One of the most visited tourist spots in Sweden is just off a car park in a service area on the E4. It is the ruin of what appears to be a typical medieval English castle. From a distance, anyway. But it isn’t English at all. Rather, it was based on Italian and German castles that the owner, Pehr Brahe, had seen on his travels.
The castle was called Brahehus and was completed in 1651. Brahe never lived in it but regularly held parties there. It became known as a pleasure castle. After he died, the castle came under the control of King Karl XI then, in 1708 it was burned to the ground. The ruins were restored in 1910 then a bit more in 2010.
These days it’s easy to visit from the services car park but, before the E4 was built, it was quite the hike. Now it’s a simple wander across the tarmac, avoiding camper vans and caravans as you take the dogs for a relief rest stop.
It was while I was reading about the castle and casting nosey glances across the car park at the actual ruin, that I witnessed another one of those weird parenting things I’m often confused about.
I was alerted by the insistent beeping of a car next to me. Naturally I turned to look, given that’s the intention of the beeping. The first thing I noticed was a family standing, seemingly impatiently, waiting for their third child. Another of their children, a boy of about ten, was the cause of the beeping. He was standing, staring at his phone as a station wagon slowly backed up out of a car space, directly towards him.
Eventually, the father woke up to the fact that his son was in danger of being squashed to death and strolled over to drag the boy away. Note, he wasn’t in any kind of hurry so I can only assume this boy was not his favourite child. It’s also interesting to note that the kid didn’t once take his eyes off his screen as he was dragged out of danger.
As the obstruction was cleared and the station wagon reversed fully and left the car park, I realised there was another young boy (about eight) standing just the other side of the car, eyes also glued to a phone.
What have these parents taught their kids about car parks, and why do they think the contents of their phones are more important than life? I don’t think I’ll ever understand parents.
There were a couple of rest stops on the final, leisurely leg of our trip north. We left the Hotel Småland at around 11am and arrived in Trosa, at the commune we’ll call home for the next week, at about 4pm. Sleep had been plentiful so we were both well rested. Mind you, I could have done without the kids running up and down the corridor outside our room.
What is it with kids and corridors? The same thing happened on both ferries as well.
Anyway, we arrived at our accommodation and instantly fell in love with the place. It’s very eco-friendly with a real community feel about it. Everyone works on maintaining the place and growing produce. Everyone is incredibly welcoming and friendly. I felt instantly that I’d love to live there.
But I never will because it’s a very long way to walk into Trosa. Our house is much better option.
Speaking of Trosa, once we’d unpacked Max and scoped out the apartment, we headed into town for some supplies. This included some essential vegetables given the general lack over the last few days (last night I had schnitzel with a tablespoon of cold peas and Mirinda had some strange deep-fried chicken thing with no veg at all) and some, also essential, milk.
I made roast salmon and räksallad for dinner and we ate outside, on the small terrace area. We were home.
In sad news, Sinéad O’Connor died today. She was only 56.
