Stadsparken and More

Having been awed by Örebro after my arrival early yesterday afternoon, I doubted I could top the experience during my day here today, but I was determined to try.

The plan I roughly formulated at breakfast this morning called for me to take in two and a half places this morning. The two full sights were a church, St. Nicolai Kyrka, and a park, Stadsparken.

I thought I’d then walk over to a nature reserve just outside of town. The church is quite close to my hotel. The park is adjacent to Wadköping, which I visited yesterday, and closer to the nature reserve than the church is.

Apple Maps told me that it would take me 30 minutes to walk from the end of Stadsparken to the nature reserve. In my rough plan, I figured I’d arrive well before lunch. So I thought I’d walk around a bit, have lunch, and then stroll around more after lunch.

It didn’t work out that way. The walk probably would have taken 30 minutes, and I indeed would have arrived well before lunch, had there not been some interesting and delightful distractions along the way. As a result, it took me well over an hour to get to the nature reserve. I arrived just in time for lunch at the cafeteria restaurant.

Consequently, this post covers only St. Nicolai Kyrka, Stadsparken, and the walk. I’ll save the nature reserve for my afternoon post.

St. Nicolai Kyrka

As I said, St. Nicolai Kyrka is quite close to my hotel. As I approached it from the nearest end, I feared there was a chapter of the DLJSSIA (Don’t Let Joel See Stuff International Association) in Örebro. That end was blocked and not visible due to construction scaffolding.

I walked around the church and saw that it was the only portion of it obstructed by scaffolding. If this is Örebro’s attempt to join the DLJSSIA, I don’t think that’s nearly sufficient to qualify for membership. You have to shut down a whole tourist attraction, or at least a substantial portion of it, to get into the association.

The entrances to St. Nicolai Kyrka are on the sides, not either end. The exterior of the main part of the church is constructed of light-grey bricks on the right side of the entrance that I used, and cream-coloured bricks on the left side of it.

I’m guessing that the end covered by scaffolding is constructed of grey stone, but I couldn’t see enough of it to be sure.

There is a red brick, peaked tower above a grey, stone wall at the unobstructed end.

The interior is quite simple, but handsome. There is also a small, even simpler side chapel.

Decorations included almost solely a small stone statue of, I forget who. (There was a sign beside it. I don’t remember if it had English or if I used Google Translate to get it, but I didn’t take a picture of the sign or write the information down, and I’ve forgotten.

It looked like they were setting up or tearing down a small stage at the front of the church when I was there, so I couldn’t walk around as much as I otherwise could have, but it didn’t restrict my movement or block much of the church interior.

According to one of my guidebooks, St. Nicolai Kyrka has its origins in the 13th century, but it’s been restyled often since. It goes on to tell me that the entrances are from the original church, but the rest was redone in Neo-Gothic style.

Only two of my three guidebooks mention St. Nicolai Kyrka. Neither says which denomination it currently serves. I am, however, willing to bet that it’s neither strict Catholic nor evangelical. A rainbow coloured rug runs along the length of the centre aisle.

Stadsparken

One of my guidebooks said that Stadsparken was voted Sweden’s most beautiful city park. It doesn’t say who did the voting, whether voters were required to visit every single city park in Sweden before voting so they could all get a fair shake, or how voters were able to reach a decisive conclusion on such a subjective question. Nevertheless, if it was voted the most beautiful, how could I not go? (I trust that there’s no need to tell you that’s a rhetorical question.)

Having now visited Stadsparken, I’m still not able to say if it’s the most beautiful. That wouldn’t be fair considering the infinitesimal fraction of city parks in Sweden that I’ve been to, but I will tell you it’s uncommonly beautiful.

Stadsparken is part beautiful botanical garden, part a pleasing, plain park, part outdoor concert theatre, and part a children’s play area.

The botanical garden aspect includes a wide variety of flowers, bushes, precisely trimmed linear hedges, and trees. Many of the flowers were in full, glorious bloom when I was there today, June 11th.

There is a rose garden in Stadsparken. Today, some of the varieties were in full bloom, some had buds that were just starting to open, and others were yet to show their true colours.

