Tourism – Super Facts

Today is the fifth time I participate in Linda Hill’s streams of consciousness. To read about the rules and participate click here or here. To read my four previous entries (prompt was pre) click here “Prediction Failures and My Lucky Day from Hell”, or here “The Review Wars on Amazon – Stream of Consciousness”, or here, “Reindeer Hide Memories”, or here “25 Sweet Leonberger and Dog Photos”. I put this post on my Super-factful blog because it is factual, real events, and not related to Leonbergers. However, it is not a super fact.

The badge features a twig with rain drops and it says Stream of consciousness Saturday #SoCS — 2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley!

Today’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday August 8, 2026, is “Travel”. Use it way you’d like. The first rule is: there should be minimal planning and no editing except typos. I did not edit but I did add a few pictures. I like adding pictures.

The first thing that came to my mind for this prompt was that I’ve travelled a lot. I’ve visited almost 50 countries, and 46 US states. I’ve been on business trips or worked in several countries. I’ve also lived in Sweden half my life and in the US during the other half of my life, and I’ve lived in five states. Most of my travel have been fun and interesting. However, not all my travel was pleasant. Below I am describing four unpleasant travel experiences.

The Salmonella Ferry

I grew up in a small town in northern Sweden in a working class family. We could not afford a lot of travel, but what we could afford was taking a trip on the ferries going from Sweden to Finland. These ferries had a car deck. You drove your car onto the car deck and then you went upstairs. The ferry between northern Sweden (Umeå or Örnsköldsvik) and Vaasa in Finland took four hours and you just stayed on the upper deck. However, the overnight ferry between Stockholm and Helsinki (or Tallin) took 15-20 hours and you stayed in small rooms underneath the upper deck. This time we took the ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki.

For dinner they had buffet with all kinds of Scandinavian dishes including dishes with eggs. Unfortunately, the eggs had a special feature and that was Salmonella. During the night more and more people started getting sick. People were vomiting and people got diarrhea. There were nearly a thousand people on the ferry and not enough bathrooms to accommodate everyone who had Salmonella. I did not get Salmonella, but I still needed to use the bathroom a couple of times. I remember people vomiting in toilets and people not able to go on time. It was an unpleasant disaster.

A large white ferry with the inscription ESTLINE. | Bad Travel Memories – Stream of Consciousness — MS Estonia in 1993/1994. Blahaaaaaaaa69420, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

However, in September 1994 something much worse happened to one of the ferries. I remember because I had just started working for a Robotics company after getting my PhD in Physics and Electrical Engineering, specialty Robotics, and two people at my workplace died. It was a ferry called MS Estonia going between Tallin and Stockholm. The ramp / door for the car deck, the so called bow visor, was leaking during a storm, letting in water and flooding the car deck making the ferry unstable. It finally tipped over very quickly. Nearly a thousand people died and not many survived.

Interrogated and Held at Gun Point in the Soviet Union

When I was a high school student, I joined a group of travelers to the Soviet Union from the church I was part of at the time. The year was 1980, before Glasnost, and the Soviet authorities had temporarily hardened their authority. We tried to smuggle unwanted literature such as Russian Bibles and other books, as well as printing machine equipment and supplies for the underground movement. We planned to travel with the Stockholm-Tallin ferry, but a strike forced us to take the train all around the Baltic Sea and back down to Helsinki and then East to Leningrad, now called St. Petersburg.

KGB Soviet Officer entering a train couple carrying an automatic gun. — I asked ChatGPT to draw me this. The tea cup in the picture happen to by chance look exactly like what we drank from.

Long story short, we were caught, at the Finland Station, and lined up at gun point, searched and interrogated in isolation one by one. While we were lined up, I said, in Swedish, “they are the cattle of dictatorship”, quoting a Swedish prime minister, who had said that about the Soviet Army. My friend Michael hit me in the stomach and said, “shut up Thomas, I am standing next to you”. I can add that a Sandinista who came there to learn guerrilla warfare was sitting with us and accidentally got caught up in our business.

After maybe 4-5 hours they let us go and they even let us into the Soviet Union. However, they gave us a guide from the KGB. She was watching us and making sure we did not misbehave but also giving us guided tours. She was nice and we got along with her. A note about history: The Finland Station was where Vladimir Lenin arrived in February 2017 setting the stage for the Russian Revolution.

