Well, Life is Sometimes Full of Surprises

Tuesday, May 8, was a driving day. We were heading to the southeastern coast of Sweden. Our route looked like it was on the coast, so we expected to see the Baltic as we drove. The Swedish coastline is so heavily crenellated that the road stays inland enough that the sea is not visible. And it’s impractical to very often detour out to the coast.

We planned to amble along our way, stopping at a few places to see some sights. Our first stop was the historic naval town of Karlskrona, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was described in our guidebook as having the largest square in northern Europe, which is flanked by two grand churches. Sounded like an interesting place to see.

We made our way through the city and up a hill to the square. One of the churches was being renovated and was partially enshrouded in netting and scaffolding. I was so looking forward to seeing this big square. To our disappointment, it is now mostly a parking area for those seeing the churches and everything else rimming the square.

Not only a parking lot, but a Red Zone parking area. That means you get to pay about double the going rate. We managed to figure out the automated parking payment machine (we and a German couple who were trying to do the same). I’ve gotten the hang of Swedish words enough to get by on one level, but lengthy, technical instructions are more than a bit daunting.

Anyway, we purchased an hour of parking and scampered through the churches and around the square and a side street or two.

Frederikskyrkan.

The German church (easier to say than its official name, Heliga Trefaldighetskyrkan, which means Holy Trinity). Same architect for both churches—Tessin the Younger, who we had bumped into numerous times already.

Then we were back on the road. By afternoon, we decided to take what we hoped would be a more coastal route. It was a beautiful day, and we wanted to see the sea. We drove through an area filled with apple orchards. It was definitely springtime at its peak. Shades of green. Trees in full leaf, lots of white-blooming trees, and, now, blooming apple orchards.

Our next stop was the little town of Kivik, which is known for its winding streets and half-timbered houses. We stopped long enough to wander a few of the streets and then walk along the beach.

It was time to get serious about aiming for our home for the next two nights: Ystad. And here is where some expectations got turned on their heads.

When I was making lodging reservations, back in November or so, I had tried to book a room in a big old seaside hotel. I remembered that for some reason I moved to a Plan B (it was full or too expensive or I didn’t like the feel of it or whatever). But I thought we were still going to an old seaside hotel, fairly big, and probably a step down in quality from Plan A.

What we checked into was a beautiful old house, with only 7 guest rooms, each beautifully decorated. We had to lug our bags upstairs again (I assume you know that the bulk of this burden falls on Jerry’s shoulders), but we had our own large private deck and a very charming room.

As we had bumped into at a number of hotels which are not located in a town (i.e., they’re on the outskirts or in the countryside), they offer a meal package. In addition to the usual (and marvelous) Scandinavian breakfast spread, they offer an evening meal package, and sometimes afternoon tea and pastry. Whenever this option presented itself, we looked at how far it would be to access other options for dining and what the pricing looked like. At this particular hotel, we had opted for the dinner package. Usually, you are deciding that convenience is what you’re going for, and you expect the meals to be fine. But one’s expectations are modest.

We had booked a similar package at the first country hotel (our first two nights out of Stockholm). Our expectations had been low, but we found ourselves in a very pretty dining room and were served food that was at least a couple notches above what we expected. We counted ourselves lucky and thought nothing more about it.

When we checked in to our Ystad area inn, it was in a tiny vestibule, with the steep staircase to our room right there. Just down a short hall from the entry area, was a loud room that was a working prep kitchen and dishwashing station. I asked where we were to go to access the restaurant (also our breakfast room) and was told to go past the noisy dishwashing room and turn right. This did not bode well, though, again, we figured it would be okay, just iffy.

At the appointed time, we headed downstairs, walked down the hall, and turned into a beautiful sitting room, where you could have a drink or help yourself to coffee and tea. Then we turned into the dining room. This was, in my opinion, one of the prettiest rooms I’ve seen. Wrapped in windows and charmingly decorated.

The surprises did not end there. The food we were served was perfectly prepared and presented. The wait staff was highly trained and nothing but friendly and helpful—not a small thing when you speak no Swedish and are dependent on “the kindness of strangers.” The food was being cooked by a young woman and plated by a young man, all in one corner of the open room. I can’t begin to imagine preparing this serious food for a room full of people every night with one (impressive) stove and a couple counters.

Now anyone who knows us would say it’s no surprise at all for us to land ourselves in a foodie heaven. But the fact that we found ourselves in such a situation unknowingly is a surprise. And it was beyond any expectations as to the quality of the food. I would rank our two dinners here amongst the best restaurant meals we’ve had.

After dinner, I looked up the hotel’s website. I swear I had not seen anything about the dining aspect other than that they were offering a meal package. But right there on their site was reference to Daniel Mullern, one of Sweden’s acclaimed chefs and his dedication to all things local. Didn’t see that one coming!

