Lazy Sunday Afternoon Cycle

...Or so we thought!

In Linkoping cycling is the most popular form of transport and everyone has a bike and as I think you've already realised, we exchange students have also bought ourselves bikes and it was last Sunday that we decided to really test them out.

We had come up with this brilliant idea while city exploring on Saturday, but said we would wait and see if it was going to rain. So a sunny Sunday mornig came, the sms's were sent, it was on! We were going to cycle to a lake JUST north of the city, not too far.

We met at the local shopping centre at 1 and the first indication that this was maybe not the best idea came when I realised everyone was wearing their winter warmest against the WIND! Wind? We had checked the weather reports for rain (only 5% they said), but had never thought to check for wind. We decided that it can't be that bad and the next vital question was asked, how to get there? No one knew exactly, but luckly we had one or two maps amongst us and after fighting the wind for control of the maps, a route was decided on.

Cycling in Sweden is fairly easy, no real hills and there are more bike paths than roads. It was really nice riding through the streets of neat little houses and watching little children play in really fun looking parks and the bigger children playing soccer on the public lawns. It was only after about 30 minutes that we realised that we had been looking at these scenes of Swedish life a little longer than maybe we should have, were we on the right road?

After I stopped a Swedish lady for directions we came to realise that we were riding in a nice big circle around the neighbourhood and had failed to notice the bike path under the bridge that would take us to our destination.

After eventually finding the right path with a sign saying Berg 10 km, we all thought that can't be too bad by bike, but yet again we forgot to account for the wind! We were soon on a bike path parrallel to the main road with majestic corn fields on both sides and a gusting wind sweeping straight across us!

Besides for the difficult conditions the ride was really nice and we were able to see a little of Swedish country life of wide open spaces dotted with little red houses and best of all not a fence in sight. When we neared the lake we could see wind surfers on the water, probably the only people really enjoying the weather.

Berg is one of the many towns that line the Gota Kanal, a channel that runs all the way from Gothenburg to Stockholm, and one of the best things to look at is the series of lock gates running from the river down to the lake its self. It was here that we stopped and admired the incredible natural beauty of Sweden while enjoying a nice hot cup of coffee and some cakes. While we were sitting at the cafe, we were also fortunate enough to see a yacht enter the locks, that are really wonderful pieces of engineering.

Unfortunately we could not spend all afternoon there, but as we were leaving we passed two children selling their old toys and that is when I saw it...and low and behold I bought my first Swedish hat! Actually its more of a helmet made of cardboard, but its still very cool! (My new profile picture is me wearing it!) Of course I wore it all the 10km home and it now sits proudly on my bookshelf awaiting its next oppotunity to be worn.

In the end it was a really great Sunday afternoon and fair enough it did not rain, but I hope it is only the first of many more such adventures that awaits me.

Hej da (that is how you spell it, but the 'a' needs a circle above it that I don't have on my

keyboard, will have to find it)

{VIDEO: This is my first attempt at adding video to my blog, I hope it works! Please excuse the bad video parts ie. the green parts. I have no idea how that happened and I don't want to pull anymore of what precious hair I have left out trying to fix it. I'll try to fix it before my next video, but I still think you'll get the general idea...ENJOY!}