Lund, Ales Stenar and Kräftor

Hejsan,

Sorry for the long time between posts! I have been busy sightseeing around Sweden with my sister-in-law, and time seemed to fly by.

S. and I headed down south last week. It was my first time travelling long-distance on the train here. Of course it was 45 minutes late arriving in Lund but since we had no specific plans it didn't affect us. We arrived in Lund in the early afternoon on Wednesday after 6 hours of train travel. Lund is pretty far south, its about 25km North of Malmö which is the town you take the bridge to Copenhagen (Köpenhamm) from. It is an ancient town and was once of the religious centres of Scandinavia. To attest to this is the nearly 900 year old Cathedral that is at the centre of town. We went on a tour of this cathedral with a very enthusiastic tour guide. She started by talking to us about the astronomical clock that is in the Cathedral. The clock plays music and has dancing figures twice a day, but the other aspect of it is that you can figure out what day anyone was born on, and the period of the moon, as well as all the religious holidays. Apparently, I was born on a Thursday (Thursday's child has far to go they say!) We wandered around Lund for the afternoon, before picking up our snazzy orange and blue rental car with advertisements all over it and heading down to Ystad.

Ystad is the amazingly cute town full of half-timbered houses situated on the Baltic. It has the oldest half-timbered house as well as the only full block of half-timbered houses in all of Scandinavia. Our hostel in Ystad was right on the beach so we were able to take some nice walks along the shore. We set out on Thursday morning towards Ales Stenar, it was incredibly windy there...check out this (sideways) video




After checking out the stones, we headed down to the beach and bought some tasty smoked salmon and herring and tried to avoid the wasps. Next stop was Glimmingehus, a 15th century castle that an unpopular guy built. Since he was so unpopular the castle has numerous death traps, and the word must have got around as there were never any attacks on the castle.

We were on our way to Kivik, when we decided to detour into Stenshuvud National Park. We hiked up to Stenshuvud and had a nice view of the surrounding countryside.

Final stop of the day was Kivik, where we walked around a 3000 year old burial ground and bought some apples from a roadside stand. On our way back to Ystad I got a bit of a start. We had just entered a townsite and I was gradually slowing down when I saw a cop in the tree with his speed camera aimed directly at us...luckily, it was just a dummy dressed up as a cop, as I hadn't quite got down to the slower speed limit yet :p

Our last day we decided to take a quick dip in the Baltic before leaving. And when I say quick, I mean quick. You know the water is cold when its warmer standing on the shore dripping wet with the wind blowing. The trip had been smooth sailing up to that point, but of course, something had to happen. Our train was delayed out of Lund as they couldn't get the two halves of the train to attach. So an hour later the first half arrived. Of course, our car was on the second half so we had to wait another half an hour for that half to arrive. We were a couple hours later than expected but now it just seems somewhat funny.

Sunday, we decided to hold a kräftorfest (crayfish party). There were six of us in total and we managed to eat 3kg of crayfish and a fair bit of snaps. It was somewhat odd having a crayfish party with no Swedes to show us how its done, but Ben has been to a few so he showed us how to get at the meat, and we had no problems coming up with our own songs to sing in between the shots of snaps.

I am now worn out, but we are heading to Gotland this weekend with S. and J. Hopefully it will be a relaxing trip!

For some photos of our adventures check out:
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=153278&l=c6949&id=842465120
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=153284&l=51b6e&id=842465120

Hejdå
E.