KALMAR - June 19,2012
We returned on the ferry from Visby - 3 1/2 hours - and we arrived in Oskarshamn in Southeast Sweden at 8 pm in the evening. Our next stop on our adventure was Copenhagen. It was a 5 hour drive from the ferry, so we made a brief evening stop in Kalmar - 45 minutes from Oskarshamn. Kalmar has an abundance of seafaring past. The region has a lot going for it. It has natural beauty, elk, large forests,flowering meadows, and 5,000 lakes teaming with fish.
Kalmar, a coastal town opposite the Baltic island of Oland, contains Sweden's best-preserved Renaissance castle. Historically the town is forever liked to the Kalmar Union, the treaty that three northern crowns signed here in 1357 linking Denmark,Norway, and Sweden into an ill-fated but united kingdom. The union was dismantled in 1523.
Kalmar Slott - Kalmar Castle. This place has the kind of realism that Disney just can't create - the dark dungeon still conjures cries of the damned. There are enough secret passages here to enthrall Dracula; there's a moat and a drawbridge; and fairy-tale architectural adornments - pepper pots and turrets. This is a strategically situated castle on the Baltic which was the "key to Sweden". There was even a prison for women located in this castle.
There was a beautiful exhibition in the castle. The Swedes and the Danes started the art of paper cutting into interesting scenes, and colorful people. The artist displaying in the castle, pressed these paper cuttings in between two pieces of glass, and sealed them.
Goodbye to the Motherland and on to visit the Danes!!!
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