– A church visit often entailed tens of kilometers of walking or horse driving. Travelling was arduous and time-consuming, it wasn’t easy to get here and back in one day. Because of this, church towns began popping up.

– If you lived within 10 kilometers of the church, at least one member of your household had to attend every Sunday service. If you lived twenty kilometers away, you had to attend every other Sunday, 30 kilometers, once every three Sundays and so on. This was due to regulations brought about as part of the Protestant Reformation, established  in 1681. However, the major holidays, Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and Michaelmas were exempted from this rule.

– Then, no excuse was good enough. During these holidays, the entire parish gathered in the church towns and outside of the church services, people took the opportunity to visit markets and do business. Many men sneaked off to speakeasy bars and youngsters went courting amongst the cottages.

Although this was a rule before Mom was born, she still claims she's happy these walls can't talk since this used to be the party place when she was young. 

The atmosphere here is a happy place with the traditional accordion players, and thankfully they don't play so loud it hurts

there are a lot of different instrument played, and the key fiddle looks very complicated 

It's a stringed instrument dating back to the fourteenth century. It consists of sixteen total strings: four are bowed, and twelve are resonant. A key box is used in place of the fretboard, with keys in half-step intervals.

After spending lots of time here, Mom shopping some goodies, but forgot to go back to the lady and pick up something very locally made. Oh well,

Now we began the boring trip driving the big road close to the coast all the way south. Mom says it's boring because she has done it so many times (I've done it 3 times) so she knows every house, every bend, every tree..........Tree?? wait a minute, there are billions. .....ok Mom was relly exaggerating a lot.

We drove 497 miles and are now outside Stockholm. The further south we go the darker it gets. We took 2 naps on the road..........

this is how it looked from our window when we went to sleep about 2 am

this is waking up at 5.30 am

We're staying at a campsite now because Mom needed to charge PC and cameras get free wifi and to take a shower. 

She's really considering this sun cell thingy more and more. That'll give us more freedom to park and sleep anywhere without worrying about what need to get charged.

Outside the door a lot of baby ducks are coming to visit, I knew they'll run if I go out to say hello, so I stayed nicely and watched them from inside. 

Finally caught up, and hopefully I'll have more to tell you about tomorrow. I have a feeling we'll go visit a place I have been to many times before, since we are getting close.

ALL IS WELL miss you all