The cold I was incubating erupted during our first night in the Guest House and I spent most of it sitting on the floor in the bathroom where I ran the hot shower for steam to moisten the cough racking my chest.

The morning light, coffee and breakfast restored enough energy to walk back across the river and visit the Santa Cruz Cathedral adjoined by the Café. This was where the first two kings of Portugal were buried in Baroque splendor.

I sat and stared at a crucifix from whose agonized torso a golden sunburst emerged, hoping that some analogous joy could emerge from my lungs.

It seemed to work, because I dozed off and woke up feeling fine as we wandered up through an arch leading toward the university,

passed through two more arches

and emerged into a plaza packed with ebullient young people who had just completed a run, high on endorphins.

Their energy seemed to pass into me and provided Jan with some of the fortitude to keep going uphill through the narrow streets.

At a terrace overlooking the river we boarded the small green city bus that switchbacked through the Botanical Gardens to the University buildings at the top.

Rather than taking the three hour tour, which included a visit to the famous library, we stayed on the bus back down to our hotel and  took a nap.

I was awakened by the sound of choral singing in the street just outside the window. I opened the shutters and saw people dressed in white parading up the hill behind us. We went outside and got swept up in the crowd following the singers, clueless but eager to find out what was happening.

The climb was rigorous, but like the energy of the runners earlier, helped elevate us up the hill.  A pair of undergraduate monitors with bullhorns told us that this was a procession marking the opening of the Coimbra Biennale, a huge artistic event lasting for several months that would take place in the buildings at the top.

As the  crowd assembled there, the singers concluded their rendition, not of a church anthem but of the famous chorus of slaves from a Verdi opera.

That led to a long sequence of speeches by elected officials, corporate sponsors and the event organizers. I walked up to a sympathetic looking man to ask more about what was happening and he gave me an English version of the thick program.

Screenshot

The theme was “To hold, to receive, to Give,” close to the theme of mutuality and the gift economy expressed in The Serviceberry, the book by Robin Wall Kimmerer, we would be discussing next week at our second meeting of the Agrarian Spirit Book Club.

Jan and I sat on a high wall, happy to get off our feet and enjoy the view across the river in the late afternoon light.

Once the doors of the immense edifice opened, people crowded inside to view the installations.  Most made use of its huge dark ruined spaces to create effects of fear and dread.

We walked through a number of them, intrigued by the venue and its potential for powerful presentations, but engaged by none of them, yet still thrilled by the occasion and the place.

Despite the previous daytime recovery, the night again required a stayover in the shower.

Along with coffee’s medicinal relief, the morning newspaper provided distraction

Google Translate supplied details.

[We learned later that this event attracted international attention.]

We took it easy for most of the day. Jan discovered that an Easter Choral Concert was scheduled for that evening back at the New Monastery.  It required free email reservations, which she made.

This time we took a three-minute Bolt ride to the hilltop and arrived early enough to learn about the gigantic architectural complex which includes the church hosting the performance.

It enshrines the incorrupt body of Saint Queen Isabel (1271–1336), revered throughout Portugal for her modesty and charity.

“When caught secretly carrying bread to the poor in winter [forbidden by her husband, the king], she claimed her apron held roses; upon opening it, the bread had transformed into roses, proving her devotion”

Having extra time before the concert, we returned to the Bienale Exhibition and were greeted by a volunteer guide, herself an actress, producer and artist

I wanted to see the piece produced by Christian Anderson, the man from Stockholm who gave me the brochure at the ceremony the day before.

Maria took us to a small outbuilding devoted to his work, which I found more appealing than the others we’d seen.

The enormous Church occupies only a small portion of the long defunct monastery. Beyond the scaffolding for ongoing renovation,  the five spriraling arches over Isabel’s tomb were coated with gold. (What would she think of that?)

The audience was sparse, made up largely of friends and relatives of the performers, most of whom, including the conductor, were young. The program consisted of three gorgeous pieces,  two by a Baroque Czech composer, J.D. Zelinka, I never heard of

and one by Joseph Haydn.

We’d arranged for a final two night stay in Lisbon at the Avalade Palace Hotel near the airport to prepare for the 24-hour flight back to California.

This section of the City was developed for middle class housing during the ’40’s and ’50’s with high rise apartments,  parks, and a neighborhood atmosphere. It also attracted international non-profits and government agencies along its wide central boulevard. On our walks up the block it was evident that many of the buildings had seen better days and were now being restored or redeveloped.

The backyard of our Hotel also showed signs of faded former opulence.

