This really was the best choice for many reasons. One was that I was pleasantly surprised to find Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh, Rembrandt and of course, Carl Larsson all present in the galleries. The second reason is that Thorlief’s father, Sven Wallqvist was an artist. Therefore, unsurprisingly, Thorlief knows a lot about art. Especially since a good portion of the artists featured in the galleries went to art school with Thorlief’s father right there in Gothenburg.
I feel very ignorant when it comes to art (as I should). I only know a few names, and the only Scandinavian one I could name was Carl Larsson. So as we were strolling through the galleries, Thorlief would ask me, “Surely, you’ve heard of Anders Zorn?” The best response I could come up with was, “Tell me about me him.” Because Thorlief knows. And then I would hear his life history. And now I know who Anders Zorn is.
Overall, I really enjoyed it. They had an entire section dedicated to Carl Larsson’s Singoalla drawings, which I had never heard of before, but really liked. After almost two hours at the art museum, it was of course time for fika.
First we had to go back to Thorlief’s car because he only gets two hours of free parking...so we just move it one block over. Also, when Thorlief picked me up in the morning, he brought Maya with him. Maya is a plump little bull terrier type dog; she looks like a little Duke. Thorlief and Ewa treat Maya as if she is their child and its really cute. Maya gets the whole backseat of the car to herself, which she won’t leave because Thorlief has a doggy seat heater that plugs into the cigarette lighter in the backseat. So even though we left her in the car for almost two hours, she was nice and warm and snoozing in the car.
After fika, Thorlief took me on a driving tour of where he “really” grew up. It is the equivalent to what we would call a suburb. Thorlief actually grew up in Partille and his old house is on the side of a mountain. Thorlief had a few stories about going in the forrest to pick wild mushrooms and berries (a very common pastime in Sweden).
After all of this, Thorlief had invited me for dinner at his house. First, we went and picked up Ewa from her job at a hospital in Gothenburg. Then we made the drive back to their home in Torslanda. Torslanda is it’s own town but it still has a Gothenburg address.
For dinner, one of Thorlief’s sons, Johan joins us for dinner. Johan and I are of the same generation, so it was nice to meet my third cousin (? I think).
After dinner, we, again, had fika. But I finally had my first cinnamon roll (!!!!) , a type of which is famously Swedish. During fika, we had a wide variety of conversation topics. One which comes up is healthcare in the United States. None of the Swedes understood why people wouldn’t want universal healthcare in the United States. The only answer I could come up with was people just think very differently in the US and it’s not like Sweden where you grow up in a socialist environment. Then Thorlief started asking me about some current events in America...something about a political shooting or something... I finally had to admit, that in my limited internet time, I hadn’t checked the US news once. It was all pleasant conversation, mostly just asking questions that you want to know about someone living in different country.
It was a late night. But when I got back to Gunilla’s house at maybe 10:30 PM, she was still awake and had bread and Swedish cheese waiting for me.
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