Luleå to Gävle

Getting from Luleå to Gävle was a little bumpy. The train only goes at night and was over two hours late leaving Luleå. By the time it finally pulled into the station most of us had been waiting outside in the cold for well over an hour. But the Swedes are patient people and everyone was bundled up and seemed to take the wait in stride. Sleeping on a train is only slightly less miserable than sleeping on an airplane, but the seat next to me was empty so I really couldn't complain. The delay ended up being a good thing as I still arrived in Gävle two hours ahead of the hostel’s reception opening hours. After a short wander through town trying to elude an excessively vocal and pungent man I went back to the station to get coffee and wait. Gävle is a beautiful little town of parks and squares modeled after Paris. A wide river runs through the city from a vast park designed after the Bois du Bologne. Little bridges link several islands running up the center so you can jog right in the middle of the river. Gävle is the home of Gevalia Coffee and Läkerol, makers of those tiny colorful boxes of pastilles that line the shelves of Scandinavian candy stores. Irresistible. Every winter they make an enormous goat (13 meters tall) out of straw and place it in the center of town. In the 40 year history of the giant yule goat it has been set on fire over 20 times, vandalized and even hit by a car. Apparently undeterred, the people of Gävle continue to build it each year. I've put links to this year's webcam as well as the tragic history of the goat on this page.

The hostel was in the oldest part of town in a tiny patch of colorful wooden cottages that had survived a fire that took everything else. They had no record of my reservation (starting to notice a pattern here) but they had room for me if I was willing to move around a bit. After a shower and an assessment of what I wanted to see and how much time I had to see it all I gathered my cameras and sketch books and headed back to the train station. Turns out I had made a very good decision, but I’ll get to that. After booking travel to Ensköping and Borlänge I went to wait for the bus that would take me to Forsbacka.

less than 48 hours

Ok, so lesson No. 1: When you’re a negligible distance from the Arctic Circle it can be VERY cold. Anticipate the worst and plan accordingly.

Lesson No. 2: When you’re a negligible distance from the Arctic Circle and a local tells you a BIG storm is coming, you can take their word for it. If you’re smart, you’ll sit somewhere warm with a nice drink while you reflect on how lucky you are not to be out in the cold.

Both luck and common sense must have taken leave of me somewhere in Finland. I’ve been in Luleå less than two days and every time I step onto a bus it’s a new adventure. I set out yesterday in a snowstorm to see Gammelstad. It was cold and very windy and snowing horizontally. I climbed onto a crowded bus (Saab, of course) and watched attentively as each stop came up. I didn’t want to miss mine. Everyone was animated by the storm; talking while they took off or put on hats and gloves. There was a girl with a cat and three of her friends, a very large deaf woman who kept making phone calls while trying to hang on to a rather cumbersome wall shelf, two women with large strollers and man in his early twenties sitting in front of me who couldn’t manage to get his fingers far enough into his ears to block them all out. I got off at Gammelstad’s something or other and followed this agitated young man across the snowy road. To my right was a huge roundabout and to my left a petrol station. I went left to get directions. The woman at the counter pointed me toward a young man stocking the shelves. He spoke English and was very kind and told me that Gammelstad proper was three more stops down the road. He gave me a map and said it was only a kilometer but cautioned “It is not such nice weather.” I told him I didn’t mind walking and thanked him as I went back out into the storm.

There were lots of cars and no sidewalks on the road I was to follow. The snow was ankle deep and I walked into a very strong wind. It was snowing so hard (follow the link to video) that I almost walked right by Gammelstad! It appeared out of nowhere and I turned onto a narrow lane and walked up a hill packed with little red cottages. It seemed as if most of the wooden buildings had all huddled together behind the more orderly ones fronting the street. They all had white trim and shutters and lace curtains were hung in the windows. Most had large stones for front steps. A huge old stone church and a big white belltower sat on top of the hill. Except for an occasional passing car, there wasn’t a soul in sight. The church was locked up and the tourist office was closed along with all of the shops and cafés. Further evidence of my singular brilliance. I took pictures, mostly of the blowing snow, until the next bus came.

As the day progressed the storm just seemed to grow and my attempts to wander Luleå were severely hampered. I gave in and returned to my room, where the snow was now a quarter of the way up the window. The storm blew all night but the sky was clear when I woke up this morning and so I decided to go back to take some more pictures and sketch before leaving town. A bus bound for the hospital, via Gammelstad came ten minutes before the N^o 9 that I had taken yesterday. The driver didn’t speak English but nodded when I said Gammelstad so I paid her and sat down. This time I wouldn’t get off until I saw those little red cottages. The bus wound through neighborhoods where all the houses were either yellow or red, past two lakes and finally stopped in front of an enormous building covered by a glass roof. Everyone got off and the driver turned and just looked at me. We were at the end of the line and apparently I had missed my stop. Could getting to Gammelstad really be this much of a challenge? I gathered my things and stood up and she tried to explain to me that another bus would come in three minutes and to get off at ‘Centrum’. I told her I understood and turned to get off the bus but she told me to sit down. In three minutes we were back on the road.

‘Centrum’ came, and I got off the bus. I knew where I was from the day before and I walked toward the church on the hill. I passed a man with two children on delicate foot sleds and they smiled at me as I took their picture. The town was quiet and nestled in yesterday’s snow and I wandered up and down the tiny streets and photographed the winding passageways between the buildings. The church, even in a city would have been massive and imposing but at the top of the hill in this Lilliputian village its presence was exaggerated. A family was gathering there for what looked like a christening and so I was able to get a glimpse inside. A single bay of white plastered walls terminated in a beautifully painted apse. It was a very reduced gothic of ribbed vaults and pointed arches and uncharacteristically thick walls. It would have been the perfect place to wait out yesterday's storm. I circled the entire village and then stopped next to Margarta’s Wardshus to sketch the buildings that followed the main road as it wound its way out of town. Getting there had taken a great deal of doing and as long as the weather held I was in no hurry to get back on the bus.