Saltsjöbaden

J and I took a small outing today. After several gray rainy days, today was finally sunny so we took the green line to Slussen station. From Slussen we walked along Katarinavägan and Fjällgatan to get some views of Gamla Stan, Skeppholmen and the boats in the harbor. I stored 24 of the photo's here. Upon returning to Slussen we got on the train east to Saltsjöbaden, a place I remembered as picturesque from my visit in 2000. It had changed quite a bit. Half a dozen new apartment buildings we built right next to the train station - it used to look much more quaint.

It's still a beautiful place, though. It's a favorite place for boats because they are closer to the "big water." We had a light lunch, wandered around taking photos and admiring what "big money" can buy. There's 15 or so photo's here.

We also stumbled upon the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. We first saw 5 or 6 small wooden boats on the shore. There were people gathering around them. Every 5 or 10 minutes another car would drive up with one secured to it's roof. After awhile there were probably 10 to 15 of these boats. I asked a woman what all the bustle was about and learned it is a "society" that allows it's members (young people from 11 to 20-something) to build these boats.The organizer and founder of the society has an old Swedish Navy boat that is full of machine tools for steel and wood. The "members" build their boats on the Navy boat. Now when I say build a boat, I mean everything except a few fasteners and the sail fabric. They make the metal parts, build the boat, mast, the sail, everything.....It takes from 1000 to 2500 hours. These young people have been working weekends for at least a year. Now, today, they were taking their finished masterpieces out on a three week archipelago trip. The instructor and some others will escort the armada with cargo carrying boats and some other boats in case of emergencies. Check out my 44 pictures here.

This has to be an amazing experience for the young men and women. I know the parents were beaming with pride. In the US there are a thousand reasons this would never work and all of the thousand reasons boil down to lawyers. If a minor were to get hurt using one of the many tools needed to build a boat, or have a problem on the camping trip, or whatever, the parents, at the urging of a lawyer, would want somebody to pay and insurance companies wouldn't touch this....and so we don't have things like this and it is most unfortunate. Our young people that don't choose sports or heavy academics will be playing video games, since we've essentially outlawed work for minors, too......