From Göteborg to Stockholm... A day of ups and downs...

Our second full day in Sweden found us traveling from Göteborg to Stockholm with a few stops along the way. One was to see the church in Habo which is an old, wooden building famous for the extensive painted interior of the church. It is in the countryside near Habo, not in the town itself. The setting is beautiful and we spent quite awhile there exploring the cemetery and the church interior.

Up until our last stop to get gas about 30 minutes outside of Stockholm, we were doing fine. But the trouble started at the Statoil station when we used the windshield washing pump instead of the gas pump to fuel the car. Our inability to read Swedish plus exhaustion after a long day driving plus an idiot employee who told us to use the orange button to begin fueling at pump 18 when he should have known it was not a gas pump added up to a very expensive and time consuming delay before we finally arrived, hungry and exhausted and quite a bit poorer at our hotel.

A few photos from the day begin below.

First, the bell tower at Habo Church...

One of the many detailed interior paintings from which you might see why this church is considered to be the finest example of a painted interior in all of Sweden. At some point during our travels, we were told how common it was in the "old days" for wooden churches to be extensively painted.

After my return, I promise to post a few more images from the better parts of our day. In the meantime, here is what our view looked like as we were towed to a service station to have the washer fluid drained from our tank and replaced by gas after the mishap described above.

Our tow truck driver, moving our car into the garage bay where it was raised on a lift so they could drain the tank. They were very thorough, flushing the tank twice with gasoline before giving us 20 liters of gas, for which the repair shop owner did not charge us, figuring perhaps that we'd suffered enough already!