Summer Vacation, 1998
Scandinavian Concert Tour with the
Washington County Chorale
(now the Oregon Chorale)
To tell the story of the entire trip would take hours
and hours and pages and pages. Instead, I'll just comment briefly on the more successful
pictures I took. Obviously, these are a small sample of the nearly 400
pictures I snapped over the course of the entire 19 day tour. It's a
rare day when weather conditions and subject material work together to produce
a really good pictures. These pictures in no way represent the entire
trip. They are just the more presentable pictures! All pictures
were taken with my Olympus XA pocket 35mm camera using Kodachrome 64 film.
Enjoy...
We began our tour in Copenhagen, Denmark. It's
a charming city with many canals 
, famous 
breweries 
, amazing church spires 
, and art 
anyone would recognize 
. The
first cathedral concert of the tour was in the city of Växjö. The
unusual twin spires 
were visible from all over
town. The falling rain left dark streaks 
on the front of the cathedral. I
enjoyed playing the organ 
. In the park
next door, I found a statue of my good buddy Carl Linnaeus 
. The
rocks in an old churchyard wall 
sported a variety of mosses
and lichens, growing since the wall was erected in 1731. We attended
Midsommer 
festivities 
on the grounds 
of
the medieval Kronoberg castle on the shores 
of Lake Helgasjön.
Here's our bus 
, all decorated for the occasion! There were people in
native costume 
and much dancing 
. Earlier that day we toured the lake aboard Thor 
, a coal
fired steamboat. Later, we took a delightful cruise aboard the Kung
Sverker 
down a portion of the Göta Canal 
from Lake Boren 
to Lake Vättern through several locks 
. We stopped briefly in Gamla Linkoping 
. Stockholm
is fascinating with its narrow streets 
and
distinctive skyline 
. The warship Vasa 
, sunk in 1628, has been restored
to all of its baroque splendor 
. Despite my best efforts, I was
not awarded a nobel prize when I visited city hall 
. While
in Stockholm, we discovered the people of Sweden use very powerful toothpaste 
. The
cathedral 
in Uppsala 
was most impressive. The
view 
from
the old castle on the hill was nice. I don't think the King cared much
for the church 
. The old church in Rättvik 
did its best to compete
with the clouds 
. When we went to Moro (he he he!) we were greeted
by another 
towering
spire. The ancient wooden stave churches 
of
Norway are architectural wonders. This door 
was carved by
the hand of some Viking over a thousand years ago. We saw several quiet 
,
isolated communities 
along the Sognafjord. As we crossed
the Norwegian highlands 
I'm sure I saw a troll
behind that rock. No trip to Oslo would be complete without a visit
to the harbor 
, National Gallery 
or the world renowned Vigeland 
Sculpture 
Park 
. On the way home we observed remarkable examples of polar
glaciation 
over northern Greenland 
.
Now, are you ready for another trip? Grab your camera and let's go to the Baltics! We'll start in Helsinki, travel to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany.
