25th Oct - Sweden 'Pimp up my Ride'
It's quite amazing how far you can travel in just a few days exploring the smaller towns in Sweden. We managed to travel 1,000 kms in southern Sweden (and admittedly, only saw part of it) but got a good appreciation of the coastal towns, in fairly wintery weather. For the first time, since arriving in London on our very first morning, we actually got questioned by a Customs official on the highway toll zone between Denmark and Sweden. I wonder why he had a confused look on his face, when he asked why two Australians were leasing a French licensed car with red (diplomatic?) plates and travelling from our 'home' in Denmark to Sweden for a few days? Can't explain it but he was very suspicious.
We started off driving from Copenhagen, bypassing Malmo for YSTAD, a tiny ferry stop to Poland (9 hours). It was probably once a more important town, but is nowa little slow. Nearly everything in Ystad was closed on Sunday but we managed to explore the town including some beautiful 11th and 12th century churches on foot, before driving about 20 kms further on to Sweden's STONE HENGE.
What you say? Aren't you in the wrong country? No, there really is a type of Stone Henge in ALES STENAR on the very southern coast of Sweden. It has been Carbon date tested by several groups and is estimated it is from 600AD. It's believed to be an iron age burial ground. It is extremely windy there (and this was a relatively good weather day) and it's completely exposed to the elements (including huge cow droppings everywhere - it's a mine field). Although not as large or spectacular as the British Stone henge, at least it didn't have a motorway 100 meters away!
As you can see in the photos, quite spectacular. Ales Stenar is on the rise above KASEBERGA which has a lovely old harbour, an ice cream shop and not much else. We didn't take up the ice cream but a coffee would have been nice, oh well.
Back in the car, we drove to SIMRISHAMN and found a cafe to warm up in and have a good toasted baguette whilst watching *Pimp Up my Ride' and American TV show we've seen before in Germany where people with extremely rundown cars get nominated by their embarassed friends to the show. The totally rebuild the car as a mean street machine with a massive sound system and at least one tv in the boot and at least two screens in the cabin. Some of them turn out really amazing and others are just hideous but the whole show is quite fun to watch.
Continuing up the South-East coast, we drove into KRISTIANSTAD, the old Danish stronghold by King Christian IV. Unfortunately except for a few churches, different in style to the last, and some interesting fountain sculpture, it was a quick 45-mins tour of the town on a Sunday afternoon and back in the car to HALMSTAD on the South-Western coast.
In Halmstad, we managed to find a hotel just outside the old city gate, the Clarion Collection Norre Park which was really amazing as it offered us not only room and breakfast in the morning but also an evening buffet including hot & cold dishes from 6-9pm for the reasonable price of 950SK (100€). This saved us at least 300 SK on dinner in town. We walked around the old town that evening, trying to avoid the steady rain falling.
The following morning it was only 2 degrees when we started out. It climbed to a massive 7 degrees by the end of the day, after we drove further south.
Initially, we drove up the Western coast to FALKENBERG, although we were mostly unimpressed and so decided to head down closer to Malmo/ Copenhagen via GESKÅ in ULLARED. A town in the middle of Sweden which has a massive Dimmey's type store (we've never seen a bigger shopping frenzy) and about 20 discount warehouses have set up around it. Apparently 3M people visit it each year and everyone was taking trolleys and 2 hand carts as they walked into the store 8some people were trying to manhandle two overloaded trollies through the store!). It was bedlam and after buying some essentials (gloves for Mark and winter socks for me), we headed out of there and straight onto the backroads (50-70kms-hour maximum) to a small town called ARILD which was extremely difficult to find.
However, persistence and a little about turn on the backroads later and we found what we were looking for - NIMIS. It's a rather unique and completely extraordinary driftwood sculpture in literally the middle of nowhere.
Arriving at the not very well signposted farmstead of HIMMELSTORP at 3.30pm, we spent the next 35 mins walking through very difficult terrain to find NIMIS (the name of the art piece). It would have been helpful to have really sturdy shoes, a walking stick and a bit better signage as we realised afterwards we took a very difficult and at times dangerously large sidestep of the correct route on the way down. With the failing light and unsure whether it would take us longer to return, we had to leave after only 10mins, although Mark made an amazing video with our digital camera and I'm sure people will want to see this. The pictures below, don't quite represent the 'shock, awe and wonderment' of us upon reaching it. (As well as sore knees, ankles and thighs).
(you can walk between, in, up and around these 'sculptures and the towers are about 5 stories high)
After returning safely to the car in only 20mins (going on the right path), we both commented that this was perhaps the best man made thing we've seen to-date on the trip. Certainly it was startling, impossible to imagine how or why the artist built it. We reallised as we were setting out from the car originally, we saw someone with a small tool belt carrying a hammer, who may have been the artist returning from adding some more driftwood to this scultpure which runs into the sea.
After a quick dinner at McDonalds (a guilty pleasure) we headed back home and paid another 285 Swedish Krona (AUS$50) toll just to cross a 1km long bridge back into Denmark.
