September 23, 2018

Go North Young Man! (And Woman!)

After a number of months of predictable, same-old activities, this has been a week of never knowing exactly what the next day would bring. After a very enjoyable day in Berlin visiting with a few people who knew us and even some old folks who didn’t remember us though we remembered them, it was time to hit the road for new adventures. Our hotel, if it can be called that, in Berlin, was unique for sharing the bathroom with four other rooms on our floor though we did have our own shower in one corner of the room. But then we headed to Hotel Seeufer which means Lakeshore, near the city of Kiel, Germany where Grammy had worked as a young missionary. It’s a harbor town on the shores of the Baltic and the Seeufer was quite delightful with private bath and shower and a picturesque location in a little town known as Ploen, about 20-30 minutes away. While it wasn’t located on the Baltic, it was, as the name implies, right on the shore of a beautiful lake with a dock at the end of their garden backyard. Here a couple of representative photos.

Grammy remembered walking along the harbor paths in Kiel which we did on Monday afternoon and enjoyed all of the sailing ships, the “German Naval Yards” and what we thought was a delicious meal in a picturesque restaurant right there outside until Grammy ended up throwing up for about two hours later that night. She blamed it on either the fish or the salad she ate but fortunately it was all over by the next morning with no further repercussions. Here are some scenes from Kiel.

 

Tuesday,  it was off to Copenhagen where we had secured lodgings at the Copenhagen Temple patron housing facility.  When we arrived at the temple we found out it was closed until a session which started at 6:30 PM. Although we had a number we could use to get in, it turned out that it wasn’t obvious exactly where the housing was located. We did ask a passerby who fortunately spoke a little English and she indicated she thought the Mormons busied themselves in a building behind the temple and when we finally got that far and looked around, sure enough, there was a church (no steeple) in a building of 4 stories, the chapel being on the second floor and the patron housing being on the fourth. We did find a door bell to ring above a number board where I suppose we might have  used the number they gave us but when I rang the bell a familiar voice answered and asked what we wanted. It turns out that one of our co-workers in Freiberg also had the Copenhagen Temple on their visiting list and were the ones to answer the bell. No one otherwise was working at the facility until Thursday! But they did have an envelope with our name on it and keys inside to our room which our friends supplied us with so the Lord does provide. Our room was again two small twin beds with a shared bath as well as a shared shower with a room carrying 2 bunk beds and housing a mother and three daughters. But we all arranged a nice schedule for using the facilities and it wasn’t all that bad. We knew in advance that there was no cafeteria but there was an eating area where we could bring and cook any food we wanted to purchase. We did make the 6:30 PM session where they asked us to be the witness couple and they had a total of 11 patrons including the 4 women, our neighbors, as well as the other Freiberg couple.

Wednesday we did get a second session in as well as had the opportunity to get around Copenhagen and see the sights including the famous statues of Hans Christian Anderson, the Little Mermaid, and our favorite goal of the cathedral with the statues of Christ (which the church has adopted) and 12 apostles excluding Judas Iscariot but including Paul.  We understand they have all of them at the visitor’s center at the new Rome Temple. Here you see the temple and a few of our other visits.

Then it was time to move on for our longest day trip of the journey so far as we headed for Stockholm and the temple there. Having left Germany on Tuesday, we were definitely in countries where we didn’t know the language but were blessed that virtually everyone we had to deal with spoke enough English that we could get by. Although Denmark wasn’t too bad, it seems like just about everyone in Sweden knows enough English that we were able to salvage a little self-confidence and get by. Below the Christus cathedral and the Stockholm Temple.

Interestingly, we were asked in our first of the two sessions we did in Stockholm to again be the witness couple. As witnesses, one always participates in a special prayer circle during the session and we were quite surprised that it was conducted in English in Copenhagen (though our second session there was in Danish) but both sessions in Stockholm were done in Swedish and we wore headsets for all the sessions we did.

Interestingly, the Stockholm Temple was dedicated in 1985, the same year as the Freiberg Temple but the latter has now been remodeled twice whereas the Stockholm Temple has never been remodeled yet. But Freiberg now has two endowment rooms whereas the Stockholm Temple has 4. It clearly is quite a bit busier than either Copenhagen or Freiberg and we were truly enchanted by the friendliness of the Swedish Saints. We attended church today at the chapel adjacent to the temple and had a lovely American couple who served as translators for us. He is the Elders Quorum President and originates from Kaysville. He came here to get a master’s degree and planned on only staying about 20 months but is now working in helping the Pentecostals publish their magazine and has been here 7 years. He says he just about has them convinced that we’re really Christians.

Our side trips here in Stockholm have taken us down past a few sites we saw when we came through several years ago with Tom and Laurel on a Baltic cruise including the King’s castle and the building where the Nobel prizes are awarded each year. Here’s the view from our hotel window and I kept thinking it would be lovely to somehow get across the lake beyond the train station there. 

We finally pulled it off in a lovely walk through a genuine Swedish forest. Stay tuned for all the slides when we finally get home!

Mom: Well, we’ve had some interesting places to stay this past week, kind of like girl’s camp. You sort of need to ignore the inconveniences and jump in and have an adventure. It’s just that girls need more bathroom space for their stuff and we don’t get that over here in Europe. At any rate its been fun driving through all the beautiful countryside and landscapes of Northern Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. Denmark is a lot like Germany but was greener and had more cows in the pleasant pastures. Poetic. Sweden has been a little flatter, with some green, soft, rolling hills, and many lakes. There seems to be less pine trees here and more deciduous, bushy trees. Still beautiful. A few trees have started to turn reddish gold and autumn came rushing in with a huge, pouring rain storm. Our legs and shoes got soaking wet even under our umbrellas. The weather has really been quite nice, with temperatures around 60 and some in the upper 50,s. It’s my favorite time of year to travel, even with an occasional wind and rain storm.

The temples have all been great to visit and are unique and beautiful in their own ways. The grounds here in Stockholm are the most beautiful and by far the largest. But truly I think the most beautiful temple is the Freiberg and though, I am prejudiced, I think the best managed and organized. We’ll have to wait and see about Helsinki. I’m excited for our flight into Finland tomorrow, hopefully I can see some of the many lakes below.

Until the next time. Love, hugs, and prayers,

Mom, Dad, Grammy, Grampa, Elder and Sister Parker