in search of sverige posten

today owen and i went searching for the post office--we saw the swedish posthorns on boxes and even on this bike!

i checked the map of karlstad but only saw P for Parking and no Post. found posten.se and got excited over new scandanavian stamps. we even found a real live post lady and asked how to get to the post office--she looked a little flustered and said oh, there's no post office. what? how can that be? i mean, shouldn't it be a cathedral, gothic, grogeous building with marble floors and a griffin perched out front. nope, the post went broke so it's all online and stamps and packages can be mailed from the ica maxi. so today we trekked up to the market and found the stamp queue, snaking its way from the summer muskmellons to the crates of 1.5 litre ramlösa bottles. and we bought stamps, mailed a package to owen's best friend, then took our postcards and searched the square for a proper post box. i imagine it's only a matter of time until we're conducting usps business in a stater bros. all that said, inky postcards and affixing frimärken still holds its thrill, hallowed building or not.