We started off driving from Copenhagen, bypassing Malmo for YSTAD, a tiny ferry stop to Poland (9 hours). It was probably once a more important town, but is nowa little slow. Nearly everything in Ystad was closed on Sunday but we managed to explore the town including some beautiful 11th and 12th century churches on foot, before driving about 20 kms further on to Sweden's STONE HENGE.
What you say? Aren't you in the wrong country? No, there really is a type of Stone Henge in ALES STENAR on the very southern coast of Sweden. It has been Carbon date tested by several groups and is estimated it is from 600AD. It's believed to be an iron age burial ground. It is extremely windy there (and this was a relatively good weather day) and it's completely exposed to the elements (including huge cow droppings everywhere - it's a mine field). Although not as large or spectacular as the British Stone henge, at least it didn't have a motorway 100 meters away!
As you can see in the photos, quite spectacular. Ales Stenar is on the rise above KASEBERGA which has a lovely old harbour, an ice cream shop and not much else. We didn't take up the ice cream but a coffee would have been nice, oh well.
Back in the car, we drove to SIMRISHAMN and found a cafe to warm up in and have a good toasted baguette whilst watching *Pimp Up my Ride' and American TV show we've seen before in Germany where people with extremely rundown cars get nominated by their embarassed friends to the show. The totally rebuild the car as a mean street machine with a massive sound system and at least one tv in the boot and at least two screens in the cabin. Some of them turn out really amazing and others are just hideous but the whole show is quite fun to watch.
Continuing up the South-East coast, we drove into KRISTIANSTAD, the old Danish stronghold by King Christian IV. Unfortunately except for a few churches, different in style to the last, and some interesting fountain sculpture, it was a quick 45-mins tour of the town on a Sunday afternoon and back in the car to HALMSTAD on the South-Western coast.
In Halmstad, we managed to find a hotel just outside the old city gate, the Clarion Collection Norre Park which was really amazing as it offered us not only room and breakfast in the morning but also an evening buffet including hot & cold dishes from 6-9pm for the reasonable price of 950SK (100€). This saved us at least 300 SK on dinner in town. We walked around the old town that evening, trying to avoid the steady rain falling.
The following morning it was only 2 degrees when we started out. It climbed to a massive 7 degrees by the end of the day, after we drove further south.
Initially, we drove up the Western coast to FALKENBERG, although we were mostly unimpressed and so decided to head down closer to Malmo/ Copenhagen via GESKÅ in ULLARED. A town in the middle of Sweden which has a massive Dimmey's type store (we've never seen a bigger shopping frenzy) and about 20 discount warehouses have set up around it. Apparently 3M people visit it each year and everyone was taking trolleys and 2 hand carts as they walked into the store 8some people were trying to manhandle two overloaded trollies through the store!). It was bedlam and after buying some essentials (gloves for Mark and winter socks for me), we headed out of there and straight onto the backroads (50-70kms-hour maximum) to a small town called ARILD which was extremely difficult to find.
However, persistence and a little about turn on the backroads later and we found what we were looking for - NIMIS. It's a rather unique and completely extraordinary driftwood sculpture in literally the middle of nowhere.
Arriving at the not very well signposted farmstead of HIMMELSTORP at 3.30pm, we spent the next 35 mins walking through very difficult terrain to find NIMIS (the name of the art piece). It would have been helpful to have really sturdy shoes, a walking stick and a bit better signage as we realised afterwards we took a very difficult and at times dangerously large sidestep of the correct route on the way down. With the failing light and unsure whether it would take us longer to return, we had to leave after only 10mins, although Mark made an amazing video with our digital camera and I'm sure people will want to see this. The pictures below, don't quite represent the 'shock, awe and wonderment' of us upon reaching it. (As well as sore knees, ankles and thighs).
(you can walk between, in, up and around these 'sculptures and the towers are about 5 stories high)
After returning safely to the car in only 20mins (going on the right path), we both commented that this was perhaps the best man made thing we've seen to-date on the trip. Certainly it was startling, impossible to imagine how or why the artist built it. We reallised as we were setting out from the car originally, we saw someone with a small tool belt carrying a hammer, who may have been the artist returning from adding some more driftwood to this scultpure which runs into the sea.
After a quick dinner at McDonalds (a guilty pleasure) we headed back home and paid another 285 Swedish Krona (AUS$50) toll just to cross a 1km long bridge back into Denmark.
posted by Most Liveable at 3:32 AM
2 Comments:
Lucky the customs official let you through. Seeing you are Aussies in Denmark, there is a relationship of sorts with the Royal Family. I've heard that between October and April is not a good time to travel around Scandinavia, unless you go nordic skiing. When we are visiting Rebecca in June-July next year would be perfect time to pop in to Sweden, at least the weather would be warmer. Looking forward to seeing photos of the swedish Stonehenge, just to compare it to the original on Salisbury Plains. Love reading your blog, keep it up.
Love Mum & Dad & Aaron
this is a practice. here goes floss
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