Hejsan!
We're just about finished up an exhausting weekend/week! I think I'm getting to old to do this whole vacation and work thing in the same week...but it has been pretty busy! Thursday I spent in Stockholm, teaching a class, prepping more classes and exploring the Nobel Prize Museum while I waited for B. and our friend, S.-l. to come into town. Of course, the train they were supposed to be on was cancelled so we ended up rushing to our final destination, a concert by the Latvian Symphony featuring a somewhat weird cellist (strange clothes, long curly grey hair which he kept having to brush off his face, you get the picture - but I guess you need to have some eccentricities to be that good). The concert was really good though and was in this concert hall that had seats all around it - which I've never experienced before.
After the concert we crashed at S. and J.'s for the night as we were rising early to catch our ferry to Gotland (well first we had to take the subway and two commuter trains to get to the ferry). The ferry ride was uneventful, 3.5 hours of smooth sailing and a crappy lunch.
Visby was a really neat town. Its the biggest town in Gotland and has around 20,000 inhabitants although not everyone lives in the town walls. Yes, it is a walled city! We spent the afternoon wandering around the town, examining all the old crumbled churches, going into the existing cathedral, buying godis (candies) at a candy sale!!! We then headed back to our cell, for some pre-dinner drinks and some cards. We literally were staying in a cell, as the hostel was an old prison, complete with barbed wire around the walls. It was an interesting set-up as all the rooms were pretty narrow.
The next day we checked out the museum in town, which has a lot of picture stones in it and talks about the Geology of Gotland, which is unique in Sweden. Nothing too exciting...although we did all seem to have more fun in the kid's science part of the museum then we should have. Next stop was to pick up our brightly coloured rental car (see photos) and to head up north towards Fårö (translation: sheep island). We stopped in the town of Bro to examine the old church which contains some picture stones in its walls and has some of the only remaining standing stones in a farmers field (which we almost drove by). Then we stopped at this place (the name I can't remember) that has an old fort submerged in the middle of a lake (Atlantis????). Apparently you can dive and check it out if you want. It seemed from the limited signage, that the fort might actually have been built over the lake, but we are unsure of that detail. We didn't have our scuba gear with us so we refrained from diving in :)
We took the ferry (5 minutes) to Fårö and continued our drive up to the south beach where our cabin was. The beach was amazing there, super soft sand, very calm sea, thousands of jellyfish (maneter). Yes, I'm serious, for every square metre there must have been 7 jellyfish. It wasn't that it was exceptionally warm so we weren't planning on going swimming and suntanning that much but its always fun to run into the ocean. We tried this the next day, the others made it out a ways (the jellyfish still didn't subside though), I made it up to my waist and then decided it wasn't fun standing on jellyfish and having jellyfish brush against you every second so I beelined it for the shore. And I'm the swimmer, not a brave one obviously. Our second day on the island we rented bikes and rode out to some sea stacks. The sea stacks were formed when either the sea subsided or the land rose and then the coral reefs were eroded by the elements, until only these towers of rock remained. Our bike ride was a bit of an adventure on tractor roads, read: bumpy, swampy and windy. We did see many sheep so the island lived up to its name, we also saw old wooden windmills, and houses and barns with very cool thatched roofs. Of course, we had to stop for a fika so we stopped at bakery and enjoyed some paj (pie) and some saffron pancakes, a specialty of the island. The pancake is more like a gelatinous/eggy pie with raisins, rice and, obviously, saffron in it. It is served with salmbår (a cross between a raspberry and a blackberry) jam and cream (of course).
The rest of our trip included more sea stack spotting, some frisbee playing, walks on the beach and wine. We got back to Uppsala at 11:15pm on Monday night and were pretty tired.
To check out our weekend click here...
Trevlig helg!
E.
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