Medieval Visby

We came over to Gotland this morning, another Baltic island, and drove down to our digs at Tofta Strand.

Seems the family creeps into their own summer place and the shed during the summer and rents out their place to tourists. She is a motorcycle queen, and loves mirrors and cloth flowers. Ugh. The place is roomy enough, but the kitchen utensils suck. Either plastic crap or scratched Teflon pans or welled up ones. Whatever. We will survive. There's a trampoline outside, Teeny2 is happy about that. Every 10th house seems to have one, someone made a million selling these to the Swedes a few years back.

After unpacking and looking for food - the only thing to be found was the grocery store at the local mobile home place, and the food they had was not exactly what we wanted - we went to a concert in Roma. An organist, Ragnhild Pettersson, was playing a number of different works. It was very nice, and it was nice to see the church, although the old altar picture above the very 70s altar cloth was a bit jarring.

Since the night was still young we headed off for Visby. Arriving there we realized that the maidens on the boat over who were dressed in Medieval costumes had multiplied. We seemed to be in the minority.

Visby is as amazing place - they still have most of the city walls intact and pretty much keep cars out. The place has lots of interesting ruins - the former Hansesatic League city was too poor to tear them down so they just let them rot. In the 18th century someone had the bright idea that this might be interesting for tourists, and one of the major sources of income for the island was born.

The town was popping - it was 10pm and the streets were filled with people, mostly dressed medievally, but of course still wearing their backpacks and jogging shoes and using their mobile phones. This was not just young kids - it was older couples, people walking dogs, families pushing prams, kids dressed up (the little girls loved being princesses, it seems). Some of the restaurants would only accept people in Medieval dress. There will be a week-long festival, it seems. Teeny2 was thrilled with everyone she saw and would looooove to have one of the green dresses with flared sleeves.

Looks like I will have to sacrifice a day at the beach for another tour of town - the place is far too interesting, and there is so much good tourist stuff to buy :)