quick update!

David and I went to Falun in the Darlana region (North West of Stockholm) on friday evening till sunday. There we met Linn and Philip at Linn’s mum’s place. We had a fantastic week end with great food, great company, nice slalom on Saturday and superb cross country on sunday morning!!

Falun is a nice little town (almost 60000 people) which has the oldest copper mine in the world! It was active until the early 90s and for 700 years before that and was run by the same company all that while! It was open every day of the year except for midsummer day and fortunately that is the day when it collapsed in the 19th century so no one got killed.

Falun is also famous for its cross country tracks. It has a beautiful hilly landscape covered of course with forests and snowy lakes. We also saw some ski jump slides!! Those guys must be mad to even climb up there, not speaking about jumping off!

Now everyone (including Philip) is training for the 90 km Vasaloppet (crosscountry marathon) which starts near Norway and ends not far from Falun, apparently following (backwards! he was going to Norway!) the steps of dear Gustav Vasa who ran (on skis) in front of the Danes after they tricked and killed pretty much all nobility in a blood bath on Gamla Stan (the old Stockholm) in 1524. His own people caught up with him (does that mean he was not very fast and lost the race?) so that he could help them and together they kicked the Danes out. Then they crowned him to celebrate.

That’s it for now. I have started to take swedish lessions twice per week so that added to badminton keeps me busy alright!!

Have fun!

🙂