(Used to be) Living in Luleåland: Sommar Semester i Södra Sverige Samanfattning Del 1 av 3

Shooting Around Southern Sweden on my Summer Holiday

East Coast: Stockholm - Uppsala - Småland [Kalmar & Revsuden]

-Part 1-

Hej! I just got back from a 10 day holiday in the mid-south of Sweden, driving from coast to coast. It's a bit of a rushed post, as I am in the middle of important experiments, and I will probably have to fiddle with the pics later, but in the meantime:

[Click to enlarge map]

I flew down the 900kms to Stockholm [1] to catch up with Lucy who was still in Sweden after travelling with her friend Katherine down from Luleå via the inlandsbanan ("inland track", not the "inlands banana!"). We caught up and stayed with Jenni Best, an Aussie who commutes for work between Luleå and Stockholm. Dinner was at the trendy Sturehof cafe in the center of town, where you rock up with a booking number, not a name. Big, bustling and full of good seafood, it is well known even up here in Luleå, and it was very good though we didn't touch the thousand dollar wine.

We then got in our woefully underpowered 1.6L VW Golf, and drove 60 km up to Uppsala [2], the town where the first university in Scandanavia was established. We spent the day there, managing to catch a brass quintet concert in the church, had a look at the burial mounds in the old town, and had lunch with my ex-boss and PhD supervisor Yi-bing Cheng who was in town for a conference. A swim, a waterslide and some diving board action in the baths ended the day, with a traditional Swedish pizza dinner* follwed by fresh strawberries with ice cream. It is strawberry season here, and the smell of ripe strawberries fills the air as you walk past the many stalls selling them by the litre.

It was here in Uppsala that got my desire to drive on the wrong side of the road, go the wrong way up one-way streets, and drive into town squares closed to traffic, mostly out of my system.

Uppsala Cathedral

Uppsala University

Yi-Bing and Me

Dappled

Uppsala Slott (Castle)

Viking Burial Mounds - of commoners probably

Runes

Then it was down the east coast about 500km to Revsuden near Kalmar [3], where we stayed with Kattis and her family in one of their summer stugas by the lake. They were very welcoming, and it was great to just relax in the sun and hang around and not do too much for a couple of days. Great sunny weather however didn't mean that the lake was warm - in fact only one of the times we went in could we actually hang around in the lake and go for a swim. So why jump in otherwise - because there was no shower in the stuga! bathing was done in the lake of course!

The summer weather, when it is here, is glorious in Sweden. Days are often 25-30oC, slightly humid so they feel warmer than they should (or is that just my chilled Luleå blood not coping anymore?)