I somewhat regret calling some elements of Stadsparken a plain park. That sounds like mild derision. Not at all. It’s just that there weren’t any flashy aspects, just luxuriant, peaceful, pastoral grass, trees, and benches.

There were also a few statues in the botanical gardens and “plain park” portions of Stadsparken.

The concert area is a large expanse of lawn, with several rows of benches arrayed in front of a stage.

The children’s play area is not your standard swings-and-slides playground. There were what looked to be bespoke climbing and other play apparatuses. And there is also a water play area with shooting fountains and a splash pad.

The whole park is exceptionally well-maintained, primly-trimmed, and clean. As I said, I don’t have enough input or enough confidence in my aesthetic tastes to say it’s the most beautiful city park in Sweden, but I think it must at least rank high on the list.

The Walk

The route Apple Maps gave me from Stadsparken to the nature reserve started on the riverwalk I was on yesterday. Once it passed Wadköping, the riverwalk abruptly ended, but gave me a great, direct view of a channel off the river that runs through Örebro, the Svartån, which translates to Black River. Immediately beside the mirror-smooth channel, there are some handsome houses. That made for a nice view. I paused to take it in.

The route then took me onto a street a bit back from the river. That was pleasant, but not exciting.

Soon, it passed by a small, somewhat rugged park. Rugged, but there was a carefully trimmed circular hedge with some gaps cut in the circle at regular intervals. Exploring the little park, I saw that there was a stream that started from an underground source, probably an underground river. The stream followed a long horseshoe pattern that wrapped around the ground holding the circular hedge. It then flowed back down the other side of the horseshoe and into the Svartån.

I spent a little while in that park.

Close to it, there’s a dam on the Svartån. A small waterfall flows over the dam. There might also be some small hydroelectric generation equipment in the dam. I’m not sure.

A wooden pedestrian bridge crosses over the dam. Apple Maps directed me to cross the river, but not there. It said to cross at a bridge farther downstream. I looked at the map, and there didn’t seem to be any good way to get where I wanted to go if I crossed at the dam. But there was an interesting-looking building on the other side, and I couldn’t figure out what it was.

The building was made of red bricks. It looked like the equivalent of maybe five or six storeys tall and was considerably taller than it was wide or deep. The lower portion of the building was fairly unadorned. However, higher up, it jutted out a bit with a series of arches. There were windows above that. Plus, one corner had a turret that ran the full height of the building.

The building looked old, but not ancient.

I crossed the river to check it out. In the crossing, I saw that on the other side of the dam, there’s a channel with locks so small craft can be lowered and raised between the portions of the river above and below the dam.

When I got over to the other side and near the building, I saw a large, colourful sculpture of a woman in ethnic costume holding what appeared to be medical symbols. I looked at some of the other buildings nearby, and they had Örebro University signs on them. I guess the medical faculty was there.

But the weird building didn’t seem to be associated with that.

I saw two boards close to the building, each attached to poles on its outer edges. The poles were driven into the ground, holding the boards vertical. The sides of the two boards facing me were both pure white. I figured there must be some signage on the other side that would explain the building. I walked around to check it out. Nope. The other side of both of them was also pure white.

I then took a closer look at the building and saw a plaque made of flat stone or concrete. Some Swedish words were chiselled into it. The font was stark, and the engraving was crisp, so the camera function of Google Translate had no problem translating it. It said:

STATE RAILWAYS.

STOCK OF

FLAMMABLE OILS

Okay. Time to be moseying along.

I crossed back over the dam and continued on the route Apple Maps gave me.

I got to the bridge I was supposed to cross, but before I crossed it, there was another nice little park beside the Svartån with some great views of the river. So I spent some time there.

I then crossed the bridge. The rest of the way to the nature reserve was along a river walk on the other side of the Svartån. It was lovely. Further downstream, there was a series of small docks perpendicular to the other bank with pleasure craft docked at many of them. At one point, there was also a small bay off the river containing a marina with more pleasure craft.

By the time I finally made it to the nature reserve, I headed straight for the restaurant to grab a sandwich for lunch. I’ll pick up at the nature reserve in my next post.