The concierge told us about two places to eat within walking distance:  Tico-Tico, a lively spot with wonderful fresh fish where went the first night for dinner and for lunch the next day

and O Patamar, a tiny neighborhood cafe around the corner, where we went for lunch the first day and for evening snack the last. Still owned by the grandma who started it, it’s run by three brothers, including one who’s 11-years old.

They spoke enough English for some warm conversation–a fitting conclusion for the unexpected encounters of a memorable trip.

We breakfasted in the basement of Hotel Gama Stan whose walls and vaults formed part of the ancient City walls.

Further under ground on the way to City Hall, we rode an escalator 100 feet down to the Kungstradgarten Subway station

and were astounded by what we found down there:

We got the requisite portrait at City Hall.

While Jan stayed at the cafe, I roamed the grounds that I recognized from the Hendrik Willem Van Loon alphabet book I’d treasured as a five year old.

As an inscription in it shows, my parents rescued the battered volume and gifted it to our daughter Claire when she was 9.

I rented one of the ubiquitous Lime electric scooters, planning to ride to a beach along the shore a couple of miles away for a swim. But I soon lost heart because of the traffic and confusing road alignments and walked over to check out one of the Culturfest events:

Jan and I reconnected in the mid afternoon and agreed to visit the National Museum. We wound our way through the ever more crowded streets filled with young Swedes whose beauty appealed to my art conoisseur’s eye.

We arrived with just enough time to catch some highlights before it closed for the day.

Over the entrance we both found the PreRaphaelite mural by Carl Larsson visually appealing  but  bizarre in subject. “Midwinter Sacrifice” portrays a legendary naked king being willingly beheaded for his subjects by a red-cloaked priest in the effort to end a famine. Inspiring ongoing controversy, it was removed and then returned over a period of several decades.

Only briefly distracted, we hunted down the less controversial, but no less affecting Rembrandt portraits of youth and age.

With only a half hour or so left, we came upon the featured exhibit entitled “Hannah Hirsch Pauli, The Art of Being Free.” We both loved the work and the life story of this relatively unknown Swedish painter (1864-1940) who came from an assimilated Jewish family, spent several years in Paris with the Impressionists, married an artist and bore children, lived a sane and productive life and died before being exiled or murdered by the Nazis. Like Rembrandt’s, I particularly liked her portraits of Youth and Age.

This image of fulfilled exhaustion befitted our mood as we left the museum and hiked back to Kungsradgarden for dinner in a cafe neatly tucked in a tight grove of linden trees.

Somewhat refreshed, we braved exuberant crowds gathered before the Opera House to hear a concert by a big star we didnt know, but whose lyrical enthusiasm I greatly enjoyed.

Jan and I again parted ways in front of the Royal Palace, she on her way back to the hotel and I in search of one last taste of mainstream Culture that I wished the one I was returning to in the morning was more like:

As I stood with the crowd, my phone dinged notice of a text from Jan.  It was a picture and the caption, “Best dessert I’ve ever eaten.”

It felt liberating to be on our own for the last two days in this City we had come to love.  To reach the coffee shop arranged to meet Ruth, Jan’s undergrad roommate, we took a pleasant busride through neighborhoods inhabited by locals, all of which gave evidence of an extensive and prosperous middle class.

Ruth was late so I left Jan waiting and walked up the hill in a nearby public park which offered wide views

and the preserved structure of the Stockholm astronomical observatory, built in the mid 1700’s at the behest of the Swedish Academy of Sciences which included major researchers whose names are still familiar like Celsius and Linnaeus.

Back at the coffee shop, Jan and Ruth were deep in reminiscence and catch-up.

After graduating Stanford in 1967, she had opted to move to Sweden, gone to medical school there, became a specialist in oncology, married a fellow physician and pharmaceutical executive, and recently retired.

Her husband, who had come along to the coffeeshop, invited me to visit their nearby apartment, in the middle of major renovation but still notably comfortable.

Jan and I returned downtown to retrieve our suitcases and walk through the steadily increasing crowds assembling for “Culturfest,” a weeklong festival of free concerts at multiple outdoor venues. We arrived at Hotel Gamla Stan, relieved to check in to the modest room overlooking an ancient alley.

Refreshed by a siesta, we crossed the street, found a restaurant and sat at a table again overlooking the water. Before we had a chance to order, a shabby-looking fellow and two sidekicks entered the terrace and set up instruments. Then he started to sing

At that point we stopped thinking about food, captivated by his voice and personality. The large respectable looking party sitting nearby sang along with him.

And people along the quay outside the restaurant gathered to listen and shoot video.

During a brief set break we ordered from the waitress and I asked who is this guy.  “Tommy Nilsson,” she said, “Look him up.”

