Our first mornings in Motala were glorious. It is such a quiet idyll here in the smaller guest harbour at Motala Verkstad, which we have all to ourselves. As tempting as it would be to stay here forever, we really have to think about going through the last couple of bridges and the final lock to take us out into the main town and the channel which leads out on to Lake Vättern, Sweden's second largest lake - more like an inland sea, really. We aren't venturing into the lake though, as Fiona will be moored at a buoy in Motala Boat Club, out in a protected little bay at Råssnäs (number 3 on this map - and click on the camera symbols to see some photos of the surroundings. It's a beautiful spot).




So we reluctantly say goodbye to the sheep and ducks who have been keeping us company each day and prepare to bring Fiona home. The route down the last mile of the canal is so green and pretty that it is hard to believe that we are in the middle of quite a large town. We tipped our hats at the grave site of Baltzar von Platen, who provided the vision and drive needed to build the Göta Canal and establish Motala as the cradle of Sweden's engineering industry. He was buried here in 1830, sadly two years before his dream was completed.






Then it was a quick job to go through the final lock and into the main bay. Here you find the head office of the Göta Canal (it is the half way point, so an ideal place to have it), a big motor museum, a fantastic ice cream shop and of course the main guest harbour, where we stayed for several days last year.




But there was no stopping today as we were on a mission and getting excited at being re-united with our poor little car, which has been parked at the boat club now for over two months. I hope it starts when we get there! We are also keen to see where we will be moored. We have paid for a buoy to be set out for us, but have no idea where it is exactly. We chose today to go and look as it is calm and still, so we won't feel stressed trying to catch the buoy for the first time in windy, wavy conditions. As Lars-Göran's hands are tender from all of the rope pulling over the last few days, I'm guessing that will be my job.

Just past the guest harbour, the bay opens out quite a bit and we sailed past the big fountain, thankful that the wind was not blowing the spray our way.




We are both in really high spirits, despite the sailing being cut short by a week or so and the warm, sunny day seems to confirm that we have made the right choice. I'm hoping that once we have the boat safely moored that we can relax a little bit. Stress is one of the triggering factors for eczema and I've been thinking about whether the stress of preparing the other place for selling up, buying this place (which needs renovation as well) and moving half way across the country has taken its toll on Lars-Göran. I know he is happy to move, but it has been a lot of work, with much more to come once we assess how much we need to do in the new flat. And it has been a less than perfect summer weatherwise, so he may be feeling a bit down about that as well. We'll have to take it slowly I think.

As we swung into the boat club's bay near Råssnäs, we immediately saw our buoy. Now I wonder how we guessed that it was Fiona's?




I caught the buoy first time (legend that I am. Modest, too.....) and in no time at all, she was safely moored and we could see her resting among the other boats. I notice that she is rather large compared to the other boats in the club and that we are lying furthest out - so we have a bracing 200 metre row in to shore. That ought to be fun if the wind is against us. I feel that the lightweight electric motor we have been considering for the dinghy may be bought sooner than we planned.




We moored the boat, rowed to shore, finally found a fellow club member to help us jump-start the car (second person we asked - the first man couldn't find his own battery!) and drove happily home.

So where is home? Be patient, be patient. It's one of a group of flats in a small, quiet town. On a quiet street. And we are on the second floor of two - NO UPSTAIRS ELEPHANTS NEIGHBOURS!!!!! What can I say - we take AGES to finally make a decision. This had been on our minds for at least three years and we have looked at other towns. The first was Nyköping, not too far from Nynäshamn. But I was rather put off by the advertising.




Now be honest. Tell the truth. Like me, aren't you wondering exactly what he's doing with that other hand? I told my theory to Lars-Göran who thinks I seriously need help and that nobody would assume anything of the sort that I was suggesting. So what else is making him look so shall we say, orgasmically happy, I ask you? Please confirm it isn't just me.

