Visby and Almedalen

This summer, for a serie of circumstances, I ended up having the possibility to travel to Visby for going to Almedalen.

Visby

Almedalen is a political event that lasts about a week. All the politician and a lot of organizations meet up and there are a lot of events and seminars. During the years, this event has grown up in size and, as for every event in Visby, half of Stockholm is there.
Said this one has to know that I am completely disinterest in politics. I have no clue what goes on in my own country most of the times, and in Sweden, it is even less. I am quite detach, I do not know the people that run this place and surely, I wasn't burning to be in Almedalen for some special reason (or for meeting some local VIP).
However, I thought it could have been an interesting experience, and it was.

In the architects antrum...

One of the seminars

In the town center

Almedalen per se' didn't impress me. On the other hand, I was very puzzled of the importance given to an event where there is a large amount of noise produced by everyone. Who is there is mostly to talk and show off, not to listen. If you have a message, you can be there and splat it in everyone's face, but it is not said that somebody will actually understand it.
So, it is a bit of a waste of time. Except if your voice is big enough to actually be heard.

Visby on the other hand was very pitoresque. The historical centre is small, compact and it is lovely to just stroll around, although there was a lot of people (but I suspect that is almost inevitable the whole summer there).

Streets of Visby

Typical house in Visby. House painted with tar.

Details of the painting on the house

Streets of Visby

Nice corners

Interesting buildings

The wall is beautiful from every angle, but especially at sunset. The church ruins are fascinating.

Majestic

Inside the ruins

A buildings meltpot

Beautiful church ruins

Basically, everything that is breathing medieval is very refreshing in a country where wherever you go the most ancient building is from the 1800 century and everything else has been burnt down, reutilized for building something else, or haven't existed at all.
Of course it is not Rome, but considering where one is, it is quite impressive that the core of the town is almost intact with old buildings.

View from the wall

Houses and wall

One of the towers

The wall at sunset

I had also the opportunity to peek a look outside the wall. Visby per se' loses then its touch as soon as one get far away from the center. It becomes a very conventional 70s shaped town.

Nothing extraordinary (except that there are two cranes here). But this picture became really good in my opinion!

Outside Visby the island have plenty of potential. The landscape can be very beautiful and dramatic, with high cliffs standing on water (pity that the weather was awful when I went to observe the panorama...), there are again ruins of quite big monasteries and finally, there are also small fishermans villages, small, intact in the atmosphere, typical with low buildings.

Talking of Roma. This is the ruins of the monastery in Roma

Roma monastery

Building annexes to Roma monastery

 If food though is a very important element for my trips, it was not the case for the rest of the people I was surrounded, so sadly, the food experience was quite boring. Not that I would think that during such week there is the possibility to eat in some nice place, with typical food, at a reasonable price, but we ended up eating a pizza, and of course, that I would have never chosen if I'd be on my own visiting there.
Hopefully, if there will ever be another trip, there will be then some chance to eat something typical!