Tott Hotel Visby

I am on the beautiful island of Gotland, in the Baltic Sea, east of the Swedish mainland. I flew into Stockholm and took several buses and trains to arrive at the ferry harbor of Nynäshamn. The ferry departed at 9pm and took 3 hours to reach Visby, the main town of Gotland. There were about 600 passengers on the ferry, about one third of the number in July when tourism is at its peak. I was met at the terminal by my friend Lena Lager, and a former Innisfree volunteer from 1999. She came ...

... really strange walking around in there, you could just touch everything, there were barely any blockades and there were no signs telling you what you could and couldn't do. There were even old decorative peices just lying on the ground, just waiting to be picked up and taken away. The most surprising thing was that there were actually unblocked staircases, so you could climb up scarily narrow, steep stairs and around inside the ruin. This ...

... to head over to our hostel. After going in the wrong direction for a while, we eventually got there. I was a little surprised when we got to the hostel, it was not quite what I expected. I guess the building serves as student housing during the year and they rent it out to people in the summer, becuase the rooms all had a lot going for them, but there were no common meeting spaces at all. It was a nice room though, more than what we needed for just sleeping in there. <br><br>

... After the 3 hour ferry to Oskarshamn, we have about a 6 hour drive to Copenhagen. We also need to stop and get some more groceries and ice packs. This is one of more puzzling things about traveling around here: nobody sells ice. The only way to try to keep our cooler food cool is to by some small ice packs where we can find them, but of course we haven't had a way to refreeze any of them yet. Hopefully, our apartment will have an icebox. In ...

... use some repair. There are no shoulders and the trees come right up next to the road. They don't believe in utilizing street lights or stop lights, just lots of roundabouts and add-on fog lamps. Oh, and no police - anywhere... except the one that gave Todd a parking ticket in Kalmar. At least that's what we think it is. Funny how Todd forgot to blog about that, eh? <br> <br>We also just wanted to add that we miss you and hope everyone is doing well!

... and got in cars to head down to Nasudden to see the wind farms. The area had over 100 turbines of all different sizes. It had been there since 1983 when the country started doing tests to see how effective wind turbines were in producing energy. We also learned that Sweden is building a large wind farm in the sea between Denmark and Sweden. That area should produce enough energy to light 60,000 ...

... quickly in Malmo to see what would be the best things to see in Sweden in a shorter time span. So with a little help from the tourist office and Sofia my Swedish work colleague, we decided on Gotland and Stockholm. Sweden has given me the first real feeling of space since traveling so far. This is not because I can see around me for miles on end, but more that you can drive for an hour along a fairly major road pass about 15 cars, and see only forest, tree after tree with a few ...

... unless we have to. We found a campsite in a field about 3km outside of town and set up camp for the night. We then took a ride out into the countryside past beautiful forested areas and secluded houses. We also stumbled across the military testing range and quickly biked around it. From there we went back into town for some beers and then some drunken bike riding around town. It was fun ripping up and down the streets and around the ...

... during the summer. Due to the large amount of "wealthy" tourists who choose Gotland as a summer tourist destination, these artists run very successful businesses. So after picking up a map of all he different workshops open, we decided to check out a few (specifically Gotlandic krukmakeris [ceramics] because I am in love with Gotlandic earth wares and pottery). Saturday evening we went to Bruna Dorren (my summer workplace) with Mattias's family to have ...

Easter is coming up and we have put up our Easter tree, a European tradition I guess. we went out to the forest and gathered some branches and tied them in a bundle. Then we tied little egg ornaments and little fluffy chickens and some colorful feathers on it. Strange, yes but it was fun to make.