Month: August 2025

A leisurely Sunday in Oskarshamn

August 3, 2025

Oskarshamn, Sweden

We wandered over to see a couple museums. First the work of a famous local woodcarving artist, Doderhultar.

Note condition of the bride.

Then a nautical museum.

Those poor armadillos were turned into lamps.

Then to the library where we saw the coolest globe ever! Has full relief to show mountains, including under the oceans! We want one, but they aren’t made any more.

Oskarshamn has hired various artists to paint murals on the sides of buildings.

We stopped for lunch on a bench at a park with a nice view of a garden, a church, and a painting of a jar of pickles.

Got moved to our next hotel, which is in an old train station across from the ferry line. The young man (age 28) who bought the restaurant section of the station 6 months ago has converted the rooms over the restaurant into hotel rooms. Our room is ginormous!

The owner is originally from Syria. Left at age 16, moved to Greece and became a chef, married a Swedish girl, moved here and started up his business.

We ate Greek food at his restaurant tonight while watching the huge Gotland ferry unload and begin reloading. This ferry holds 500 cars! Looks like it is a key way stuff gets to and from the island. For instance, we saw big trash trucks leaving the ferry. And there were 3 farm trackers that got on.

Tomorrow, we are on the 1:25 pm ferry, leaving us time to sleep in, check out, hang out at the ferry and be early to get on (or on time even if anything goes awry).

Tut tut it looks like rain

68 km today to arrive in Oskarshamn (pronounced Oscar’s Ham). Many of the staff /service people in town wear t-shirts to that effect.

I’ve seen scenery from all over Europe, and I love the scenery in Sweden. Most of the trip has been through dark forests or fields. The huge rocks seemingly placed at random in the middle of fields contrast with the forests and growth within the rocks. It’s not the raw majesty of the Alps, but something different. The open wilderness readily lends itself to wild camping, which is legal in Sweden.

Certainly sections of the forest do show heavy deforestation, which makes sense given how many things in Sweden are made from wood instead of plastic. But those sections are fairly isolated.

And everywhere wild flowers. By the side of the road. Intermixed with the wheat in the fields.

We had lunch in a field overlooking a lake (and nearby cows). We rode under the threat of rain the second half of the day, always with blue sky and fluffy clouds in front of us, but dark clouds to either side. Despite a period of thunder, we had only a couple intervals of light rain (enough to make us nervous but never enough to get us wet).

I pulled out the upcoming ferry schedules only to realize I’d originally added all the dates to the calendar in Eastern Standard Time. Now that I’m not IN EST, everything on the calendar was off by 6 hours (which in at least one case made it on a different day). Hopefully fixed now.

The staff tonight have been amazing. The bathroom might be the smallest I’ve ever seen. In a cute way.

Made it to the coast!

Friday, August 2

Vimmerby to Oskarshamn

Rick sometimes notes that he hits days where he feels his power kick in. He feels it in 3s. Three days, 3 weeks. Well, there was no 3 involved, but I finally felt it! Not that I didn’t still use the E on my bike, but I could pedal faster and farther up hills. Although we didn’t have too many hills as we were heading toward the coast, so mostly down.

Had lunch in a pretty spot by a lake.

We were out in the countryside all day.

We have noticed these elevated ramps into the upper levels of barns. Not sure if they are for the trackers or animals, though I don’t think you’d keep the animals up high like that. Might topple.

Saw a couple varieties of mushrooms.

Arrived in Oskarshamn about 3:15, after 6 hours on the road. Not bad for 68 kms.

We wandered into town. There was an English speaking band playing blues in the town square.

Went down near the waterfront.

Tonight we are in a Best Western, with the tiniest bathroom ever. Must be about 2.5×6′, including toilet, sink and shower. A bit of a squeeze!

At least it wasn’t all up

We had a brief chat with Roger, our AurBnB host, this morning, learning that “Kinda” is the name of the municipality. We also learned that, despite Linda’s desire, there aren’t many rabbits (or hares) in the region. She’s been wanting a picture of one ever since we saw one in Stockholm and she missed her chance. Not many squirrels either. In theory there are hares on Gotland though.

The first 10 km from Kisa took us from 106 m to 243 m, the highest elevation of the trip so far. In steep increments. We’d first planned this trip sans e-bike, and that would have been a disaster.

We’ve been passing scat by the side of the road for the past few days, and wondering at its source. Sadly, we passed a dead badger by the side of the road today, but at least now know the creature involved. Not bunnies!

We stopped for lunch next to a lake with a group of teens settled in for their own lunch. While we were there two more groups of ~15 arrived, also by canoe(s). They’re Germans on a 2-week canoeing expedition.

52 km today to Vimmerby, home of Astrid Lindgren (and the all-important Astrid Lindgren World theme park). Tomorrow will be longer, but have us arrive in Oscarsham and the ferry to Gotland in a couple days. There may be bunnies

When we walked out for dinner and groceries, Linda complained of a rock in her shoe. When we got back to the room she couldn’t find one, so she removed the insole only to find a metal spike! At some point, weeks ago, she’d stepped on a nail and it’s been aggravating her since. Fixed now.

Every day we hang up laundry to dry. In this hotel we had a mini-split AC unit, unusual in that the hotels we’ve stayed in haven’t had AC (and the rooms have often been quite warm). However, clothes don’t dry well with cold air. The hotel had screwed the battery-powered wireless remote control to the wall so you couldn’t change it. With a torx screw. Which is part of my toolkit… Some adjustments later and we had everything dry in the morning. I even remembered to set the control back the way it was!

A “road”, a badger, Germans, and Pippi Longstocking

Friday, August 1

Kisa to Vimmerby, Sweden

This morning I walked around the garden at our Airbnb.

Then we headed out. Rick started us out with a shortcut on a small “road”.

We had to do a bit of walking on part of the “road”.

After that, we spent a lot of time going up what some would call a hill, but it seemed like a small mountain to me. All lovely forested area. Me buzzing along on my e-bike behind Rick as he pedaled away. No, I do not feel guilty. As I told Rick, if not for the e-bike, I’d just stop and say “Call me a cab!”

Scenery snapped from the bike:

Most interesting road kill: a badger. Looked kind of like this one

but lighter markings on the face and of course, more dead. I speculated that he had pale markings because he was elderly. Maybe his eyesight wasn’t so good either.

We stopped for lunch on a rock by a lake. Turned out to be a popular area. There were 3 groups of German high school aged kids doing a 2-week summer adventure camp. They canoed up, found separate shady spots and gathered for lunch. There was some brief singing – the kids, not us.

Made it to the town of Vimmerby, known for being the home of Astrid Lundgren, author of Pippi Longstocking. There’s even a Pippi Longstocking theme park in the area! Info on it notes that all the plays are in Swedish because everybody knows all the stories, so the language won’t matter.