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.