Gamleby 2: Sculpture park

I have been asked to continue writing about this place and I sure intend too! More importantly, there has been a never-ending expedition while in Gamleby. It’s called the saga of the troll sculpture park. This peculiar little town has a tradition of legends of Garp, trolls. Their shopping center has a nice big Garp on top it, looking down at you with a friendly smile... Now we know where J.K. Rowling got the idea for the giants, especially one named Gawrp...

Anyway, with those aficionados of my ridiculous past adventures or attempts to, will remember the trips to the Peking in New York. Quite simply, this historical sailing vessel is docked right in New York city, at the south street seaport museum. Me and Maggie, on my day off from the Nyckel, would daytrip to the Big Apple to see this ship. We would daytrip is a proper way of describing this epic saga. Every day off, we would go and every single time, it was closed to public. Too much snow. Bad weather. No volunteers to man it. Gone to dry dock.... And this went on for weeks, make that months....We tried, every single weekend to step foot on the Peking but to no avail. Instead we spent our time exploring the great city by foot, seeing other museums, trying to smuggle our way into the FBI Building, following John Lennon’s foot step...

Finally, one day it was open when we were there and had the ship to ourselves. But as we were exploring the ship, it was one of the saddest moment ever. So much deception, the ship was falling apart, nobody was there or even cared about it and our adventure of exploring New York was over. This was suppose to be the culmination, the climax of all this waiting. The pinnacle of the odyssey ended up being this hulk of a rusted ship, this grand historical mighty ship, nothing but a piece of...

O.K. So I got a little side-tracked here, but the point is that the sculpture park, although not such a long trial, ended being the same. Without the giant deception at the end, of course. Because we never found it! So, we walked around one weekend, trying to find it. Couldn’t find the path to it. Next weekend, we find the path to it, but it was completely covered up by snow, and the soft snow, you know, the one you step on and suddenly you’ve got snow up to your armpits or something... So after finding it, we decide that the next weekend, we are going to attempt the climb up the mountain to see these cool sculptures. So there we were, climbing up the mountain, in this snowfilled path of some sort... Finding these cool icicles from all the cliff-like rocks, stepping armpit deep into snow, scaling the rock-face... Up on the mountain, no sign of any sculptures. Nice flagpole with a Swedish flag on it though.

Walk around, more like trundled along or swim in the snow, finding an abandoned water shed, back country skiing trails and cliffs.... Lots of the latest... A bandy game being played somewhere far off, since we can hear the commentary from a loud-hailer... After wadding around all this snow and blindly heading for the running commentary, we finally see a path amongst the cliffs, down the rocky mountain. And down we head, like a couple of Sasquatch coming down the mountain. Covered in snow, dreads peeking out of our tuques, made a grand entrance into the ice rink. Had nice hot chocolate and local sausage in a bun and watched the game. Bandy is like hockey, played on ice, skates, sticks and a ball instead of a puck. But the sticks are like a merge in between golf and hockey sticks, the rink is the size of a soccer field and most of the same rules applies actually. It’s very interesting. It’s hockey and soccer put together.

Afterwards, we went back home, wet, cold and without a sight of sculpture park... After this, we speculated on the whereabouts of this park, but never found it. Maybe we passed it in our rambling around, and it being covered in snow, we never saw it. Maybe... Or, maybe it was on the other side of the said mountain. Or possibly, it is a mystical park and the sculptures moves around as they please... That’s a possibility....

Nonetheless, we never found the park or it’s sculptures. And the only Garp I saw is the one that greets people atop the shopping center... That is the sculpture park! I think I’ll have to go back there during summer, for sure! As far as the boats... The said beam that we cut with the contraption was then craned to the sawmill. Then rolled on it’s cart and picked up by an other crane, one attached piece of equipment in the sawmill, to pick up the logs. There, we had a little accident and the scissors that grips the tree let go and the whole thing kind of went flying... Then put it up again and in place... Anyway, we saw how come Egil works alone and takes days just to set up things... He can fix any problem with a little thinking and a few piece of wood, pretty amazing. He is a true engineer, more like a Macgyver of wood. Put a piece of wood here, nail this here and then the 1 ton log will hold while I move the scissors around... Now if we put up a lever here by the means of this metal bar, then we can lift it up and then.... And what do you know, after a hour of fiddling around, the 1-ton tree is back on it’s tracks, ready to be sawed... He is quite amazing! Although he’s always talking about royalty, kings and queens and history... Trust me, I love history, I can bore you to death with it for a long period of time myself, but this guy! No matter what the subject, he somehow always manages to bring it down to the king of Sweden and how Canada doesn’t have a king! Ah, but wait, it has the British Queen!!! All the time, it’s pretty funny, and it’s so predictable, that before he has even made half the link from our current discussion to Royalty, we see where he going and say it before him! Especially Kerstin, it’s hilarious!!!

Wow, it’s pretty amazing how the fact of relating these stories of Egil and Kerstin seems so far... I’ve been in Ibiza now for like 2 weeks and it feels like I’ve left Sweden months ago! It’s pretty amazing how when you feel miserable at a place, everything seems so long, so far away, so unattainable.... But that's my next blog!