Amnesia in Garmisch-Partenkirchen

When I was about 22 years old, I travelled with a group of friends from Sweden to Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria, southern Germany, to ski. We were travelling by bus. As it turned out I had a pretty bad accident in a black diamond slope that was closed because of too icy conditions. Yes, I know, I ignored the sign and the rules. Long story short, I fell badly, hit my head, had a concussion, and a badly dislocated shoulder. As a bonus I lost my memory.

My memory was gone for about three days. It was caused by shock and not by brain injury and that kind of amnesia resolves itself within hours up to a few weeks. Amnesia caused by brain injury is much more difficult to recover from. There were other weird things happening on this trip. You can read more about this trip here.

Mountains in the background. The town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the foreground. | Bad Travel Memories – Stream of Consciousness — The town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Photo by op23 on Pexels.com

Our Hardest Goodbye (Don’t Read if you are Sensitive)

I’ve had ski accidents at other places as well, for example, Breckridge. One time I broke my finger and got some bruises in the Horseshoe Bowl in Breckenridge. However, the by far worst ski vacation I’ve ever had was not because of an accident. My oldest son and I went to Beaver Creek, Colorado, to ski, because that is what he wanted to do. My wife took the other two kids to Ohio because that is what they wanted to do.

While we were gone, we hired a dog sitter who was going to watch our four dogs, our Leonberger dog Bronco, our Labrador Baylor, our German Shepherd named Baby, and our Japanese Chin Ryu. The agreement was that she was supposed to come to our house a few times per day and then sleep over with the dogs.

However, after we had already left, she called us and told us she couldn’t do it as agreed because she was watching other dogs at her house, so she asked us if she could take our dogs to her house. Well, there was not really any choice. A few days later she called us and told us she could not find Baylor. He had been barking at night, so she put him out in the backyard. It turned out her fence was not secured and he had escaped. It was January and a cold even in Dallas, where we live. The next day he was found dead about halfway between her house and our house. He had been hit by a car, and the driver had just left him there. The kids cried and we were all traumatized. That was by far the worst vacation we’ve ever had. That was travel we will forever regret.

A labrador is walking across the rainbow bridge. The text says “You were our favorite Hello and our hardest Goodbye.” — We lost our beloved Baylor in a horrible way. Illustration by Naomi Rosenblatt.

To see the Super Facts click here

I just returned from a trip to Scandinavia with my son and his wife. Since it is World Tourism Day today, September 27^th, I thought I’d make one more post related to our trip. As usual, the post features many interesting facts, but it is not a super-fact post. To provide some background. Me and my oldest son and his wife visited my native country of Sweden and Norway over the last 10+ days. We got a lot done. Unfortunately, we did not have time to visit with family this time.

Three people standing on a boat on the fjord. — From a cruise in Sognefjord. Left to right, me, my eldest son and his wife.

First, we visited Stockholm including the Old City (Gamla Stan), the Royal Palace in Stockholm and Drottningholm, which is a Royal Palace outside of Stockholm, built in the 1660’s and resembling Versailles in France. We also visited the Ice Bar, a Viking restaurant, many museums including the Vasa Museum and the Abba Museum, and we learned about Karl XIV Bernadotte, the founder of the current Swedish Royal dynasty.

A photo of the Vasa Ship taken from below | Tourism in Scandinavia on World Tourism Day — A photo of the Vasa ship from the bottom floor. My son is standing on the right in a green and black shirt.

We spent a day in Uppsala, the student city north of Stockholm, where I studied engineering physics. Here we visited Sweden’s largest cathedral, the tomb of king Gustav I, Uppsala castle, my old student club (Nation of Norrland), the religious center of the Vikings, a Viking Museum, and we spent the afternoon with a classmate from my days at Uppsala University.

Four people standing in front of a restaurant. — From left to right, my oldest son, his wife, a classmate of mine from engineering physics 35-40 years ago, and finally me in the white jacket. In the background is a restaurant. I had Viking honey mead.

