In the guidebook, there was a short entry about Ballard, a quaint neighbourhood north of downtown Seattle, just by the ocean. It was described as the old Scandinavian fishing village, because that’s where most of the Scandinavian immigrants moved back in the day. They even have a Nordic heritage museum there. Well, as the history nerd Scandinavian gal that I am, I just had to pay Ballard a visit.
Miles said that a couple of years ago, there was still a Swedish store in Ballard, run by an old Swedish couple, where they sold Swedish food and other stuff. Now, that store had closed and the neighbourhood has become quite gentrified. Not very much left of the Scandinavian fishing village. I saw a couple of Norwegian flags, but mostly it was just cute wooden houses with lush gardens and with the ocean in the background. A beautiful neighbourhood, so relaxed and calm. A nice break from the fast pace of the city.
I ate lunch at a place called Paseo, down by the water. Whitney told me that they would serve me the best sandwich that I’ve ever had, so I ordered the one with tofu and god, was she right. Tofu, onion, garlic, peppers, sauce, crispy bread – divine. You know, that’s why you should couchsurf. Where else would I have gotten a tip like that in a city where I don’t know anyone? I would have just walked past that red shed and not known that I just missed the best sandwich of my life. But no. Not this time. Because I had met Whitney.
And out on the bay, boat owners were enjoying the beautiful afternoon too.
Controlling the boats going into and out of Union Lake and Lake Washington from Puget Sound (that is, the Pacific), is Chittenden Locks. I wasn’t impressed, because we have a couple of locks in Stockholm too – I even travel across a bridge that goes over one of the locks between Lake Mälaren and the Baltic Sea every morning when I go to university, or work, or just when I want to meet my friends. But they’ve made the area around it into a park, which I like.
But for some reason, I seemed to be the only one who wasn’t impressed by the locks. The tourists were flocking around the actual lock, where the water was pumped in or out to let the boats through. (Because, just as with Mälaren and the Baltic, the waterlevel in the lake is kept slightly higher than in the sea, as a precaution.) Later, when I talked to Miles about this, he said that it might not be anything special for me, but for most Americans it is. So many states in the US are landlocked, and many of the others don’t really have the conditions to allow those kinds of connections between lakes and the ocean. So, in that context, the Chittenden Locks are special. I just happen to come from a part of the world where we have even more of them.
It was a nice half day trip, to the tranquility of Ballard. Even though, to tell the truth, I didn’t see much there that reminded me of Scandinavia. For me, it seemed very much like a cute and quaint northwestern American neighbourhood.
Katja Malmborg 