Friday, March 16, 2007

Out to Dalarna

Saturday, 23 Sep. 2006 Rattvik

Out to Dalarna for a couple of days. I had a thought that Dalarna would be the most ‘Swedish’ place. I mean my images of Sweden seemed to come from Dalarna such as Dalahest, mid-summer festival, reddish wooden houses in the woods of white birch trees, something like those, although my friend pointed out that Swedish and Dalarna-ish wouldn’t be the same. Maybe. Anyway I love to go to country side. I decided to stay in Rattvik because it is located between Mora and Leksad, which are most popular place in Dalarna region. I wanted to stay around Lake Siljan.

I took the bus to Rattvik from Stockholm. As soon as I got out of the city of Stockholm, I just saw plains and little ponds for about 4 hours. That was I had expected maybe boring but peaceful scenery.

The bus arrived at Rettvik 4 hours after. In front of the train station, there was big Dalahest. There it is. Now I am in Dalarna. Rattvik looked very small pretty town and I didn’t see people around. It was so quiet.

The station was on the lakeshore. Right back of the station, there was a long wooden pier toward the lake whose length was about 6650 meters. It is connected to the man-made small island in the lake. Several white birch trees were planted on that island. You can see beautiful sunset from the bridge.



It was already in the evening, so all I would do for the day was just going to YH. Rattvik would be popular tourist town in summer, but the this time of the year, I really didn’t see any tourists. My friend was right. Rattvik YH is located in the park near town center. It looked like a old school from outside, but it was pretty modern and well-equipped inside. I got a whole dormitory room all for myself. I just saw a couple of elderly people in YH.. The tourists’ season was certainly over.

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