someone needed one. We exchanged a few words in English and he in Swedish and we politely thanked him and left. Then Jo helped Evan light a candle for his friend in Austin who wasn’t well and for anyone else that needed a prayer and we wandered back outside blinking in the bright sunlight.

Our last stop before returning home was Pelle Svanslos’ park. Pelle No-Tail is a famous Swedish children’s character created by Gosta Knuttson as a subtle satire on Sweden’s socialist society. The Swedes have a very well developed and much admired children’s literature section, which includes Knuttson and Astrid Lundgrin - known worldwide as the author of Pippi Longstocking (Langstrump in Swedish). Vivian and Evan played. Jo and I sat and rested our feet. Then we walked across the park to the bus stop and took a bus back to Gnejsvagen, home, and a wonderful dinner of meatballs (yes, everyone does eat them all the time) outside on a picnic table with Chris and Nina while the kids played at the swings well past 10pm in the northern summer light.