That I did, and on the iphone popped this:

and this

Next morning, after loading up on the Scandinavian staple of pickled herring and lox, our small group assembled to meet the local guide, Gaby, a former high school history teacher, who spoke with knowledge and enthusiasm.

After passing a synagogue built in 1870 and apparantly not destroyed by the Nazis, she stopped at at a memorial honoring slain Jews and the gentile Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who risked his life to provide safe passage to people fleeing the murderers throughout Europe. After the Allied victory in Europe, he was imprisoned by the Soviets and never heard from again.

The prostrated figures reminded me of the memorial in Vienna I saw last year.

Next, with no waiting necessary, we boarded a comfortable electric bus headed toward the Vasa Museum.  It houses a huge sailing ship that sank in Stockholm harbor in 1628 and was salvaged almost fully intact 333 years later.

It was commissioned by King Gustavus Adolfus, who at the time was fighting wars with Denmark, Russia, and Poland-Lithuania,  a nation  ruled by his cousin and Sweden’s former king who’d been exiled during wars of religion because he was Catholic. “Richly decorated as a symbol of the king’s ambitions for Sweden and himself, upon completion she was one of the most powerfully armed vessels in the world. However, Vasa was dangerously unstable, with too much weight in the upper structure of the hull. Despite this lack of stability, she was ordered to sea and sank only a few minutes after encountering a wind stronger than a breeze.”*

Just as memorable as that story was the one of the sunken ship’s discovery in Stockholm harbor and its recovery and restoration between 1961 and 1990 presented in the museum’s film theatre.

A tiring walk through the crowded streets of Gamla Stan, the well preserved old section of the City

ended with a short ferry ride back to the harbor

and dinner in a cafe served by cheerful young waitstaff,

and return to our opulent hotel room.

Arriving in sunny Stockholm, I was energized by the luxury of the room we were assigned at the Hotel Kungstradgarden, complete with a large chandelier reflecting moving lights on the walls and 12 foot ceiling.  Originally an adjunct to a royal palace, it was renovated recently to retain its 18th century decor.

Its location on a little sloped plaza allowed us to reach the King’s park in minutes and stroll  down  a treed alley to the harbor.

We scanned the waterfront in search of an optimally situated restaurant to take in the spectacular views. Across a graceful stone bridge and surrounded by palatial buildings we saw a treed terrace with tables and umbrellas jutting into the water. Wary of long flights of steps, we found a cylindrical outdoor elevator accommodating those with knee issues.

At a table by swiftly flowing tidal currents we realized that this City, like Venice, was an archipelago equally composed of land and water.

A panorama of majestic buildings adjoining the King’s Park spread across the opposite bank, the  most imposing being the Royal Opera House, perhaps, I surmised, in competition with those of Copenhagen and Oslo.

Behind us and beyond the bridge stood the austere but elegant royal palace.

And across the road from the elevator rose the less fortress-like parliament building.

On the way back to the King’s Park, we noticed a young man fishing.  As in Oslo, we were told, all the waters here were clean enough for angling and swimming.

Fabled Scandinavian design was evident everywhere, from a brightly colored local church

to the sculpture of lamposts and lions

From Jan: 

Sick in bed, poor Steven completely missed seeing Bergen.

So, I set off bravely on my own. First I went to the Bryggens Museum.  I was blown away by the unique tapestry series “Åsmund Frægdagjeva” by Ragna Breivik.

These ten magnificent tapestries created by Norwegian textile artist Ragna Breivik were woven over a period of more than 25 years. She dyed the wool with natural dyes, spun it and wove the tapestries on a loom of her own design, on display at the museum.

The tapestries are based on the medieval ballad of Åsmund Frægdagjeva, who rescues Princess Ermelin from trolls in Trollebotn where the sun never shines.

These visually stunning woven images reawakened my long ago love of  Viking and Icelandic sagas–as retold in medieval poetry and storytelling traditions–when I studied them in my Comparative Medieval Literature MA program at Columbia.

The story begins as many fairytales do: the fair princess has been captured and imprisoned in a faraway castle, and the King commissions a hero, in this case Åsmund, to rescue her.

He and his brothers take the King’s flagship vessel to the castle of the ogre, where the princess is imprisoned.

He finds the princess walking through the castle, and immediately falls in love with her. But she, under a spell of the ogre to believe that he is her mother, will not leave with Åsmund.

He then takes her by force. On his way out, the ogre appears. They fight a long battle both physically and with curses and spells, but Åsmund eventually kills him.

The princess being free from the spell, they plunder the castle and return home with all the ogre’s treasure.

