Tomorrow, we are taking off for Germany! Our journey starts from the Central Station in Stockholm and the train will take us to Southern Sweden where we will take the overnight ferry to Germany. We will be visiting Lübeck, Berlin, Dresden, Bad Schandau, Prague, and Hamburg before we return to Stockholm on the 12th of October.
During our 2-week journey, we will be posting to Facebook and Instagram. Please look for updates from our journey there:
In exactly a month, on the 28th of September, Kerstin and I will be boarding an early morning train at Stockholm Central station to trace Augusta’s journey though Germany. Obviously, there will be no steam engines and no hustle and bustle on the platform; no carriers of large trunks and no women in elegant Victorian attire – except for us! We will be there, dressed in our fall dresses, capes, and bonnets – a la mode of 1847 – mingling with morning commuters.
The train ride south is the start of our 2-week, European journey. We are going to travel like two sisters would have traveled in 1847, and with Augusta’s diary as our guide book.
But before we take off on this exciting journey, we have to finish our wardrobe. We need outfits for all kinds of weather and for opera visits and mountain hiking – all the things Augusta did on her journey.
We have no idea what clothes she brought or how she packed. So far, I have made one fall dress with a matching wool pelerine (short cape) and bonnet, and a ball gown in fine muslin (aka Walmart $4 cotton). I have 2 weeks to make a silk ball gown and 2 more dresses! But how wonderful it will be to hike in Saxon Switzerland National Park, in a dress with several layers of petticoats. And I am hoping for brilliant fall colors.
The journey has been planned in detail and we are going to visit all the churches, palaces, and museums that Augusta described. Besides hiking, we will take a steam boat on River Elbe and a steam-engine train in Dresden. And we hope to get tickets to the opera as well.
We are looking forward to meeting a lot of interesting and interested people on our journey. That is something we experienced when we did the Göta Canal cruise – you make new friends along the way.
Our time table looks like this:
If you happen to be in the surroundings – let us know! Maybe we can have a cup of caffe or a glace together.
But rest assure – we will be uploading pictures and blogging during our journey!
When I was 14, my dad gave me a moleskin notebook and suggested I should start keeping a diary. I was flattered and at the same time curious. Why did he think I should chronicle my mundane teenage life? Years later, I found out that both his mother and her grandmother kept diaries.
My great-great-grandmother (my father’s mother’s mother’s mother) was Augusta Söderholm. She was born in Sweden in 1827 and died from tuberculosis at the age of 28. Her diary starts in 1847 with a trip to Germany and her impressions of travelling by the new mode of transportation – the steam-engine train.
Could one retrace her trip to Germany? What about her travels from her country estate to Stockholm, where the diary chronicles societal balls and descriptions of hopeful suitors?
My sister Kerstin got equally excited about the possibility of following Augusta’s footsteps.
And so our own journey started – a journey to understand the life of a young, wealthy, Swedish girl in the mid-1800s. You can read about our journey here and on Kerstin’s blog in Swedish. We hope you will embark on this journey with us.