The next morning, we headed down to the dining room for breakfast. No one was staffing the room at the moment. We had passed a man working on his laptop in the adjacent sitting room. He promptly came over to us and asked if we would like some bacon and eggs. We declined and headed for the yogurt and fruit and started to peruse the options. It dawned on me that this man looked somewhat like the picture of the chef I had seen on the website the night before. So I said something about how much we had enjoyed our dinner. He said, “I have very good chefs.”  He then asked me what I had most liked, and I told him and commented on how well prepared our main course had been. This led to a brief conversation about where we were from. He has a relative in Washington, D.C., and has been to Florida and LA. At this point, we finished making our breakfast choices and moved on to a table.

A bit later, our chef friend was leaving, but he made a point of coming by our table and asking what we intended to do that day. We replied that we planned to explore the nearby town of Ystad and perhaps spend some time on the beach. He asked if we had been to Kaseberga. Since we’d never heard of it, we said no. He went on to suggest that we go there, “just 15 to 20 minutes east on the coast.” He said Kaseberga was a charming fishing village, and that its beach was superior to the one by us. He and his family had lived there for 10 years. It is where he started his first restaurant and where he raised his children.

He also told us of some ruins (or something of that ilk) that you walked up to and that had a great view to the sea. He went and grabbed a sticky and wrote the names of the town and the ruins for us. Then he suggested that, since Kaseberga is known for its smoked fish, we should have some smoked fish and some beer.

He left, and we suddenly had a completely different plan for our day.

After breakfast, we aimed our car to Kaseberga. We wound our way through the town and down a steep hill to the harbor. Small town, tiny harbor. There was a big sailboat in the harbor and a couple fishing boats. Not much else going on. Only a couple cars in the parking area. We headed for the automated parking machine and immediately hit a brick wall of Swedish. They seemed to want 160 SEK per day. That’s uncomfortably close to $20, and we didn’t plan to be there for a day. There also seemed to be something about boats. And the only thing in English said we’d get the code for the shower with our parking receipt. So now we were pretty sure this parking area was for a different purpose, but it was the only parking on the harbor. After some testy back and forth, we decided to take a risk and simply leave the car where we had parked without purchasing a parking ticket.

I took a couple pictures of the harbor. While I was there, I watched a fisherman unloading his catch. Within minutes, a Kaseberga Fisk (read “fish”) truck pulled up, and away went the very fresh fish.

We found a sign pointing to Ales Stenar, the name of the ruins our chef had mentioned. It said it was only .5km away. Sounded easy enough. It was up a steep hillside, first with a lot of stairs, then giving way to a wide path. With only .5km, we figured it must be at the top of the hill. We climbed the hill, just in time to see a large group of school children exiting the area. We let them go past and then started walking. That .5km turned out to be more like 1.5 to 2km (thank you Fitbit for confirming our suspicions).

Up the hill and looking back to the harbor. The one big sailboat (flying a German flag) was leaving the harbor.

We eventually arrived at what is called a stone ship—standing stones in the shape of a ship—used as a solar calendar and thought to date back to Viking times. Amazingly, we had this mystical spot on the cliff to ourselves for quite awhile. Sunshine, endless miles of the Baltic at our feet, and 59 stones. And a bunch of sheep that mostly ignored us. Then groups of people started arriving, so we headed back down the hill to the harbor. What a fabulous opportunity. And it was such a fluke that we were there at all.

The sailboat had hoisted its sails and was heading out.

The curious sheep like to use these old stones as scratching posts.

We then debated whether to follow the rest of our new friend’s advice. It was a little early for lunch, but…. I couldn’t help but remember that truck picking up fish right off the boat. And Kaseberga Fisk has a market selling all sorts of smoked fish (and lots of eels, fresh and smoked). No sooner had we decided we would try to get some smoked fish than a bus load of (I think) German tourists got there ahead of us. Where did they come from? And soon dozens of other people showed up. Looked like this little town we practically had to ourselves was on a lot of people’s screens.

Patience is its own reward. We eventually had some of the most delicately smoked and moist salmon we’ve ever had. We “paired” it with a Kaseberga beer. Now that’s dining locally! And we consumed it sitting right on the sea in bright sunshine.

It was so idyllic a day, we didn’t want it to end. This is what we were hoping to experience in Scandinavia! And the fact that we had no notion of any of this when we awoke that morning somehow just made it all the sweeter.

We had to force ourselves to drive into Ystad. We wrestled with yet another automated parking machine. A Swedish woman tried two different cards and couldn’t get it to work and left. We decided to give it one go, and amazingly it worked.

Ystad is a very nice town, with old buildings, a main square, and a big church.

It also has some nice timbered buildings and some windy little pedestrian streets with picturesque houses.

If we’d gone there before our morning adventure, we might have been more affected by it. But nothing was going to be able to top our hillside and seaside experiences in Kaseberga.