Last week, Kerstin shared the travel diary of 10-year old Ernst Salomon. In the summer of 1841, Ernst and his family were visiting Särö, a fashionable spa on the Swedish west coast. In his diary, he describes the activities at the spa. Besides the bathing, they went for walks, picked seashells, and went horseback riding. In the evenings, the guests took turns hosting dinners and […]
Lübeck, October 2017 Dressed in the fashion of 1847, Kerstin and I enter the breakfast parlor at Hotel Anno 1216. The early morning sun lights up the room. The décor of the room is exquisite. The table settings are elegant and on each table is a fresh cut tea rose. We get a warm welcome from the staff who shows us to our table and […]
May God Preserve our Silk Worms Father told us last Monday when he was here, that the kind pastor, Mr. Lindström, who my sister and I have recently been acquainted with, had visited father at the palace that same day in order to ask if he could give us some silkworms that he couldn’t keep as he will spend the summer in Uppsala. Father had […]
Imagine a canvas that is over 4 miles (or 6.4 km) long! In the mid-1800s, a few artists painted landscapes on such long canvases. Of course, if you wanted to do an accurate painting of the Mississippi River for example – or at least 1,000 miles of it – you probably needed a few miles of canvas. Panoramas depicting landscapes and famous battles were already […]
Augusta’s friend Lotten didn’t cry over spilled milk. She just laughed as she spilled milk over her white dress. It turned out to be the most enjoyable evening. “My dear Augusta! Thank you, my dear friend, for your long-awaited letter… … Do you know the most enjoyable day I have had this winter? It was last Monday at my aunt’s. She had a reception and […]
The first real flying reindeer? A reindeer flying over Stockholm in 1851? Seriously? Yes, it happened. I was rereading Augusta’s diary entry about her outing on 18 June 1851 to watch the first balloon ride in Stockholm. On Wednesday we walked to Skeppsbron to, if possible, take a boat over to Djurgården, where an Italian intended to ascend by an air balloon, but seeing the […]
You can get to Stockholm’s international airport either by train or by car. Either way, you will pass Rosersberg, a small community northwest of Stockholm. If you are having a rental car, this is where you start looking for a gas station to fill up the car. If you are going by train, you just enjoy the beauty of the landscape. In the winter, there […]
Under the moss on the gravestone, you can discern the words chiseled in the polished marble: NEVER FORGOTTEN. We have reached the final destination of our trip to the west coast of Sweden – Varberg. This is where Augusta, at the age of 28, spent a short time to treat her tuberculosis with sea air and spa water – the only prescribed treatments available before […]
“They are not long, the days of wine and roses: Out of a misty dream Our path emerges for a while, then closes Within a dream.” (Ernest Dowson, Vitae Summa Brevis) The Summer Sejour to Gustafsberg, 1845 In the summer of 1845, Augusta turned 18. She had just finished her schooling in Stockholm and maybe her mother Anna thought it was time for her to […]