Herräng, Sweden

Our final week of the trip was spent in Herräng, for week one of the Herräng Dance Camp. This year is the 25th anniversary of the camp, and they've got 5 weeks of dancing madness there. Herräng itself used to be an ore-mining town, and now is just a small village of ~800 people. That population probably doubles or triples during July, depending on how many people are attending camp on any given week. Though I think a lot of the natives bail during the summer and rent out their homes or rooms to dance invaders.

The way classes worked was interesting, since I come from a Camp Harmony sort of background where everything is very flexible and on-the-fly. At Herräng you have to register for a specific class series, which gets marked on your Herräng "passport." They actually have a passport control squad that does random spot checks in the classes every day, to make sure nobody's sneaking around. I was signed up for Int.-Adv. Lindy Hop, so that's what I did, though I would have checked out some of the beginning Boogie Woogie classes if I could have. (Boogie Woogie was the non-Lindy focus for this week; each week is different.) We had about three 80-minute classes a day, some of which really pushed me, and some of which were easier, so I think it was a good level for me. There was a good variety of teachers, too. We spent the most time with Daniel and Åsa who I think made a really good backbone for the week. They seemed the most well-rounded teachers, covering musicality, fancy moves, footwork variations, niggling basic details, and other stuff. There were some other good teachers we only got one shot with, though, like Ichtiandras and Solveiga, who I would have liked to have seen a lot more of.

Frankie Manning is sort of the patron saint of Herräng, though he didn't arrive until mid-week because of some events back in the States for his recently released autobiography. I got a copy at camp and got Frankie to sign it, then read most of it on the plane flight home. Absolutely fantastic book all the way through, but worth it even if all you read is his description of creating and performing the first air steps (aerials) ever. One of the classes for all the lindy hop students was actually just an hour with Frankie Manning and his son, Chazz Young, on stage telling us stories of what it was like dancing at the Savoy back in the 1930's to bands like Chick Webb and Count Basie. Frankie is 93 years old and says he's been dancing for 94 years, and he can tell you about all of them with such complete joy and humor that it's a delight to listen to. His voice comes through extremely well in the book, too, so I highly recommend reading it.

One camp tradition I thought was a little weird until I experienced it was the daily meetings. At 9 PM each day there are no dances or classes or anything else scheduled and everyone goes and crams themselves into the main Folkets Hus room (fire safety limit: 150 people, actual limit: waaaay more) as well as a couple other rooms where they have live video broadcasts. Then Lennart Westerlund comes out on stage completely deadpan, sits down on a stool, and leads some of the most entertaining hour-long meetings I've ever been in. They include not only general camp information and announcements, but also video clips from previous camps and old movies, occasional performances, ongoing sitcoms with various teachers and staff, ongoing in-jokes (ice cream! salty fish! bugaloo!), and updates on projects such as trying to get the King of Sweden to visit the camp. It was well worth being packed in like sardines every night. (They'd have you cram in as far as you think you can, let you rest and get comfortable for 10 minutes, then tell you to squeeze in even more to get the latecomers in.)

When I needed a break from camp a couple times, I took a walk down to the beach. The beach itself is an extremely modest little strip of sand with a dock and a picnic table. But there are also some interesting areas with remains of the old mining operations. Like enormous pits, or huge dirt/sand dunes in different colors. And giant, rusty pieces of equipment, like enormous iron wheels and railroad ties. It kind of reminded me of playing Myst years ago, exploring a deserted area and finding remnants of past civilizations. Also near the beach were some beautifully forested areas with some lovely paths to follow. So it was a good place to go and recharge if I got a little over-lindied once in a while.

