(Post and Image provided by Ian Wolney)
Hej hej! Our group took a tour around the gardens of Skansen, an open-air museum located in Stockholm. Our tour guide, Bosse, was dressed in 18th century attire and took us on a wonderful tour. He gave us insights into the sustainability and cultural importance of gardening in the life of Swedish folk throughout history by showing us different gardens and buildings from different eras of Swedish history. I learned a lot about Swedish history and gardening, but more importantly, it made me really want to start a garden!
After our tour we were able to choose to do glassblowing or paper making. I chose to do glass blowing, and with my group we decided to make a blue and green vase with the opening looking like flower petals to sort of resemble the earth. Each person in my group took turns heating, rolling, shaping, pinching, and cutting the glass. We added baking soda in it to make bubbles in the glass too. Surprisingly, our vase turned out great!
During the afternoon we were able to spend the day exploring Skansen, which has everything from historical viking runes to Nordic animal zoos (like the seals above). Skansen had so much to see and do that I felt like it was impossible to experience everything, but after we were done I felt very satisfied with what I got to do.
Later in the evening, I went with a small group to go shopping in central Stockholm and get coffee. During the whole day we traveled using the subway and trams to get across the city, which was an exciting and new experience for me as I’ve never used public transportation at home. I noticed there’s not a lot of cars because they have so many public transportation options, reducing the country’s carbon impact. I hope one day we decide to create the same infrastructure at home so that we can reduce our impact on the environment and improve the walkability of our cities.