21 July Lergöksrundan

Ingrid and I convinced Analyn to participate in our Lergöksrundan ritual the next day. This involves renting bikes from the campground and then following signs for the Lergöksrundan. This is all in Ångelholm, the town where my grandparents retired, and where I spent half of my childhood summers. Ångelholm is known for their clay doves, called Lergöks. A rundan is a route or circuit. Thus, if one follows the Lergöksrundan, one gets a pretty good sense of the town from forests, residential areas, the hospital, the river, the beach, the city hall, etc. In short, its what anyone visiting Sweden would want to see. Plus, bike riding is cool!

Being intrepid travelers, we were unconcerned with the fact that I had no grip and essentially rode without being able to use my arms. Analyn’s bike seat was several centimeters too high so she had to jump every time we stopped. But we managed it all and had fun doing it. I stole some pictures from Analyn’s Facebook page.

It was good to get a chance to relax a bit in Sweden. We’d been on the go for awhile, despite being on a cruise, so it was pleasant to take things slow for a bit. I was able to go swimming a few times. Analyn and Ingrid were able to shop for clogs. We could watch the sun set at 10PM and catch up on all our favorite Swedish vices, like scraping Knäckebröd across a tub of butter.

Unfortunately the internet was a bit of a hassle. The manager of the hostel, Sven-Anders, has a wireless signal. Analyn and I were able to see the signal but not connect online. Sven-Anders is about 60 and has the tech skills of Portia so he didn’t really understand why I kept asking him to reboot the modem. I told him to unplug it and replug it in sixty seconds later. 15 seconds later he said he had. I was skeptical. He also seemed to confuse his computer and his modem, claiming the modem was only on while he was working. Funny thing was the signal was constant – even when he “turned it off.” Needless to say, we spent a fair amount of time hunting around for free wifi signals.