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a feeling that you are not part any more of the rest of the world.” I liked that. At the next table, a pair of Italian truffle dogs nuzzled their lunching owners. “Gotland truffles are very good, you know,” Maurice said, mentioning a friend in the neighbourhood, Ragnar Olofsson, who hunted the elusive delicacy professionally. These lagotti romagnoli seemed to have acclimatised to island life. Grey and curly, they looked like small, dozing sheep. “I love Amsterdam,” Maurice said of the city where he lives and works as a filmmaker and the founder of Tony’s Chocolonely, a chocolate producer committed to excising slavery from a traditionally troubled and exploitative business. “But when I arrive here I feel everything. When I am here the rest of the world doesn’t exist any more.” We met through the Danish chef René Redzepi. Maurice had made a documentary, Ants on a Shrimp, about Redzepi’s restaurant, Noma. Now he and his wife, filmmaker and producing partner Benthe Forrer, are focusing their entrepreneurial and story telling energies on building something in Gotland with an eye to protecting what’s special there. In addition to a house in Ljugarn, the couple recently bought a house in Fårö, a satellite island just off the northeastern tip of Gotland, that they plan to renovate, and another in Visby. V isby is Gotland’s main town. It has a well-preserved, walled medieval fortress – and from the 1100s to the 1300s it was a seat of Hanseatic League trading power. It’s now home to an annual medieval festival and what passes for the seasonal tourist crush. In Visby, you’ll find the ramparts and museums with their Stone Age relics, crowded ice-cream shops and cobblestoned alleys lined with tiny, colourful wooden houses. But for all of pretty Visby’s Unesco-protected appeal, the real wonders of Gotland were to be found in its quieter places, where signs of humans and their doings were fewer and farther between. It’s hard to do nothing. The world conspires to restore diligence. Thoughts, texts, stray bits of news from the world outside interrupt, unbidden. We’re selftrained as travellers to hurry up and check things off Gotland Guide STAY Fabriken Furillen (furillen.com; open from July through mid August) is a former limestone factory turned design-hotel oasis. Stelor ( stelor.se) features several stylish rooms in an 1820s farmhouse. EAT Bakfickan (bakfickanvisby.se) is a cosy spot for seafood like smoked shrimp and fish soup. Krakas Krog (krakas. se) offers modern Swedish cuisine in a gorgeous country setting. Lergrav Fisk & Café (lergrav.com) is a classic fish smokehouse with baskets of shrimp and smoked eel. Lilla Bjers (lillabjers.se) is a lovely farmhouse restaurant. Ljugarns Strandcafé & Restaurang (strand cafe.se) serves up seafood and mini-golf in a beachside setting. At Rot (restaurang rot.se), chef Luqaz Ottosson prepares remarkable farm-totable feasts inside a From top: Akantus, a shop in Visby; onions fresh from the garden glass-blowing studio. Rute Stenugnsbageri (rutestenugnsbageri. se) is the Swedish bakery of your dreams. SHOP Akantus (akantus visby.se) has a nice mix of antiques and crafts in Visby. Formverket (formverket.se) is a design boutique from local Barbro Tryberg Boberg. Scarlett Gallery X Gotland (thescarlett gallery.com) is a pop-up founded by a group of English and Swedish creatives. Skulpturfabriken (skulpturfabriken.se), a concrete factory and shop selling tableware, has been around since 1995. DEPARTURES 89