Exploring Västerås

Variety filled the day, especially as regards the sky, which changed from moment to moment, heavy, black rain clouds sweeping dramatically through the Lake Mälaren region with vivid white cumulus in a bright blue sky between. The wet foliage, spring flowers, rocks and man-made surfaces gleaming in the sun added to the appeal of Västerås, a city in the midst of redevelopment, it seems. The docklands are full of new buildings; I'll come to that later.

Sculpture in Stora Torget

Getting off the stopping train from Eskilstuna (having come through familiarly northern scenery: pine trees, lakeside wharfs, islands, cottages), I walked through a park and Bauhaus style town hall to the concrete town centre that looked like any other town at first with its kebab shops, MacDonald's, shopping malls, H & M store, abstract sculptures, and bought a latte at the Espresso House to watch the biogas-bussar going by. Further on though, it became more interesting. A number of spacious squares give the town some individuality. The market square where nobody was bothering to shop at the fruit and flower stalls because of the cold weather had a notable sculpture on a wall, a line of men on bikes from the old days half a century ago, busily cycling to work. Beyond this square (Stora Torget---the -et suffix in Swedish means "the", so I learned the other day) I could see some of the old town and the cathedral spire, so I headed that way down cobbled streets shiny with rain and more of those red stained wooden walls and fences.

Djäkenberget

Chris sent me a text message to say his Swedish trainees had told him this was the coldest May here since records began. By that point I had crossed the river bridge and climbed, out of curiosity, up the hill called the Djäkenberget, a park established in 1862, with lookout points and shelters. It was obviously a paradise for children, groups of little ones being herded along in colourful raincoats by their supervisors. There were mossy rocks to climb on with irresistible pathways through the pines. I followed some of these myself. Standing stones were inscribed (in the 19th century) with quotations from poems. Lawns, ponds and flowering trees enhanced the charm of the place, and the local birds (tree creepers, great tits, robins, fieldfares, chaffinches, jackdaws, etc. were much in evidence). At the bottom of the hill swathes of daffodils were still in bloom.

Djäkenberget

The district on the cathedral side of the river is all about a bishop who lived in the 17th century, called Johannes Rudbekius, and his wife Malin. This enlightened couple, inspired by Martin Luther and his wife, it seems, were bold and determined enough to establish a sort of welfare state in this part of Sweden and their influence still lives on. This is enthusiastically documented in the interior of the domkyrka, in both Swedish and English. Rudbekius founded a free school for boys where Theology, Physics, Mathematics, Latin, Logic, Politics and Hebrew were the subjects taught, and his wife ran an equivalent school for girls, the first in Sweden, teaching her protégées Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, the Catechism, Housekeeping and Needlework---true Enlightenment still had a way to go in those days, but it was a start. The couple established city hospitals too, in an age when the plague and other epidemics were rampant.

Bok, beech.

Behind the cathedral was a small botanical garden with all the plants labelled in Linnaeus' fashion with their Latin and Swedish (common) names.

Back in town I found a cafeteria serving vegetarian lasagne with a buffet salad. I made my way back toward the station via the tourist info centre where perhaps I should have started. The girl there did a good job introducing me to Västerås, selling me a couple of little dala horses to take home as gifts and encouraging me to look through the virtual reality headset at scenes from a zoo with local animals and from the concert hall where I was suddenly part of the local symphony orchestra playing Mendelssohn's Hebridean Overture. I asked the girl if it was worth my while going to look at the docklands the other side of the railway tracks and she said, "Oh yes."

So with an hour or so to spare, that's where I went next. I was strongly reminded of Malmö where we last year, although because of the weather the crowds were missing. The docks are being reclaimed as a desirable and probably quite expensive residential area decorated with boardwalks, gardens, shallow ponds. A metal bridge leads to the lake shore from which you can see boats ferrying people across to islands in Lake Mälaren, one of the largest freshwater lakes in Sweden, 120 km from west to east; it drains into the sea at Stockholm. A sculpture of an osprey stands at the waterfront in Västerås; those birds are common here. I saw a pair of Canada geese avoiding the waves; it was a windy day under those livid clouds. I also walked across to the ferry docks passing some large, brightly painted, privately owned vessels named Bore and Anna, fishing boats probably. And a red tug whose name was Stora Le, Big Smile---I did like that one!