Gotland

07/12/07

Gotland

Central station, Stockholm. Alive. This place is crazy, the fun kind of crazy. From what I’ve read, I need to head over to the Gamla Stan, the name for the old town. I check with the hotel reservation booth in the station and get what’s got to be the one free hotel room in the entire old town part of the city. A premium – of course - but I’m already getting a feel from this place and the extra few bucks will be worth it.

I unload.

What a city! Lake Malarin joins the Baltic at the edge of the city. The boats and pleasure craft fill the waterways and the water is crystal clear. This is Sweden? I head across a small road to a little island, to the Gamla Stan, the old town and am transported back into the Middle Ages. There are hundreds of shops and restaurants and I sit down at one and order: Sotare, grilled Baltic Herring, great beer and ice cream served with cloudberries for desert. Oh my God.

Stockholm is filled with fantastic museums and sights and you can walk for days and days among beautiful buildings. The Royal jewels and ruins of the 13th century palace, the wooden sculpture of St. George with the Dragon at the old cathedral. The weather is a cool, brisk fifty-five and I’m in heaven.

I’ve got my overstuffed rucksack and I’m going to head to the hotel, check in and go right back out exploring. I’ve bought a travel guide on Scandinavia and have a general idea of the things to come.

The hotel is superb.

The girl behind the desk answers every question and fills me in on each and every potential sight. I go to the room, small, always microscopic compared to the American version, but very quaint.

I’ve still got time to see the Royal Palace today. I pay my couple of bucks and enter inside. The palace from the outside is unassuming and I’m not anticipating anything great.

Holy shit.

From the Bernadotte and State apartments throughout the Palace, it’s obvious I’m in the presence of greatness and royalty. This place is magnificent. I walk throughout the place dazed. Phenomenal. I buy the $10 book of the palace as I leave for the next stop, the Treasury.

Awesome. Deep underground, the jewels and crowns represent hundreds of years of pure glory. And this is a mere prerequisite for the armory.

Night falls. Hours of incredible sights and probably ten or so miles on foot and I’m shot. Tomorrow I’ve got the same agenda.

The medieval and Vasa museums follow. The Vasa flagship built in 1628 and undoubtedly the greatest warship of the time.

And the sights just keep coming. My senses are actually overloading at this pace and I decide to take a short day trip to the island of Gotland for a change of pace. I have another nice meal, pack up one small bag, and intend to head to the airport the next morning. I do a film check, exactly four rolls of film burned. The collage will expand greatly from this one. I’ve saved every receipt, entrance ticket, free map, post card.

I got hustled at the airport, from the damned ticket counter lady. I want to check out the Swedish guidebook’s recommendation of Visby, Gotland, a small island off the coast of Sweden. The guidebook says you can travel down through the old walls of the city and see roses that are six inches in diameter and blooming out of the snow in the middle of winter.

My first thought, bullshit.

All right, I want to see that, photograph that, and paint that.

At the airport in Stockholm I want to buy a ticket for an overnight stay in Visby and traverse the island by my own means. I want to travel stand-by which would save almost two hundred bucks. But I’m warned that the stand-by ticket is a horrible idea and that I would probably be stranded there on the island forever.

Ok bitch, I’ll bite. I buy the premium-priced ticket and board. Of the forty or so available seats, I am one of a total of fifteen passengers.

You bitch.

Whatever, I can deal. The problem I assume will be the return flight from the island anyway.

Visby. The plane lands and I grab a five dollar, five minute cab ride and get out at the centro, centro meaning the only place in the island that has a couple of houses next to each other. I’ve got my Walkman on playing some oldies, ‘Bachman Turner’s Not Fragile’ and some old ‘REM’ and head across a path to the other side of the island. Walking down a small hill, I see a group of trellises in the distance covered with what really does look like blood red roses. The camera comes out; the burning of pictures begins.

Up close, the guidebooks were right. Huge, beautiful roses, growing right out of the snow winding up the thatches in the trellis. Too cool.

After the rose photo shoot, I crunch along the snow around the island and run into dozens of old churches, some of them almost a thousand years old. The city is surrounded by a great wall, which I find a place to climb and snap some pictures of this great, old place. The town has gathered together and built itself back with the glory days of medieval times and the entire day of browsing turns out perfectly.

All of this, my vacation from a vacation and I haven’t even killed the day, so imagine my surprise when I’m one of eight passengers on the way back.

I actually took the time to walk over to the counter back in Stockholm to find my ticket scalper, but unfortunately she was not present, having been able to afford a vacation of her own on me.

So even realizing the utter futility of the situation, I took the time to fill out a complaint for both her and the air carrier’s policy.

They don’t need to do that kind of shit for a couple of hundred bucks.

Night falls again. I’m probably a third through the must-see sights of this glorious place. I call back to the States to check in. I’m six hours ahead and they’re still at the grind. A message is passed on to me. Problems back home. Not my project, but volunteers are required to help, and I’m one of them.

Back into the jaws of death I go, taking the seeds of memories and photos of roses which spring life from the cold hard frozen ground.