The Walls of Glass: Skellefteå

Välkomna hem! or in English 'welcome home!' Eventhough this beautiful city in the northern Sweden may not be your home, it will surely make you feel like at one. A nickname for this town is 'Golden Town' and it refers to the large gold mining industry. It is also well known for hockey and its golden team Skellefteå AIK.

The city was founded not a long time ago, in 1845. It lies at the Baltic sea where the river called Skellefteälven flows.

Besides many sport and leasure activities there is one place which caught my attention. It's called Bonnstan and it's one of the most well preserved 1900's century Church towns of its kind which remains unchanged since it was built between 1830 and 1840. Whenever I walked past those houses all I could think of how they lived back then...and how close were people at those times.

Skellefteå will definitely leave only good memories in my mind. Here I tried the best hamburgers in Sweden (at Krysset gatukök), the best and biggest ice cream in a cone (at Bergsbykiosken), here I first ate surströmming (a very stinky fermented herring - but realy tasty), swam in the Baltic sea in a place called Byske havsbad, went to Furögrund to fika and enjoy the view on the sea, visited Bjuröklubb with another amazing view on the sea and a lighthouse where you can also buy fish from a fresh catch, experienced my first sail on the river in a pool, because the boats were sold out (still it was fun!) and had a chance to have a look inside a dairy farm and see how well Swedish cows are being taken care of. Lots of experience, lots of nice memories.

So if you ever decide to visit Sweden and you want to avoid big towns and crowds, go to Skellefteå, a relaxed city which make you feel as comfortable as home.