… Uppsala. Sweden, Day 30

The sleeping plan worked out quite. It looks like I finally has got so tired that sun shining early in the morning is not a big deal any longer. When I left my sleeping bag at about 9am I went to the basement to check laundry situation. I could not believe my eyes: barely any washing hours were booked for this weekend. So, I made a decision to do my washing today, although I was not in such a terrible need as last time.

While my laundry was being done, I cooked something between late breakfast and early lunch: rice pudding. I could finally used cinnamon I bought accidentally weeks ago! About 10am was also a time, when the kitchen was a very busy place. I do not remember I had ever seen so many people there. I expressed my surprise and the explanation I got was a very simple one: everyone is having a breakfast so early in the morning.

A package of sugar from a Czech restaurant came handy and together with cinnamon my rice pudding tasted just great:

I already found which washing program works the best for me, so I had no problems to set the washing machine this time. However, me and buttons of the drier are not such good friends, and therefore drying remains to be tricky: although I was sure I set everything properly, my clothing stayed little wet again.

I guess it is getting boring to read about weather in Uppsala every other day, however I cannot avoid mentioning it once again. Today it was great again: nice and warm, with gentle breeze! This made me to leave the dorms shortly after lunch.

Still remembering the fiasco of my well-planned trip that never happened, I was absolutely spontaneous this time. Why not to go to lake Ekoln, south of downtown Uppsala. The way there was simple, just along the main road most of the time. The road was called Dag Hammarskjölds väg and that was exactly the road which keeps going on and on and although it is quite hilly, it has that great trail for roller blading. Fortunately beautiful landscape of Sweden was a nice prevention of getting bored of walking.

I took a short break at Sunnerstaåsen, which seemed to offer a lot to do throughout the whole year: from skying in winter to kayaking and mountain-biking in summer. However, on Saturday afternoon there was no one except for a resting cyclist and few runners. To me it was just a nice place to sit down and enjoy the Swedish summer. I could also appreciate the wonderful view:

From Sunnerstaåsen it was only 15 more minutes to the shores of the lake. I reached a place offering camping and although it was quite crowded with people, nobody was camping at all. It looked to me that Swedes who were not on vacation came to the lake. There were lots of families with small kids as well as people driving their boats. Some bikers were having a rest there and some people apparently came just to have a nice walk. That was exactly what I did, too.

I spent there almost three hours walking a bit, taking lots of pictures, enjoying the sun and sparkling surface of the lake as well as watching Swedish kids playing around. For the first time during my stay here, I was at a place where mainly (maybe only?) Swedes were, so I was excited to hear the language all around and to check whether most of Swedes were really blond.

The surroundings of the lake were very pleasant, offering lots of different spots to focus my camera on: from sunny bays with little boats, fallen trees, to bridges across the Fyrisån River and houses scattered around the lake. The houses were truly a mosaic of ways of living.

Typical red wooden houses with necessary white lines round windows and doors neighbored to a Russian-looking yellow villa. There were also little summer houses covered in flowers falling from window ledges as well as few huge villas with beautiful lawns and private piers. A very interesting place to live surely was an old house hidden in overgrown grass and bushes. This made me to recall the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty. No matter how old, how big and how well kept the houses were, vast majority of them was wooden.

It must be great to have a breakfast there: