Meeting Bridget in Uppsala

We've been in Sweden how long now? and still haven't been outside of Stockholm (and its suburbs). We thought we should actually check one other Scandinavian city off the list, and headed 40 miles north to Uppsala.

The real impetus of the trip was to go to the Bror Hjorths Hus for a special exhibition of Pija Lindenbaum's illustrations. For those of you not up on your Swedish children's illustrators, Pija Lindenbaum is the author and illustrator of one of Myrna's favorites, a series of books about a little girl name Bridget (or Gittan, in Swedish). And I admit, Chris and I have become fans too. We also were missing the good old days in Germany, where we'd just hop on a train and spend a day or two exploring a new city.

As expected, the exhibit was a hit. There were lots of dress up clothes, though Myrna was "a little bit scared" of the dresses, and instead insisted that I was the one to wear the scarves, tiaras and tutus, and she would stick with shoes, a necklace and a purse (which she then wore for a bit to look at the paintings).


Since it was an exhibit aimed at kids, all the paintings were nicely placed at "kid height," and sturdily anchored to the walls. We missed getting this on video, but Myrna definitely did a good job describing this painting:

"The moose brothers are drinking out of the toilet. Disgusting!"

After a tasty lunch (with lemonade), we headed down to the basement, for some watercolor painting. Myrna, of course, was much more interested in wetting the brush and mixing the paints, than actually getting paint on the paper.


It wasn't so cold, and we spent some time walking around town. Also some chasing, and quite a bit of not-really-walking-at-all. And we were regularly reminded of the fact that Myrna is a two-year-old, and one who has nearly perfected the art of tantrum-throwing. Just when we were beginning to think that our plan to spend the afternoon in Uppsala was overly ambitious, though, we happened upon some sort of kayak race in the city canals. I realize that may sound pretty tame, but it was actually pretty intense. The merger of several waterways made for some powerful rapids and even a small waterfall. And, just to make it interesting, there was an obstacle course. We sat along the water and watched this for a while, and Myrna was enthralled. It consumed enough of the afternoon that we were able to finish off the day with a visit to the cathedral and a pub dinner. After the busy day, she fell asleep waiting for our return train.