Falun

August 8th to 10th, I visited Falun, a city 4 hours southwest of Hudiksvall with Ewa, my Rotary district chairperson, Judith from Germany and Emma from New Zealand. We spent the weekend touring around the city and getting to know each other. Falun is famous for its really old copper mine. It was the biggest copper mine in Europe during the middle ages and only shut down a couple years ago. We got a tour. Here's a picture of Ewa, Judith and Emma standing in front of the mine. Saturday night, we went to a Swedish opera in an old open pit limestone quarry. It was an amazing facility and a perfect night to watch an opera outside.Here's a picture from behind and above the opera before we started the walk down into the pit. The performance was incredible, it was Mozart's The Magic Flute in Swedish with English subtitles. It had a modern twist with a motorcycle entrance and they incorporated the water in the stage. When it got dark they fit fireworks in to the story! It was the best finally I've ever seen! Falun is in the Dalarna region of Sweden which is famous for the Dala horses, the little red painted wooden horses. So we visited one of the factories. Here's a picture of the newly painted horses drying on shelves. Everything is done by hand in the factory to keep with tradition. I bought a little horse and had one of the painting ladies write my name on it. We had a fun time in Falun and on Monday, from there, Judith and I went 6 hour farther south to Vimmerby where all the other international students in Sweden met for a week long Swedish language camp. We had to wake up and get on a train at 5 in the morning to get there but it was worth it!