Miriam and I stayed in the general accommodations, which are mostly in the small school building and its gym. All furniture was removed from the classrooms and the entire thing (including hallways) was packed with bunk beds. They left the decorations up, though, so there are still little kids' drawings and dioramas on the walls, and a solar system hanging from the ceiling. Our classroom had 15 bunks, so 30 people. One one side, my bunk was flush up against another one (luckily neither of us were rollers). On the other side, I had to squeeze in sideways to fit between the beds. We were told we only had this much space because it was week one. Apparently in the more crowded weeks people are sharing beds and sleeping on the floor. As it was, it still got pretty unpleasant after a few days, when it just became a warm, damp, smelly petri dish of sweat and germs. As I think I mentioned in a previous post, I got sick midway through camp, and you could just hear the cough traveling from one bed to another. No way to keep anything quarantined in there.

Getting sick meant that I had a pretty rough time of the last half of camp. I still managed to attend classes and learn some stuff, but I wasn't able to dance much or have much fun in the evenings. So it was kind of a depressing end to the trip, having gone all the way out to Sweden for this and then blown so much of it. I'm not sure if or when I'll go back in future years. Part of me wants to, to do it right, but part of me would rather just spend my travel time and money on new trips. But someday, maybe, who knows.

Baltic Ferries

Going between Sweden and Finland, we took the overnight cruise ships, which turned out to be pretty fun. I recommend going between Stockholm and Helsinki, though, rather than Stockholm and Turku. We did it both ways and the latter is a shorter trip with less time to really get the cruise ship experience, plus they roll you out of bed at 6 AM. We got a complimentary or accidental room upgrade or something on the Helsinki trip as well, which might color my perception of it a bit, but I still liked that trip better. We were on the Silja line, which means a giant blue boat, rather than the Viking line, which would be a giant red boat. Though perhaps there are other differences as well.

To imagine one of these cruise ships, take a hotel, a mall, a sauna, a casino, a nightclub, some restaurants and bars, and then moosh them all together and make the whole thing float. I don't know how many people they get on those things, but it's gotta be a lot. If you walk up on the deck, you get lovely views of all the little islands in the archipelago around Stockholm, or you can see midnight sunsets later in the evening. The rooms we had were pretty small, with beds that collapse into the walls, so you can decide between being able to lay down or turn around. I'm not sure how big and fancy the more expensive ones get, but our upgraded room did at least have a nice window overlooking the main "promenade" (i.e. shopping mall) of the ship. Wandering around the mall and restaurants and duty-free shops is interesting for a short while, but not for too long. Luckily, there was some other fun to be found.

There was a small stage and dance floor at one end of the first ship we were on. I poked my head in there a couple times during the evening, and noticed some show that seemed to have people in pirate costumes dancing to different sorts of music each time. Miriam and I went back later, though, and found a band playing and people dancing. They were mostly playing a bunch of "oldies," with some swing-able stuff early on, followed by more tangos, foxtrots, and slow dances later. We managed to get a decent little dance fix out of it. One really amusing moment came during a waltz when I was confused about why absolutely everybody suddenly wanted to dance in the same corner as us. Turns out these ships are so big it's easy to forget sometimes that you're actually out on the ocean. Until the dance floor tilts.

After dancing, we found a bunch of karaoke going on in another part of the ship. This turned out to be fascinating because the majority of the songs were in either Finnish or Russian (though occasionally English with one of those accents). It was really fun to hear pop music from other countries, and to watch all the foreign words going by on the screens. I tried to remember some of the lyrics long enough to write them down when we got back to our room. Now we'll see how well I did by googling for them and seeing if I can find the songs to listen to again.

I'll mention the ferry between Helsinki and Tallinn as well, as long as I'm here, though it was rather different, being more like a glorified bus and not a huge cruise ship. The one interesting thing about it was the music video showing on a screen when we boarded. It had a catchy little tune and this bizarre animation with hippo-dog things holding umbrellas. I really want to find that song again, and Miriam managed to jot down the main melody, but that's all we've got. After that one, they just showed American music videos from the '80's and '90's for the rest of the trip, so less interesting.