We looked at other towns that we dismissed one by one because we thought they were ugly or too far away or there simply were no places available for sale. Sweden is somewhat socialist in character and in many of these rural regions, all of the apartments are owned by the local government. I prefer to own my apartment rather than rent. It's probably some outdated Australian home ownership notion, but I still prefer it to renting. The towns we considered included Oxelösund, Oskarshamn, Mönsterås, Bergkvara, Kristianopel, Karlskrona, Mariestad etc. Many of these towns we investigated thoroughly while we've been out sailing. We had not considered anything away from the coast, so it was quite by accident while I was idly flipping through a realtor website that I found a flat for sale in a town that we loved. And the flat was ridiculously cheap - so we travelled down to Vadstena to have a look. And where is Vadstena when it is at home?

Here:




We loved Vadstena and when I saw this apartment, we finally did the maths (or math, for you Americans) and worked out that we could live there cheaper than we could in Nynäshamn, which would leave us enough to also run a small car. We had visited Vadstena last year while sailing to the west coast and fell in love with the town. The apartment needs work, but it was love at first sight for us. High ceilings, solid timber floors, a bathroom window (unheard of in Sweden!), a small group of flats, a quiet street, a sunny location. And what a pretty town!




But now we have to get cracking and do some work, as everything we own is in storage and we have to sleep on the floor until at least one room is fixed up. We started on the main living room first, which was painted with three white walls and one blood red wall. Not really my taste. So we spent an afternoon combing through the wallpaper shop in town, looking for something warm and friendly. I finally found a soft terracotta colour in a book of old-fashioned wallpapers dating from the early twentieth century. Our apartment was built in the early 1940s, so I feel that it has the proportions for this type of paper. We ordered that paper for the living room, bedroom and hallway (plus a decorative border for the hallway as well) and even found a pretty blue and white floral paper for the kitchen.

Then we started work. First the walls had to be made ready while we waited for the paper to arrive. Then it was a matter of measuring, wetting the paper and then applying it to the sanded, prepared walls.




We had to improvise a bit as we were not able to find a suitable container in which to soak the wallpaper, which was prepasted. None of the local shops had anything we could use and all of them said that we ought to use paste instead. But Lars-Göran was adamant that he preferred the other method. In the end I had a brainwave and we went to the local plant shop down by the harbour and bought one of those plastic balcony planter boxes, drilled holes in the side and added a spare bit of curtain rod we had lying around and we had a great container to soak the wallpaper.

We worked steadily, finding a system that functioned well and despite friends' predictions that we'd divorce by the second wall, we found it quite fun - tiring certainly, but not stressful. It wasn't long before we were covering the awful red wall. I know in this picture that the wallpaper does not look much better than the red paint, but believe me, it's a lovely colour in real life, with a faint watermark pattern on it, as though someone has shaken a brush and splashed the surface with lighter and darker paint. It gives the walls a bit of depth and texture.




Once the paper was done, it was time to add the cornice. These are not at all common in Sweden, which is a pity as often the ceiling/wall joints are not very straight and they can look untidy. Fortunately we have lovely high ceilings and we had no hesitation in choosing the same cornice we had used in our flat at Nynäshamn (mind you, we had to drive a round trip of 180kms to Norrköping to buy it!). It's easy to work with and once we figured out how to correctly set the mitre box for perfect 45 degree angles at the corners, it went very quickly.




Then it was a matter of moving in the furniture, popping along to IKEA to get a few extra bookshelves for our growing book collection and then settling down to a wine and a few nibbles in the afternoon sunshine. Life feels good again.




So that's one room partly done. We still have to put up paintings and add a few ornaments etc, but we haven't found the boxes they are packed in yet. Oops...

Our next project is to tackle the bathroom, which to be honest is far more work than we anticipated because for some odd reason, the previous owners stripped it and left it in a dreadful state. We had only a toilet, a sink hanging off the wall by the pipes and a staggering 58 holes in the walls, each a different size with a different coloured plug in it. Knobs! They took all of the cupboards, the towel rails, hooks, the shower shelf, the bathroom mirror, even the bloody toilet roll holder. Talk about wtf. According to the apartment board of directors they ought to have left the stuff belonging to the bathroom (even if it was a bit ugly). So we are looking at the bathroom renovation shops and trying to decide what to do about it all. I guess it's going to keep us busy a while longer.