We also visited Oslo, Norway, where we visited several museums including an outdoor museum, the armed forces museum, the Maritime and the Fram Museum, an old fort, and we did some fishing in Oslo fjord. We toured the Norwegian mountains and did a cruise on Sognefjord. As a side note, the Fram Museum was centered around a ship called Fram, which was used by polar explorers such as Roald Amundsen who was the first to reach the South Pole. It is generally considered that the American Robert Peary reached the North Pole first, but that claim is disputed, which makes it possible that Roald Amundsen reached the North Pole first as well.

A side view of the ship Fram, the Norwegian ship used for Polar expeditions. It is fairly large | Tourism in Scandinavia on World Tourism Day — Fram was the Norwegian ship used for Polar expeditions.

With this post I also wanted to focus on practical issues regarding visiting Scandinavia. The Scandinavian countries are relatively wealthy, like the United States, and most people, at least young people, speak English and are friendly towards tourists including Americans. When you visit tourist attractions in Scandinavia you will hear a plethora of languages. However, unlike Texas, Spanish is not a common language, so if Spanish is your first language you’ve got to know English as well. Crime is not high, even though you should watch out for pick pockets. It is rare to encounter Scandinavians who try to trick you or take advantage of you, in contrast to some other tourist places around the world. However, there are some differences between Scandinavia and the United States, especially Texas, that can be challenging to tourists.

An early runestone in Sweden | Tourism in Scandinavia on World Tourism Day — An early runestone in Sweden.

Sweden and to a certain degree Norway are trying to be cashless societies. Banks will not handle cash, most stores, restaurants, hotels, and other businesses will not accept cash. Before leaving I tried to change dollars into Swedish crowns at my bank in Dallas, but I was informed that Swedish banks no longer provide or handle cash, so they did not have any either. There are Forex stores at airports that will exchange dollars and euros into Swedish and Norwegian crowns, but using the cash is a challenge. You pretty much have to use credit cards or a swish app on your phone to pay for anything.

A river with the sun and clouds reflecting in the water | Fyrisån, the small river that flows through Uppsala | Tourism in Scandinavia on World Tourism Day — Fyrisån, the small river that flows through Uppsala.

Personally, I disagree with this. It removes one important option to pay, which becomes a problem if your credit card is stopped, or you don’t have a credit card. It greatly inconveniences tourists, visitors, and many immigrants. In addition, it forces everyone to have a detailed digital footprint that can be used to track everything you buy. Identity theft, power outages, cyber-attacks, natural disasters, and other mishaps that disable electronic payment options can become disastrous without access to cash. Therefore, despite being Swedish I think this is a bad move by Sweden.

A view of a few of the Viking king and iron age king burial mounds in Uppsala.

One difference that I personally find more amenable, but I know that many Texans (I live in Texas) will find objectionable, is the focus on reducing one’s carbon footprint and the fight against global warming. You are reminded of this all the time and EV cars are very common. Texans frequently believe that EV cars are not environmentally friendly and does not emit less carbon dioxide than regular internal combustion engine cars. This is a false belief that Swedes do not tend share. Sweden has an almost entirely fossil fuel free grid and Swedes value that their carbon footprint is less than a third of that of, for example, Americans. These are all things that could rub some Texans the wrong way, just like Texas opinions could rub Swedes the wrong way. It is better not to argue.

Image showing an ICE car and its various losses. — 16-25% of original energy goes to the wheels. Data from FuelEconomy.gov, Image by Karin Kirk for Yale Connections.

Image showing an EV car and its various losses. — 87-91% of original energy goes to the wheels. Since EVs are so much more efficient than internal combustion engines they are cleaner even when their electricity come from a very dirty grid. Data from FuelEconomy.gov, Image by Karin Kirk for Yale Connections.

There are other differences. Public transportation is very good in Sweden and Norway. Public transportation is safe and typically much cheaper than taxi, uber or renting a car. In fact, considering the difference in traffic signs, the difficulties with parking, and the restrictions on driving in inner cities, you may not want to rent a car unless you plan on driving far out into the countryside. Bicycles and bicycle lanes are also very common and need to be respected. Luckily Scandinavian inner cities are very walkable. Doorknobs/handles are not round and are like levers. Scandinavians eat dinner earlier compared to southern and central Europeans and are like Americans in that regard.

Happy World Tourism Day Everyone