Stockholm, Sweden

Stockholm bookended our trip, with a weekend at the beginning and a camp-recovery evening at the end. Unfortunately, we got there on a gray, drizzly midsummers-holiday weekend, which pretty much turns Stockholm into a ghost town. So I think we got rather an unfair impression of it. I love the archipelaginess of it, though, and getting to cross different bits of water to get to different islands.

The Af Chapman is a ship that was converted into a hostel, so that seemed like a fun place to stay. Unfortunately, it's closed for renovations, so we stayed in the Långholmens Hostel, instead, which is a converted prison. Not so bad as it sounds, though. It has a small, interesting museum that lets you compare what it was like in the prison days with the way it is now, and it's also on a lovely little island with very nice wooded paths to stroll around. And some of the rooms have interesting decorations. Like the guillotine on the mirror, and the old newspaper prints on the underside of the upper bunks. It was a bit away from the city center (in "Stockholm's Brooklyn") but not too bad.

Friday we mostly took it easy, dealing with jet lag, but did walk around the old town island of Gamla Stan for a while. Saw some nice churches, and a statue of St. George and the Dragon which I quite liked. The dragon is made out of lots of elk antlers, which gives it a wonderful look.

On Saturday we went to the Vasa Museum, built around the Vasa warship, which was the Titanic of the Scandinavian 17th century. Someone built a huge, impressive ship, then miscalculated how many rocks they needed as ballast. It got top heavy, tipped over, and sank when it was barely out of the harbor on its maiden voyage. It was found, pulled up from the ocean floor, and restored several decades ago. You can see it in the museum, along with tons of other fascinating exhibits about it and about seafaring life generally in the time period. The video about the recovery is very interesting, and well worth the half hour. I also enjoyed the wax reconstructions of some of the people whose skeletons were found on board. The display about how that was done says that while they obviously can't determine hair color or anything, they can get good enough reconstructions to be recognizable by someone who knew the person. Amazing. In the "Completely Random" department, there was a photo of our governator as Conan the Barbarian. No explanation whatsoever on why that was in a 17th century Swedish warship museum.

A ways down the street from the museum (having missed the entrance to Skansen, which we'll come back to later) we found a small Italian restaurant. This had the best pizza ever. Maybe it was something about the crust, or the sauce, or just some magic pixie dust they sprinkled on it, but it was incredible.

We continued wandering around the parks on Djurgården and found a nice rose garden, mostly notable for a lemon-scented rose. We also came across a small playground with one of these things that are so much fun. (Anybody know what they're called?) Being a damp day, the slugs were out in force. Swedish slugs are large ugly things, like banana slugs, if you let the bananas get old and black. They appeared to be cannibalistic as well.

We eventually made it back to Skansen in the evening. This is a large "open air museum," basically a park with a lot of things like reconstructions of old villages and whatnot in it. There's also a small zoo that provided some great views of bears and moose and other critters. We were rather cold and wet by this point, but wanted to stick around for the folk dancing that happens on one of the little stages in the park. At 8pm some musicians set up and started playing lovely Scandinavian tunes under a gazebo, while a couple brave dancers hambo'd and schottisched through the rain. I was starved at this point and eating a sandwich from a nearby shop. I gobbled it up as fast as I could, then we dashed over to join the dancing. Literally as soon as we set foot on the stage, the musicians wrapped up their current tune and started putting their instruments away. Ouch. I guess they decided 15 minutes was enough in that kind of weather. Really disappointing, though. It would have been fun to surprise folks with some American kids that knew the hambo.

Things brightened up on Sunday when, appropriately enough, the sun came out. We went out to Millesgården, former home of sculptor Carl Milles, and now a wonderful museum and park full of his work. He was influenced a lot by Rodin, but took everything in a much more mythological, fantastical direction. Some of it I like more than others, but it's all fascinating.

Conveniently, Millesgården is over on the side of Stockholm near the Värtan harbor, from which we'd be sailing to Helsinki. So having earlier stashed our larger bags in lockers at a train station, we were all set to go board the cruise ship Sunday afternoon. More on that next post.