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Date: Sat, 09 Aug 2003 11:16:09 GMT
From: Paul Halliday <pjghnopsamyonder.co.uk>
Subject: Back from our Scandinavian holiday (incl. Saab Museum)


Wow! You Swedes have a beautiful country and we only visited two of your towns! I'll stick to the car experiences here, but no doubt I'll upload other comment to my website. The weather was incredible, like most of Europe at the moment, with temperatures in the high 20s (degC) and clear, CLEAR blue skies which made such a difference to the haze and smog we get in Britain. We landed in Stockholm and spent three days there. I nearly passed out with the heat when we got to the airport - that's one in the eye for my mates who laughed at me for going to Sweden when they'd all gone off to Greece and Spain and the like. What a city! Lots of Volvos and Saabs (pretty much all brand new) and one heck of a lot of big American cars ... Oh, and blonde girls everywhere. Great! One guy cruised past in some Buick grinning (like I was looking at the car?) and I felt like running up to him and saying "so what? I have a classic 900" :) We saw a few 90s, which was a real bonus since I have only ever seen one in the UK and even a 96 popping along an overpass - that got me tapping my wife and pointing like a moron, going "look ... a 96". My car highlight for Stockholm was walking out of the hotel in the morning onto Vasagatan to be greeted by a line of two pristine 90s, a 9-5 Aero, a classic 900 and a couple of huge American beasts in a line cruising past. I found that eyeing up the classic 900s would lead the driver to give it a bit of gas. Four questions to the Swedes: 1. How much does petrol cost? <--- Plentiful American guzzlers (and see q.2) 2. Do you guys run rich, or was it my sense of smell coming back having given up smoking the day we went to Stockholm? 3. What are those electrical plug outlets for? I saw a lot of cars with electric plug outlets fitted to the front of cars. 4. What's with the huge fog/driving lights? About half of the cars are fitted with three 9 inch lights in front of the grille. We skipped Gothenburg and pushed straight onto Trollhattan for a couple of days. The countryside was great - flat farmland and trees everywhere. We caught the train to Skovde and then connected with a bus to Trollhattan, which strolled through a number of towns along the way. Trollhattan is very clean, just like Stockholm, but more so. The town is about the size of a medium UK town, very much like Solihull in the West Midlands. The town itself is as much a part of the Saab experience as the museum IMO. Practically the entire town drive Saabs and there are a lot more old ones there than in the City. Almost every shape of classic 900 could be found and a number of very good looking 9000 CDs, which are particularly rare in the UK. That was a real treat. With the weather so good, we strolled up Drottningatan (the station is one end and the Saab museum at the other about a mile between) all the way to Eric Carlsson roundabout. About half way up, the town finishes and the street continues along a long tree lined residential area of low rise blocks. There are lots of interesting Saabs parked up here. I even saw a 95 wagon, a few 96s, 99s and loads of classic 900s. The two cars that really stood out through were a pair of Fords - a Sierra Cossie and an Escort RS. The museum, as expected, was fantastic. We arrived just after it opened at 10am and got about half an hour with no-one else in there. Plenty of photographing going on here. Most people seemed to take about an hour to get round the cars, but we spent four hours :) What an experience. The best thing for me was to see the engines displayed on pedestals and even my wife was interested in seeing how they'd developed from the three cylinders through to the 900 16V. She kept going back to the 99 turbo engine and comparing the developments before and after. The highlight was definitely the 92001. The best car in town for me was a lightly battered black classic 900, with the SAAB bit on the grille replaced with "666" and black mesh. That car had a wicked dump valve and he knew how to use it :) Oh, the taxis and the police cars are all Saabs as well. We spent the afternoon in blazing sunshine wandering around the locks, which are about another half mile on from the Saab museum. Sheer bliss. I would really encourage people to spend more time in Trollhattan than just visiting the Saab museum. It really is a nice town and was a welcome break from the city for us. Onto Oslo from there. What a culture shock. Having spent five days in sheer heaven, Oslo was like being hit with a concrete slab! I don't know why I hated it so much - perhaps I had fallen in love with Sweden, or perhaps it was so much like the UK. My impression was that the city was dirtier than London, but not quite as many beggars as Leeds and much more aggressive than even Glasgow. Having battered our way through the station, we dragged our luggage up Tollbugatan past the methedone outlet and felt pretty glum once we arrived at the hotel. I had to spend a couple of hours in a cafÈ that served San Miguel in half litre glasses for 45 NOK to calm me down ("bollocks to this, I'm off to find a pub"), while my wife washed her hair at the hotel :) Once we'd got used to the culture shock, Oslo is not that bad - very brutal, and I mean that architecturally. I though I'd find Sweden to be quite foreign and have more affinity with the Norwegians, culturally, but it really was the other way round. The viking ship museum was amazing - thanks Hinz. The building was just as good as the ships and made a perfect setting for them. We left Oslo just as the offshore performance boat racing event was starting. We adore Sweden and we'll definitely be going back. The Saab factory was not open for visitors until later in August, so perhaps we'll see that next time. We're already planning a Gothenburg to Trollhattan to Uppsala trip for next time, but any suggestions of other places to visit along the way would be appreciated ... Cheers all, Paul

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