Day 14: Observations from Star Deck Joy Ride

We think there is an excellent reason why people typically end a journey at about two weeks time. We are two weeks and one day into our adventure and we are finding ourselves in somewhat of a funk, not wanting to venture out to see yet another famous landmark, monument, museum nor even another beautiful landscape. We are road weary and our heads are full from taking in too much during the past two weeks. This would be a natural point at which one might want to return home toward what is familiar again, allowing time for assimilation of all that has transpired. All we really wanted to do today, in the city of Stockholm, was to find the new Johnny Depp Movie, “Alice in Wonderland” and to sit and vege in some quiet theater, one might not readily think so, but it is hard work taking on a venture such as this and we are tired. We can clearly see the work ahead of trudging through the low energy times until we are yet again miraculously visited by the muse of wonder and delight and our enthusiasm returns! So it is that we wait for the muse ….
This evening the muse returned in the form of Monika, a 5 W member who we had contacted but decided we were too weary to move our baggage (small though it may be) to yet another home in Stockholm- so we opted to meet her for dinner instead of stay with her. She was a true delight and filled our evening with stories of her travels around the world and her experiences with members of the 5 W group, she has been a member since the early 90’s. Monika is Swedish and has many ancestors that immigrated to the US and she has been in the process over the past few years of “looking up her long lost ancestors” but in the reverse of what Jubie and I had ever thought of. Rather than the far flung branches of the tree searching for their roots, in this odd instance, the roots of the tree are searching for the branches. We imagined how fun it might be to receive a letter or call from someone in Norway or the Ukraine looking for us. Hmmmmm, interesting. We mused over a dinner of Swedish fare including, of course, Swedish meatballs, and fried herring with potatoes served in many different ways, some boiled, some shredded and looking somewhat like rice.