Next I headed to the Hanseatic Museum.  I was excited to see the well preserved historic Bergen headquarters of the Hanseatic League. A whole block of wooden buildings dating back to the Hanseatic era, comprising no less than 62 buildings, has been preserved.

This was a thrill for me because as a student I had studied and explored several of the ports dominated and operated by these 13^th Century merchants from Northern Germany. They sailed into Bergen to exchange grain for stockfish from Northern Norway. Their trading activities made Bryggen and Bergen one of Northern Europe’s most important trading hubs for the next 400 years.

The Hanseatic League, using the power of the purse, supplanted the kingdoms and governments of Germany and Norway. The Bergen seal symbolizes this shared governance, half German heraldic eagle and half “King Codfish.”

The Hanseatic trade routes went as far West as Greenland and as far East as the Holy Land.

The tour’s itinerary included a railway trip to Flam, an outpost at the head of a fjord on the super-rugged west side of Norway.

The route followed a steady ascent from sea level through farmland up to 2800 feet at Myrdal, a mountaineering, hiking and cross country skiing area where glaciers are visible nearby in midaugust.

There one changes trains to the Flamsbana, a railroad enthusiast’s classic operation that descends along a hair-raising right of way down to the fjord

At one point the train stops briefly at a tiny curved bridge crossing  over a wild cascade

Through the windows one sees the rushing river and numerous waterfalls

interspersed with isolated farms and homesteads, many inhabited for centuries

At the terminus, after walking through a riot of tourist shops, we arrived at a rustic-styled hotel fronting on a cruise ship wharf thankfully unoccupied during our overnight stay

I felt a cold coming on and stayed in through through dinner, but next morning took a walk on one of many trails surrounding the village.

I had to cut it short to board another ferry that  carried us for the rest of the day through inland waterways

and for a short while in the open ocean to the historic port of Bergen. Again under the weather — now gray skies and intermittent rain–I went back to bed and slept until the next afternoon’s flight to Stockholm, while Jan explored the City’s preserved heritage of the Hanseatic League, established there by Germans in 1350.

A morning boatride around the harbor along with the tourist hordes we joined

preceded departure on the overnight ferry, including sleeping cabin, for Oslo.

Another literary association brought the significance of this passage in view. It was the location of The Surgeon’s Mate, the seventh in the Aubrey-Maturin series of 21 novels by Patrick O’Brian I’ve become addicted to.  Set during the Age of Sail and the  Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800’s, these blockbuster books have been called “the greatest historical novels of all time.”

The often narrow passage between Denmark, Sweden and Norway, control of which has been contested since the Viking age, provides the only sea access from the Atlantic and beyond to Germany, Eastern Europe and Russia.

At at a table in the congenial bar on the rear deck I noticed a man writing notes on a pad next to a thick book stuffed with multicolored stickies.  Aha,  I thought, an academic! Despite fifteen years since retirement from the profession, I felt no reluctance in striking up a conversation.  It turned out he was a professor of African-American studies, working on his third book.  His wife was heading a Social Work program, and they were riding up to Oslo and returning to Copenhagen the day after arrival.

Jan joined us for a heated happy conversation, and next morning we exchanged hugs and contacts. But I’ve lost the information.  It was another of those travellers’ meetings, sufficient in itself, reminding me of the phrase I had learned from our tea ceremony host in Japan in 2010: “One life, one encounter.”

Upon arrival in Oslo, we were greeted by the local guide, a moonlighting building contractor who hailed from a village north of the Arctic Circle, hired to lead a City tour. Regaling us with sordid gossip about the Royal Family, he drove us in a van to the out of town hilltop location of an Olympic ski-jump training facility–not a place of pressing interest for me–and then to  a reputedly world reknowned sculpture park exclusively featuring the work of Gustav Vigeland. It was impressive to be sure, but left both of us cold. The last stop was the Fram Museum, containing the preserved ship built and led for the first successful expedition to the South Pole in 1911 by Roald Admundsen. Wandering upon and below decks vaguely recalled the account of that trip and the brilliant heroics of its leader that enthralled me in the 1952 Landmark book and affirmed that positive aspects of the Viking spirit have remained.

After checking in at the portside Radisson Hotel reserved by the tour, we searched for a place to eat in another jam packed and very expensive tourist district. We ate  falafel pita at a dirty sidewalk table and ended up crashing early.

Again the selected luxury hotel offered a lavish breakfast leaving behind mountains of food waste. However, it did offer advice on how to behave sustainably.

Before departure to the train station, I explored some of the new monumental buildings at the waterfront, including another Opera House, financed by Norway’s vast North Sea oil production.