Page 12 - Stuart Exposure - February '21

Page 12, Stuart Exposure

travel

Visby, Gotland: Starting Its

Fifth Millennium

By Don Kiselewski, MCC,
D.S., Palm Beach Gardens
Travel Leaders
Perhaps you watched
TV, as I did, 20 years ago
on New Year ’s Eve, when
we celebrated the end of
the second millennium and
beginning of the third. As the
world turned, the television
presentations from each of
the most prestigious cities in
each time zone created an image of the occasion that excited the
imagination. It was communications and technology at its best
and it rightly should be given credit for the spectacular event that
we witnessed. But, it was the beauty of the cities themselves that Red-tiled roof buildings in Visby, built outside the great wall, now fill the land from the city to the harbor.
left the lasting impression of entering into the new millennium.
Man has truly built wonders on our earth.
As I watched, it became apparent that the majority of the
cities highlighted during the presentation weren’t there a half
millennium ago. And then, there are cities like Visby, Gotland
that preceded Christ by 2,000 years. Names like Sydney, Paris,
Washington, and New York automatically paint pictures in our
mind – but Visby?
I tried a little experiment last week and asked a few people
whether they had ever heard of Gotland or Visby. As one might
expect, the replies were about the same as Jay Leno gets when
he conducts his “person on the street” interviews – lots of
positive answers, but none were right. Visby, Gotland got the
same results.
The first thing you should know is that Gotland is an island.
It’s actually the biggest island in the Baltic Sea, some 75 miles
long by 35 miles wide. The island is located about 55 miles off

Multicolored fishing boats dot the small harbor in Gotland.

There are gates peppered along the two-mile wall that circles
Visby. This one has a large opening for carriages and a
smaller one for pedestrians.

Travel on page 13 Visby’s brightly painted buildings line the cobblestone streets, reflecting a period locked in time.

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