20120703 Visby, Gotland, Sweden
When we woke we were abreast of the northern tip of the island-province of Gotland and steamed down the western side of it at modest speed toward Visby. I did yesterday’s notes while we drank a morning pot of coffee.
We decided the high life had worn us down and to do a simple lunch of salad, hamburgers (great), and cokes at the pool grill. We returned to the cabin to get our stuff together, then went to the rendezvous point for the land tours.
D & I with Val & Pat went out on bus 2 for the Gotlands West Coast tour. Jan, our tour guide was great. He’s an English teacher in the local high school. He had a good grasp of our idiom and slang, so could get his point across very well. When I met him at the bus, I explained what I had been doing in looking for my grandparents; he thought that it was great that I would come back - I think he’s a sentimental soul.
We bused south some 40km to a Viking burial site where stones outline a ship and archeologists have found remains that date to viking times. There are several of these sites; we saw at least five. Jan was rather emphatic about Viking skills and travels, insisting the Vikings formed Ireland civilization and had a hand in France (Normandy=Norr Man dy) and at Hastings in 1066. I’ll have to look at this.
We bused then past an old church to one that was older at Eskelhem (Eskel was a saint, and hem=home, then St Eskel’s Home). It was begun around 1200AD and finished shortly afterward. It is a functioning Lutheran Church today. Examine the pictures; rather a stark place, but it had a sense of being, a feeling of history, to it.
Jan lectured us in the church, and gave a bit of history of religion in Gotland, then sang (surprisingly) a three-stanza early hymn. I didn’t get my camera started quickly enough to catch it. Then he told a story that led into a poem by a revered local poet; I did catch it and hope you can hear his recitation.
Jan had the driver take us to a little place with a tiny harbor and a flat spot that held perhaps 40 or so small cottages. These are places where people go to get away during their vacation time. Swedes feel they must be outside when the sun is shining, especially in summer.
On the way back to Visby, we stopped at an overlook where o ne can see tall bluffs and beyond them, Visby. Very nice.
Jan had the driver take us around the east side of Visby from south to north and then back south to Eastport. Val, Pat, and Dolores decide to tour here on the high end of the place and to take the shuttle bus back. I struck out down the hill on the cobblestones through the old town. The place was going nuts with every political-interest-group out to get the attention of the running politicians who promised to be here. I was nutsy. I got solicited by the Swedish Lutheran Church, the Lung Cancer society, the Women’s Rights organization (great yellow tee-shirts), and the alcohol abolitionists. I bought some trinkets for D & Lana, and headed back to the ship.
Getting to the ship was a struggle. I should have taken the high road through the departure routes, but I was walking and enjoying it, so I headed for the ship in the distance. Every time I headed for it, there was a fence in the way. Finally I got home, well exercised.
I left D a note that I’d be in one of four bars (in order) and found a Gibson at the pool bar. D came along ten minutes later; we then went into the buffet place and had a dinner from the Baltic layout. I had another shot of herrings and kottbullar. Nice.
I started this work and D went topside to get sunset pictures. She came down, the sun set, and it’s actually somewhat dark at 2240.
To bed.
Picture Link OPicture Link D
