Weekend Retreat

Last night, Matt and I got back from a weekend retreat and field trip with our class to Vaxjo, Blidingsholm, and the Wanas Foundation. This weekend has resulted in the most pictures thus far from our time in Sweden, so be sure to check out the picasa site for plenty of more pictures!

Vaxjo

We started our trip by heading to Vaxjo early Friday morning, a city dubbed as "the greenest city in europe." We met with two individuals who discussed the environmental science behind practices and policies in Vaxjo in addition to their city planning considerations.

The city prides itself on striving towards becoming completely fossil fuel free. They currently use over 90% renewable energy. More impressive than their actual practices (because they still have awhile to go on many areas) was the cooperation between politicians.

Vaxjo politicians have been ahead of the curve when it comes to recognizing issues such as climate change and have worked across party lines to reduce their emissions. As a result, they are often used as a case study when looking at environmental issues and politics in addition to economic growth vs. reduced emissions.

Castle on the lake in Vaxjo

In addition to the talks, we spent the rest of our day walking through the town and hanging out by the central lake. For dinner, we went to a local kebab and pizza shop (I'm starting to think that this may in fact be the national dish of Sweden). As usual, I was unable to read anything on the menu, so I just asked the guy at the counter to order me the best pizza they had. I ended up getting the 'Em' pizza which is none other than a kebab on a pizza - fantastic!

Kebab Pizza - and yes there are fries on there

Blidingsholm

That night, we then drove to the Blidingsholm retreat center. On Saturday, we woke up to our first swedish pancakes (at least so we think) since being here. Not only were they swedish pancakes, but they were in the shape of hearts. We were off to a pretty good start this morning.

One of the three retreat homes

The retreat center itself was beautiful - lots of red and white barns scattered throughout the forest with lakes and streams running all over the property. For the good part of the morning and afternoon, we did a few group activities (along with a healthy amount of soccer and ultimate frisbee mixed in). That night, we then had a huge group cookout. (Hot dogs for nearly 100 people takes quite awhile to cook!)

Cookout

Car Cemetery and Wanas Foundation

The following morning, we woke up and got breakfast and then loaded onto a double-decker bus for our next stop. First, we stopped at a Car Cemetery with an interesting back story. Quite a few years ago there was an older man who was starting a junkyard on his property to resell the parts for scrap and replacements. Over the years he gathered quite a few cars and scattered them throughout the forest on his property. After a bit, the business wasn't making any money and the government told him he needed to scrap the scrapyard. However, he had no money to remove all the vehicles nor the money to pay the fine if he didn't move the cars.

To avoid having to pay, he convinced the government to let him keep the cars on the property as an 'art' piece to show over the years what happens when humans pick up and leave their stuff behind in nature. After a couple decades, nature has slowly grown completely around the cars, creating an eerie mixture of nature and technology. It is now a protected cutural historical site.

Car Cemetery

After the car cemetery, we drove onto the Wanas Foundation, a beautiful art foundation. The property consists of 'a medieval castle, an organic farm, and a sculpture park.' For the rest of the afternoon, we wandered throughout the forest and around the lake checking out the many outdoor sculptures. The site was full of surprises and contained some pretty funky art pieces.

One of the main art pieces entitled 'Atlantis' with the castle in the background. This piece is an attempt to show our culture's blindness to climate change. Coming from the sinking classical swedish home are noises of a mother making dinner, kids playing, and adults talking. It is showing that we continue to go about our everyday lives completely unaware of climate change and the impact it has on our society (as demonstrated by the sinking home)

A few of the pieces you could even climb on. One piece was a series of 11 rope swings tied at various heights in a pretty big tree. Now, I'm curious if anyone has ever managed to swing on all of them, but after seeing the one swing about 30 feet up in the air, I was determined to climb to it. A few minutes later I found myself sitting in a swing higher than I've ever swung before (with no immediate desire to try and figure out how to get back down).

Rope Swing art piece (I'm the one way at the top)

After lunch and some more exploring, we boarded the bus and drove back to Karlskrona. Today is a free day for us (well, technically a 'study' day) with class starting back up tomorrow.

- Spud